The Alternative to the Techno Café

We have found another chow hall here on the FOB that is as close as the Techno Café and it seems to be better than the Techno. We were walking to the Techno one day for dinner when we saw two Germanish females standing around in cooks uniforms. They waved at us very nicely; we waved back and asked them what they were up to. They had opened up another chow hall two buildings down from the Techno, and nobody was going to it, so we started to. All of the chow on the camp comes out of the same boxes; it all comes down to atmosphere.

To be honest, I was a getting a little tired of the oppressive beat of the Techno, so the Happy Café is a pleasant alternative. They play pop-ish music, not too loud and they are always happy to see us, normally we are the only folks in the chow hall. It is kind of funny, whenever it is breakfast or dinner-time they are waiting outside the chow hall with no customers, they see us walking up, wave and run inside to get the food ready to serve. They have even picked up on some of our bad eating habits and enable them: They always have bananas and oatmeal at breakfast (my favorite), they put out a lot of Rice Krispie Bars and White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut cookies (the team’s favorite snackish food) and they give us extra large portions of everything we ask for. Pretty cool to have almost personal service in an Army chow hall.

We have spent the last couple of days practicing and refining our battle drills and integrating a few new personnel. The first new person is SSG K, a replacement for SFC C; he came from another team and has been welcomed all around, especially in his vehicle, now they have 4 people in the vehicle to do all of the drills instead of just 3.

We also now have 3 interpreters attached to the team, they are pretty happy to be here and working with us. Two of them are from Iraq, the third is from Morocco, and they all have been living in Europe for the past few years. We spent today integrating them into the different battle drills, they were a little leery when we told them that they will be required to drive from the back seat of the HMMWVs in case of injury to the driver: Their assigned seat is right behind the driver seat, if the driver is injured they are the only ones that can quickly reach the steering wheel and keep driving. The first time they did it, they were a little tentative but they got the hang of it. They even go to the point where they could accelerate the vehicle, drive around curves and corners, and stop the vehicle, all from the back seat, pretty cool for the first day. They also got into the vehicle rollover drill - - If the vehicle starts to roll over (which happens in Iraq, especially with heavier vehicles that are driven hard) they have to help pull the gunner out of the turret and hold on to him to keep him from bouncing around the vehicle. Every one else is strapped in with our seatbelts, but the gunner would be loose, so we grab hold of him to keep him from bouncing around.

Once again, they are an extra hand in the vehicle and really have gotten into the mission: All three of them know where the first aid kits are, where the evacuation litters are kept as well as the landing zone marking panels so they lend two extra hands to the casualty evacuation drills. Very cool. One of them is a veteran of the Iran/Iraq war, I am going to ask him about that some tomorrow. My interpreter is Kurdish from Mosul, he left shortly after the first Desert Storm, when Saddam cracked down on the Kurds. We had a very interesting discussion about how hard the life of a refugee has been for him and his community.

Tomorrow is more battle drills, we will throw in some more variations, but we should get good at them here shortly.

Cultural Note: British people are incapable of closing doors. We share a latrine/shower facility with one of the British units in the exercise, it is not uncommon to be enjoying a nice hot shower and get a blast of cold German night air. When you feel that, you know that some British soldier came in and left the door wide open. We may have to have some door closing lessons if it gets much colder.

Nickname update: SSG W has earned his nickname: Slim. During the past two days of casualty evacuation drills he has turned out to be the worst casualty to have to evacuate: He is about an inch taller than me (6’4”) and weighs 250 lbs. He is a LOAD to pick up and carry around, especially with his 50 lbs. of extra gear (body armor, helmet, etc.)