A Couple of Days at Camp Victory

Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq – The staff offices of my new unit, the Iraq Assistance Group, are on the third floor of the palace. They occupy space that used to be a wide balcony overlooking the water and the rest of the palace grounds. Some drywall and cubicles fixed that. Saddam would probably have a shit fit if he saw what the place looks like now. Heads would definitely roll. About 20 people work in the offices, mostly officers, Captain and above. The walls are filled with calendars, pictures of loved ones, and secret maps. It was a lovely place, but I wouldn’t want to work there. After hearing about the thirtieth joke about making Powerpoint slides, I grabbed my tenth cup of coffee and took off. There wasn’t really anything for me to do there anyway. It was going to take a few days to arrange my helicopter ride up north to my new home, Camp Taji. All I could do was try to get used to the new time zone, walk around, and drink more coffee.
Later on, I grabbed my gear, and checked into yet another tent city. The setup was similar to what I saw in Kuwait. A bunch of lined up tents. Each large brown 40-man tent was surrounded on all sides by 5-foot high rows of sandbags, and had a wooden air conditioning-preserving alcove built on both ends of the tent. Each was actually two tents—a durable brown outer tent and a cool white inner tent. A large air conditioner was on each side of the tent. Additionally, they were fairly well lit by overhead fluorescent lighting. Electrical outlets were accessible. Twenty military cots lined each side of the room. The floors were wooden. Aside from being dusty and having gone through a constant stream of “transients” that had left paper scraps and water bottles here and there, I’d have to say KBR came through again. Most of the people in the tent city seem to be poor souls that are waiting to move into one of the trailers. (Yes, moving into a small crappy trailer is what people on Camp Victory aspire to.) It can take a couple of months before your name is finally called, and you get to leave the tent city and “move on up.” Your position on the waiting list doesn’t seem to be affected too much by your rank, either. Colonels live in the tents just like the privates. The rest of the tent-dwellers were people like me. “Transients.” It means basically what it says. People that are just passing through. They might be in Baghdad for a meeting, or they might be waiting for their plane flight home. During our stay in the tents, Army guys came and went in ones and twos. One night, a whole platoon from a unit of the Georgia National Guard came through. They heaved their packs and sleeping bags through the doors at three in the morning, filling up the cots. They were snoring away within 20 minutes. I didn’t know they were from Georgia until the next day when I talked to a few of their soldiers. In the military, I believe I’ve met Americans from every state in the union. Our military is truly a melting pot of states, colors, and creeds. But meeting these soldiers reminded me of the origins of our military; of militias from the Thirteen Colonies, fighting off the British. The military was like that for so long, until just beyond the Civil War. You’d go to war with the boys from your hometown, county, or state. Going off to war like that must make for a pretty tight unit. These guys were finishing up a deployment south of Baghdad, and were on their way to Fallujah to drop off some gear. Then they were heading home. They’d all be back fishing for bass or chasing Savannah skirts by the end of April. From the way they joked around but kept their gear squared away, and from their respectful way of talking (though not to each other), I’d have to guess it was a pretty good unit.

I’d heard about the chow halls in Iraq; my old company gunnery sergeant is in Al Taqqadum, and emailed us a few weeks ago: "The chow is the best I’ve seen in my career.” But nothing prepared me for what I saw. You grab a set of plastic utensils, a plastic plate, and a tray, and then the world is yours. For example, here were some of today’s choices, served up by the finest chow hall workers Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines could send to Iraq: a guy making Philly Cheesesteaks (including chicken ones, too), a full array of “short order” food—hamburgers, hot dogs, egg rolls, french fries, chicken nuggets. Then came several varieties of hot chow—baked chicken, carved turkey, several kinds of rice and pasta, a whole Iraqi selection of curries, lamb, rice, flatbread, swiss steaks, fresh cooked broccoli and other vegetables, and all sorts of other stuff I didn’t even go look at. That is only one section of the massive chow hall. There are deli sections, dessert sections (including fresh pies, ice cream, and a frozen yogurt bar). Rows and rows of coolers full of sodas, several kinds of milk, 10 types of juices, different kinds of coffee, a pastry bar, a full salad bar (including gigantic tubs of fresh shredded tuna, ham, and chicken). Potato salad, pasta salad, chicken salad, crab salad. I can’t even begin to recount the other stuff, because I haven’t even walked over there yet. On the way out, you can grab trail mix, Harvest Power Bars, Gatorade, Power Gel, and anything else you can carry out. Dinner is about the same thing. Breakfast, too (steaks, burritos, biscuit sandwiches, quiche, omelet makers, a waffle bar, etc.). I am making myself very sick just thinking about it. Needless to say, fat people abound. It’s a wonder the vast majority of soldiers aren’t fat, too. Being here for only six months probably helps with that, as does walking everywhere and the fact that most of them seem to be about twenty years old. A lot of them surely work pretty hard, and burning those calories is easy. Luckily, eating healthy is easy. Plenty of lean meat and vegetables. It doesn’t take long to find some huge dude stuffing his face, though. Who’d have thought you could go to war and come back fatter than when you left?

Unfortunately, the Marine side of me is hard to keep in its cage. As I left the chow hall, I walked behind a huge senior Army sergeant. She was much older than me, and must have been a recently activated reservist or something. She was obviously way over Army weight standards. She waddled out of the chow hall, finishing her cookie, yapping away to a friend as her pistol in its holster flapped against her side. I just thought to myself, “My God, does she even know how to fire that thing?” As a Marine, you have a certain idea about what sort of person wins wars. The brave men in cold muddy water late at night certainly have the most dangerous role. But in the end, I guess it takes all sorts of people to win a war. My Grandmother riveting planes during WWII did her share. I suppose I just need to remind myself that the less physically intimidating folks like the cookie monster in front of me help win the war too. She was likely a patriotic Mom, called away from her regular job and husband and kids for 6 months. She wouldn’t need to fire that rusty pistol that wasn’t on “safe” anyway. But at least she was doing her duty. And that’s a helluva lot more than a helluva lot of other people.