Quick Links
Categories
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
XML/RSS Feed
Other Heathen Blogs and Journals
Caryatid's LiveJournal
Boars Heart's LiveJournal
Orn Ransom's LiveJournal
Thorolf's LiveJournal
MacRaven
Seledréam
Vanatru's LiveJournal
Expanding Inward
Boars Heart's LiveJournal
Orn Ransom's LiveJournal
Thorolf's LiveJournal
MacRaven
Seledréam
Vanatru's LiveJournal
Expanding Inward
Links of Heathen Interest
Other (non-heathen) Blogs
Technorati
Blog Value
My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 15, 2008 11:16 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 15, 2008 11:16 PM
Where There's Dust, There's Fire
This morning I awoke to the taste of dust.
A dust storm had blown in overnight, and blanketed the air with a load of ancient withered topsoil. If Iraq was truly the cradle of civilization, then I might have wedged between my teeth dust from the corpses of the original farmers. Ick.
One of my co-workers politely described it as "The air looks like Tang." My own description is less acceptable in polite society but no less accurate -- "Everything looks like someone peed in my eyes." The air is yellow. At the height of the storm this afternoon visibility was at .0625 miles, and everything glowed golden orange. The dust, you see, reflects the sunlight, and the effect is kind of pretty. You can't really stop going to look out the windows; in that respect it reminds me of a snowy day back home.
But with the dust come rocket attacks. It's really a perfect time for those outside the compound to lob something inside the compound, because the dust acts like heavy fog at home -- you can't see anything or find anything. The day has passed in a procession of alarms, with the loudspeaker following with an announcement of "indirect fire in the compound."
The odds of me being hit? Very slim. They of course go up when there are many such attacks, but not really by much (Probability is all in the perspective anyway -- no single attack is any more likely to hit me, but overall, the chances go up).
Today I had to climb into a bunker for the second time since I'd been here (I'm usually in a building when these things happen). I was with one of my co-workers, who had never had to before. We were getting out of the truck when we heard the alarms, and she turned to me with "What do we do?" being asked by her mouth and her face. I said, "The bunker's right there. Let's go!"
I don't have flashbacks from 2003, but I do have memories. Seeing her shaking and refusing to sit down because she was too scared reminded me of the first time I had to run for a bunker for real. It was the morning (morning in Kuwait; evening in USA, I believe) that President Bush announced the beginning of the war. That happened at 5 AM Kuwait time, and I was working night shift. I got off work a few hours later, had breakfast, and went to bed. At about 10 AM I heard a whistling sound, followed by a boom, followed by alarm sirens.
I did everything right; I threw myself out of bed, grabbed and fitted my gas mask, put on flip flops and ran for the bunker. It's probably amazing I didn't break a leg in those flip-flops. I later learned the bomb had landed right outside the main gate and not detonated -- the "boom" had just been the sound of it hitting the ground.
After a while it really does become routine. I've blogged about all this before -- about how frequent and normal these attacks became. I'm sure I've told the wonderful story of the day that the alarms went off during lunch, and by the time I got to the bunkers (by the chow hall) from my office, there was no room left for me. I sat outside and heard things (SCUD's, most likely) being blown up in the air above by the Air Defense Artillery strikes. I thought I was calm; I thought, "Wow! I'm really handling this well," -- until the guy sitting next to me coughed into his gas mask and I leapt several feet in the air from a seated position.
Like I said, it becomes routine, but you never (or at least I never did) forget the first one. I doubt my teammate will either.
A dust storm had blown in overnight, and blanketed the air with a load of ancient withered topsoil. If Iraq was truly the cradle of civilization, then I might have wedged between my teeth dust from the corpses of the original farmers. Ick.
One of my co-workers politely described it as "The air looks like Tang." My own description is less acceptable in polite society but no less accurate -- "Everything looks like someone peed in my eyes." The air is yellow. At the height of the storm this afternoon visibility was at .0625 miles, and everything glowed golden orange. The dust, you see, reflects the sunlight, and the effect is kind of pretty. You can't really stop going to look out the windows; in that respect it reminds me of a snowy day back home.
But with the dust come rocket attacks. It's really a perfect time for those outside the compound to lob something inside the compound, because the dust acts like heavy fog at home -- you can't see anything or find anything. The day has passed in a procession of alarms, with the loudspeaker following with an announcement of "indirect fire in the compound."
The odds of me being hit? Very slim. They of course go up when there are many such attacks, but not really by much (Probability is all in the perspective anyway -- no single attack is any more likely to hit me, but overall, the chances go up).
Today I had to climb into a bunker for the second time since I'd been here (I'm usually in a building when these things happen). I was with one of my co-workers, who had never had to before. We were getting out of the truck when we heard the alarms, and she turned to me with "What do we do?" being asked by her mouth and her face. I said, "The bunker's right there. Let's go!"
I don't have flashbacks from 2003, but I do have memories. Seeing her shaking and refusing to sit down because she was too scared reminded me of the first time I had to run for a bunker for real. It was the morning (morning in Kuwait; evening in USA, I believe) that President Bush announced the beginning of the war. That happened at 5 AM Kuwait time, and I was working night shift. I got off work a few hours later, had breakfast, and went to bed. At about 10 AM I heard a whistling sound, followed by a boom, followed by alarm sirens.
I did everything right; I threw myself out of bed, grabbed and fitted my gas mask, put on flip flops and ran for the bunker. It's probably amazing I didn't break a leg in those flip-flops. I later learned the bomb had landed right outside the main gate and not detonated -- the "boom" had just been the sound of it hitting the ground.
After a while it really does become routine. I've blogged about all this before -- about how frequent and normal these attacks became. I'm sure I've told the wonderful story of the day that the alarms went off during lunch, and by the time I got to the bunkers (by the chow hall) from my office, there was no room left for me. I sat outside and heard things (SCUD's, most likely) being blown up in the air above by the Air Defense Artillery strikes. I thought I was calm; I thought, "Wow! I'm really handling this well," -- until the guy sitting next to me coughed into his gas mask and I leapt several feet in the air from a seated position.
Like I said, it becomes routine, but you never (or at least I never did) forget the first one. I doubt my teammate will either.
Posted: Thu - April 17, 2008 at 01:21 PM |
