LIVING ON TATTOOINE
(a.k.a. KUWAIT)
Christine Cook
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Copyright 2012 Christine Cook
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
My name is Christine Cook. I am a wife and mother of two kids. I am a writer of mystery novels, one of which was published in 2003. And until December 2003, I had a bit of a secret life.
I am a lieutenant colonel in the Michigan Army National Guard. Since I live in a liberal town, I didn’t divulge that information to many people. Most of my friends thought I was an average stay-at-home mom who wrote occasionally.
In November 2003, my battalion headquarters was alerted that we were going to war. By December 2003, I left my home and family to get ready for a year in Kuwait. My friends were in a state of shock.
It wasn’t as surprising to me. I’d known for years it wasn’t a question of if I was mobilized; it was a matter of when. I had signed on the line, I was a patriot, I knew it was my responsibility to defend this country. Maybe this mission didn’t count as defense of my country, but I was not the kind of woman to try renegotiation now.
I was scared, though. As battalion commander, I was taking soldiers I cared deeply about into uncharted territory. And I was leaving my entire life behind in Michigan.
When I arrived in Kuwait, I wrote an email letter home to let everyone know I’d made it. Thus began a weekly series of letters to let everyone know I was still safe, and my sense of humor was intact. They are part travelogue, part science fiction, part history, part political satire, part memoir.
The sections in plain text are the original e-mails as I wrote them. The italicized portions are my additions since I came home. The additions clarify parts of the e-mail which may be otherwise unclear, or they may add background information to the narrative in the letters.
So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. You’re going to another galaxy.
Christine Cook
Date: February 7, 2004
“Living on Tattooine”
ALCON:
(To those not indoctrinated in the military, ALCON means “All Concerned”)
Here I am, in my lovely, downtown base camp. Our journey started after a sleepless night on 3-4 February. It took us the whole day to pack, and hurry up, and wait, then we headed to the airstrip and waited some more for the plane. By 0230 the next morning, we were off. We touched down in two classified locations, one stateside and one in Italy (ooh la la)—I saw an inactive volcano at midnight, which was quite lovely—and then we were on our final leg of the journey into Kuwait.
The places were classified then, but not anymore. We touched down in McGuire Air Force Base and then in Sigonella, Italy.
We arrived at the airport in Kuwait around 10 a.m. Kuwait time, and were on our way again shortly thereafter.
When we arrived at this base camp, destined to be our permanent home for the year, the wind was stirring up quite a bit of sand—not a sandstorm, we were told, far from it (oh, God, I can’t wait to experience a REAL sandstorm…)—but it was unpleasant nonetheless, so I pulled out my trusty, now dusty, sand goggles. I figured by this time I’d finally reached what we in the military would call HOE (part of my audience is under 10, so I’ll just say H-E-double hockey sticks On Earth).
The G-Rated audience to which I refer here was, primarily, my daughter D’Arcy, then age nine, and my son Paul, who was five at the time. The hardest thing I have ever had to do was to kiss them goodbye, knowing I would probably not see them again for over a year.
In addition, one of my addresses on the email was ‘gstroop950’. This was my junior Girl Scout troop. Much as I would have loved to continue being the girls’ leader, I could not do so from halfway around the world.
--The “paved” road into camp reminded me of some of the roads in Gui Lin, China, all lumpy and bumpy and more pothole than asphalt. We waited twenty minutes just to get into the camp.
Every camp had an Entry Control Point (ECP). It took us at least twenty minutes that day to have all our identification cards checked, to clear our weapons, and to have the soldiers at the gate inspect our bus. Then we had to ask directions to where we were going on the base camp, since the bus driver didn’t speak English, and had no idea where we were supposed to go.
--Then we waited a couple more hours till the welcome party found out where we were sleeping. By this time, we’d been up almost 96 hours with just a few catnaps now and then, and we were tired. So mostly we ate, and then went to bed.
Now that I’m almost well rested, here’s my take on where I live. I live on Tattooine—for those of you who don’t remember this reference, or have never seen STAR WARS, Tattooine is where Luke Skywalker grew up. All I can see is sand and tents. I’ve heard there are scorpions and bugs and all sorts of other lovely creatures around this area, but I have yet to see another living critter other than humans in this base camp. We saw some sheep and goat herds on our way here, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what they were eating.
There is virtually no grass and the only trees I’ve seen are near the airport where we came in. Here in Tattooine we have no trees, just sand.
An aside: This was not, strictly speaking, true. After I’d lived in Kuwait a week or so, I realized the Kuwaitis had planted neat rows of indescribable little trees along every main highway, and they were watered constantly. Since we did not live near any major highways, however, it took awhile before I discovered this fact.
But the sun is bright and very friendly and I would never be able to have S.A.D. here (seasonal affective disorder, wherein sufferers become depressed due to lack of sunlight during the winter), not a chance of it. I hear it rains about two months per year and then I’ll be living in a mud hole, but right now it’s more like the moon with sand. I leave chalky footprints everywhere I go.
Last night was a full moon, and I must admit, it was astounding to behold—clear as a bell as it rose over the tents, and it illuminated everything—who needs electricity, anyway? There are stars, too, though the light of the moon was drowning them out, and I didn’t recognize a single constellation.
I’m doing okay, and now that I’m showered and I’ve had some sleep, I feel pretty good. I look forward to receiving any and all emails from Planet Earth—
Love to you all—
V/R
This may be a military abbreviation. It stands for “very respectfully.”
LTC Christine Cook
163rd Personnel Services Battalion
Commanding
Date: February 13, 2004
“Tattooine II”
Now that we have been living on our little desert planet of Tattooine for a week, I thought it was time for an update.
For several days, the weather was fine. The days were in the seventies, and the nights were in the fifties, a light cool breeze occasionally blew. We became convinced there were no living creatures other than earthlings here.
We were wrong.
In the past week, we have seen mice and large beetles (or are they cockroaches?),
Actually, I think they were scarab beetles. They grew to one inch wide by about two inches long, and I only saw dead ones.
--And we have heard reports of rats (about a foot long with a tail even longer) and snakes. Hmm.
The weather, too, has been more variable than I expected for a desert planet. Today is extremely windy and warm (yes, this means sandstorms); yesterday was cloudy and warm; last night we had fog, and it got pretty chilly.
We have other desert planets around here, and we have occasional contact with the earthlings at each location. The planets are Arrakis, Mars, Elton John (who always was from another planet) and Lake Tahoe. Oh, and UM, which is not so much a desert planet as a space pod to another dimension.
There are five major base camps in Kuwait, and I had soldiers at all of them. At the time I was writing this, I thought the locations were “secret”, but I’ve found that’s not the case. So here’s the code for all of the places I’ll mention throughout this book:
Arrakis: named for the desert planet in Dune, was Camp Udairi. Udairi’s name was later changed to Camp Buehring to honor a lieutenant colonel killed during a Baghdad Hotel bombing. It is now a permanent northern camp in Kuwait.
Tattooine: Camp Virginia, my base camp. Camp Virginia is fairly well known, and has the dubious distinction of being the oldest base camp in Kuwait. It was first laid out during Desert Storm. In spite of its age, it hasn’t improved much over the last fifteen years. Check the website—they call it “rustic”. As if the other base camps aren’t.
Mars: The third and final “desert” camp is Camp Victory, Kuwait. Actually, as far as I’m concerned, all the camps in Kuwait are desert camps, but someone, somewhere, determined the three northern camps, Buehring, Virginia, and Victory, are the “desert” camps. There is actually a fourth, Camp New York, which code name I forget, but it is not supposed to be a permanent camp. They’ve closed it, torn it down, and then rebuilt and re-opened it at least three times now (at untold expense, I might add). There is also Navistar, which is not so much a base camp as a truck stop on the way to Iraq.
Lake Tahoe: We nicknamed this camp Lake Tahoe because when we first got to Kuwait, my staff constantly goofed up the pronunciation of Doha, calling it Dahoe. Camp Doha is an old Kuwaiti Air Force Base consisting of rows and rows of warehouses on a bed of concrete. It’s right next to the Persian Gulf, so occasionally one can see the views of the sparkling water beyond its walls.
Elton John: This name derived, again, from mispronunciation on my staff’s part. No one could pronounce Arifjan, so they said “Elton John” and we all knew what was meant. Arifjan is a permanent camp for the U.S. Army, and will remain even after Operation Iraqi Freedom is completed. This camp is where the active duty personnel work. For the record, many active duty soldiers live in Kuwait City, and commute to work every day.
UM: This was Wolverine, my all-time favorite camp in Kuwait, called UM for University of Michigan, home of the Wolverines. I never had soldiers here, but it was halfway between Virginia and Arifjan. Since I had meetings in Arifjan constantly, I found a tent I could call a part-time home here, and I slept at UM several times a week. This camp was neat and organized, with tents set in rows, a movie theater, a 24-hour shop, and THE best dining facility in Kuwait, bar none. Unfortunately, it was built between runways at the Kuwait City International Airport, and the Kuwaitis wanted to build a third runway. So the base camp was torn down less than a year after it was built.
Above are the code names I mentioned in this letter, but there were others I added as the year went on. I’ll explain them as I get to them in the narrative.
For fun, we watch the sunrises and sunsets, which light up the sky in peach, pink, and purple 360 degrees around the campsite—
I’m told the closer to the equator you get, the more this phenomenon occurs. My mother at first thought I was suffering under delusions for saying this.
--send missives to other earthlings in happier climes, and stand in line to go shopping.
When we first got to Kuwait, there were so many soldiers passing through on their way to Iraq that we sometimes stood in line almost two hours just to get toothpaste. It got so bad, fistfights would occasionally break out if a soldier thought someone had cut in line.
I personally spend time attempting to learn the local language, and I admire the yarn from afar. Alas, the yarn is still currently on the sheep, goats, and camels I see during my travels between planets, but ah, the potential of the fiber on their backs.
I’ll take this opportunity to mention I am a knitter and have been for over two decades. While in Kuwait, I used knitting as a stress release, and became obsessive compulsive about it as a result. Sadly, I was never able to buy any yarn while I was there, and even if I could have, I would not have been able to bring it home—it’s a customs thing (mad sheep disease?). The sheep and goats in Kuwait are, indeed, beautiful, but I must assume they are hot, hungry, and dusty beasties.
One other thing we do for fun is to eat in something called a DFAC—
DFAC—short for dining facility. Every camp has at least one DFAC, but they all serve the same thing. There is always a “short order line”, which has hamburgers, hot dogs or polish sausages, burritos, pizza, egg rolls, onion rings, French fries, and baked beans, virtually every day. The “main line” always has some kind of poultry (nicknamed “bird of the day”), a pork or beef dish (nicknamed “brown chunks in sauce”), rice, mashed potatoes, two kinds of over-cooked, over-salted vegetables (usually broccoli, cauliflower mush, mixed veggies, corn, or peas), and gravy. There is also a salad bar, a pastry bar, and ice cream. The ice cream is the best part. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
--and as it is nearing the end of the current feeding time, I shall sign off for now. Thank you for all the entertaining emails from Earth; I am only sixteen light minutes away should you wish to chat.
V/R
LTC Cook
163rd PSB
Commanding
Date: February 20, 2004
“Travel on Tattooine (originally Tattooine III)”
ALCON:
Life on Tattooine has become nearly routine now. People have heard of our desert paradise, and it’s now a popular space destination.
During this time, many soldiers were coming in to replace soldiers who had been in Iraq for a year. Camp Virginia is a deployment/redeployment camp, so we saw troops both coming and going. It was my battalion’s job to provide administrative services to all these soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
--The sandstorms are vicious here, though, as we discovered last week. I was going home very late (0130) after a long day of sending missives to all who have conversed with me, and I saw lightning in the western sky, followed by claps of thunder. Two hours later, the tent started shaking and banging and I hunkered down to the bottom of my cocoon-like sleeping bag, hoping I wouldn’t breathe in too much dust. In the morning, several soldiers came by to re-anchor the tents. The tents have been tested to withstand 50 M.P.H. winds, but we were in excess of that limit, so some of the stakes were coming loose.
I wore goggles whenever I was outside, clamped my mouth shut, and covered my mouth with a cloth. In spite of that, by nightfall, I felt as though I had a quarter inch of sand dust laying on the bottom of my lungs.--
Silicosis, a lung condition brought on by having sediment in the bottom of the lungs, is a definite possibility during long stays in Kuwait.
--I have said before that Tattooine looks much like a used ashtray.
Or maybe I haven’t, but I have now. Before everyone knew we were going to be stationed in Kuwait, a general told his troops (who fell under my command) that Iraq was okay, but Kuwait was really ugly, and “it looks like a used ashtray.” Alas, with my apologies to the lovely Kuwaiti people, there are large segments of the country where this description is highly appropriate, especially when seen from above, in an aircraft. I personally thought of the sand-filled thigh-high ashtrays one sees outside of movie theaters, for example. The oil refineries look like the ends of cigarette butts sticking out of the sand, and the oil ponds look like areas where water has filled the holes made by the cigarettes.
--After the sand blows, it smells much like a used ashtray, as well. The up point, if there is one, is that, once the sand blows away, it leaves acres of white rock, which lay just below the surface of the sand. Besides looking even more like a moonscape, this white rock is indescribably beautiful against the robin’s egg blue sky (once the sand dissipates). Amazingly, within four hours of the end of the sandstorm, the sand had somehow miraculously returned, covering everything again. Everything I own is now covered with a fine layer of sand, and there’s pretty much nothing I can do to clean it. But then, that’s life on Tattooine for you.
I have taken to doing a lot of space travel between the planets around here, specifically to Elton John and UM. Because of the distance to Elton John and the earliness of the time when I need to go there, I have often planet-hopped to UM, spent the night, then traveled on to Elton John. After all, UM has the best DFAC around that I know of, and I’ve tried them all. I can get earthling style pizza there, which makes my heart jump for joy—
They actually had a pizza bar there. The Filipino women who worked there would cook 14” cheese pizzas, and keep them warm until soldiers came by. Then they would cut a quarter of the pizza off for them, and would ask which toppings they wanted on their pizza.
We could choose from ham, extra cheese, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and many other toppings. They smothered the pizza with our requested items, then they’d put this pizza, with a light layer of more cheese on top, through one of those conveyor belt pizza ovens, to melt everything together. Another Filipino woman stood at the end of this oven, scooping the pizza up, putting it on a plate, and handing it to the customer with a smile and a word of good wishes.
A word about the Filipino women who worked at the DFAC in UM: they were lovely, pleasant people with high singsong voices and ever-ready smiles. They always wanted to talk to us. We had just gone through months of training, which included telling soldiers to be wary of all the DFAC workers because they may be spies. One day, my driver was getting served and the Filipino worker greeted him with his name—“Lee-Maass!” she sang out. He jumped, looked at her, and said, “Who are you? How do you know my name? What’s your angle?” She laughed, pointed at him, and said, “It’s on your shirt.” He looked down and suddenly remembered we all wear nametags. I think he turned as red as the pizza sauce.
--And they have some pretty spectacular cakes there, too. I recommend the chocolate decadence cake. But only eat half of it. They mean it when they say decadent. The jewel of the desert as far as food is concerned is the ice cream, which they do extremely well on the desert planets. I highly recommend the drumstick ice cream with silver wrapping, as they are sugar cones filled with chocolate ice cream and sprinkled with chocolate chips. Chunks of caramel are hidden in the ice cream. Yum.
Here’s a mini Arabic lesson for you. As I said earlier, I tried to study Arabic while I was there, but didn’t get very far because I couldn’t find an Arabic person with whom to practice. I was, however, able to pick up on the alphabet, or alif-bet, as the case may be. Since the alphabet is completely phonetic, I could sound out all the writing, even if I didn’t know what it meant.
I was eating the ice cream I just described one day, and decided to sound out the Arabic letters on the silver wrapping. Duh—Rah—Eem. So far so good. Kuh—Oh—Nuh. Dreem Kone. Indeed, right below it was the name of the product in English. Dream Cone.
I hate to bore you with these details, but they are what make life livable on Tattooine, and so I share them with you. I hope you don’t mind.
Also, I have come somewhat closer to that yarn I told you about…the yarn that’s still on the sheep, goats, and camels—
They would often cross the road directly in front of our car.
--My, there are some lovely sheep here, although I am still dumbfounded trying to figure out what they eat. I am particularly enamored by the black sheep—what lovely yarn they would make, and I wouldn’t even have to dye it. I am told there is a chance that I may find some yarn in the markets of the downtown, Astropolis.
Shortly after I wrote this, Fa-ha-heel Market, where I might have found this yarn, became off-limits to Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers, so I never was able to go yarn shopping.
Speaking of Astropolis, I made a wrong non-turn at Albuquerque—
This is actually a reference to Bugs Bunny, who was always taking wrong turns at Albuquerque, and ending up somewhere off the wall (the most applicable of which would probably be the one where they ended up in the cave with a genie lamp and a guy outside yelling, “Hasaan CHOP!”). My driver and I made several wrong turns in our 75,000 miles of travel during our year in Kuwait, and decided that ALL roads led to Kuwait City, which was, of course, technically off-limits to deployed soldiers like us. Oops.
--and ended up there. Very pretty. They have palm trees, actual grass (!), and flags lining every overpass.
Well, I have yet another meeting to attend, so I shall sign off for this week. Should you be tired of receiving these aperiodic missives, please let me know and I’ll take you off the list. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally.
V/R
LTC Cook
163rd PSB
Commanding
Date: February 29, 2004
“Tattooine Travel Part II”
It’s the weekend, and thus time for another installment in my Tattooine series. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning, had a cold shower after a few days without a shower at all, stood in line for more than 45 minutes just to get a coffee, and found out I’m about to be without transportation in general, so I’m not in the best of moods, and I apologize ahead of time if this is not my cheeriest or funniest chapter you receive.
I got no emails saying take me off the list, so you’re all still getting this. I also expand the readership each week, so if this is your first chapter, and would like to read more, let me know and I’ll send the previous chapters along.
So, I have discussed the desert planets themselves, I have discussed a bit about life here, and a bit about what we may do for fun in Tattooine. I shall now turn to the subject of travel.
As the head of five different, shall I call them tribes?—
As a battalion commander of a Personnel Services Battalion, I was in charge of the welfare of five personnel services detachments (the equivalent of companies) of about fifty soldiers each. In all, I commanded 253 people. They were spread out in almost every base camp in Kuwait, plus I had a few soldiers in Qatar and some in Iraq.
--located at five different planets and a few satellites, I find myself in travel-mode quite often. If I am to extend the desert planet metaphor even further, it has become increasingly difficult to find suitable spaceships for said travel. Like Tattooine, the space ships I have are shaky, boxy, downtrodden beasts of ships, completely incapable of reaching warp speed (much like Han Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon).
I refer here to those trusty dusty army beasts, the Highly Mobile Mobilized Wheeled Vehicles, or HMMWV’s, more commonly known as Hummers. They’re pretty horrible to travel in, you’re lucky if they go above 50 miles per hour, and they become worse when you wear your armor, which you have to do when you travel in these vehicles in Kuwait, Iraq and the like. In these ways, they resemble Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, which was a bucket of bolts hardly capable of making it into warp speed.
--Alas, I had to take one such vehicle on my tour to Elton John and UM two out of three times last week alone.
When one travels in such vehicles, which are prone to break down, and prone to harassment from various local populations—
A HMMWV is nothing but an obvious target to people who wish to do army soldiers harm. Their very paint job screams, “Look at me! I’m in the U.S. Army! Shoot at me!” With their price tag of $80,000 to make and another $80,000 to up-armor, I think we’d all do ourselves a favor if we bought an up-armored Suburban for $60,000 and drove in that. We’d look like everyone else on the road, then.
--one must wear lots of space gear—outer tactical vests, helmets, masks, weapons, and goggles to get the sand out of one’s eyes—all of which add up to about forty pounds on your back and head. Then one sits in the hard seats and one turns on said spaceship, and even while not moving, one is jostled about the cabin of the vehicular object due to its overwhelming “idle”. Because we cannot hit warp speed, a two-hour journey is extended by 50 percent, if not more.
I suppose, because we do not hit warp speed at any time on such trips, we can enjoy the views and the local flora and fauna more as we pass them. And indeed, I have seen some mighty fine camels recently. Just yesterday, I saw two baby camels—one dark, almost black, and one light, almost white. They were beautiful beasts, hanging just steps away from their regal and tall caramel-colored mother. There are, indeed, many sheep and goats, although I do believe they eat sand, since there is not much else in the way of vegetation, and I have no idea how they get any water at all
During the rainy season, a sparse chartreuse-colored grass grows up through the sand, and then the little beasties are happy beasties. Come summertime, precious little grows in the desert. There are prickle bushes, which I know the camels eat. I saw one camel eating a prickle bush covered with toilet paper, I suppose it would be something like eating thistle (or an artichoke, spiny leaves and napkin and all).
What about water? Shepherds carry water with them, in plastic tubs the size of laundry baskets. Many modern day shepherds travel in pick up trucks, a fact which I believe I address in a later missive.
The view is not much to write home about. Just acres and acres of sand, dotted with Bedouin tents and LOTS of power lines. Let me try to make that more clear—LOTS OF POWER LINES. More than you could possibly imagine POWER LINES. I CANNOT BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW MANY POWER LINES!!!
But I digress. Occasionally, we pass a proposed cityscape. I say proposed, because these areas are all being built sort of at once. The first time I saw one of these cities, I thought of Miami being crossed with Harlem—All the buildings are boxy and art deco looking, with the Miami color scheme of white, cream, light pink, peach, green. But none of these buildings have windows or doors yet, so they stand gaping open, looking for all the world as though the windows have been shot out. It is an eerie and fascinating sight. I hear tell that these cities get huge grants to build the buildings and create a city, and then huge extended families come in and inhabit the buildings. “If you build it, they will come.”
I was told later that some of these homes are not in the process of being built; they are in the process of being re-built. The reason there are no windows is because they were blown out during the bombings in Desert Storm. Their owners don’t always have the money to fix their houses. I don’t know the real story here, but either way, seeing entire cities worth of huge stucco houses with no windows is a haunting experience.
I had a brief moment of thrill on Wednesday when I received a bright shiny new spacecraft—a gold Nissan Pathfinder that could, indeed, hit warp speed. I have been able to travel in her twice, and put almost 1,000 kilometers on her in three days. Alas, I hear tell she will be taken from me, and I will be back to traveling by Millennium Falcon again. My back and shoulders and all other areas of the anatomy cry in protest and pending agony.
I have gone on for far too long on this chapter. Maybe next week, if I remember, I shall spin my tale of discovering a sparkling sea just beyond this galaxy. Till then, I hope you are all well, and that your own spacecraft is better than mine.
V/R
LTC Christine Cook
163rd PSB
Commanding
Date: March 7, 2004
“Travel on Tattooine II (With a Little History Lesson Thrown in for Good Measure”
MAJ TOM TO GROUND CONTROL:
It has now been a full month since I first set foot on this galaxy of planets. I have good news since I last wrote; I am still in complete control of my little gold spacecraft. And she is a fine machine, I must say. So I am most certainly in a better humor this time around, and full of vim and vinegar since I have not been jostled in the Millennium Falcon as much this week.
I felt as though I had missed telling ALCON (all concerned) many of the details concerning travel in this desolate place, and so I think I must continue in the travel vein this week. This time, I think I will concentrate 1) on the routes we travel; 2) nighttime travel; 3) the sparkling sea beyond (which I promised last time); and finally 4) the radio comms we have here, which will, quite naturally, lead into the history of this little cluster of space litter I live in (stay with me, you’ll see why that’s a natural progression).
Number 1: The routes on which we travel: The space routes we travel as we go from the northernmost planet (Arrakis) to the southernmost planet (Elton John) get progressively better and worse at the same time. Whereas the travel just south of Arrakis is uncleared, and thus filled with meteors and asteroids—
This statement freaked out my readers the first time around, so I’d better explain. When we first got to Kuwait, the two-lane highway between Buehring and Virginia was largely unpaved. We would drive the paved portions only to be directed onto a sandy detour every mile or so. The last ten kilometers are still unpaved, as far as I know, and the condition of that stretch of road (I use the word ‘road’ loosely here) is so awful I can’t begin to describe it. Trucks have carved deep ruts in the dirt, the sand gets packed down into uneven ridges, and when it seems like the roads are as bad as they can get, it rains and significant portions of the road get washed away.
In addition to the dangers of the road itself, when we first got to Kuwait, there were reports of small arms fire occurring somewhere along the routes, so we were all prepared for possible attack any time we drove.
I always loved the description of the cars the people who were doing these attacks. “Beware of a white pick up truck with a red stripe down the side…” Because almost every person in Kuwait seemed to own a white pick up truck with a red stripe down its side, including the U.S. military, this was not useful information. So we were running scared of virtually every car. Truth? Nothing of note ever happened to me or any of my troops during our stay.
--once south of Tattooine, all is cleared and paved. However, we have discovered along many a smooth-moving route obstacles we now term “launch pads”. You earthlings may call them speed bumps. Here, they are literally in the middle of highways, and they appear with very little, if any, warning. Recently, we had just hit warp speed and were completely surprised by one such launch pad, which quite literally changed our trajectory for a short time.
The trip to which I refer here was the first trip my driver and I ever took alone. I had been on a couple of trips with the soldiers we replaced on the battlefield, but they had never thought to take our driver on a trip to see the roads himself.
By the time we left our base camp, it was completely dark outside. We nearly rear-ended the truck in front of us at the first speed-bump because there was no warning sign, and the truck just stopped in front of us. This happened twice on the unlit road we traveled.
Finally, we reached the well-lit highway, with a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour. My driver came up to speed and we expected smooth sailing from here onward. Then suddenly, we saw spinning blue lights on the side of the road which we didn’t understand. Just as suddenly, we hit a huge speed bump at nearly 110 kilometers per hour and we literally went flying. We went so far in the air that by the time we came down, we nearly landed on the second speed bump. My driver hit the breaks hard, so we were able to go over the obstacle without killing ourselves.
After we calmed down, my driver waved his hand across the windshield as though to erase what we’d just done (a Jedi knight mind-trick, I believe), and said, “We must never speak of these things.” But I guess I just did.
Once we reach the space highways farther south, the biggest problem becomes slower moving spacecraft, and trying to avoid less fortunate spacecraft that have crumpled to the side of the highways. There are new ones every day, and I must say, they are not pretty sights. It’s a miracle when someone gets out of those wrecks alive.
Speaking of sides of the highway, not a day goes by when we see some lonely looking galaxyman waiting by the side of the quick-moving highway, looking for all the world as though he said that morning, “Honey, pick me up after work, would you? I’ll be by the tree.”
Number 2: Nighttime space travel: In this queer galaxy, things become even odder at night. During the day, we may see the tents of Bedouins in clumps of dwellings, with their Mercedes Benzes parked beside them. At night, we see none of such things. Instead, we see circles of white and green neon light strips, looking for all the world like glowing crop circles, ready for close encounters of the Kuwaiti kind…Doodoodoo, do doo.
Number 3: The sparkling sea beyond: When in this dry and desolate landscape, one tends to forget we’re actually living on one REALLY BIG BEACH. Remember, sand and beaches go together. And the sand-dune I live on, when I’m in the right frame of mind, would be a great place on which to put a cabana, lay out the beach towel and wear my little swimsuit (except we’re not supposed to wear swimsuits here, and instead have been asked to wear full physical training (PT) uniform should we wish to go swimming, but that’s probably the subject for another installment of the Tattooine series)—
Ah, yes, another of those silly rules we had to live by. Arifjan had a swimming pool, and shortly after we arrived, a woman was sunbathing there, topless. There was uproar in the higher ranks, and they came up with the rule that all soldiers would wear their army PT uniform whenever they swam there. The problem continued however, and it took a little while to figure out why. The topless women were foreign nationals from coalition forces, who didn’t have to follow our rules. I’m being kind when I say we were “asked” to wear the PT uniform. We were, in fact, ordered to do so. Luckily, this order was later rescinded, because PT uniforms, when saturated, get too heavy to swim in.
--and turn into a fully baked lobster, with a mock margarita at my side. So, one day, as we traveled south to Elton John, I looked to my left and lo’ and behold, just beyond that town of vacant buildings (see last week’s installment), just beyond those oil refineries (future installment), I saw the beautiful sparkle of the sun on a vast expanse of water, and gasped in pleased surprise. It really is quite lovely, and reminded me that there is, indeed, a water galaxy just beyond this unbelievable desert scape. Hmm, something to think about.
Number 4: Radio Comms/History: As would almost any earthling when one travels, we have attempted to listen to the air traffic available here, and have gotten mixed results. One station is completely in Arabic, including the music, which one would expect here. Another is “Radio Kuwait”, which plays an odd assortment of up-to-date American music, along with a huge amount of 70’s and 80’s music covers redone to an acid house beat. I’m beginning to wonder if there is any originality left in the music industry when I hear the same lyrics I grew up with, over and over again. But then, one day last week, we heard a new “history” series, sounding for all the world as though Eric Idle were doing a new Monty Python sketch about the history of Kuwait. The music chosen for this pompous series was, of all things, STAR WARS. “The history of a place is a very important teaching point, and one which people must study to learn the value of each place, blah blah blah” (queue music)….The history defines the culture of its people, blah blah, and should be studied” (more music swell, please) etc. Finally we heard an actual tidbit of history: that Kuwait was started roughly 1716 (although they said four or five times they couldn’t put an exact date to it) by a specific tribe at a fishing village. One man built a fortress, and called it “Kuwt,” which is the Arabic diminutive for Kuwait. Then it was time for more music and more importance of history to its people talk. The whole show lasted fifteen minutes.
I kid you not.
Till next time—
V/R
LTC Christine Cook
163rd PSB, Commanding
Date: March 14, 2004
“Other Earthlings on Tattooine”
ALCON:
I sat down at first without any idea what to write about today, but then I realized I have not yet described the other earthlings with whom I share this galaxy. There is a whole group of us here, sharing the trials and tribulations of working in this place, but I really didn’t plan to go into the armies on Tattooine and its neighboring desert planets. Maybe I shall save that for another time. Instead, I intend to tell you a little about the TGNs (Third Galaxy Nationals, for the uninitiated).
For those of you who don’t know this, the kingdom, which owns all these desert planets, is rich enough that the majority of its nationals don’t work, or so I’m told. So, truth to tell, I am unsure if I have ever met a native Kuwaiti. Instead, I have met the TGNs, who come from various galaxies such as Pakistan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, the U.S., and some Arabic speaking countries of which I know not.
These people run the various niceties such as shops, coffee places, laundry stores, gift shops, and restaurants that flourish on each of the desert planets. They also run all the DFACs on each planet. So I see them a lot.
Some of them are quite friendly. Take, for example, the young Indian man who serves me vegetables each day. He always greets me with a smile, calls me “Cook-ma’am,” and serves me a loaded helping of carrots. Or peas. Or mushy cauliflower. Or broccoli. He used to ask me, without fail, if I wanted any gravy. Now he knows not to, because I’m a regular and he knows I have never succumbed to gravy—
Later in the year, he started joking with me, offering gravy every time I passed by, whether it was appropriate or not. “Gravy with your macaroni and cheese? Gravy with your egg rolls? Gravy with your pizza?”
--Another TGN in a different food line originally balked when I asked for BOTH the carrots and the broccoli. “Can only have one,” he said. But all I needed to do was to pout, and he served me an extra large portion of each.
Many of the male TGNs seem to like female earthlings, and indeed, tend to treat us with special graces. Such as the one coffee shop guy who undercharged me significantly the time I bought five different coffees, or another coffee guy who stamped my “Buy 12 get one free” card six times for one double latte.
Here’s another, later, story about a TCN. I went into the gift shop on Camp Virginia late in the year to buy my children and husband some gold cartouches. I was wearing a red t-shirt and little make-up. But the salesman kept looking at me strangely, until finally he said, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. No one in the world is more beautiful than you.”
Now, I knew he was Indian, so I laughed and said, “Oh, I’ve seen many women from India who are very beautiful.”
He shook his head. “Oh, none, none as beautiful as you. You are too much beautiful.”
I’m an average woman, with average features. I can look attractive when I have made an effort to wear nice clothes, blow-dry my hair, and apply make-up. This was not one of these days. I do have pale skin and green eyes, however, and I wonder if this is what these men found attractive about me.
My driver always found the attention I received highly amusing. He would laugh every time I told him yet another story like the ones above, and say, “Ma’am, it’s gotta be the eyes…”
The laundry TGNs, however, are not interested in mixing with the other earthlings at all. They are all business, which is nice, since this means I get beautifully folded laundry and freshly pressed uniforms every time. But they will not respond at all to my halting Arabic—
Why? Because they weren’t Arabs. They were Indian and Pakistani, as one young man abruptly told another soldier one day after he repeatedly asked, “Tikallam al Arabi? Do you speak Arabic?”
Another thing about the laundry facility, which I hesitate to put in, because I do not wish to offend, but which will help readers get more of the sensory experience I underwent every day, is this: my laundry may have been clean, but the pick-up tent certainly did not smell as though it would be. The entire tent--um, there is no delicate way to put this—it reeked of faintly curry-based body odor. How’s that for smellivision?
--nor will they discuss anything besides how much starch I want on my uniform (none, thank you. No, you want medium starch. No, I want none, thank you. Yes, ma’am, that will be medium starch. Oh, whatever). I was somewhat taken aback, however, by the well-dressed young man with the beard who served me silently the other day. He was quite embarrassed as I had to count my underwear off to him, but his maroon sweater had a crest on the left chest that had a symbol which looked suspiciously like a black playboy bunny cartoon.
Things that make you go hmm.
The women who run the UM DFAC, however, take the cake as the most pleasant TGNs of all. They always serve with a smile, buttering our bread for us, pouring the cream into our coffees, and otherwise turning the cafeteria into a five star restaurant just because of the service. I don’t know where they’re from—
As I mentioned in the last chapter, they were actually from the Phillippines.
--but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say Thailand, since their service has a certain “sinoog” to it.
“Sinoog” is a Thai term, which I first learned when watching the movie, SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA. As the late actor/performance artist Spaulding Gray described it, Sinoog is a sort of “don’t worry, be happy” mentality that the Thai people have. I went to Thailand in the early 90’s, and I learned sinoog is exactly that, but it is also so much more than that. There is a certain grace and beauty the Thai people exude, which may come, in part, from practicing their Buddhist religion. These women at the DFAC had the same “sinoog” quality.
Maybe next time I’ll discuss the “armies” of Tattooine and the surrounding planets, but I’ll warn you, I’m currently rereading CATCH 22, which is bound to color my way of looking at things for the near term. Till then—
V/R
LTC Christine Cook
163rd PSB, Commanding
Date: March 21, 2004
“Groundhog Week Strikes Tattooine”
ALCON:
Can it be so soon that it is time for yet another periodical treatise from me? The days tend to run together right now. In fact, one of my subordinate detachment sergeants interrupted his dinner the other night to look up in stupefied fashion, and he said, “Groundhog Day.”
All the others around the table looked at him, puzzled. It was already March, close to spring. The command sergeant major said, “I’m sorry, it’s not Groundhog Day.”
The detachment sergeant said, “Yes. It is. One day just runs into another. I can’t tell them apart. I’m living in the movie GROUNDHOG DAY.”
It occurs to me, in rereading this passage, that all this talk about command sergeants major and detachment sergeants may be confusing to the reader. So I shall explain some of the levels here.
First, while some may think there is no caste system in the United States, at least not in the Indian sense, a caste system exists in the military. There are basically two castes: officers and enlisted personnel. As recently as thirty years ago, these two castes were discouraged from mixing together socially, but in many of the military cultures, this separation has broken down a little bit. You will still see a marked separation in the Marines, but in the army, enlisted persons and officers will often eat together, work out together, or play cards together.
This caste system occurred because officers are supposed to give the orders to go into battle, take that hill, or otherwise do things that may put soldiers into danger. The thinking goes that if you socialize with someone, it will be harder to tell them, “Go get yourself killed.”
I think in the active duty military, it’s easier to keep this separation than it is in the reserves or national guard. Why? Well, imagine this scenario, which I have, in fact, seen: a 22 year old second lieutenant comes into the local unit, and one of the specialists in his section was his high school principal. Here’s another, even more common situation: a gang of high school buddies all decide to join the same unit for educational benefits so they can go to college. One of these soldiers decides to go to Officer Candidate School and becomes an officer. Now he’s expected not to hang out with his original buddies.
I’m getting a little away from my topic here, which really was to explain the enlisted corps a bit. These soldiers sign on for several years, and once their contract is up, they can either renew their contract (re-enlist) or they can leave. They come into the army as privates. There are three ranks of privates, and then a soldier reaches the rank of specialist (enlisted rank four, abbreviated E-4). If a specialist is promoted, he enters the class of the non-commissioned officer (abbreviated NCO). NCOs are the back-bone of the army; without them, nothing would get done.
The first rank for an NCO in the army is sergeant (E-5), followed by staff sergeant (E-6), sergeant first class (E-7), master sergeant (E-8), and finally sergeant major (E-9).
There is one more step a NCO can go up the rung, and that is when a sergeant major becomes a command sergeant major. There is no rank difference, but there is a great deal of difference in the respect a command sergeant major receives.
One more thing to explain in this little section and then I’ll send you back to your story. Remember that I am (was) a battalion commander, and I said I had five companies underneath me. You may be asking what the heck that means. This brings in the concept of officers, so bear with me here:
Small army units are called squads, sections, or platoons. These units can be as small as five soldiers or as large as about forty. Platoons normally have a second lieutenant (Officer rank 1, O-1) or first lieutenant (O-2) who ensures the soldiers in the platoon have guidance, and that all their life support issues are met.
There are three or four sections or platoons in a company, although in a personnel services battalion, companies are called detachments, because the detachment can be taken out of my chain of command and sent somewhere completely different, whereas a company normally would go where the battalion goes. Companies or detachments are commanded by captains (O-3), who do the same thing a lieutenant would do, but for a larger amount of people. Companies can be as small as 25 soldiers, or as large as 250 soldiers, and being a company commander is a heavy responsibility. Company/detachment commanders get assistants, who also have heavy responsibilities. They are called first sergeants or detachment sergeants, and wear the rank of E7 or E8.
Between two and six companies or detachments fall under the command of one battalion, which has a lieutenant colonel (O-5) as its commander. A battalion can be as small as 100 people or as large as 1000. Battalion command carries heavy responsibilities as well. A battalion commander gets not one, but two assistants: an executive officer (major, O-4) and a command sergeant major (E-9).
Phew! That was a really long explanation just to tell you that this conversation happened between a detachment sergeant (E8), a command sergeant major (E9), and the company commander and battalion commander. And, not that anyone really cares, but this conversation took place at Arrakis.
Now, because I travel from one planet to another like a hummingbird, my days are not Groundhog Days. But certainly I can understand the concept of having a Groundhog Week. Here’s mine:
Sunday night, 1700, I get in the car and my driver drives me to UM. We have dinner. I check my email at another personnel services battalion headquarters, since their commander is kind enough to let me on their system. I go to my room, read for awhile, go to bed.
Monday, I wake at 0445, get showered, dressed, eat breakfast, go to Elton John, sit in meetings till 1030. Go back to UM for lunch, then drive up to Arrakis, do work there, drive back. Check email, do business, get inundated with paperwork and people asking me questions, eat dinner, more business till 2100 or so, do yoga, go to bed.
Tuesday, get up and 0630, do yoga, get dressed, have breakfast, go to my very own battalion update briefing (BUB) at 1100, lunch, get packed, do some more work, drive to UM, see Sunday night to Monday morning for repetition of schedule till 1030, visit my unit in Elton John, on the way back to Tattooine, go to Mars, eat dinner (yeah, I had lunch there somewhere, too, but who knows where?), more work, inundation with all the people who haven’t seen me for a day and a half, check email (stacked up to the gills), do yoga, go to bed.
Thursday is similar to Tuesday, with no BUB.
Friday, on the way home from Elton John, I often visit the folks in Lake Tahoe, and by the time I get home, I’m wiped out and can hardly see straight. But it’s not time to rest. Work some more (see Wednesday), go to bed without yoga, because I might fall asleep in downward dog and break my nose. Saturday, see Tuesday, including another BUB, this time followed by an officers’ call lunch and development training.
I’m done, make that DONE, by 1500, and then I try to take about 24 hours off. The off day usually includes reading, knitting, watching a movie, yoga, writing (to include this missive)—
I’ll take this moment to explain that I had just had a mystery novel, MORTE A DELI, published shortly before I was mobilized. I was in the process of writing the second book in the series, so I brought the second draft along with me to complete while on deployment.
Ha! What was I thinking? For the first six months, my main character, ‘d’Arcy W. Carter’, refused to come out and play. Desert life was not for her. Finally, the muses came back to me and I slowly but surely worked my way through the next several drafts.
It is arduous work to write a book set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan when you’re sitting in the deserts of Kuwait, let me tell you. I can’t tell you how many days I woke at 0430, had a full day of army business which took me till midnight, and then I would put in another hour of writing till one a.m.
But I completed the book soon after I returned, and it is now set for publication in the near future.
--then at 1500 Sunday, it’s time to start the whole process over again.
It’s almost as boring as GROUNDHOG DAY, isn’t it?
I expect to keep this schedule until the camels come home. Or I come home. Whichever comes first (please let it be me…)
Actually, this schedule changed several times during my deployment, but each time it changed, it was always repetitive, and contained many of the same elements as you see above. The most substantive difference came when the Wednesday meetings in Arifjan were discontinued, and Wednesdays became the day I traveled to all the camps.
Here’s how that went: 0900 travel to Buehring, then to New York or Ali Al Salem as needed, followed by Victory, and finally Doha. I always made time for dinner in Doha, then we worked out in their great gym (one of the best in the country—alas, it is no more, as Doha has since closed) and we came back home by about 2300. It made for a long day, but seriously cut down on my travel days.
Also, when Wolverine closed, my unit in Arifjan was kind enough to let me borrow a cot down there, and I started sleeping in Arifjan on Sunday and Thursday nights.
Till next week—
Cook
“Tattooine Is Heating Up”
ALCON:
It is yet another of those periodic missives from Tattooine. I floundered around trying to come up with a topic to cover this week, and I just got hot and sweaty in the process, which brought to mind exactly what the topic should be—HEAT.