Another Word From Our Troop

My Brother-In-Law Jeremy has arrived in Qatar and sent his latest 'report'. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):

..it was about noon when I stepped outside for my first time in the daytime heat and it took my breath away! Hot, hot, hot. One person compared it to having a giant hair dryer blowing on you constantly, as even the “breeze” is extremely hot. Another person I think more accurately described it as when you open a oven that has been pre-heated to 500 degrees and you feel the blast of heat. It is generally not a pleasant experience and even the shade does very little for you. Of course the only thing that was in our favor is that the humidity is significantly lower than Ft. Bragg for which I am ever so grateful. I am not sure if there was just a spike in the temp at that time or if I am already more acclimated to the heat, but I have not felt the insanely intense heat like I did when I first stepped out of my tent. Of course then I even felt bad, because while I was panting in the shade trying to figure out if I could survive this heat for a year a group of soldiers walked by in full “battle rattle”. It is sobering to think of the hardships that these soldiers are going through that are on the frontlines. I used to always think about how they are away from their families, or how their lives may be in danger, but it I guess I never added the thought of the suffering these soldiers go through on a day to day bases in the heat. It must surely sap their moral.

That's saying a lot considering the high morale our troops do have in the field. If they didn't believe in what they were doing there would be little reason for moral we are seeing in Iraq.

Read the full text of Jeremy's letter after the jump...

Wow! It has been a long and crazy week, but I am finally in my new home in Camp As Sayliya (a-say-lay-uh), Qatar!

My trip started last Monday I will try and spare some of the more mundane details, but basically it involved a lot of sitting around waiting, riding an airplane and riding a bus. In fact it seems like that is all I have done in the last week. We started by waiting for 3 hours outside at Fort Bragg, before we finally got picked up and brought to the airport, at the airport at Pope Air Force Base we sat for another 4 hours waiting for our flight. We finally boarded our plane, it was a big DM 11 it has 10 seats across the row. I was not fortunate enough to get an aisle or window seat, which made a 15 hour flight seem twice as long. We did stop twice though, once in Maine and again in Germany. We finally got to Kuwait around 11 PM on Tues. night (I added the 8 hours time difference). We waited at the airport for an hour or so, then had a 2 hour bus ride, then an hour and half briefing, then we unloaded luggage for about 2 hours and then loaded our luggage on another bus and took a 45 min. ride to a different camp, unloaded our luggage again and finally got to bed in a tent around 6 in the morning. I slept for 5 hours then had to get up for a meeting. So it was about noon when I stepped outside for my first time in the daytime heat and it took my breath away! Hot, hot, hot. One person compared it to having a giant hair dryer blowing on you constantly, as even the “breeze” is extremely hot. Another person I think more accurately described it as when you open a oven that has been pre-heated to 500 degrees and you feel the blast of heat. It is generally not a pleasant experience and even the shade does very little for you. Of course the only thing that was in our favor is that the humidity is significantly lower than Ft. Bragg for which I am ever so grateful. I am not sure if there was just a spike in the temp at that time or if I am already more acclimated to the heat, but I have not felt the insanely intense heat like I did when I first stepped out of my tent. Of course then I even felt bad, because while I was panting in the shade trying to figure out if I could survive this heat for a year a group of soldiers walked by in full “battle rattle”. It is sobering to think of the hardships that these soldiers are going through that are on the frontlines. I used to always think about how they are away from their families, or how their lives may be in danger, but it I guess I never added the thought of the suffering these soldiers go through on a day to day bases in the heat. It must surely sap their moral.

Later on that night we ended up waiting another 4-5 hours for another flight. This time it was only a 1 hour flight down to Qatar. Then we waited at the Qatar airport for 3 hours, we had a little problems with customs. In a box of files that I was carrying through we had quick stashed a stack of atropine needles. It is something we are forced to carry with us, but we only use it in the event of a gas attack. Well the Qatari customs officials didn’t necessarily like us bringing needles in and they confiscated our entire box, including all of our military and medical files. Thankfully we were able to rectify the situation early the next morning and someone went back to the airport and picked up the box.

We finally got to Camp As Sayliya (CAS) about 3 am and from there everything has been smooth sailing. The unit we are replacing, in an effort to speed up the replacement process, has been very efficient and well prepared and has taken excellent care of us. Yesterday (Thursday) we spent in-processing and showing us around the camp. Today they took us to the city of Doha to the mall so we can start to get a feel for Qatar and the people here. First thing we noticed is that they are wealthy! From what I understand, every natural born Qatari gets a check for somewhere around 1000-3000 dollars a month just for being a Qatari. So many Qatari’s don’t work and the people that work around here are immigrants. The mall we went to was called the Velligio. It is almost a perfect resemblance of the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. It has a sky painted ceiling and canals that ran down the hallway with gondola rides. The stores in the mall were your average American stores like GAP and Banana Republic and a Claire’s. But everything seems to cost about twice as much.

I am still learning about all the camp has to offer and my job here. But I do understand that our overall mission is an important one in that soldiers that come here only have 4 days of Rest and Recuperation and we try to let them do as much or as little as they want in those 4 days so that they can be re-charged and go back out to the front-lines and continue doing the best job they can.

It is funny though as we generally have anywhere from 500-700 soldiers here at anytime, and although they are from all over Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, it is something about the bond of the military that gets all of them to associate quite well and have a good time. As I am writing this e-mail in my office it is Karaoke night in the stage right next to my office. I stepped out there to see about 100 soldiers out there having a good time and now they are doing a fairly good rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama”, oh, I have to take that back, it sounds like somebody else just joined the original singer on the microphone and is not doing so hot, but at least it sounds like they are all having fun :) If anyone remembers the first two years of the war and seeing the generals do their daily briefings for the reports, that is the stage that they all sing karaoke on.

Well that’s all for now, thanks again to all of you for your prayers and support this last week during my travels