Here is another installment from our officer in the field. It's a great letter and it is always interesting to see how things work inside our military. It's quite amusing actually. no snippets this time as the whole letter is great. Read the whole thing below...
Hello all!
Well I have finally been afforded the perfect opportunity to get my next e-mail out to everyone. I am currently on staff duty tonight, which means that I sit in an office and monitor several phones, walkie talkies and radios and if anyone decides to launch a missile at us I activate the siren. So yeah, pretty much I do nothing. I will get the privilege of doing this about once every other month, so you are all at least guaranteed an e-mail then!
Things have started to settle down after a few hectic weeks. I had 11 Soldiers that left my section and I received 9 new Soldiers. So we have been busy in-processing them and training them on their new jobs. Actually just getting the 9 Soldiers was quite the task in itself. I got a call on my cell phone at about 0400 in the morning and the Soldiers that we were expecting had actually just landed in Qatar instead of Kuwait where they normally would have gone first in order to in-process into the middle east Area of Operations. So when they called me I told them to stay put and I would be ready and pick them up within an hour. They called me back about 30 min later and said that they needed to get on a plane to go to Kuwait first. I said NO, NO, NO don’t do that because they will get stuck in Kuwait, but they were getting their orders from someone higher up, so I told them to give me 5 min. and I would have authorization for them to stay here and 2 min. later I had the necessary authorization for them to stay here. I called them back but they had already boarded the plane and the doors were closing. So I was bummed that I knew I was going to lose at least a day or two with them going to Kuwait. Then the next morning they called me and said that they were waiting for a flight to come back to Qatar and that they would be there sometime that evening. About an hour later I got frantic call from them because some Lieutenant Colonel walked into where they were waiting and split them into two teams and told the first team “You now work for me” and he ordered the other team to get on a bus and head to another camp located in Kuwait and they were now going to work for some other unit. Now as soon as I heard that I knew it was because Kuwait isn’t exactly happy with us. Technically we fall under the control of Kuwait, but really for our day-to-day operations we fall under Qatar. So when our Kuwait higher headquarters supervisors came to visit us a week or so prior our supervisors here in Qatar got into a yelling match with them (and won) and we are getting official orders cut to show that we now completely fall under Qatar instead of Kuwait. So I knew that Kuwait was trying to return the favor for us and show us that they were still in control too. So it took three days of lots of phone calls and e-mails and it ended up going to a Three-star generals level before it was finally settled (as if there was any doubt) that they would come down to Qatar.
The new Soldiers that we finally received are all Active Duty Soldiers and for years I had heard that Active Duty Soldiers are so much more different then Guard Soldiers, as of right not I can’t say it is for the better, but it is still a little early to know what all their strengths and weaknesses are. But the way I see it right now is that Guard Soldiers are used to getting a months worth of work done in a weekend. Where as Active Duty Soldiers managed to stretch a weekends worth of work over 30 days. Of course I think it is that same Guard mentality that drives me to stay late almost every night and get as much work done as possible in a day. But slowly I am coming to the realization that I will never ever get fully caught up on things to do around my building. The Command Sergeant Major here makes sure of that. Every morning I have to walk through the building with him and he manages to find some of the most insane jobs that I have to complete. Sometimes it is very simple and takes hardly no time at all (i.e. that chair is missing an arm, make sure you throw it away) and sometimes it is a little more involved (i.e. the pool tables look like junk, write up all the deficiencies on the seven pool tables , find a contractor to fix them and then the money to pay for it). So he definitely keeps me on my toes in that department.
The other thing that has been keeping me busy is that about every other day or so I get a phone call that some of the items from my big spending spree are sporadically arriving. So I have to go pick them up and sign a bunch of paperwork and then I have to set it up in our building and make sure it works. Not that I mind doing all that, in fact I find it very fun, but it is time consuming.
All of that and I still have my daily reports to deal with, Soldier issues, daily physical fitness exercise. We have 100+ new Soldiers arriving everyday always asking the same questions, weekly I go through the several hundred comment cards and read every one of them. 95% of them write stuff that will not change like the 4 day pass should be a week long. The one thing I always get a kick out of is that everyone thinks that their rank should be the cutoff for which Soldiers get their own room. Right now only Colonels and Command Sergeant Majors get their own room. Lieutenant Colonels and Majors both say that Field grade officers and above should get their own room. Captains say Captains and above should get their own room. Lieutenants say that all officers should get their own rooms. Master Sergeants and Sergeant First Classes say that senior NCOs should get their own room. Sergeants and Staff Sergeants think that all NCOs should get their own rooms and Specialists and Privates think that everyone should get their own room. It is really pretty funny.
Last Friday night I had probably the most fun I have had since I have been here. One of our vendors treated me and LT Mangen along with two of our Soldiers out to a special party on the beach. However, to get to the beach we got to take a 20 min. ride in a SUV over the sand dunes. Our host treated us by giving us his very best driver “Smokey” and he treated us to a CRAZY ride. It is hard to explain exactly what it was like, but we offer the same venue for Soldiers all the time and for safety reasons we only allow them to go up to 60 Km/hour however when they took us out I saw the speedometer reach at least 120 km/hour! He would go screaming down a straightaway and then he would fish tail left and right and I don’t know how he kept the SUV from tipping but he did an excellent job of pushing the vehicle to the limits. The other fun thing he would do is we would go sideways on a hill and you feel like you are looking straight done the side of the hill but somehow he managed to keep the vehicle upright.
In the next two weeks we have a BIG tournament coming up. Every year the Qatari military challenge us to a volleyball tournament. For some reason we accept every year even though we KNOW that they hire professional volleyball players to come “join” their military for a couple of weeks to train up, play against us and then go back to wherever they came from. I made the second team. And we have about 3 hour practices almost every other night and it is safe to say that I am very sore from every practice. Some of the guys on the A team are REALLY good and it is generally not a good feeling to be on the receiving end of one of their spikes. But I have definitely learned a lot about volleyball in the last few weeks and improved my own game. But it is VERY serious stuff so I am anxious to see how it all goes when we do actually play the Qataris.
Well I am sure there is more to write about, but that is all I can think of at this time. Overall things are going well and time is going fairly quickly
Jeremy
Friday, November 16, 2007
Letter from Qatar
Monday, October 8, 2007
Update From Qatar
Here is another update from Jeremy (Our soldier in Qatar. It sounds like he is having a good time. I found it especially interesting how funding is allocated at the end of the year and the rules for land ownership in Qatar. Jeremy's full letter is after the jump...
Hello All!
Well I am sorry it has been awhile since my last update, but truth be told I haven't written because life is kind of dull around here. I get up around 0500 almost every morning, I workout until almost 0800 then I am at work around 0900 and then usually call it a day around 8 or 9 at night.
During the day at work I am busy working on reports, building databases and trying to find ways to improve the program here. Then just when I am ready to leave around 6 at night is when alot of the soldiers start to come in and hang around in our building so I am usually walking around finding out if there are ways I can help soldiers or ideas on how to improve the program. The days all kind of run together around here, it is kind of hard to remember what day it is. Sundays we have a nice church service at the chapel, and that's about the only difference that I see in my week. I technically have Monday's off, but that usually just means I come to work in civilian clothes instead of a uniform and I take off a little early to go get a hair cut. I picked taking Monday's off because I try to use it as a day to recover after staying up all night trying to watch NFL football, but I have reports that are due first thing every Monday morning, so I am usually not too successful at catching up on sleep.
I have had a couple of interesting days here. I have gone to two different Iftars. Right now Muslims are in the holy month of Ramadan and they fast the entire day. Then at night once you can no longer see a white thread they sound a loud horn all around the city and people have an Iftar which is the breaking of the fast. We work with two different companies that operate our off-post trips they are called QIT and QIA, and actually the two managers are cousins. So the first Iftar we went to was at the QIA manager's house and the QIT manager and his wife joined us there. It was wonderful food and it was a fun evening of visiting with the two families and learning more about their culture and religion. The men were not very religious and the wives were fairly devout, but they were also very progressive in their thinking about how women should be viewed in the Muslim culture. It was all quite interesting and fun to experience. The second Iftar we went to was to the manager of QIT and meet the rest of his family. He has VERY ambitious children. As his son enrolled in college in Jordan at the age of 16 and will be a fully licensed commercial pilot just after he turns 18. His daughter is a straight A student who hopes to attend Harvard Law school and is enrolled in sports year round and always enjoys a game of rugby!
Today we had five congress people come to our building. You would have thought the President was coming the way everyone was over-reacting. In the end it was all very anti-climatic. the congress people were here, they got a 15 min. briefing, they walked through our building in about 5-10 min. and they were out the door.
We had our much anticipated bowling alley open up a week or two ago. It has been in the construction phase for a little over a year because they had to keep waiting for parts to get through customs. but it is finally up and running and actually it is very nice!
I am looking forward to the next few weeks as I am expecting boatloads of new equipment and games to start arriving. I was told at about 6 PM one night that I had until 0900 the next morning to buy pretty much whatever I wanted for the R&R program. I ended up staying up until about 1 am that night buying all sorts of stuff for the program. Then a couple of nights later I got a frantic call on my cell phone that said I had to run down to the resource management office because they were having a end of the fiscal year spending spree, but it could only be for furniture. So luckily I happened to be right next door to the RM office, I walked in and the lady set a sheet of paper in front of me and said "write down any type of furniture you want for R&R" so I went ahead and went on another spending spree. A couple of minutes later I had other section heads coming in the door with cookies and treats, but since I am with R&R we always take precedence so we got first dibs on the left over money for the fiscal year. I don't feel bad about buying all this stuff because I know it's not for me and it really wasn't anything too excessive, it's all for the R&R soldiers and anything that I can do to make their few days here more relaxing and fun is just a small token of the appreciation we have for the hard work they are doing up north.
I have actually risked driving into downtown Doha a couple of times now and it actually isn't that bad. They have roundabouts EVERYWHERE but once you know the science behind a roundabout it is pretty easy to navigate through them. Doha itself is "reinventing" itself. They are tearing down many, many buildings and they have alot of skyscrapers that are currently being built. Doha is not only the geographical center of the middle east, it is now considered the "religious" center on all matters related to Muslims. It is quite a progressive city and some people say that it will overtake Dubai as the city to visit in the middle east by 2015. Of course the Qataris have VERY strict rules. The population itself is about 1/5 Qatari and only Qataris can own land. This means that 4/5 of the population lives on rented land - including the land that Camp As Sayliyah is located on - and by law the owner can reclaim the land whenever they want and the renter is out of luck. In fact the US Embassy here is in the same scenario and it is the only US Embassy in the world that is on rented and not owned land. They have made one small exception, they are building a massive island in the Persian Gulf and building a planned community there called "The Pearl" (Qatar is famous for it's pearls). Non-Qataris can purchase a 900 sq foot condo for right around 1 million Qatar Riyals (about $350,000).
Well, I guess that is about all for now. If you have any specific questions feel free to e-mail me. I hope everyone is doing well back home and that you are all still faithfully cheering on the Viking even though they are absolutely horrible and have managed to sign three quarterbacks that are all quite bad.
Jeremy
Friday, August 24, 2007
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
Thursday, August 9, 2007
A word from the Troops
Well at least one troop. You may have read in an earlier post that my Sister and her Husband were featured in the a local News media story covering a recent troop deployment. My brother-in-law, Jeremy is sending periodic updates and has given me permission to post them here. He will not exactly be on the front lines but it will give good insight as to what our troops are experiencing and how their morale is out in the field, and get and inside look at how the Army functions.
Jeremy will soon be sent to Qatar as he has been training at Fort Bragg for the last few months. He writes in part:
Well I am done! Done with training that is... ...Now the only thing we have left is our 4-day pass and then we sit and wait for a flight to go overseas. I am told that our flight will be around the 20 th, but I am not holding my breath, it could change to September 1st, or they could all of a sudden get us on an early flight and we leave on the 17th. So the main thing now is to get all our ducks in a row and make sure we are about 80% packed so if we do get a last minute flight we are ready to go.
I know some of you have said you get a kick out of my stories on dealing with Fort Bragg and how inept they are. But they certainly got an earful about it a couple of weeks ago. My Brigade Command Sergeant Major and Colonel decided to come down for a 1 day visit about two weeks ago. We knew they were coming for about two weeks before and so any chance we had we told the Fort Bragg people "Hey we have VIPs coming, this is their itinerary and they are going to need transportation". Oh "don't worry" was the standard reply. Guess what? The morning the Col and CSM were here they waiting for almost two hours outside their hotel room waiting for transportation. I finally managed to yell at someone enough to get them to take their own van and go pick them up. But it was a real eye opener for our COL and CSM to see just how messed up things are down here.
Well the next time I e-mail I plan on being in my new home away from home in Qatar
I will continue to update you on Jeremy's progress as he continues his Tour of Duty. I would ask anyone reading this to keep him and his family in your prayers
Read Jeremy's full letter after the jump...
Hello all!
Well I am done! Done with training that is. We completed the last of our training requirements as of yesterday and this morning we moved off the FOB and back into some nice A/C barracks. Just in time because the heat has really been cranked up around here. During our training we had temperatures in the tent around 100 in the heat of the day, now it is 90+ by mid morning and around 110-112 in the mid-afternoon. Now the only thing we have left is our 4-day pass and then we sit and wait for a flight to go overseas. I am told that our flight will be around the 20 th, but I am not holding my breath, it could change to September 1st, or they could all of a sudden get us on an early flight and we leave on the 17th. So the main thing now is to get all our ducks in a row and make sure we are about 80% packed so if we do get a last minute flight we are ready to go. But one thing is for sure and that is that we won't fly out before our 4 day pass, so I am definitely looking forward to that! Beth and Eva are flying down here and we are going to head to Myrtle Beach for a couple of days, it should be relaxing time with the family.
The training these last few weeks has actually been pretty good. My personal favorite was TCP Ops (Temporary Control Point Operations). There we learned how to setup a temporary holding area to hold, search and transport detainees. Not likely that we would ever have to do that, but just something that the Army has decided everyone needs to be trained on. We learned how to search vehicles, and people and then they do exercises where they have COBs (civilians on the battlefield) that are dressed up like Iraqis and it is very good training because you get a real feel for how the language barrier is so difficult to work with. They also showed us moves on how to subdued and control people twice our size. I didn't personally get to test out the method, but when I was in charge of the transport cell they brought over a COB that looked like Shaquille O'Neill and one of my average size soldiers had to subdue him when he started getting out of hand, so I saw first hand that the methods do work! We also did base defense operations, which is basically how to guard a base camp from attack. I was in charge of the ECP (Entry Control Point) and was shot by a sniper within about 5 min. of starting the scenario so I did nothing for the next two hours. (By the way, it was a cheap shot, I didn't even hear a shot go off, one of the trainers just looked over at me and said you have been shot by a sniper and it took me out of the scenario :( ) But it was a pretty hot day, so I was semi-thankful to not have been out in the sun playing the game for two hours. We also did urban operations, which is where they teach you how to enter, clear and search rooms. It was a long day and our trainer wasn't very good, thankfully the MN guard has some excellent trainers and most of my soldiers were already pretty squared away on urban operations. The last big event is a 4 day event, "GAC STX"(Ground Assault Convoy, something, something, something) anyway, basically we learned how to conduct convoy operations in theater. It was good training and the main event on the 4 th day is when you go out with live ammunition and drive through a course that has pop-up targets shooting at you and fake IED's going off. By the way, special thanks goes out to my Commander, LT Mangen, she was supposed to be conducting 5/25/100, where when you dismount a vehicle you do an immediate 5 meter search around your vehicle for any IEDs, then you do a 25 meter search and then you scan 100 meters. I was still in the vehicle talking on the radio when I noticed the OC/T (Observer, Controller, trainer) asking her if she saw any IEDs, she said she didn't and he was pointing at something and asked her again if she say any IEDs, she still didn't see it, so he took out an IED simulator and set it off right outside my door, let me tell you, those things are LOUD! Thankfully the OC/T decided not to kill me and let me continue on my mission, and we later went back and he showed us the IED which was thoroughly buried and almost impossible to see, so I cut LT Mangen a little slack, but I still give her a hard time about it.
I know some of you have said you get a kick out of my stories on dealing with Fort Bragg and how inept they are. But they certainly got an earful about it a couple of weeks ago. My Brigade Command Sergeant Major and Colonel decided to come down for a 1 day visit about two weeks ago. We knew they were coming for about two weeks before and so any chance we had we told the Fort Bragg people "Hey we have VIPs coming, this is their itinerary and they are going to need transportation". Oh "don't worry" was the standard reply. Guess what? The morning the Col and CSM were here they waiting for almost two hours outside their hotel room waiting for transportation. I finally managed to yell at someone enough to get them to take their own van and go pick them up. But it was a real eye opener for our COL and CSM to see just how messed up things are down here.
And for one final story this e-mail….It was a Friday a couple of weeks ago when he had nothing going on, we were just sitting around in our tents all day when I received a phone call from one of my sergeants in another training group saying that some people were looking for us because we were supposedly missing some training event. So I went to the BDOC (Base Defense Operations Center) to find out what was going on. When I got there, just outside the door were three sergeants talking about how they were upset that a unit had missed the training. So I asked them if they were the ones calling for the 347 th PSD. They said they were and wondered why we failed to show up at 1900 for a Base Defense Operations class. Well it was quite ironic that that was the class they said we missed, because only a couple of days prior LT Mangen and asked the LT in charge of Base Defense if we could do the class on Fri. he said no, she asked him again the following day and he said no again, she asked him a third time and he was adamant that we could not do Base Defense Ops on Fri. So when I found out that we "missed" the class I thought it was pretty funny. So after taking 15 min. of explaining the whole situation to them and them calling their LT and getting confirmation on the story, they finally said, your right it was our mistake, you didn't miss any training, you are scheduled for the training on 30 July. So I walked back and had just finished explaining to LT Mangen that we were in fact right and good to go when all of a sudden they came over the FOB PA system and ordered all 347 th PSD Personnel to report to the BDOC ASAP. Well that really set me off, because they had just said 10 min. earlier, that everything was good to go and none of my soldiers needed to be in class. So I practically ran back to the BDOC and asked them why in the world they would page all my soldiers when they had just told me we were good to go. They guy looks at me and he says "Oh, your with the 347 th? I thought you were with some other unit". I was upset at them, but just laughed to myself and figured it would be another good story that you guys would all enjoy :)
Well the next time I e-mail I plan on being in my new home away from home in Qatar, so take care everyone, and I will chat with you all later!
Jeremy
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