Kuwait Part 10

Seven days and you're still in Kuwait. Everyone else has already gone up to Basra. The boredom kills you. You get up, you go to formation, you eat, you lie around, you work out, you eat, you go to formation, you go buy something, you eat, you go to formation, you wait to see if you're on the next flight, you're not, you go to sleep. Repeat. Then you start busing yourself with tasks. You try to take pictures but the MPs tell you you're not authorized. You try to use the Internet but the Internet Cafes are packed and slow. You try a lot of things, and you just go from meal to meal to meal, formation to formation to formation.
You're Kuwaiting.

Kuwait Part 9

You step into the barracks and your eyes ache as you adjust to blazing sun to dim fluorescent twilight. Inside there are instructions stating that the hangar-like structure can hold 70 people, 85 in a surge. The cots are arranged in three rows. You try to grab a cot by the wall, near the outlets, but you’re too late. You’re an island in the middle, surrounded by people walking and people talking and people packing and you’re flanked by a Vietnam vet and a character from Dubliners. The Soldiers who have been living in the barracks before you complain about the depleted space, but that’s just the Army way. You bus out to the range tomorrow, and you will shoot.

Kuwait Part 8

There’s a briefing. Do don’t this. Always do this. Camp Buehring has this: PX, two gyms, two cafeterias, internet cafes, KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, etc. Camp Buehring also has this: Persian sand vipers, camel spiders and scorpions. “We do not actually have anti-venom for the Persian sand viper yet.” Well that’s good to know.

Kuwait Part 7

We arrive at Camp Buehring. The buses stop and we are told to go to chow. The choices: stuffed Bell pepper or Bombay chicken. They had warned us that the food was much better here. There’s a fountain that they say came from one of Saddam’s palaces. I try to throw money in but get tangled up. My plate whisks to the edge of tray and I have to recover abruptly so as not to lose it. I did lose my spoon though. People laugh.

Kuwait Part 6

The fence disappears; we’re out in the wide open. There’s a Blackhawk on the horizon. And then another. There’s a line of fuel trucks and a sign that says Ali Al-Salem Air Base. We continue on. A dreary stretch of road: a dead sheep, a hollowed up mangled wreck of a ambulance, a dead camel, a graveyard of shredded tires, and a telephone pole chopped in half, its splinted comrade dead nearby. So it goes?