News from the Front #3

I was talking with some ERF (Iraqi Swat) don’t ask me what ERF stands for because I get way to confused with all the damn Army acronyms let alone the Iraqi ones. Anyway they were asking me all kinds of questions about me, my family, if I liked to drink (if I would like a drink, which of course I could not but a beer would be good), and they also were very in to talking about the “crazy American women” and how they want all those rights they get. It was pretty humorous. They asked me if my wife drove and I said yes as long as I was not driving. They asked me how many cars I had and I said two, they were beside themselves that my wife had her own car and drove it. We also talked about American cities and they said they wanted to see New York and Miami but definitely not San Francisco; one guy said “no, no, not San Francisco men are not men there,” as he waived is hands in a [flamboyant] way. They said they did not like George Bush but they did like Obama. I of course asked them why and they shrugged and one said “Obama look like me”. Anyway they probably only get CNN and Keith Oberman in Arabic over here so whatever.

News from the Front #2

First Encounter -

No…not with a terrorist, a freaking Camel Spider, a terrorist Camel Spider.

These things are no joke are they are nasty. Lauren you have no idea how much you would freak out. We were all sitting talking when somebody was like, “hey look at that!”, we all looked and saw this thing running across the gravel. A couple of us got around it and I had a small peace, like a foot long, of garden hose so I poked at it a couple times. The spiders mouth opens wide and it makes a hissing noise that you can clearly hear. The mouth has 4 very large fangs, 2 on top and 2 on the bottom. When I came at it the first time it reared its two front legs up in the air, opened its mouth and then bit into the hose; and I do mean bit into. When I went to do it again it came at me like to attack. It was crazy and took me completely off guard that a spider was actually so bold as to attack me; it was pretty fast too. Eventually me and another guy cornered it and got it trapped in a Gatorade bottle. Once we had it in the bottle we poked a hold in the top and I shit you not, once that spider knew the hole was there and saw some daylight he started charging it like he could get through.

We were going to try and transport it to a big cooler where the mechanics have a pet scorpion that is a little bigger than the spider was. We would have seen a little battle but the spider has since passed on to terrorist spider heaven where he will get his 72 spider virgins.

News from the Front - Will Interest Some of You

In his own words [See below for a key to the acronyms]:

This morning I was part of a meeting with my PL and the COL of the IA company we work with. We talked, through our terp, about what’s going on in the area, what the threats are, what they need etc. It was cool to be a part of that and he was actually a very intelligent guy who, despite the language barrier, was very personable. A lot of the other IA guys are harder to talk to as they are less sociable despite any efforts they may have.

Anyway we even ate together which was an interesting and new experience for me too. It was me one other US guy, the terp, and our PL and then their CO and XO. We had eggs, some kind of Pita type sweet bread they make and Chi Tea which is sweet as hell. Their CO wanted to drink some whisky too but my PL had to decline despite the temptation; considering we had a joint operation to follow. Still a little bit a whiskey would have tasted just fine. It was funny too because the flies are really persistent here and when they land on the bread I was shooing them away. The guy quickly told me no, it’s okay the flies don’t hurt the bread. Oh well I guess, when in Rome right. Another thing that was funny too was when we were talking about where we were from I was making fun of my PL for being a “tree hugger” hippie from Oregon, which of course he is not he is just from there, but the IA guys really got a kick out of us explaining what a “tree hugger” hippie was. I think they are going to call him “Hippie Joe” from now on. All in all we are building good rapport with this group in particular. It’s some of the other guys that seem to be playing both sides; those are stories for other times though.

It was a cool experience all said and done and it is something I should get to do more often and be involved more in the different meetings we do.

***

PL = Platoon Leader
COL = Colonel
IA = Iraqi Army
Terp = interpreter
CO = Commanding Officer
XO = Executive Officer