Bezawada and Me

“You’re doing a good job Mike,” said my new boss.  He was half my age and simply called Tee – I suppose the first initial of his name.   “They were all talking about how much better the Industrial Zone was looking in the Site Manager’s meeting this morning.”

I thought to myself – What in the hell was the last labor foreman doing?  How hard is it to pick up trash?  I’d been in Iraq two weeks, placed in charge of a crew of four TCN’s.  That was the military’s acronym for third country nationals.  In other words they weren’t from Iraq and they weren’t from the U.S. – they were from a third country.  But third could just as easily have stood for third-world.  Three of my four, Bob, Ned and Charley were from India. (Not their real names but nicknames given to them by someone too lazy to learn their strange sounding real names. Tee I suspect.)  Leonard (real name) was a Filipino. 

Managing a four-man trash crew – five since I carried a bag and set the pace – was hardly a challenge.  I’d virtually grown up managing people – the employees in my father’s factory.  And I’d had as many as 120 employees of my own when I owned a women’s handbag manufacturing business in my 20’s.  For 20 years of my life I had created and produced public events – home & garden shows and boat shows.  I had been a publisher on two different occasions – nothing major, but still, monthly magazines.  Even now the U.S. Coast Guard considered me capable of taking responsibility for up to six passengers in a sailing vessel as a licensed captain – and here I was picking up trash. 

Hey, for 80,000 tax free dollars a year, plus room and board, I’d pick up discarded water bottles and food wrappers, which was largely what littered the roads north of the Baghdad International Airport, in the Industrial Zone, where I was assigned to the O&M department – Operations and Maintenance.

I was 58 years old, and although my exterior was holding up pretty good, on the inside I was tired of the lifelong struggle to make a buck.  I’d had more careers than anyone I knew, most of them businesses I’d started with what was left in my pocket after the last ride on the roller coaster of boom and bust.  I’d always gotten up one more time than I’d been knocked down, but this time… I needed a job, a good one.  One that could help me pay back the money I’d lost in one incredibly horrible weekend. 

It was a weekend in which I’d fought the entire Jacksonville, Florida Department of Parks and Recreations and their comrades in arms, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, to try and produce the first (and last) annual Mayport Bike Fest.  I’d lost sixty thousand dollars.  It wasn’t the first time in my varied entrepreneurial career that I’d been knocked flat, but I just didn’t have it in me to roll the dice again.  I needed a job.  Yeah.  Fat chance of finding a high paying job with a CV that would make Homer Simpson look like a stable employee.

Headed for a warzone

It had been a year since the debacle in Mayport, and things weren’t getting any better.  Bill collectors were driving Holly crazy.  Some of them had been personal friends of hers – like one of the bands that had played during the event.  They hadn’t been paid and couldn’t understand some part of “we lost our asses and will pay you when we figure out how.”

Our relationship had cooled, to the point that most nights I slept in the guest room.  In the spring of ’04 I took off on my motorcycle to spend the summer in Kansas, taking care of my oldest daughter’s two boys, Jake and Will 12 and 8 years old.  In late summer I went further west, all the way to Temecula, California to attend the wedding reception of one of my best friends, Jean-Luc.

I made the ride back to Jacksonville from San Diego in three days, stopping in Houston to spend the night with an uncle and aunt.  I had no idea than that I’d be back in only two weeks to attend the Friday morning job fair at Kellogg Brown and Root, where they were interviewing en masse for jobs in Iraq.  Better known as KBR, it was a division of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation, and they had a multi-billion dollar contract to provide logistical support to the U.S. Army.

At the time I was completely unaware of the civilian work force that was then growing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and might never have known but for a chance remark a friend of mine made while we were building a shed in his backyard.  It was one of the many odd jobs I’d been picking up while I waited for lightning to strike, like it always had.  I’d always been “inspired” to undertake my next venture, and usually right away.  This time nothing was happening.  It had been almost a year-and-a-half, and I was still adrift.

 I’d been picking up a little cash giving sailing instructions for a sailing school in Jacksonville, or captaining two hour charters for a charter company in St. Augustine.  We’d already sold my sailboat to pay bills – the 32’ Endeavour I had bought for nearly nothing and spent a year refitting. 

Holly and I had sailed “Angelita” to the Bahamas for an incredible month together.  It was literally the shakedown cruise, and we didn’t clear the mouth of the St. Johns River before the first of a series of problems brought us to a stop – a frozen water pump.  We spent the night tied to the transient slip at Mayport Marina (never suspecting the part its owner would play in our future). 

The pump failed again two days later and we motored onto the Little Bahama Bank in a dead calm using the 4 hp outboard for the inflatable dinghy we’d borrowed, clamped onto the swim ladder.  The cruise was eventful and included a harrowing night at sea in a terrible storm, but we had enjoyed ourselves so much we considered moving aboard when we returned to Jacksonville.  If there’d been room for Holly’s two boys we probably would have.

 I’d sailed since I was a boy in Kansas but that was lake sailing and I didn’t feel like I was qualified to be a real licensed boat captain.  Our cruise, with all of its challenges met, along with Holly’s assurances, gave me the confidence to take the Sea School course and I passed the test with ease.  For a year I’d supplemented our income by taking paying customers for short sails, or longer two day sails to St. Augustine and back.  I’d moved my boat to Mayport, which is how I became friends with the owner, Neal

Now without Angelita I was plying whatever skills I had, and one of them was carpentry, and I was helping my friend Robby build a storage shed when that lightning I was talking about suddenly struck!

“My brother is in Iraq making a ton of money,” he said, just making conversation while we hammered plywood sheathing on the roof of the shed.

“Yeah, doing what?” I asked.

“He’s driving a recovery vehicle, towing burned out trucks back to the base after they’ve been blown up… hit by IEDs on the highway or something,” he said. “He’s making $90,000 a year, and most of it’s tax-free.”

Now he had my attention.  With that kind of money I could pay off our debts in a year.  A year in Iraq wouldn’t be so bad, and I’d always felt a little guilty about missing the war that took my brother David and my best friend Ralph in 1969 – the Vietnam War.  Not that I felt it was my patriotic duty, because I don’t.  I thought wars were wrong – all wars; any war.  And even in late 2004, before it was proven for a certainty, I thought the invasion of Iraq was based on lies.  I knew the one in Vietnam had been and it had cost us 58,000 young lives, including two of the best guys I’d ever known.

I had just always wondered what being in a war zone would be like.  My brother Dave had been killed within two months of reaching Vietnam – killed when his gunboat was blown up.  Ironically he’d joined the Naval Reserve, thinking the Navy would be safer than the Army he was in danger of being drafted into because of a low lottery number. 

In the late ‘60s when American boys reached the age of 18 they were eligible for the draft.  A “lottery” was held and birth dates were pulled like lotto balls, and assigned ascending numbers.  Lower numbers were drafted first.  David, and our mutual best friend Ralph both had fairly low numbers, and both of them thought they had found a route to safety.

David’s was the Naval Reserve.  He’d only have to serve two years of active duty and then a bunch of years of weekends once a month or something like that.  He didn’t know that since the Navy had less invested in the men who were only going to be active for two years instead of four, they were given the hazardous duty.  David was assigned to the “Riverines” and taught how to operate a .50 cal.  It didn’t get more dangerous than hauling Marines up and down the rivers of the Mekong Delta.

Ralph’s pathway to safety was a coveted spot in the Kansas National Guard, wrangled for him by a brother-in-law with connections.  The National Guard was considered a safe way to serve one’s military duty since they did their soldiering in the states.  Not in Ralph’s case.  It led straight to his death – he was “in country” less than a month and died his very first day in combat.  The Kansas National Guard had been activated and sent to Vietnam.

Robbie and I finished the shed and I went straight home to the internet to find out what other positions KBR had available.  Without a commercial driver’s license I wouldn’t be driving a truck, and I wasn’t too sorry about that.  At the time the news was filled with stories of truck drivers being captured and killed – some of them in very brutal fashion.

I found hundreds of positions available.  While many of them were technical, or required education and/or skills that I didn’t have, I found 14 positions I felt qualified for.  I knew that if I applied online I’d be playing a waiting game.  KBR’s web site said they had a “job fair” in Houston every Friday and Saturday.  I planned on being at the next one.

Holly’s and my relationship had warmed up quite a bit, and she was sorry to think I might be gone again so soon after having just returned from a summer away.   At the same time she was as excited as I was to think we might have found the way to pay our debts.

While it was a J.O.B., it didn’t promise to be an ordinary job.  For me it offered the excitement of a totally new experience.  I had no idea what lay ahead, both good and bad, nor that it wouldn’t be for only a year.  One year was what KBR had indicated as the minimum “contract”, and that was all I wanted.  I would be there 43 months – three and half times as long as I planned.  But first I had to make another butt numbing ride, right back to Houston, Texas.

Kellogg Brown & Root – KBR

My uncle Harlis and aunt Charlotte were used to seeing me once in a blue moon, not twice in one month.  But, they were excited to see me again so soon, and Harlis generously loaned me his truck for the drive from their home in Sour Lake, an hour east of downtown Houston, to the offices of KBR.  When I arrived there was already a steady stream of people walking from the parking lot, lining up to pass through a gate, beyond which was a huge metal building. 

It was as motley, poorly dressed group of people as I’d seen since the last time I was in a WalMart.  They looked like they were dressed to go to a pig roast, not a job interview.  I was the only one wearing a sport coat, albeit with boots, jeans and dress shirt – sans necktie.  It was Houston, and I knew how to dress up Texas fashion.  Only one guy was “better dressed,” and he had overshot the mark in a three piece suit.

With my resume in hand and a list of the 14 jobs I felt qualified for I read a sign that said applicants were only allowed to apply for one position.  I quickly scanned the list as I approached the table the applicants ahead of me were busily filling out forms.  A decision had to be made then and there – before I reached the form.  A poster showed a long list of job titles, beside each of which was the number of positions available for each – 1,1,1,2,1,1,1.  Most of them had only one opening, except for Labor Foreman, for which there were six positions available.  I played the odds.

Inside what at one time must have been a factory building for assembling something large, based on the forty foot ceiling and the gantry crane at one end.  On one end were several white trailers that looked like the portable temporary offices one sees on construction sites.  On the other end, our end, were rows and rows of 8 foot folding tables with folding chairs, all facing one direction, and in front of each chair was a neatly stapled stack of papers – information for new applicants.

For an hour we all listened as information was shared about the procedures to follow, how this mass interview of prospective employees would take place.  We would submit our forms and resumes, and there were recruiters for each of the various positions who would peruse the information and in a short while names would be called, along with the name of the recruiter.  Those whose names are not called “Thank you for your time, and feel free to re-apply.”

There was also a lecture on the hazards of working in a war zone in which the speaker did his best to scare the bejezus out of anyone who might be averse to showering with bottled water, living in a tent, eating MRE’s (meals ready to eat), discovering a scorpion in your sleeping bag, or being blown to smithereens in a mortar attack.  I had heard or read that KBR had had a problem with training newly recruited employees, training them, transporting them to Iraq, only to have them quit within days of their arrival.  I later heard about two employees that refused to get off the plane when it landed in Baghdad.  With their dissertation on the discomforts and hazards of taking the job was undoubtedly an attempt to weed out the scaredy-cats before they spent a ton of money on them. 

My name was called (you probably assumed that by now) and I joined two other, very different men at the table where the recruiter for Labor Foreman was waiting to interview us.  One of the others was a ruggedly sun-weatherd gent wearing boots, jeans, a short sleeved snap button western shirt and an old ball cap obviously given to him by the feed store whose advertising adorned the front.  His name was John and although he looked ten years older than me, we were the same age.  John was a rancher from the far southwestern part of Texas.  The other man was an ex-Marine named Alan – big, burly, baby-faced and burr headed.

The recruiter asked us several questions but the most important seemed to be whether or not we had ever been in charge of or managed people.  I enumerated my experience, which was extensive.  John said “Well, I’ve always had several hands on the ranch, Mexicans, mostly wetbacks.”  Alan had the most difficulty coming up with any experience but he had been the assistant manager of a car rental agency since getting out of the Marines.  The recruiter needed Labor Foremen and any hint of experience was good enough.  We were all moved on to the next stage – not hired, but told to go home and wait for a call to return to Houston for screening and if we passed the physical examination, background check and a couple of tests designed to weed out the morons and psychopaths, we’d be sent to Iraq.  So pack a bag.

The recruiter wanted to know how quickly each of us would be ready to depart.  My answer was ASAP.  Alan needed two weeks and John  reckoned he’d need about a month to get things in order so’s he could Ieave.

I rode back to Jacksonville filled with anticipation of a new adventure.  I didn’t have to wait long for the call from a woman in Houston who gave me my flight information, departing Jacksonville for Houston the following week.  Holly and I robbed the piggy bank and bought some things on the list or necessities I’d been given in Houston, including a new pair of steel toed boots.

KBR is nothing if not organized.  I was met at the airport, along with other arrivals; shuttled to the hotel where I would be staying; and given instructions to catch another shuttle to the training center which had been set up in one of Houston’s less popular shopping malls – in what had once been a J.C. Penney’s or Sears store.

When I arrived at the training center I signed in, was checked off a list and given a plastic identification tag on the end of a red lanyard.  They were red this week.  Arrivals from previous weeks had different colors – blue, green, yellow.  It was easy to see who had been there the longest, because there were fewer and fewer of some colors.  Before I boarded the bus for the Houston airport I would be one of the few reds left.  Something was to delay my background check.

In the meantime, we were fed three times a day cafeteria style, and spent a lot of time lounging in one of the several areas of overstuffed chairs, couches, and tables where recruits sat playing cards, or a variety of board games.  There was a lot of talking and anxious speculation about where one might wind up – which military base – and what the conditions were actually like.  Most popular were the returnees who had been in Iraq, but for some reason had left and were now returning.  KBR required anyone who had “left the project” for more than 30 days to go through the week-long training all over again.  Those who had been there were sought out for their inside knowledge.

KBR was sending about 500 people a week to Iraq and Afghanistan at the time – the majority to Iraq; and so it was an extremely busy place.  My group numbered 800, and probably 300 of those would be weeded out for one cause or another.  Many failed the physical, and an amazingly large number failed the incredibly simple intelligence test; others the drug test.

It was an eclectic mix of people.  Not to be judgmental, but it was a working class crowd, tattoos and piercings weren’t uncommon, and, although there were plenty of women in the mix, it was predominated by burly, paunchy, truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, and tradesmen – plumbers, electricians, and construction workers.   Of course there was a sprinkling of administrators and managers – people who would work in quality assurance, purchasing, and IT.  They would all be easy to spot once they’d been issued their company laptop computers.

There were people of all ages, including one petite, vivacious grandmother named Gladys.  She was very popular, because of her friendly outgoing personality, as well as the utter disparity of her presence.  She was the last person you would expect to be headed to work in a foreign war zone.  She said her daughters were terribly worried about her, but she brushed off any reason for concern as if she were just taking a trip to Disney World.  I think a lot of the more anxious people found comfort in her presence.  And I credit her with saving me from immediate disqualification and dismissal.

I am somewhat claustrophobic.  Okay, I’m very fucking claustrophobic.  My worst possible I’d-rather-die-than-have-this-done-to-me nightmare is to be rolled up in a carpet with my arms at my side.  I can’t even imagine it without freaking out.  It’s the idea that I can’t get loose; that I can’t move.  If you’re claustrophobic I don’t need to explain it.  If you’re not… well, good for you.

Everyone headed for Iraq was to be issued an NBC suit, which stood for nuclear, bacterial, and chemical.  It was a bright yellow plastic hooded zippered suit, and it was meant to protect the wearer from death via the aforementioned means.  An entire afternoon was spent instructing us all in the donning of the suit, along with a gas mask, rubber gloves and rubber boots.  All of which fit into a big black canvas bag we were to keep near us at all times.

The signal we were to respond to in the event of a poison gas attack was the banging of a pipe or anything metallic, like a hammer against steel, along with the sound of someone screaming “gas, gas, gas.” 

I have to stop at this point and tell what I think is a funny story concerning the yellow NBC suits.  It happened just after I arrived in Iraq.  Three KBR employees had been drinking – which in and of itself would result in immediate termination – when they decided it would be funny to don their NBC gear and visit the surrounding hootches of their fellow employees yelling gas, gas, gas, and clanging a pair of metal pipes.

The gag resulted in exactly the fear and chaos they’d hoped for, and all of them were on return flights out of Baghdad the next day.  KBR was serious about the rules.  Infractions were not tolerated.  Period.

It came time for us to “buddy up” and don our NBC suits, complete with mask, boots and gloves.  The reason we needed buddies was because our wrists, ankles and the space between our hoods and masks had to be sealed with duct tape.  By the way, my claustrophobia increases exponentially with rising temperature.  The hotter I get the more I need fresh air.  I should have dressed for this exercise in my undershorts and a t-shirt.

We were only required to wear these hermetically sealed space suits for 15 minutes.  We all sat, silently waiting for the signal that the time was up.  Five minutes into the exercise in human cocooning, I began to panic.  I had to consciously keep my arms from reaching for the mask and ripping it from my face, which would have immediately added my name to the growing list of washouts.

Then I looked to my left and saw little Gladys, sitting as calmly as if she were in church, with her hands in her lap.  It pissed me off, inspired me, and filled me with shame, all in the same moment.  I took a deep breath and the panic passed.  I could have spent the rest of the afternoon in that suit – if I hadn’t been so fucking hot.

Now let me tell you that we all lugged those black bags to Iraq, and every one of us did what all those before us had done – we shoved those bags where the sun don’t shine, under our bunks.  And they never saw the light of day until we demobed.   (demobilization, which is military talk for quit and go home)  Then they saw the light of day, because there was a humongous pile of them in a storage yard.  They kept bringing new ones to Iraq because every one of the thousands – no, tens of thousands – of arriving KBR employees had one, but nobody left with them. 

Let me tell you one more thing.  It doesn’t matter whether that yellow suit would have saved a person from the terminal effects of poison gas, or deadly bacteria, in the 120 to 140 degree heat of an Iraqi summer day you’d have died faster from the heat, or in my case just gone stark raving mad.  They are, in my opinion, a great idea in theory, but until they’ve been proven in the real world they are a complete waste of money.  I think someone in authority knows that and that’s why they are such a brilliant shade of yellow – they’re actually body bags with arms and legs, and yellow makes them easier to find.

We did use the rubber boots during the rainy season.  And most of us – including myself – found a lot of uses for that roll of duct tape.

I passed the physical in spite of a slight hernia on my right side.  I must have been meant to go to Iraq because the doctor said “Well, I’m taking a chance in letting you go, but if you promise not to do any hard lifting, and it’s not prolapsed, so I’ll sign off on it.”  What?  I couldn’t believe it. 

Now all I had to do was pass the background check. Something was holding it up. I was worried because just a few years earlier there had been a bench warrant issued for my arrest in Colorado.  It was a civil mater, not anything criminal, just an ex-wife who didn’t think my half of the ranch and a whole lot of money was enough.  I had been too generous in my desire to provide for her, even though the marriage only lasted five years and there were no children.  I had agreed voluntarily to a large sum, but after a couple of years business took a downturn and I couldn’t pay.  Never, ever get a divorce without the advice of an attorney, and then take the advice.

I’d spent a week in three jails as they transported me from southern Colorado to Ft. Collins, in the northern most part of the state.  Once in front of the judge she’d been sympathetic to a man who had obviously been one-in-a-million (my assessment, not the judge’s) but her hands were tied.  She sentenced me to 90 days in jail, suspended so long as I began making monthly payments. 

After I gave this woman half the 57 acre horse farm and enough money to pay off the remainder of the loan I wasn’t about to pay her more, especially after she’d had me jailed.  Judge or no judge, suspended sentence or not – I put the state of Colorado in the rear-view mirror of my Suzuki Samurai and headed to Florida.

To my relief the background check came back negative, I was given my all-important DOD card, identifying me as a Civilian Contractor with the Department of Defense, and lined up for the bus ride to the Houston airport and a plane – first stop DeGaule International airport, Paris, France.

Arrival in Iraq

As we flew over the North Atlantic I looked out the window just in time to watch the total eclipse of the moon.  The date of my departure will thus be forever referenced in time.  As I peered out the window, entranced by such a rare event, I said excitedly to another recruit in the seat behind me, “Look, a total eclipse of the moon!”

He took a quick glance, grunted “Yeah”, and turned back to his magazine.  Not everyone appreciates rare astronomical events.  They happen about once a year, but how many have you seen?  And how many have you seen from 35,000 feet in an airplane while over the Atlantic Ocean?  I was impressed and watched until the moon regained its complete fullness.  I would cross the Atlantic several more times in the next few years – more times than I had any idea – but I would never see such a wondrous site again.  When the moon regained its light it reflected the sheen of the ocean far below us. 

The layover in Paris was only for a few hours, but for a while it appeared that it would be longer.  Our group was being detained because of official concerns on the part of the French over all of the flak vests and Kevlar helmets in our luggage.  Each of us had been outfitted with protection against the shrapnel that was a very present danger in Iraq at the time.

Someone must have satisfied French security, because we were permitted to board our flight and continued on to Dubai.

When we arrived at Dubai, with typical KBR efficiency, there was a welcoming party with a placard “KBR”, and clipboards to check off our names and direct us to a waiting bus, with a trailer in tow for the luggage.  We were taken to a hotel where we were ushered into a meeting room for further instructions, concerning the rules, eating schedules at the hotel buffet, and told that we would be flown to Baghdad on a charter flight soon.  It was Ramadan throughout the Muslim world and we were told to respect the Muslim culture by not eating in public, and smokers were instructed to use designated areas.  There were clothing rules as well.  No sleeveless shirts for the men and none of the T-shirts with vulgar slogans popular in the U.S.

With a couple of days before our flight a couple of us ventured out to do some shopping, and sightseeing.  Dubai was a forest of construction cranes, and in our part of town there were more Pakistanis and Indians than there were Citizens of Dubai.  The massive number of foreign workers from those countries had created an equally large community of businesses to meet their daily needs.  The streets were lined with shops, restaurants, markets and hotels and apartments catering to the expatriate population, and of course anxious to sell their wares to us Americans.  I needed a watch and found a bargain.

The flight to Baghdad was on a charter flight piloted by Russian pilots with Russian stewardesses.  The landing was interesting, and as a pilot I appreciated the difficulty of the military-style landing that began high over the airport and brought us down several thousand feet in about three full 360 degree spirals to nail the end of the runway without the usual long “final approach”.  I also assumed correctly the reason why.  Flying low over Baghdad was a dangerous thing to do.  The airspace above the airport was under the control of U.S. military forces.

We filed into the airport and lined up to clear passport control.  I thought it strange that even though the entire nation of Iraq was under U.S. military control, and we were all card carrying civilian contractors of the Department of Defense, that we would have to have our passports inspected and stamped by Iraqis.

The airport was a shell of its former self, silent and semi-dark.  The shops that would be selling the usual things to travelers, and once had been, were empty. 

We gathered our bags at the conveyor belt, and formed another line to put the bags in the back of a cargo truck and climb on a bus – one with the shades drawn.  We were given more instructions about security, and the need to have our D.O.D. badges at hand to raise and show the soldier who would enter the bus at one or more of the internal checkpoints we’d pass through.

As the bus wound its way toward our next destination –wherever that was – it was like suddenly being transported to the set of a war movie.  There were Humvees and Bradleys – tracked vehicles that look like small tanks – all painted the exact same shade of light brown as the dust that covered everything in sight.  Even the palm trees, which should have had green fronds, were covered with a patina of brown, as if they’d been lightly spray painted.  There were soldiers wearing camouflaged uniforms – brown.  I had a window seat and was seeing all of this by peering through a space between the curtains that covered the windows.

The bus zig-zagged between “Jersey barriers” that jutted into the road on the right, then left, then right, (the moveable concrete barriers that separate the lanes in some American roadways) and came to a stop next to a small guard shack mostly concealed by stacks of sandbags.  A young soldier who looked uncannily like my brother David the last time I’d seen him at 19 – probably the same age – boarded the bus.

“How’s everybody doing,” he asked, as we all held aloft our badges, as we’d been instructed to do.

The bus continued, rumbling along the rough packed dirt road, passing small non-descript stucco buildings –the same color brown as everything else.  And then I got a glimpse of the large ornate buildings, one had a bright blue tiled dome, and another larger one had beside it a construction crane that was bent and hanging from obvious damage.  The building itself showed signs of what I imagined, and later confirmed, was bomb damage.

Then we passed a large dump filled with piles of tangled metal, and chunks of concrete, and unidentifiable piles of the kinds of offal every dump collects – and what appeared to be a prefabricated living quarters, burned to a crisp, with a random pattern of holes torn in the metal cladding, as if it had been hit by a giant shotgun.  I wondered to myself whether anyone had been in it at the time.  I heard a few days later that indeed there had been – killed in his bed.

The bus soon turned into an area with rows of white metal clad prefabricated  buildings on one side, and rows of cars parked on the right, the majority of which were white pickup trucks – one of the hallmarks of KBR was a white truck.

The bus stopped in front of what was referred to as the BTC, the Baghdad Transitional Center.  It was the first stop for employees entering Iraq – regardless of which base they were assigned to – and the last place for anyone leaving Iraq.  It was a complex of the 8 foot wide by 20 or 40 foot long white metal clad prefabricated buildings that were configured in a variety of ways and used as either offices or living quarters.  At the BTC they had been attached end to end to make a long row of offices, which back-to-back, making another row on the other side.  There was a long covered wooden deck on either side.

To the northeast of the “office building” there were rows and rows of “billeting” trailers 40 feet long, each with four doors, and each door with a welded metal set of steps and a stoop.  The rows were identified with a letter and the doors with a number.  Each room contained two crudely fashioned wooden bunks with mattresses.

We were given another short lecture about the rules and safety, and told that the camp was currently under orders to wear our vest and Kevlar until further notice.  Everyone filed off the bus, where our names were called and checked off of another list, and rooms were assigned, a clean sheet, blanket and pillow handed out and directions were given to the DFAC (dining facility).

Most of the people I’d been traveling with would be billeted at the BTC for anywhere from a few hours to a few days, waiting on their transportation to one of the many other military bases in Iraq, but I was home.  I would be living at the BTC until the billeting department at _____ , the row of living units we’d passed coming into the camp, could assign me a room of my own – hopefully, one without a roommate.  Until then I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of unit B-23.

One of my bunkmates was a rotund and profoundly friendly black guy named Mike.  He had come in from one of the other “camps” – as bases were referred to – and was heading home for an R&R, which stands for rest and recreation.  Our contract gave us a vacation every four months.  Once we were past the introduction, and a little talk about where we were each from, Mike launched into a fervent sales pitch about how as soon as I made some money I should buy Iraqi Dinar (the currency of Iraq).  He said that because of the war it was cheap and you’d get 1,250 for every dollar.  “Man, I’ve got 100,000 Dinar but when I get back I’m gonna buy a million of ‘em.  When the war is over and Iraq starts pumping that oil again they’re gonna be worth a dollar.  You know that’s what they were worth before the war.”  Then he told me about guys who’d gotten rich buying Kuwait money during the first gulf war.

It was evident Mike didn’t know much about fiat currency, and all my efforts to explain to him that the people who print Dinar weren’t going to let him or anyone else benefit from what would be a deflation of the currency, the opposite of the inflation that had made the dinar so cheap.  “They’ll just print more of it Mike.  They’re not going to let you get rich when all they have to do is crank up the printing presses and keep the wealth themselves.”

Mike just shook his head.  “I’m telling you man.  A bunch a guys got rich after Kuwait, you better buy some Dinar.”

This was something I heard over and over again while I was in Iraq, and it was difficult to find any KBR employee who hadn’t traded several thousand dollars of their new-found wealth for Iraqi Dinar.  As I write these words seven years later I just did a search for Iraqi Dinar on eBay and got 1,425 listings.  Mike was right, the dinar is worth more – 34% more.  300,000 Dinar just sold for $365 with 3 bids for an exchange rate of 821 to 1.  If Mike had bought gold he’d have made ten times that by now.  But I’m dumber than Mike was because I knew that, and didn’t buy nearly enough gold.

The rainy season had begun and there was enough drizzle to turn the powdery fine dust to slick sticky mud.   I had experienced a lot of mud in my life but couldn’t remember any that was so slick, and at the same time as sticky as glue.

Iraq has two seasons, hot n’ dry, and cold n’ wet.  The rainy season – which, near Baghdad should really be called the drizzly season – usually begins in December and lasts until April, but this year it had come a bit early.

 The muddy roads dried quickly, turning as hard as if they were paved with concrete, but the constant traffic of heavy vehicles caused the mud to dry in huge bumps and the roads were rougher than a rocky river bottom; so KBR road graders from “Horizontal” would grade the roads and then the traffic would pulverize the dirt into powder.  A passing convoy would stir up a veritable dust storm, so there were water trucks constantly spreading water on the roads; it was called “dust abatement”.  They would knock down the dust, but the dust would become mud, and the whole cycle would repeat again.

Mike agreed to show me the way to the DFAC which was across the road to the east of KBR’s main billeting area – where several thousand KBR employees lived in rows of the same white-metal-clad modular units (think boxy mobile homes without wheels) that were lined up at the BTC.  KBR had two such areas on the north end of the BIAP complex of bases which formed a ring around the Baghdad International Airport.  Occupying all of what had been the exclusive domain of Saddam and the elite of his government.  It included a game preserve, several artificial lakes surrounded by large palaces, mosques, and lakeside vacation homes.  These were all located within the bounds of what the military had named South Victory.  Naturally officers were billeted in the former palaces and lake houses. 

There were also miles and miles of canals that provided water for irrigated wheat fields.  That was where North Victory (later changed to Camp Liberty) was located, and it included the BTC, the main KBR billeting area, the Industrial Zone – where various logistical related operations were located, like the new ice plant, laundry, convoy staging area, recovery yard (where my friend Robbie’s brother had been a driver) and a variety of other sites I’ll be describing later. 

There was another KBR billeting area in North Victory known by the strange name of Wayne’s World.  In the shape of a triangle wedged against a perimeter wall on one side and a road that ran alongside an irrigation canal on the other.  It was mostly populated by employees involved in the various construction trades – electricians, plumbers, carpenters and heavy equipment operators, and divided into two halves – new construction on the left and O&M (operations and maintenance) on the left.  I was assigned to O&M.

Of course all of this was still unknown to me when Mike and I lined up to enter the DFAC. 

There were two entrances to the dining facility, one on the left and one on the right side of a very large metal building.  The entrance on the left was for non-military personnel, the right for soldiers.  The DFAC was filled with surprises, the first being the incredible array of food.  It was like one of those all you can eat buffet restaurants in the U.S. except the selection was larger!

There were several DFACs located around BIAP, two located on North Victory, and two more on neighboring South Victory.  They served breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight meal because there were troops and civilian workers to feed 24 hours a day. And every Friday night was steak and lobster night – all you could eat – for as long as I was in Iraq.

Just as there were two entrances, there were two serving lines, identical in their selection but reversed in order.  Behind the serving lines were swinging doors that led to the kitchen.  There were dozens of young men who appeared to me to be Indian because of their Caucasian features, but very dark skin.  They were dressed in crisp clean shirts with bow ties and wearing little paper hats.  All of them were either busy filling plates with the food being pointed out to them, or replacing empty stainless steel trays, with heaping full ones fresh from the kitchen.

 Both buffet lines exited in the middle of the dining area, which was separated by a line of self-serve arrays of fresh fruit, desserts including pudding, cakes, pies, and a soft serve ice cream machine.  Then refrigerated cabinets filled with Gator-aid, soda, beer (non-alcoholic) and fruit juices. 

Civilians usually sat on the civilian side, even though there was no rule stating civilians couldn’t sit on the other side of the dining hall.  Soldiers on the other hand, sat everywhere.  There were lots more of them.

I was raised with firearms.  I began shooting a rifle when I was 12 years old and my dad took my brother and me hunting.  We loved the outdoors and every winter we hunted rabbits, and once a year we would drive to western Kansas to hunt pheasants on the farm of a family friend.  I’d been taught to respect guns and NEVER EVER point one anywhere but down at the ground, up in the air, or at something I intended to kill.

As I took my tray of food and found a place to sit in the crowded rows of tables I was aware of every muzzle of every rifle and every shoulder holstered 9mm pistol that looked me in my face.  Every soldier had one or the other – an M16 or an automatic pistol – unless they were carrying the much larger M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, referred to by soldiers as a “Saw”.

Although they carried their pistols in shoulder holsters, the muzzle was visible peaking backwards under the soldier’s armpit.  And if he (or she) was sitting at the next table in front of me, facing the same way, I was likely looking down the muzzle of his sidearm.

I don’t know when I quit seeing muzzles everywhere I looked during meals at the DFAC.  Maybe it was a couple of weeks – maybe a month – but eventually firearms went just as unnoticed by me as they were by the soldiers who carried them.  It was somewhat reassuring that they had to dry-fire their weapon into a barrel filled with sand as they entered their side of the DFAC.  That insured that if there was a round in the chamber of their gun it went into the drum full of sand instead of the diner sitting behind them.

Welcome to LOGCAP III

“Welcome to Logcap three.”  The greeting, from a short middle-aged woman from KBR Human Resources, was extended to me and a group of about 20 other new arrivals crammed around a conference table in one of the white modular office buildings that had been grafted one to another to make a larger unit.  Thus began a series of briefings by representatives of various departments, like safety, human resources and security – intended to familiarize us in the ways of KBR.  They seemed excessively zealous in their intimidation. 

I would learn that KBR excels at intimidation of its employees.  This was only the beginning of the all-pervasive big-brother-is-watching-you feeling I was to live with.  Occasionally it would be reinforced by reprimands, both verbal and written, and it was to culminate in a full blown investigation in which my personal computer and private journals would be confiscated from my room – when I wasn’t there.  KBR and I were not destined to get along very well.

One of the things we were told was that we were not to speak to any representative of the media. If we were approached by a journalist or reporter we were to refer them to our superior who would refer them “up the chain” until they were handed to someone from KBR’s public relations department.  Not complying would result in our immediate termination. 

General Order number 1 of Multi-National Corp – Iraq (GO-1) was read to us.  It was the military’s list of banned substances and activities to the troops – a long list that oddly included the prohibition of adopting stray dogs as pets.  The parts that were to be most applicable to KBR employees were concerning the possession, sale, or consumption of alcohol and drugs, and the possession of pornographic material in any form, including on our personal computers.  There was, however no specific definition of what constituted pornographic material.

It was clearly and emphatically stated that any infraction of GO-1 would result in “being sent to the house”, as it was commonly referred to in the vernacular.

I was given the name of my immediate superior, along with a very rough idea of where he might be found.  The next day I grabbed a “taxi”, a small white pickup with a Filipino driver – one of the TCN’s (third country nationals) I knew nothing about, but about whom I was to become intimately familiar with, and forever affected by.

“I’m looking for a guy named T. Brown.  He’s with O&M in the Industrial Zone,” I said as I climbed into the passenger’s seat; awkwardly because of the fifty pounds of protective steel plates I was carrying in the front and back sleeves of my protective vest, and the necessity to duck my head because of the extra height of my Kevlar helmet.   We were still under orders to wear our “battle rattle”.

“No office in IZ,” he replied, adding, “But maybe we find in Wayne’s World.”

I was lost of course, and trying to take note of landmarks.  In time I would know BIAP like the back of my hand – the northern section at least – but for now it all looked the same; rows of white modular living units, brown stucco buildings (obviously pre-invasion) but then I recognized the balustered bridge we had crossed in the bus ride from the airport.  Instead of continuing straight – the direction we’d come from – the driver took a right and followed a reed-lined irrigation canal.

On the left he plunged down the embankment into Wayne’s World, and it was a strange world.  There were rows of shipping containers, and more of white living modules, a couple of large metal buildings and piles and reels and reels of electric cable, some as big around as a man’s arm.  There were groups of men here and there and I instructed the driver to stop near one group. 

“Anybody know where I can find T. Brown?” I asked them.  “Tee?” replied one.  “Not sure, but I’d try that tent over there,” he continued, pointing to a dust-covered-brown tent. “He’s usually in there this time of day.”  I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a tent similar to others I’d seen, and similarly covered in brown dust. 

Patches of khaki green could be seen in places, and there were green semi-circles with short ropes hanging in the center of them.  I deduced that past winds had whipped the ropes, knocking off the dust that was within their radius.  Ropes I supposed were intended to tie up the side-walls, although this particular tent was permanently erected atop a wooden floor.  It was also surrounded by sand bags piled waist high, and had been fitted with a wooden door. 

I instructed the driver to wait a minute while I checked inside.  I opened the door and asked the nearest of a couple of dozen men and women all sitting at laptop computers at one of four rows of plywood “stations” – each divided from the next by a privacy divider, “Do you know where I can find T. Brown?”

“Tee!” he yelled.  “There’s a guy here looking for you.”

From the back of the tent a tall young man in a cowboy hat began to squeeze his way toward the door through a narrow aisle of chairs back-to-back.  One guy grabbed his ass as he went past, and T’s anger was immediate.  He wasn’t sure who was asking for him, and I could see the concern in his eyes as he approached me.  When I told him I was his new Labor Foreman his entire countenance changed as he relaxed.

“You got here faster than I thought you would,” he said smiling a big grin.  Adding, “I only put in that request a couple of weeks ago.  I wonder where the other one’s at?”  I noted a strong accent and accurately identified it as Texan. 

I also noticed that he’d ended his sentence with a preposition – not that I’m a grammarian, but due to an old joke I’d never forgotten, in which the uneducated underclassman had corrected his bad grammar, brought to his attention by a snooty upperclassman, by restating his question “Okay then.  Where is the library at, asshole?”  I have forever after remembered the incorrectness of ending a sentence with the word at.

I told him there were two other men hired when I was, but they would be delayed – one for two weeks and the other somewhat longer, and that maybe one of them was the other guy he was looking for. He told me his best friend Ryan had also been hired and was expected to join us in a couple of days.  He said he’d pick me up at the BTC in the next morning to take me to breakfast and then show me around and assign me to my duties.

It was a short meeting and the driver took me back to the BTC where I killed time, and walked to the DFAC for another big meal, and another night’s sleep on my mattress on the floor.

Highly paid trash-man

At the appointed hour – a very early 5:30 AM – Tee arrived accompanied by the guy I was there to replace.  Jason was a Labor Foreman on loan from another camp to supervise the crew of only four laborers currently working in the IZ.  We went to breakfast and then to the office, which was a small room located in one of Saddam’s “hard buildings” as they were called – referring to the fact that they were made of stucco covered brick with a concrete roof.  We were permitted to remove our vest and “Kevlar” whenever we were inside a hard-building because mortars would not penetrate the concrete roof, whereas they would pass through the metal roof of a modular office or living quarter as if it were nothing.

I had already learned that the burned out modular I’d seen in the dump on the way from the airport was just such an instance.  The occupant had been killed while asleep in his bed.  I was a fatalist when it came to death, and throughout my 43 months in Iraq I never lost a minute of sleep from worrying about the very real fact that at any minute a mortar or rocket could blow me to smithereens, right there in my own bed.

I was however startled from a deep sleep by the most horrendous BAM I’d ever heard in my life.  It sounded like a bomb had landed just outside my door.  And it was followed a half minute later by a second and then a third.  I counted ten in all.  At the time I hadn’t heard enough explosions to know the difference between “incoming” and “outgoing” – that would come later.

The next morning when I asked if anyone else had, “heard those bombs last night?” whoever I asked chuckled and said, “Those weren’t bombs, they were Howitzers.”  It was outgoing fire from the mobile cannons located directly across the road from the KBR camp where I was billeted in a four room unit after my brief stay at the BTC.  All the living units were 40 feet long, but some were divided into two rooms with a common bathroom between.  Most of them, however, were like my first room, divided into four rooms with a bath between each pair of rooms. 

My room was just big enough for a bed, a hanging dresser, nightstand and a small refrigerator.  Every room had a refrigerator.  The bathroom had a door on either side.  I lived for several months in my small room, before moving to a larger one, without ever meeting my neighbor.  I heard him lock my door and take his shower.  Then, when he unlocked it, I knew the bathroom was free for me to use. 

I was happy with my snug little piece of privacy, and it became an important refuge.  When I closed the door to my room, I closed out Iraq and might have been anywhere in the world – once I became accustomed to the incessant sound of two helicopters flying overhead; always two at a time; every few minutes, 24 hours a day.

The hard building where T’s office was located was also used by the Transportation Department.  Every morning about one hundred mostly Filipino truck drivers gathered there for their daily safety briefing in the morning – one of KBR’s sacred requirements, and part of their contractual obligation to the military.  There were tables and benches on either side of the first room one entered when entering the building.  Dozens of Filipino men were sitting at the tables, waiting for their day to begin.

They would all be back again at lunchtime to eat cold plates of gruel-covered rice that was prepared and delivered by the British contractor which recruited, transported and now fed and housed them in Iraq, Prime Projects International.  I was destined to become very familiar with PPI, but at this point my low opinion of them was only beginning to take shape.

Beyond the tables and across the back of the room was a counter, behind which were dozens of cubby holes containing a clipboard and the keys to the various types of trucks – water trucks for delivering potable water, sucker trucks for removing it from the black water tanks where it accumulated after being used for showers and flushing toilets.  From there it was hauled to several “dump sites” and then pumped off-base to the Baghdad water purification plant.  There were also flatbed trucks used to move cargo both within the BIAP complex and to other nearby bases.  The trucks that went “outside the wire” were driven by “expats” – American KBR truck drivers.

Past the counter along one side of the room was a hallway that led to Tee’s office, second door on the right.  As we entered the office four TCN’s were waiting for us – three young Indians, two of whom were barely twenty, and a Filipino who appeared to be in his thirties.  Tee introduced them as Bob, Ned, Charley and Leonard.  Only Leonard, the Filipino, was called by his real name.  The other three were nicknames – given to them, I assumed, by Tee.  Pointing my direction he said, “This is your new boss, Mister Mike.” 

They accepted the news with stoicism and a handshake.  As Tee explained that Jason would be returning to his own camp, the three Indians acknowledged with a lot of “head-bobbing”  To me it was a disconcertingly obsequious gesture, and one I’d never seen. 

In India they don’t nod their heads for yes, and shake them for no like we do in the west.  We take these gestures for granted, and never consider there is another axis upon which one can move one’s head – side to side.  Try it.  Wag your head just slightly as if you were moving first your right ear and then the left closer to your shoulders.  To Indians it means “I understand, accept, or agree”.  It’s not quite the same as yes, and it certainly isn’t no.  It became easy for me to tell when an Indian was fresh off the plane – a new arrival – because they quickly imitated the western way of nodding in agreement.

Jason gave each man a handshake and left the office to return to the camp he was assigned to.  It was now my job to earn the respect of my new charges, and at first it was a challenge.  These men attached quickly to their supervisor, with a loyalty that is hard for the independent American to understand.  We may like our old boss and dislike our new one, but it’s rarely an emotionally upsetting occasion when there is a change; certainly we hold our opinion until the new boss has shown what he’s made of.  Leonard wanted a transfer – immediately.

I must have looked like trouble to Leonard, a quiet, work hardened, wiry man who looked more Japanese than Filipino.  He had worked as a merchant mariner on cargo ships before finding his way to Iraq, and had his adult life traveling the world on foreign cargo ships, sending his earnings home to support his family.  He was in his mid-30s and had never married. 

Tee denied Leonard’s request for a transfer, to his quiet, but obvious dismay.  In spite of his immediate misgivings about his new boss, he and I were to create a lasting friendship – but first I had to prove myself, and Jason had been a totally different kind of boss than me.

Our job was to take plastic trash bags and walk the two main east-west roads – about two kilometers in length – and three north-south roads – about a kilometer – of the Industrial Zone, picking up trash.  Notwithstanding the miles of walking beside dust-choked roads, it was a stupid easy job.  If it didn’t belong there and fit in a trash bag… pick it up!  The only other thing I demanded from my crew was to do it quickly. 

I was raised in a factory where everyone worked by the hour, and the man who wrote the checks was always present.  The factory was one large metal building with one big room, so there was no place to slack off out of sight of the boss.  If you worked for my dad, you were expected to be moving “asses and elbows.”   Later in life, but not much later – in my late 20’s – I had a factory of my own, manufacturing belts and handbags.  Like my dad, I had to push my employees because hourly paid employees don’t have the incentive to work quickly that workers paid by the piece have – called “piece-work” in a garment factory.  Why should they?  They’re paid the same regardless of their productivity.

That was the work ethic I had when I first arrived in Iraq.  It would change with time.  The military, and perhaps any government job, is so wasteful it destroys even the most industrious individual’s fastidious desires.  But now, my four workers were ready to go on strike, because I was working them too hard and not taking breaks as often or as long as their former boss had.  My response was simple.  You don’t like this pace?  Keep up with this old man.  I doubled the pace.  I was 58 years old, and in their world that was damned old.  Indian men and Filipinos are one foot in the grave by the time they are in their late 50’s.   Understandably due to a life of hard work and poor health care.

They were struggling to keep up with me and my bag was filling faster than theirs.  What made it even more impressive to my men is that I was also wearing a flack vest that weighed 50 lbs, and a Kevlar helmet.  And the day was hot.  It was killing me, but I wasn’t letting them know it.

After a complete round of the Industrial zone I told them “Now, that is what working too hard feels like.  So quit your whining.”   They understood me because they all spoke a little English, and for Leonard, as with many Filipinos, it was his second language – Tegalo being his native tongue.

The transformation was amazing.  They were ready to follow me, because I had led them, and maybe shamed them a bit.  They certainly weren’t going to let an old man outdo them.

Ryan, Tee’s best friend arrived a few days after I did.  One morning they both picked me up in Tee’s white extended cab pickup truck.  They were both about the same height – well over six feet – so there wasn’t much room in the back.  So I just sat sideways.  It was obvious these two high-school buddies were best of friends, and I was mildly entertained as they remembered what seemed like old vaudeville routines, quoting from comedy albums they’d memorized, and recounted past practical jokes. 

Ryan was also a Labor Foreman, although it wouldn’t be very long before he was promoted to General Labor Foreman and become my boss.  We were expecting several more Labor Foremen, and another 40 or 50 TCNs.  Three of them arrived that morning, fresh off the plane from Dubai.  Tee shook their hands and pointing at them one by one said “Okay, you’re Larry, you’re Moe, and you’ll be Curly.”

“The hell if they are!” I said before I could control my tone of voice.  After all I was talking to my boss, and really didn’t have the authority to countermand him – but I wasn’t going to stand for such disrespect, of anyone.  “A man’s name is important to him and we’re going to make the effort to learn their names,” I continued, taking a pen and pad from my pocket.

Perhaps it respect for his elder, or maybe Tee was taken aback by my sudden outburst, but whatever the reason he didn’t object.  And it could just have been that I’d touched his own sensibilities at some level. Hmmm… naw… not Tee.

“What are your names?” I asked.  The tall fine boned boy with the sleepy eyes spoke some English and said “I am Paresh.”  Then, understanding the question Jayesh, the one with the “wild eyes” spoke up.  He had eyes any cowboy recognizes in a horse that can’t be fully trusted, with a lot of white showing.  It applies to humans too I think.  It did in the case of young Jayesh.  And finally Ganesh spoke his name. He was sort of an amiable sort with thick lips and proved to be just as affable and clueless as he looked. 

Paresh, Jayesh, and Ganesh.  What’s with all the names ending in esh?

From then on, the Labor Foremen in the Industrial Zone called their men by their true names – and there were to be many more TCNs, most of them with names unfamiliar to Americans.

Ryan took the new arrivals to the Staging Yard, which was also in bad need of a trash patrol.  It was about 20 acres of gravel divided into fifty lanes, each wide enough for two rows of tractor-trailers and long enough for eight or ten of them to line up nose to tail.  There were always somewhere between 500 and 800 trucks in the yard, each with at least one driver, and sometimes two.  That added up to a lot of men, and a lot of trash.  Men from their part of the world don’t carry their garbage to the dumpsters – of which there were several – they drop it right where they are.

Arriving convoys were parked there to await the “client” – whoever had ordered the cargo they were hauling – to come for them, and lead them to their offload point.  And then they would return to the Staging Yard to wait until they were joined into a convoy for the trip back – usually to Kuwait – for another load.

The drivers were middle-eastern, from a half dozen different countries surrounding Iraq, including Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey, even men from Nigeria.  They lived in the yard eating what food they’d brought with them.  Each trailer had a big metal box hanging below the trailer that contained their foodstuff, a gas stove and usually a water pipe.  They were usually there for a couple of weeks, but it wasn’t unusual for a driver to be there for a month, waiting helplessly for a convoy.

These drivers were confined to the staging yard, and neither KBR nor the military assumed responsibility for feeding them or providing them with anything more than a parking space and access to one of two “John-Wayne showers”.  Why John Wayne?  I guess because they were crude, cold-water showers and you had to be as tough as the Duke to use one.

The showers had been the source of a major problem the day I arrived on the job.  Tee was showing me around and got a call from the Site Manager, Daryl Johnson, demanding that he come to the Staging Yard immediately.  Not that anyone really cared that the truck drivers had to walk through a muddy mess to get to and from the showers, which were crudely built from plywood, five showers to a side, built on a wooden “pallet” with spaces between the floor boards to permit the water to run out and down to a hole in the ground with a pump in it.  From there the “gray-water” was pumped into a “black-water” tank to be sucked out and hauled to a dump site.

The problem was that there was nothing under the showers but mud, and it was getting nasty and turning green.  I was standing outside a group of several men that included Tee and Daryl – who I had not yet met – and listened as they suggested and rejected various solutions.  I had seen some large piles of brown neoprene in the Materials Yard as Tee was taking me on a tour, and we’d stopped there to load some dry-erase boards someone had ordered for O&M.  I’d asked Tee what they were and he said they were water storage bags that had been torn and were no longer functional.

It occurred to me that a big piece of the neoprene – very tough, resilient and waterproof – would work well under the John-Wayne showers with a low wooden frame to create a shallow pan.  I suggested it, and everyone turned to look at me with a who-the-hell-is-this-guy look on their faces.  But they did it and it worked perfectly.  I think Daryl must have taken note, although he didn’t even introduce himself.

After I began my trash duties I returned to the Staging Yard every day.  It was included in our route.  I returned after hours to accept some of the many invitations I got from drivers to join them for a cup of the strong sweet tea they seemed to constantly be brewing.  We’d sit on a carpet beneath their truck, and converse in their broken English, and they would teach me a bit of Arabic.  I always carried my camera and would take their photos.  There was a photo shop near the PX and the next day I would return the next day with prints.  They loved it!  But my photo bill was mounting as sometimes the groups were large, and brought prints for each one.  I didn’t mind because they seemed so appreciative, and afterward when my guys and would pass through the Staging Yard burly Middle Eastern drivers would recognize me and yell my name “Mike, Mike… habibi.”

I developed a strong affection for these rugged men – men who were driving the most dangerous roads in the world in old un-armored Mercedes trucks.  However, I never did really get used to being grabbed by the shoulders and kissed on either cheek in the traditional greeting – three times.

Every day at noon our TCN’s would eat their plate of rice with whatever that foul looking stuff was on top of it, and Tee, Ryan and I would head to the “Golden Buffet”.  I’d immediately gotten into the habit of bringing back seven desserts on a paper plate, covered with plastic wrap for the “guys” – as I began to call them.

One day Tee’s mother, who had actually joined KBR in Iraq before Tee had, was fresh from an R&R to some Eastern European country – I don’t know which one, Hungary, or Yugoslavia maybe.  Anyway she was feeling, and looking, pretty good, because she’d gotten a facelift while she was there.  She joined us for lunch. We went to the “Divison” DFAC, which was a bit nicer, and offered a better selection of desserts than “Antelope” near the IZ.  It was called Division DFAC because it was close to Division Headquarters and frequented by Army brass.

The conversation was mostly about Bobbie’s trip, and when it was about time to leave I went and got my dessert plate with seven slices of delicious looking cake, wrapped in plastic.  I had noticed some officers sitting next to our little group, but hadn’t paid attention to their rank.  All of a sudden KABAM!! – everyone hit the floor – everyone except me and the three-star general across the table and one seat to the left of me.  I don’t know why he didn’t hit the deck.  I know I didn’t because it was the first rocket I’d ever experienced and I just didn’t know to react.

We found out later the rocket had hit the “Water Point” on Z-Lake, the location of the water purification units, known as ROWPU units – reverse osmosis water purification units – were located.  The purified water was then stored in one of those huge 50,000 gallon Neoprene bags.  The rocket had hit a bag, rupturing it and spilling a lot of very expensive water back into the lake.

On the way back to work Tee said “Land, I’d say you were lucky that rocket hit when it did, just judgin’ from the way that three-star was eyein’ that big plate of desserts you were fixin’ to carry out of the DFAC.”  I was more discrete with my dessert smuggling in the future, but it wouldn’t matter.  We soon had more TCN’s than I could have carried desserts for.

Bob, Ned, Leonard and I had developed an “esprit de corps”.  We considered ourselves to be the elite of trash men.  We were all proud of the way we kept the IZ clear of unsightly trash, and we considered it a challenge when a convoy of trucks parked for the night along the road would leave a windrow of trash left from whatever they’d eaten and drank during the night.  They had trashed “our” IZ!

At times we would march along the back road shortcut that lead to the west entrance to the IZ, and they’d sing along with me the Disney song the Seven Dwarves had sung in Snow White – “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go… hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho… “

In the afternoon Tee would give us the pickup truck and we hauled heavy stuff to the dump – mostly remnants of wooden pallets that had fallen from trucks, and broken pieces of concrete, and twisted metal that were scattered everywhere.  The dump was a fun experience in itself.  We never knew what treasures we’d find.  Once we found an entire treasure trove of expensive “Leatherman” knives – the kind that fold out to make a pair of pliers, and have screw drivers, and a saw – a complete folding toolkit.

I’m still wearing boxer underwear I salvaged from boxes and boxes of them that had been thrown away.  I gathered all I could carry and left behind several lifetime supplies, all destined to be burned by the next day.  We found piles of new ink cartridges for some model of color copier, a truckload of Budweiser beer – non-alcoholic of course.  A lot of what we found was out-of-date, by a single day!  I always wondered if beer knows what the date is.  “Uh-oh.  I’m bad.  I was good until last midnight, but now I’m poison.”

The military has its rules, and until they fenced in the dump and put a lock on the gate we benefitted.  Even then… well I’m getting ahead of my story.

I’d fallen into a routine that could have lasted a year and suited me fine.  I loved my crew of guys and had turned trash collecting into a fun job.  But one day as we were walking our trash route, Daryl, our Site Manager I’d never officially met, stopped in a cloud of dust beside us and threw open the passenger door “Mike, get in.  I got another job for you.”  I gave my guys a quick look and handed Leonard my trash bag, climbed in the truck and turned to see four bewildered TCN’s.  They’d lost another boss – this time with no formalities or time for goodbyes.  Hell, they were just TCN’s to Daryl Johnson, men that might as well have been machines for all the feelings he imagined them to have.

Log Base Seitz

Daryl drove me to the corner and turned left, heading to a place I’d wondered about as we walked our trash route.  The main east-west road led right up to the gate, where two soldiers, always in battle-rattle, stopped approaching traffic and after checking identification, waved them on in.  There was a berm at the gate that made it impossible to see what lay below, and the area was surrounded by a tall wall made of laid concrete blocks. 

It was Log Base Seitz, a tiny Logistics Base located in the furthest northwest corner of the BIAP complex of bases.  And directly over the north wall of “Log Base” as it was referred to, was the infamous Abhu Graib, which had recently been in the news because of the photos of humiliation and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of their U.S. military guards.

Daryl explained that he respected that a man of my age and experience was capable of more than just picking up trash.  I don’t know how he knew of my experience, but maybe my solution to the muddy showers had impressed him.  He said that he had plans for me, and thought there was a chance I could be his Chief of Services.  For now he wanted me to take charge of a crew of Indian TCW’s that were replacing a crew of Iraqis, who, for the past year, had been cleaning the “ab units” and showers on Log Base. 

I asked him what an ab unit was, and he told me it was short for ablution unit, which is what the master military namer of things decided to call latrines.  What was wrong with latrine?  Why did the Army deem it necessary to change the name?

I’d never heard the word ablution before but had this person, whoever they are, checked the dictionary he (or maybe she) would have seen that the word refers to washing oneself, particularly as in a religious ceremony.  Washing oneself?  The trailers where you did that were appropriately called shower units. 

The Iraqi work crew was being replaced due to security and the time consuming process of bringing them on and off the base each day.  Even though they arrived early in the morning, by the time they’d been sniffed, wanded, patted down, i.d. checked, and given a temporary badge it was damn near noon.

The process of leaving was much simpler, and consisted of trading their temporary i.d. for the driver’s license or national identification they’d left in exchange.   Even so, they had to leave by 15:00, in order to get back to their homes before the curfew in Baghdad.  TCN’s offered a more efficient alternative without the security risks. 

The other requirement for employing Iraqis on the base was an armed military escort.  It was a boring assignment for a soldier, riding shotgun while an Iraqi truck driver picked up trash, but the military considered it an absolute necessity.  And, rightfully so, as there were a lot of Iraqis who wanted Americans to go home or die.

In fact right across the north and west walls of Log Base there must have been a lot of pissed off Iraqis because Log Base was a notorious target for Iraqi mortars. 

As we passed the gate, topped the berm and descended into the walled fortress of Log Base Seitz, Daryl asked me with a kind of evil chuckle in his voice, “You ain’t afraid of mortars are you?”  My honest answer was no.  Surprisingly I wasn’t.  As I’ve said, I’m a fatalist, and believed then, as now, that when it’s my day to go, it’s my day.

He had timed his question, because just as I answered he said “That’s good, cuz a soldier was sittin’ in dat potajon right there when a mortar hit while he was doin’ his bidnus.”  Sure enough, I could see that the portable toilet sitting beside the road was peppered with various sizes of small holes.

“Did he live?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he won’t be sittin’ down fo a while.”

We ate lunch at the small DFAC on Log Base that served the nearly 900 soldiers billeted on the tiny base.  At the table next to us was a soldier with a bandage on his neck. 

“Hey, how you doin’?” Daryl asked as we sat down with our trays.  The man cranked his upper body around in our direction and responded that he was doing fine, but that his neck was still a bit stiff.

“That’s the mutha-fucka that was in his bed across the street in du male barracks when a mortar came right thru da wall and landed by his bed,” Daryl said, under his breath, in his thick “urban” accent. “Dat mutha-fucka is lucky to be alive.”  

There was no arguing with that.  There had been a horrendous death toll at Log Base in 2004.  The entry gate was known as the “Mora Gate” in honor of Sgt. Melvin Mora, who had died the previous June while shaving in ab-unit number 1.

I hadn’t heard the story as I sat there at lunch with Daryl, but the first week on my new job I was in ab-unit number 1, looking at the patched holes in the ceiling and walls, the floor, and even a few small holes in the metal dividers that separated one toilet stall from another.  When a mortar hits it “fragments” and slivers of steel ranging in size from smaller than a grain of sand to half the size of your hand penetrate everything within a small radius of ten to twenty yards – that’s the smaller mortars – more for larger ones.

I was trying to imagine what it would have been like to, in an instant, without any warning, be killed or wounded while minding your morning business in the bathroom.  I didn’t have to imagine it for long.  I was about to get a first-hand description. 

I heard a toilet flush and a young soldier emerged from one of the stalls.  “You know what happened here don’t you sir?” he asked as he washed his hands at the sink.

“I’ve heard that a soldier was killed in here.  I guess from the mortar that did this damage,” I replied.   Adding, “But that’s about all.”

“Yeah, he was right here shaving,“ indicating the sink where he stood.  “I was standing over there about where you are, and another guy was over there,” he continued, indicating a spot between the sink and the door.  “I never got a scratch, but Moro was so full of holes…  I’d put my hand over one spot to stop the bleeding, and blood would start pouring out of another hole.”

I listened compassionately as this young soldier related the most horrible event imaginable – all too often experienced in war – watching helplessly as a comrade loses his life.  The third soldier was wounded, but lived.  Moro was not the only one to die in 2004.  Ceremonial events on the small Log Base parade grounds had been banned after a mortar landed in the midst of one, killing several and wounding many more.  The soldiers had dubbed Log Base Seitz “Mortaritaville”, and although there were many other places bearing that name, at Log Base it was no joke.

KBR electrical crews were busy rewiring the entire base – a multi-million dollar contract KBR had been awarded – and the expat Labor Foremen always wore their battle-rattle, even though their Indian and Filipino laborers didn’t.  They didn’t have any to wear.  PPI had not issued protective gear to the 2,000 workers who currently lived under their care.

I declined to wear mine unless we were under general orders by the military and KBR to do so; if my men didn’t have protection to wear, then, neither would I.

John, the Labor Foreman who had been in charge of the Iraqi crew was told to train me and my new crew of ten Indians – fresh off the plane.  He could have done it in an hour, but we’d spend a week together, because we weren’t asked how long it would take – just told.  I mean… here’s the shipping container with all the supplies, detergent, extra buckets, squeegees, brooms and mops, and an inventory of toilet paper.  And there are the ab and shower units.  Duh!

John always wore his vest and Kevlar, as the protective Kevlar helmets were called.  Noting that I didn’t, he said, “Yeah, you don’t wear your shit now, but just wait until you’re in your first mortar attack.  You’ll be wearing your gear then.”  He’d barely gotten the words out of his mouth when BAMP! – a mortar.  It was somewhere close, and before the second one hit John and I and ten Indians had hit the ground.  I dove for the edge of the metal shipping container that contained the cleaning supplies, and four Indians went with me – all laying like fallen dominos. 

I felt the body of the young Indian on top of me – whose name I didn’t yet know – trembling uncontrollably in fear.  I reached for his shoulder and calmed him with English words he couldn’t understand, but they must have helped because he stopped shaking.

As soon as the last of four or five mortars fell we scurried the few yards to one of two concrete bunkers that were located amongst the ab and shower units.  Imagine a four foot tall concrete box turned upside down with no ends to it.  In front of each open end of the bunker sandbags were piled to prevent shrapnel from entering the interior.  The roof of the bunker was also stacked with sandbags for added protection.

After the death of Sgt. Moro an Iraqi contractor had been paid to erect a “mortar roof” over the eleven forty foot ab and shower units.  They were arranged in three rows of four, minus one in the first row. The modular unit in that spot was the KBR laundry drop, where soldiers dropped off bags of dirty laundry at a counter inside.  There were two Filipino women who took the laundry and wrote out a receipt for each bag.  Three days later the bags were back cleaned and folded.  All courtesy of KBR, and the American tax payer.

The metal roof was suspended a few feet above the ab and shower units.  The theory was that any incoming mortar would explode when it hit the “mortar roof”, before it could penetrate the roofs of the ab and shower units.  It was a unique piece of construction in that there was no “wind bracing” – no triangulation to prevent it from just falling over sideways in a strong wind, and none of the slender poles that supported the roof lined up with each other.  In spite of my expectations it never fell – it only leaned.

To my friends and family back home I referred to my new guys as “my ten little Indians”- referencing the nursery rhyme we all learned when I was a kid “One little two little Indian three little Indians… four little five little Indians six little Indians… etc.  We had experiencing our first of many mortar attacks together.  Too many to count, but on Log Base they were practically a daily occurrence, and some days twice.

English School

It was late November and I’d been in Iraq just over a month – the most interesting, and in many ways exciting, month of a pretty interesting life.  With the change in responsibilities I fell into a new routine.  I arose at 5:00 AM and walked the short distance to PPI-1, the camp where Prime Projects International housed their Filipino workers, which lay alongside KBR’s main billeting area.  From there the bus driver and I would go to PPI-2, the newly constructed, and constantly expanding, camp where my ten Indians lived.

I would greet each one by name, and we then we’d ride the six kilometers to Log Base Seitz where the guard would wave us on through the gate – recognizing that it was the same bunch of men who entered the camp every morning.

Our home for the day was a gray 20 foot shipping container that had a wooden front with a standard sized door, the metal doors were still attached but one of them had been swung out of the way.  The wooden front was located about four feet into the unit creating a covered “stoop” where we all left our shoes.  Inside the floor was covered with cardboard and the odd pieces of foam, old pillows, or whatever we’d scrounged up for the guys to sit on.  They, being Indians preferred the floor to a chair.  Not being an Indian, and unable to squat like one, my spot was a folding chair.

The shipping container was our “club house”, or “break room”.  It was where my men and I when they weren’t cleaning toilets and showers.  The break-room was one of three shipping containers side-by-side, and just a few paces north of the main ab and shower units – the eleven located under the mortar roof.  There were additional toilet trailers scattered around the base, two split-units – forty footers divided half for men and half for women – and two full sized units.  The full sized units were designated one for men and one for women and were near a two story dormitory located on the very north end of Log Base – one male and one female.

I split the men into five crews of two, letting them pick their partners.  John showed them how to mix a bucket of suds, wash the sinks, toilets and showers, and mop and squeegee the floors.  They took the job seriously and the smaller ones were able to squat low enough to get completely under the long counters with their rows of sinks and scrub the drain pipes.  Indian men can squat, folding themselves in half, and work right on the ground for hours.  It was amazing to me and very funny to them when I tried.  I just couldn’t move my center of gravity far enough forward to keep from falling backwards. 

The men were from different parts of India, and altogether they spoke about four different languages.  In addition to the language indigenous to the area of India they were from most of them also spoke Hindu.  Only one of them spoke much English – the oldest, Babu.  He had been a laborer working in construction in a variety of middle-eastern countries for many years.  He also spoke a bit of Arabic.  The rest of the men knew a very few words of English, and all of them could, and did, call me Sir – all of them but one.  Bezawada only spoke his native Telugu, and he could not read or write in any language.

Venkata Subarao Bezawada was, like all five of my “Telugus”, short and very dark complected.  They came from the state of Andhra Pradesh, in Central India.  I would learn to love all of my guys, but there was something different and to me more precious about the Telugus.  Whereas the others were from cities, the Telugus were from small communities. Two – Limbadri and Bezawada, were rice farmers.  The youngest, Raju had been a porter at a rail station, and the oldest, Babu, as I said, had worked abroad for years.  Satiya had gone to Mumbai when he was just 15, and supported himself and his family by selling saris out of a suitcase.  He hoped to make enough money in Iraq to open a small store.

My first impulse was to begin learning Hindu so I could communicate with them, but on second thought I decided it would be much more beneficial for them if they could speak English.  It would not only help them in their present situation, but, I imagined, would be an asset when they returned to India.  If I was going to teach English I would need some dry-erase boards, and I just happened to know where there were some.

The first or second day I was in Iraq I’d gone with Tee to the storage yard, where shipments of supplies and equipment were received and distributed to whoever had ordered them, to take delivery on 11 dry-erase boards that someone had ordered before Tee arrived.  He signed for them, and having no idea who or what they were intended for, we stored them in an abandoned bathroom – pre-invasion – that was just outside our office in the staging yard.

My new boss was Richard, a college buddy of Daryl’s who, at Daryl’s urging had signed on with KBR and had arrived with the first wave, soon after the Army.  Richard’s official title was Chief of Maintenance, O&M responsible for Log Base Seitz and an even smaller postage stamp sized base known as Log Base Annex.  Because Log Base Seitz was contiguous to the Industrial Zone and the Annex was a small island surrounded by it, they had been included in Daryl’s area of responsibility. Thus Richard was added to my list of bosses. 

He was impossible for me to read because he had no facial expression at all.  I can usually tell a lot from just a person’s face, but not with Richard – at least not at first.  He would have been a natural at the game of Texas Hold’em.

I told Richard I wanted to teach my guys English, and I knew where there were some dry-erase boards nobody was using, “Would anyone mind if I used them to teach my guys English?” I asked. 

“What you gonna do, be their professor?” he chided.  “Sure, ain’t nobody gonna care, go getum, and while you at it, why don’t you go to the carpenter shop and have em make you a podium, fo you to stan behin when you giv‘n ‘em lessons – professor.”

He chuckled and I could see a little crinkle of a smile around his eyes.  I could tell that even though he was giving me a hard time, he approved.

We arrived at Log Base early every morning.  The bus dropped us off and the first thing we did was turn on the electric space heater to take the chill off the break room.  The guys had all had their morning ration of rice, so I would leave them and walk the hundred yards to the Log Base DFAC and have my breakfast. 

The morning cleaning didn’t begin until about 9:00 after the soldiers had all had a chance to take their morning showers.  That gave us a couple of hours, and I filled an hour of that with an English lesson.  The first thing I had to teach them was to sign their names on a list that signified they’d attended and understood the morning safety briefing.  And they had to initial the timesheet listing the number of hours they’d worked that day, and sign it once a week when the timesheets were submitted.  Most of them already had a signature, but Bezwada had never had a pen or pencil in his hands.

I laboriously showed him each letter, and wrote them on a piece of paper for him to copy.  He spent several hours copying b  e  z  a  w  a  d  a until he could print his name.  He was proud of this new ability, and I was proud of him as well.

Perhaps because Bezawada didn’t understand the Hindu that the other men were speaking, or the English his bosses spoke, he was very quiet and reserved.  I watched him at times, studying him.  There was something about him that I felt was special.  Maybe it was just his strong jaw and the way he set his mouth, with his teeth in a clench, because it reminded me of my mother’s oldest brother, my uncle Jerry – the most handsome man I’d ever known.

I began my lessons with the simple things I thought the men should know first, the tools they were using.  I brought a mop and a broom, a bucket and a squeegee into the break room and taught them the name of each item and then what it meant to say “this is a broom” when the broom was near, and “that is a broom” when the broom was far – so they would understand the difference between this and that.

One day I was directly behind Krishna as he rounded the corner of one of the ab units and came to an abrupt halt because one of the men had left a mop leaning against the wall of the building, blocking the wooden walkway.  I laughed when Krishna exclaimed “That is a mop.”  He turned and gave me one of his wide toothy grins.  We were both pleased and amused.

I asked my wife to send find and buy some children’s English books – books designed for first-grade students.  Within ten days I received a box with more than just books.  She had gone to a supply store for teachers and had included some small white metal slates with magnetized plastic letters, and some reference books, outlining lessons.

One of our favorite activities was “Who has my knife?”  I remembered playing “button, button, who has the button,” when I was a kid, and to help the guys understand questions and answers we all sat in a circle on the floor of a shipping container in a warzone playing a child’s game.

I would hide my eyes while the men passed my pocket knife to one of them who would hide it under his leg or in a hand.  Then I would go around the circle asking “Mohavir, do you have my knife?”  He would then answer “No, I do not have your knife.”  Or, “Yes, I have your knife,” producing the knife, and for some reason it was always very funny to them.  And we’d do it again.  Little Raju was the slowest to learn, and he would mix up the order of the words “No, knife you I no have.”  And then he would slap his forehead and shake his hand and laugh in embarrassment, and I’d help him get it straight.

It was of course ridiculous to expect these men to understand the safety lessons we were expected to give them every day.  Many of them, like how to use a ladder, or the need to always use a lockout when repairing an electric device, would not only have been meaningless but inapplicable to the work they were doing.  The lessons that applied were simple – watch for traffic when working near the road – don’t pick up unexploded ordinance.  We were always finding live ammo, mostly the small rifle rounds, but quite often the big .50 caliber rounds as well.  I wasn’t as concerned about that as I was unexploded mortars.  The Iraqi mortars didn’t always explode.  I remember one five-round attack when none of them went off.  We heard the thump, thump, thump as they landed, and saw them on the ground behind the yellow caution tape the MPs put up until the Army’s bomb disposal team removed them.

To bridge the language barrier I drew stick figure cartoons on the dry-erase board and showed a before and after.  For example, stick figure Raju is not watching where he is going and a Humvee speeds past.  The “after” cartoon would show the results – Raju flying into the air after being struck by the Humvee. I always used lots of red marker to indicate the bloody effects.  Every morning the guys couldn’t wait to see who was today’s victim, and then there was a lot of laughing at poor Raju for being so careless, or Ram, or Babu, or whoever the victim of the day had been.

One of my English lessons focused on ages, and birthdays.  After I listed all of the men’s birthdays on the board one of them asked me “Sir.  What day your birthday?”  As it happened my birthday was to be the following week – December the 19^th.  I wrote it on the board.

When my birthday came the men waited until we were all in the break room and I’d had my breakfast and then they surprised me with homemade birthday cards, and treats they had squirreled away, including sodas.  They also gave me a gift of a small plaque with a metal relief of a camel they’d bought at one of the Iraqi gift shops.  We had a boom box with a tape player and I played country music and grabbed a mop to demonstrate the two-step.  Then we played the Indian music they loved and they danced.  Gupta, who was a plumber’s assistant at Log Base Annex, had taken to spending more time with us than with his own crew, was big and rotund, especially for an Indian.  I’ll always remember Gupta’s dancing, at the best birthday party I’d ever had.

Christmas was only a week away.  I bought a small imitation Christmas tree and a string of lights at the PX – which resembled a small WalMart.   The men were all familiar with Christmas, even though all of them but one were Hindus. That one was a recent arrival, hired as an interpreter.  Veerus was a Christian from Mumbai, and fluent in English, with an Indian accent so thick that I could barely understand him.  Several times he would say a word, and when I would finally understand him and correct his pronunciation he would argue with me. 

“Veerus,” I would say, “I am the one who has been speaking English since I was a baby.” 

He would see the absurdity of his position and laugh, saying “Oh yes, I am so very sorry sir.”

Christmas was a wonderful repeat of my birthday, with treats and music, more dancing and homemade Christmas cards – and new wristwatches all around. 

“Kahla Nahg” even had a gift for the guys.  “Mike, since it’s Christmas you can let the guys off four hours  early today.”  Then, as he climbed into his big white Ford pickup truck he added, “Be sure to take them hours offa there timesheet though.  We don’t wanna get in trouble for timesheet fraud.”

“But Daryl,” I replied.  “Time off without pay is not a gift.  It’s usually considered a punishment.” 

“Mike… don’t make me send you to the house.  Just do what I tell you.”

I sent them home early, and I didn’t deduct the hours, and fortunately Daryl never asked about it, because I would have had to tell him the truth.  That’s what I did.

The men tried on their new jeans and posed for a photo.  I just assumed they would like jeans as much as we Americans do, and while they all donned their new jeans for a group photo and obviously appreciated the gesture, they rarely wore them.  Limbadri wore the same pair of mustard yellow slacks at least four days a week.

I referred to him privately as my little black elf.  He couldn’t have been more than 4’9″ tall with a big well-formed mustache and, as had all the Telugus, a very black complexion.  He also had the most unlikely deep baritone voice.

He was an incredibly talented mimic and what he couldn’t say, he could act out.  Sometimes I found him utterly hilarious.  Like his imitation of John the Labor Foreman who’d been with us the first week on Log Base.  His method of management was to direct the men from a folding camp chair, reading a book and chain smoking cigarettes.  He was parsimonious with his verbal orders, preferring to point and bark a few words, unintelligible to men who were only just learning a few words of English, and assume the men knew what he wanted them to do.  Limbadri did a perfect imitation of the guy.

The funniest of Limbadri’s acts was performed one day when we were all hunkered down in a concrete bunker waiting for the “all clear” after one of the many mortar attacks that occurred on almost a daily basis.  It was after Raju had been busted by the Sargent Major for taking a shower in one of the shower units.  I had been totally unaware that some of the Indians had been sneaking showers, due to the fact that there was usually nothing but ice cold water in the showers at PPI camp #2 where they lived.

The Sargent Major had busted into the break room in a panic – “Mike. One of your guys is in a shower unit taking a shower, and he’s freaking my men out.”  I rushed with the Sgt Major to the unit and there was little Raju, eyes as big as moon pies, just toweling off with his shirt, knowing he was in trouble.  There were two very large black soldiers shaving at the row mirrors that lined the “sink end” of the shower trailer.  I assumed they were the ones who had “freaked out”, as the Sgt Major put it, and blew the whistle on Raju.

“Raju”, I said, taking him by the shoulder after he hurriedly dressed himself. “What in the hell were you thinking? Come with me”, I added, in a somewhat scolding tone, for the benefit of the Sgt Major, who I assured this would never happen again.  It was a promise I would break, and gladly.

I plead the Indian’s case to my boss, Daryl, who I learned to hate for his total indifference to anyone’s needs but his own.  He instructed me that my job would be in jeopardy if one of the guys was ever caught taking another unauthorized shower, and that none were authorized.

I’ve taken ice cold showers before and they are pure torture.  To me it was ridiculous that my men could clean the showers, but not use them.

I ordered signs from the sign shop that read “Do not enter. Cleaning personnel inside.”  I gave my men very strict instructions to place the sign on the door of a shower unit, lock the door, and take turns using the showers, as they and their partner were cleaning.  I had divided the men up into five crews of two.

So now I’ll bring you back to Limbadri’s best act of mimicry.  He and Babu were workmates and one day soon after I’d authorized unauthorized showers Babu was taking his shower when a mortar hit and the sound of the siren signalling everyone to hit the bunkers went off.  Limbadri was telling the story in mime.  He jumped out of the imaginary shower, with eyes wide and the facial expression of a panicked Babu.  Then he grabbed imaginary pants and hopped around on one foot putting them on.  And I could imagine the whole scene, which until then I had not known about.  Babu sat in the corner of the bunker pouting because Limbadri was telling on him and I we were all doubling over in laughter, at the mimicry of my little black elfin Limbadri.

I have a lot of wonderful memories of the few months I spent practically every minute of the day, seven days a week, with my guys, but one is especially poignant, and it involved Limbadri.

It was the rainy season and impossible to keep from becoming covered with the mud that formed instantly, with even the slightest drizzle, from the fine powder of Iraqi soil when it became wet.  I’ve never in my life encountered mud so slippery and at the same time as sticky.

Several of the guys and I were standing in front of the 20 foot shipping container that was our break room and shelter – more of a club house – when the guys weren’t busy with their twice daily cleanings of the toilets and showers.  Limbadri had taken it upon himself to care for me in, what to me were very touching ways.  He noticed that I had some mud stains on the sleeves, and the front of my jacket.  He wet a cleaning rag in water and wiped the mud from my jacket, carefully inspecting it to be sure he’d gotten every spot.

When he had finished I took the rag from him and returned the favor, as he also had mud on his coat.  I barely began to work with the rag when Limbadri, whose head didn’t reach my chin, threw his arms around my waist and pressed his head against my chest and began to sob.  I held him as he cried and cried, squeezing me ever tighter.

The other guys were surprised, mystified, wondering what in the world had happened.  I also had tears in my eyes as I told them nothing was wrong.  Limbadri is only very very happy.  His tears are happy ones.

To this day I can only imagine what was going through Limbadri’s mind, what caused him to react to my returning his favor.  I only know that there have been few times in my life when I’ve felt so much love – both received by, and felt for, another human being.

Iraqi Trash Trucks

December 2005 was one of the most wonderful times of my life.  And just as when I’d settled into the trash collecting routine with Ned, Bob, Charlie and Leonard, I had once again established a routine on Log Base Seitz.  And once again it was to be short lived.

Richard had a new truck and that meant I had wheels, and wheels meant new responsibilities.  I inherited his green, diesel powered, small sized Mitsubishi crew cab pickup truck.  I also inherited one of his more tedious tasks – picking up armed a couple of armed soldiers early each morning and taking them to ECP13 (entry control point) to meet Iraqi truck drivers and escort them onto the base.  The driver’s jobs were to drive four ancient worn out dump trucks to the dump and back. 

The immediate impact was that I didn’t ride the bus to work with my guys, and they were on their own until anywhere from 11 to 13:00, depending upon how the morning went.

The old dump trucks were pretty much just incredibly expensive rolling dumpsters.  How expensive could old worn out dump trucks be?  Hold onto your hat… 300 fucking dollars per day per truck.  That’s right, KBR was paying $9,000.00 per month per truck in rent to an Iraqi named Abudrani.  And when Daryl Johnson told me how he’d arranged to rent them he spit that number out like it was something to be proud of… as if it were some kind of meritorious achievement to be able to spend that kind of dough.

Abudrani was not the owner of the vehicles, he was just a broker – an Iraqi businessman who just happened to be in the right place and know the right people when the U.S. Army needed equipment.  In addition to dump trucks he had rented backhoes, cranes, bulldozers and all kinds of heavy equipment.  Most of it was just like the dump trucks – worn plumb the hell out.

The fact that I wasn’t going to be in the break room every morning for English lessons didn’t really matter because everyone but Bezawada had lost interest in the lessons.  He was the only serious student left – and he was serious.  While the other guys were napping, or playing games,  Bezawada was working with his notebook and pencil, tracing the alphabet, or words I had given him  He was beginning to be able to sound out the words in his first-grade reader.  I was determined that so long as he was determined, I wouldn’t stop being his English teacher.

There were three of the old dump trucks parked on Log Base Seitz, and another one at Log Base Annex.  The drivers had been instructed by Richard to arrive at ECP-13 early, so they would be among the first wave of cars and vans to enter the bomb check area.  Cars would begin arriving from outside the base at around 6:00 and be stopped at a check point by heavily armed soldiers.  At around 7:30 representatives of the various companies who had hired Iraqi laborers, and truck drivers would arrive accompanied by the armed soldiers they’d brought with them, who would then escort the Iraqis for as long as they were on the base.

Before the Iraqis were free to enter the base and join their escorts their cars had to be sniffed by bomb dogs, inspected inside out and under.  The occupants, along with pedestrians who had walked onto the base also had to be wanded, patted down and then the person who had hired them would collect their identifications and go to a iittle window where soldiers inside would check the id’s and exchange them for temporary id’s on lanyards to be worn around the neck and kept in plain sight while they were on base.

On a good day we’d load up and be starting dump trucks by 9:00 – if they’d start.  Many times they wouldn’t.  Dead batteries were the most common problem so I carried jumper cables.  There was one driver, Mohammad, (a common Iraqi name) who I preferred, because he wasn’t as clueless as say “Ten-babies”, a small, ancient, toothless Iraqi whose name I never knew because he introduced and called himself Ten-babies.  Why?  Because, he was the proud father of ten children.

About half the time – in fact exactly half the time based upon a log I kept – the trucks were not in need of dumping.  As I said they were really just dumpsters.  Log Base was a logistics base which meant they were constantly receiving palletized and boxed materials and supplies for redistribution to other bases.  The dump trucks were there to collect broken pallets, boxes and other packing material.  The one at the Annex was always a problem because they mixed wood scraps with metal, and the dump, managed at the time by a National Guard Captain – whose name I don’t recall – and some of his men, wanted wood and metal separated.

The other bases all had large wooden boxes located at drop off points – two side by side – one with a big sign that said wood only, and the other said metal only.  The KBR Transportation Department had a fleet of eight or ten tiny Mitsubishi dump trucks, each with a crew of two drivers, and these small trucks made the rounds hauling the wood and metal from the drop offs to the dump. 

While Daryl was gone for a two week R&R Richard told me “Mike you need to come up with a CAM.  The Project Manager had done put the word out dat the military is puttin’ pressure on KBR to show where we are savin’ money.”

I asked what a CAM was and Richard explained that it stood for Cost Avoidance Measure.  Leave it to the military namer of things to come up with a stupid name just so it would have a simple acronym.  Next time you go to the grocery store and buy the house brand instead of the expensive one know that you have participated in a cost avoidance measure.

Richard showed me an example where he had shown KBR was going to save something like two thousand dollars a year on Log Base by replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent lights – of course that didn’t take into account the cost of the fixtures.

I did the math real quick in my head and said “Hell, I can give you a CAM worth four hundred and thirty two thousand dollars a year.” 

Richard chuckled that funny little laugh that came up from the bottom of his throat and asked “How you gonna do dat?”

I said “It’s simple.  Just send those broken down dump trucks back to Baghdad, and call Transportation.  They’ve already got the trucks and all they’d have to do is add Log Base and Annex to their route.”

Richard didn’t know the trucks were costing as much as they were.  He told me to write it up but before I did to go double check the costs with Kathy somebody in procurement.  I went to KBR’s office and found Kathy and told her I needed to know what we were paying to rent the dump trucks from Abudrani.  She gave me the look – the who-the-hell-are-you look – and asked me why I wanted to know.  So I told her.  She verified exactly what Daryl had told me – $300 per day per truck.

I got a copy of a CAM and ,following the format, created a CAM in Microsoft Word on my personal laptop and printed it out.  The I folded it and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket, just in time for Daryl’s return from his R&R.

When I saw him he never said hello.  The first words out of his mouth were “What choo doin’ askin’ Kathy bout dem Iraqi dump trucks?”

I pulled the CAM out of my pocket and showed it to him, while at the same time explaining that we didn’t need them because we already had the Mitsubishi dump trucks and the manpower and it wouldn’t add a dime to our current expenditures.  There would be a 100 percent savings.

“Nah, you wrong bout dat Mike.  We needs dem mutha-fuckin dump trucks.  Naw.  No way,” he said, shaking his head back and forth, and cocked back with his chin high – a strange habit that was often imitated by those who didn’t like him.  And there were more of them than he knew.  I was fast joining their ranks.  Tee was one of them.  He would cock his head back and wag it back and forth and say mutha-fuckin dis and mutha-fuckin dat, in a pretty fair imitation of Daryl, who could hardly utter a sentence without including those words.

I asked Daryl if he would at least consider submitting my CAM to his boss for possible approval.  He was so adamant about keeping the trucks that I wondered if he might be getting a kick-back.  It just didn’t make any sense at all to me.

He gave me back the CAM and I walked to the other side of the modular office building and entered Casey Veranus, the <insert title>’s office.  I’d never met the man bit Tee’s mom Bobbie was his admin.  I said “I need to see Casey Veranus.”

Bobbie said, in her thick east Texas accent, “Well this is your lucky day Mike, cuz he’s standing right behind you.”

I turned to see a somewhat Oriental looking, muscular man in his thirties with a military haircut.  “How can I help you?” he asked, and then added “You sellin’ newspapers?”  He was making reference to the copy of Stars and Stripes that I had folded under my arm.  Immediately I didn’t like him.  I don’t like smart remarks from someone I haven’t met yet.  I was older and regardless of the fact that I was just a lowly Labor Foreman, I felt I deserved some respect. 

But regardless of my instant assessment I just smiled and said “Nope.  I want to see you about a CAM I have that’s worth about four hundred thousand dollars a year.”  That wiped the smirk off of his face.

He invited me into his office, which was rather large considering the cramped quarters most people were living with.  Large enough for a long conference table that extended lengthwise in front of his desk.

He took the CAM I had prepared and studied its single page for a minute.  Then he asked, “Are you sure of these figures?”

“Yes,” I said, “I checked them with procurement.  They’re accurate.”

“Are you sure we can do without these trucks?” he continued.

I had no way to share in just a few minutes the life experience I had that made me one thousand percent certain.  I had learned to back a trailer hauling trash from the family factory to the dump.  I had my commercial driver’s license when I was 19 so I could drive the company 18 wheeler to pick up rolls of grey goods at a military depot in Memphis and then haul the fabric to be dyed in Chicago.  I had farmed and ranched.  I knew goddamn good and well how many Mitsubishi loads each of those old dump trucks held and how long it would take them to drive the measly one kilometer from Log Base to the dump.

But all I could really say was, “Yes sir.  I’m positive.”

“Well, thank you for your initiative on this.  We’ll take it under consideration.”  And I was dismissed.

The next morning I saw Daryl and I said, “Daryl.  I don’t want you to hear this from anyone but me so I’m telling you, I went over your head and took the CAM to Casey Veranus.”

“Wrong answer Mike… wrong answer,” he said, tipping back his head as if he were about to gargle the words.   Even though his reply made no sense, in that it had been a statement and not an answer, the message was clear.  I had thrown away any opportunity for advancement so long as Daryl was my Site Manager.  I felt like it was worth it, if I’d saved the American taxpayer nearly a half million dollars a year. 

Unfortunately I’d given my chances away for nothing.  KBR didn’t cancel the lease on the Iraqi dump trucks; they renewed their six month lease two more times.  The third time the requisition was refused by the Army. The ACO [have to check this title… I don’t think it is correct.  There was an Army officer who approved all reqs] scratched a line through it and wrote “Find government owned assets.”  How do I know that?  Because by then I was the Logistics Coordinator and had gritted my teeth in anger as I followed my orders to issue the requisition.

When it was refused I simply picked up the phone and called Transportation.  “Hey Bob, can you add Log Base Seitz to your dump route for wood and metal?  I’ll have some collection bins placed there right away.”  And that was all there was too it – a half million dollars later.

My routine since I’d been given Richard’s truck and responsibility for the Iraqi drivers had changed.  Now my first stop after an early breakfast was the guard shack at Moro Gate.  I went every morning, parked my truck, entered the shack and said the same thing to the Sergeant in charge, “I need a couple of escorts for the dump trucks.”  And every morning I’d then walk down the berm just inside the gate, where the escorts sat inside waiting for their assignment, swing open the door, and there would sit Ojeda and Forester – my two favorite escorts.

They were always there because they were the only ones with escort duty that arrived as early as I did.  They would rush through the breakfast line and walk the half mile from the DFAC to the shipping container because they liked the duty.  If they arrived later, they might get stuck on a trash truck escorting an Iraqi driver from dumpster to dumpster until 15:00.  With me it was likely they’d be done by 11:00 – too late to be assigned another escort duty.  It made for a short day for them.

I liked it because I could get to the ECP early enough to get my Iraqi drivers through in the first wave.  If we missed the first wave it meant we’d be there for at least two hours instead of one, because each “wave” took about an hour.  I also liked using them because they knew the job and if I needed to do something else they just took over, and we hooked back up when it was time to escort the drivers back to the gate in their little Nissan car. 

It was usually Sergeant Georgia in charge at the guard shack, a rather effeminate bookish sort.  One morning I showed up at the usual hour and Georgia said “I don’t have anyone for you yet this morning.”

“That’s okay,” I said.  “I can probably catch them walking this way from the DFAC.”

I jumped in my truck and went in search of Ojeda and Forrester.  I drove the road to the DFAC, without finding them.  I even went inside the DFAC, thinking they might still be eating – not there.  I drove the cross streets between the large Metal warehouses-turned-barracks – still no Ojeda and Forrester.  Then it hit me… that mother fucker Georgia hadn’t said Ojeda and Forester weren’t there yet.  He’d said “I don’t have anyone for you yet.”

I sped back to the shipping container “waiting room” and swung open the door.  There they were, sitting on the wooden bench.  “Where, have you been?” one of them asked.

“Looking for you two,” I answered.

“We’ve been right here since 07:00.”

“I know. C’mon, let’s go.  We’re gonna be late,” I replied

I couldn’t let it slide.  I was too pissed.  Sergeant Georgia had cost me two hours, and screwed up my morning.  Waiting at the ECP was one of the most boring things in the world. 

I burst into the guard shack and it was probably obvious I was not too pleased, but if not, the tone of my voice removed any doubt.  “What the hell did you send me on a wild goose chase for?” I asked.  Adding before he could answer, “You knew Ojeda and Forrester were waiting for me.”

Georgia’s answer was short and simple “I wanted you to use someone else,” he replied smugly.   “You need to train someone else in case those guys aren’t available someday.”

Well that logic might have made sense to someone, but not me, and I made the flaw in his logic obvious with my question, “So, tell me something.  Why would it be more difficult to train someone when they don’t show up that it would have been today WHEN THEY DID SHOW UP?”

I didn’t wait for an answer, because one didn’t exist, and I was in a hurry to – by some miracle – get to the gate in time to rush my guys through in the first wave.  “You just cost me two hours with your silliness,” I said over my shoulder as I headed out to the truck.

Sergeant Georgia was a patient man.  I’d put him in his place, but he’d get even.

PPI-2 – Slaves and convicts have better living conditions.

Prime Projects International, the British company who supplied the TCNs to KBR, who in turn supplied them to the military, was expanding.  There first camp, next to KBR-North Victory, had first been populated by Filipinos.  When they began adding more and more Indians they began to segregate the two vastly different cultures.  Filipinos have more aggressive personalities, and are more like Americans in their individuality.  Most of them had skills, or acquired them more rapidly because of their ability to speak English.  When I arrived, the expat plumbing, electrical, power generation and HVAC foremen all had purely Filipino laborers in their crews of four to five men.  It was mostly the Indians doing the unskilled labor.

When Prime Projects began building the second camp the first camp became PPI-1, and the new one was designated PPI-2.  Although I had waited for my men outside PPI-2 in the predawn darkness, I had never actually entered the camp, and was unaware of the living conditions.  That changed when my men began complaining about not having any water.  I thought at first they were talking about water for showering, and of course I knew hot water had been scarce, because of the issue I’d had with the Sgt Major and Raju’s illicit bathing.

“No sir no, PPI no water for drinking,” one of my Indians clarified.  Someone added, “Only water men take from working.”

 The ROWPU units that purified the water in Z-Lake, water that was diverted from the Tigris River, was potable, and it was chlorinated, but nobody drank it.  It was intended for showers and toilets, and the large central laundry – everyone drank bottled water trucked in from Kuwait, by the semi-truck load.

Without hesitation, or authorization, other than the moral authority I feel every man has – I loaded in my truck and headed for PPI-2 in search of an answer.

PPI had an office next to the “Lady’s camp”, which was located just up the road from PPI-2.  Between the two was a large “laydown yard” where PPI received supplies and materials for their ever expanding enterprise.  I parked the Mitsubishi in front of the office and went looking for whoever was in charge.  What I found was some young men, Brits, who were undoubtedly on a grand adventure, and making a ton of British pounds running things in Iraq for someone in an office in Dubai, or London, or who knows where.  They were a bit indignant at my questioning about the bottled water crisis.

As it turned out, they had simply forgotten to order enough water, and it would be arriving any day.  In the meantime the Indians living in PPI-2 – now approaching the 3,000 mark – had only the water they could take from their jobsite. 

That was fine with for my men.  We had an ample supply of bottled water.  There were pallets off it positioned conveniently in several locations around Log Base Seitz.  My men were also lucky in that, with Richard’s help we had gotten permission for my guys to eat breakfast and lunch in the Log Base DFAC.   It could only happen while “Kala Nahg” was on R&R.  That’s what the Indians had begun to call Daryl.  In English it means Black Cobra.  It was not a term of endearment.  I once told him what the Indians called him and it made him smile, with a perverse pride.

When the guys first entered the DFAC they were wide-eyed at the variety and the abundance of delicious food.  Especially when they discovered there was really no set limit on the amount of fresh apples, oranges, and boxed fruit drinks they could carry out with them.  I had to caution them myself; afraid they would wear out their welcome.

Permission was granted with the understanding that they were to file in as a group, accompanied by myself or another expat, and sit together in the back of the DFAC.  They were as quiet as mice and well behaved.  We all entered together and when the last man was finished, we all filed out, emptying our trays in the big trash barrel outside the DFAC door.  It was a privilege reserved for ten men out of three thousand.

On the other hand those other several thousand men had no bottled water.  I might have been left with no plan of action except for one very fortuitous coincidence.

That very week a convoy of about ten of the Army’s all-terrain version of a semi-tractor pulling two trailers apiece had pulled out of Log Base Seitz loaded with bottled water.  It had rained, softening the cartons that each held a dozen bottles.  As the convoy had exited around the perimeter road that encircled the BIAP complex the trailers began to shed bottles like a maple shed leaves in the fall.  I had delivered one of the Iraqi drivers to D-9, a base on the western side of BIAP and had seen the hundreds of bottles of water beside the road, dropped on the outbound and then again inbound when someone finally made the decision to turn around and take the load back to Log Base.

I saw the discombobulated convoy parked at Log Base Seitz for a couple of days while someone decided what to do with the loads of water.  The decision?  Throw the remaining 90% of the loads in the dump!  So… there they were, tons of bottles of water, being thrown to the bulldozers, while several thousand Indians were going without.

My truck offered me mobility, and it also made it possible to run my own personal salvage mission.  I had no problem finding volunteers for our after-hours forays into the dump, which at that time was not fenced in and locked as it would be a few months later.  We carried load after load, as much as the little Mitsubishi could carry, from the dump to PPI-2, about four kilometers away.

PPI-2 was also more accessible then than it would be.  The emphasis was on putting in more of the 40’ shipping containers that housed a dozen men apiece.  Windowless steel boxes with one door – they were arranged cheek by jowl in long rows.   There was just enough room for the little pickup truck to drive down the lane between facing rows of living containers.

As I drove the truck it was mobbed from behind by hundreds of Indian men.  They were pouring out of their rooms as the word spread through the camp that water was being handed out.  Several times I had to stop the truck and demand that they form a line, and insist that each man was limited to two bottles.  As soon as I was back in the truck chaos would ensue. 

One of my Indians could drive so I put him at the wheel because Indians were not giving respect to other Indians.  They did respect me and an orderly distribution was maintained, so long as I was in the back of the truck.  Bezawada was beside me yelling “Line, line, line!”  He had learned another word in English.

Scavenging Iraqi Drivers

Like I’ve said, the dump was always a treasure hunt, and one never knew what might be hidden in a pile of cartons, or under a pile of pallets.  The Iraqis who drove the old dump trucks made more money from scavenging in the base dump than they did from the meager ten dollars a day they were receiving from Abudrani. 

As soon as a truck would begin pumping hydraulic fluid into the telescoping ram that lifted the 10 meter dump bed the driver would be digging in the debris, looking for something of value he could haul back to Baghdad – a fan that had been discarded because the cord was frayed; a piece of plywood that could be tied to the top of the little worn out Nissan that belonged to Ali; discarded batteries that might still have some life left in them; or an office chair that lost a wheel, or, more often, had a broken leg.  The Army might consider it disposable, but Iraqis did not.

One day one of the drivers ignored his truck too long while the hydraulic pump was running, distracted by some valuable find, when the pump began to whine under the added pressure of a fully extended cylinder.  All of a sudden we heard a “pop” and oil began to pour out of the separated cylinder shaft.  Imagine the extendable antennae on an old portable radio, with chrome metal tubes of increasing diameter fit one into another.  The hydraulic cylinder on a dump truck with a long bed is the same, only on a much larger scale.  This one had come apart between the second and third of five sections.

The empty dump bed collapsed immediately but had only descended halfway because the two halves of the parted cylinder had “scissored”, crisscrossing, leaving the bed still 15 feet in the air.   In America this would have required a crane to lift the bed, so the cylinder could be removed and taken to a repair shop; or perhaps even a new cylinder.  In Iraq this was not an option, and I didn’t know what the hell we were going to do.

It happened that in the dump at the same moment were two dump trucks from D-9 (Log Base Seitz was not the only base using worn out old dump trucks for rolling dumpsters).  One of the drivers was evidently considered to be an expert mechanic.  After watching him at work I’d have to say he was more than that; he was an Iraqi version of McGyver.

The first thing they had to do was raise the disabled dump bed without a crane.  They maneuvered another dump truck next to the broken one, hooked a chain from one bed to the other and used one to raise the other.

The cylinders were then wrestled into position and the smaller cylinder inserted into the larger one.  What remained was to screw the large threaded metal ring that had blown out – evidently and miraculously without damaging the threads – back into the larger cylinder.  Each telescoping shaft had such a ring that held an O-ring in place, which kept the oil inside the shafts and prevented it from leaking.

Tightening this ring would normally take a very special spanner wrench because it was smooth and cylindrical, and didn’t have the flat sides that standard wrench would grab when tightening a “nut”.  So what did Mohammad McGyver use?  A towel.  He wrapped a towel around the smooth cylindrical ring, so that it overlapped itself and with the brute force of two Iraqi truck drivers they turned the ring.  A half turn at a time – then gaining a new “purchase” on the ring and turning another half-turn until the cylinder was back together. 

Someone produced a bucket of oil and replaced the hydraulic fluid that had been lost, and within an hour the truck was as good as – well as good as before.  I was impressed as much with their tenacity when faced with a seemingly unsolvable problem, as with their ingenuity.

Copper cable was one of the most sought after commodities in the dump, because it was like finding cash money.  There were scrap buyers in Baghdad, and copper was easy to sell.  That is if you could get it to Baghdad.

As I said, KBR was rewiring Log Base Seitz and so there were lots of short ends of cable of varying sizes in the dump trucks – in diameters from the size of a man’s finger to his wrist.  The drivers usually wanted to strip the outer cover and I would loan them my pocket knife to do it with.  One day Masri Ali pulled a paper bag out of the glove box of the old Nissan and pulled out a box cutter, to strip the cover and insulation from a large find of copper cable.  I asked him for the sack, and inside there were five more box cutters.

“What in the hell are you doing Ali?” I asked with utter incredulity in my voice.  “Man, don’t you know this is what started this whole mess; Arabs with box cutters?” (Note:  I don’t believe now, and didn’t believe then that such a ridiculous scenario was the truth, but it was then, and probably still is the majority opinion.)

Ali – called Masri Ali only when we needed to distinguish him from the other Ali, Masri being Arabic for Egyptian and little Masri  Ali was originally from Egypt, but had married an Iraqi woman – looked at me with a look of total surprise, like a small boy who had no idea he’d broken a rule. 

“I don’t know how you got these knives past the morning vehicle inspection, but I’ll keep them for you, if you don’t mind.”

The drivers had lucked out and really hit a bonanza with about six big cables, probably 30 feet long, and we had dumped them behind a block wall just past the approach to the Mora gate.  It was out of site so they wouldn’t draw attention while they stripped the covers and insulation from the underlying copper cable.  It was more than they could haul in the Nissan’s trunk in one trip, so it was going to mean several day’s haul back to Baghdad.

I had left two drivers with Forrester while Ojeda and I went to dump the truck parked at the Annex.  When I returned they were waiting by the Nissan on the other side of the road, parked in its usual spot up against the perimeter wall.

“What’s up?” I asked.  “Why aren’t you guys stripping the cable?”

“A sergeant ordered us to stop,” Forrester replied.  “He said it was a security violation because Iraqis use wire to make roadside bombs.”

I was pissed off.  Ignorance always pisses me off.  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, doesn’t he know that any Iraqi that wants copper wire can just go buy it in a hardware store in Baghdad?”  I added, “Besides that this stuff is a hell of a lot heavier gage than anyone would use in a bomb.”  

As it turns out the sergeant was not from Log Base and we didn’t expect him to be back any time soon so I told the drivers to hurry the fuck up and get that cable stripped.

The mother of all cable-finds was so big the drivers had to haul it to Baghdad in one of the dump trucks.  KBR had dug up, and replaced, a length of heavy cable, probably a quarter-mile long.  Every time we passed this big pile of cable a driver would ask if they could have it.  I was dubious but finally I asked Richard if it could be arranged.  Richard, who was always ribbing me for being such a “liberal” had a soft spot in his heart for the Iraqi dump truck drivers.  He cared as much as I did – maybe more.  After all he’d known several of them longer than I had.  He thought about it a minute, weighing the fact that it was headed for the dump anyway, and then said, “Yeah, but you’re gonna need a forklift.” 

I asked a favor of a soldier driving an Army forklift in the nearby laydown yard, and we loaded it in the most reliable of the worn out dump trucks.  Ali promised to have it back the next day, but there was one thing he wanted to do before he drove off the base. 

We escorted him to the dump where an Iraqi contractor had just taken over management from the National Guard unit which had been in charge when I first arrived.  They had since demobed and gone home.  Ali asked an Iraqi driving a big front-end loader to cover the cable with dirt.

I asked Ali what the dirt was for, and in his broken English he explained, “If police see cable, they want money.” He indicated bribe by rubbing his forefingers and thumb together in the universal sign.  He continued, “If see dirt, mafi mushkala.” – Arabic for “no problem”.

The wide open days of “dump diving” were coming to an end.  For a while the Iraq contractor was in charge, but a gate was installed and because Iraqis had to begin leaving the base at 15:00, the gates were locked.  And it wasn’t much longer until another Army unit was put in charge of security, and the rules were tightened.  We still scavenged as much as we could, but the days when I could drive my truck into the dump after hours and help my guys scavenge pudding and fruit cups, drink mix, boxes of cookies and the much valued Styrofoam cups out of “squad meals” that had been dumped unopened, were coming to an end.

Life had settled into a routine and although each day held the promise of the unexpected, there was also a regular schedule.  My mornings were occupied with the responsibilities of escorting the Iraqi truck drivers onto the base, hoping they could start their old trucks; then follow them and their soldier escorts for the one kilometer drive to the dump.  Then wait for them while they scavenged for treasures, return the “rolling dumpsters” back to their locations and escort the old Nissan laden with the junk they’d found and anywhere from one to four drivers – depending upon who made it to the base that day.

At the exit to ECP-13 the car would be inspected, but not as heavily since they were exiting the base at that point.  Their temporary i.d. badges were surrendered in exchange for their civilian identifications and they’d exit the base, headed for Baghdad.  This was the routine every day but one – Friday was the Muslim day of rest.

Life on Log Base Seitz

Most days I could get the Iraqis off the base before it was time for lunch.  If I couldn’t make it for some reason or another – usually a late start because of trouble starting one of the trucks – I’d radio someone else to escort the guys to lunch.  There were times when Ojeda or Forrester would do it for me.  They had become fond of the guys and because I had filled them in on the facts of their low wages, poor treatment, and the illicit agency fee they had all paid for the pleasure of working in a warzone – at a time when soldiers were being paid large signing bonuses for “re-upping” – they were sympathetic.  Most soldiers didn’t know anything about the Dark skinned foreigners who served them their food and cleaned their toilets.  Many of them assumed they were Iraqis – dark skinned – they all must have looked alike; although I could tell the difference from a hundred yards away. 

Regardless of what the soldiers knew I was often appalled at the total lack of respect they were shown.  I especially had a problem with female soldiers running the guys out of the women’s ab-unit while they were cleaning.  It never failed that just as soon as the guys resumed their duties another batch of young females would run them out – not to do use the toilet but rather the sinks and mirrors.  My guys were standing out in the cold waiting while female soldiers were applying makeup.

I raised the issue with the Sergeant Major and he agreed that the men should be permitted to finish their job without being interrupted.  We further decided it would be best to establish and set time for cleaning every morning, between 9:00 and 10:00.  I printed and posted a notice stating that the ab-unit would be closed for cleaning during that hour.  And I told my men to stand their ground on the matter.

Indian men are courteous, and somewhat reserved, to the point of timidity, and regardless of the Sergeant Major’s order and my poster I found Limbadri and Babu standing in the cold, shivering beside the door to the ab-unit.

I have a short fuse when it comes to a lack of respect for any other human being, I don’t care if he is the janitor.  I burst into the ab-unit and told the women to get gather their shit and leave.  They gave me looks of incredulity, and said something about talking to their CO about the matter.  I replied that they could talk to the General if they wanted to, that this was a direct order from the Sergeant Major.  I’d learned that Lieutenants, Captains, Majors and Colonels, may be in charge, but it’s the Sergeant Major who runs things.

Sure enough their CO came to see me, and reprimanded me for my language, but the order stood.  My men were going to clean the damn toilets without interruption.

Sometime in late February or early March a couple of units were moving out and being replaced.  One of the incoming groups was a National Guard unit from a town I had called home, and in fact my daughter stilled lived in Olathe, Kansas.

As soldiers were preparing to leave the barracks they had inhabited for the previous year they were cleaning out and tossing a lot of stuff that no one from a third world country would discard – and a lot of things the average American wouldn’t throw away.  But if a soldier didn’t need it and couldn’t sell it, it went into the dumpsters near the supply conex. (In 1952 the army began using the term CONEX, short for “Container Express” when referring to shipping containers)

My guys began showing up with used boots, bags of candy and snacks, girly magazines, and even a working television set, and a small microwave oven.   The girly magazines were strictly forbidden in the Army’s General Order number one – probably more strictly enforced by KBR than by the military – so I made them lose the magazines.  They wanted the appliances for their living quarters at PPI-2.  I couldn’t see any reason why not, but they needed a written letter stating where they’d obtained such things when entering the security gate at PPI-2.  There was now a chain link fence topped with razor wire around their camp, and a guarded gate.

The dumpster was being harvested regularly, and everything was fine until one day – and I just happened to be there when it happened – a female soldier (again with the women) went fucking ape shit when she saw one of the Indians pulling things from the dumpster.

“What the hell is he doing?” she screamed.  “That is completely against Army regulations.  It’s a security risk.  There are letters from my parents in there,” she continued.  “What if they get their address and then my family is in danger?”

I replied, “These guys can’t read English, and couldn’t care less about your parent’s letters!  They aren’t Iraqis; they’re Indians.”

I didn’t think to add, “Your theoretical threat from Iraqis who would somehow contact their evil American counterparts in Nebraska who would then find your parents and assassinate them is greater if your letters stay in the dumpster, because then they’ll wind up in the dump AND IRAQIS WORK THERE!”

But I didn’t.  And it wouldn’t have helped.

Within an hour the order from the Sergeant Major was “Mike, keep your guys away from the dumpsters.” 

I told them my guys to stay away from the dumpsters, “Don’t get near them.  But, if you see something really sweet – like a television set – come and get me.  I’ll get it for you.”

Like I’ve said, it was a rare day when Log Base didn’t get hit with a mortar attack.  Sometimes it happened while I was at the dump with the Iraqis.  I knew my guys would be scrambling for the concrete bunker without me, and I honestly wished I was there with them.  Thankfully, in spite of the hundreds of mortars that fell on Log Base Seitz none of my guys were ever hit – but there was one close call.

Bezawada and I were near the north ab-unit – the one that served the two-story barracks on the far north end of little Log Base Seitz.  We were picking up some pieces of a broken pallet and Bezawada lost the little pin that kept the leather watchband on the Timex I had bought him for Christmas.  He was sure it was somewhere in the gravel near the Mitsubishi.  I helped him look for a full 15 minutes, and Bez would still be there looking, he treasured the watch that much.

I said “Bezawada, maybe Iraqi store has new one.  Let’s go there.”

With the hope of a new pin to replace the old one he reluctantly gave up the search, and we hopped in the truck for the 100 yard drive to the small gift shop where an Iraqi woman and her two young daughters were shop keepers.  The store sold knick knacks, cigarettes, pirated movies on DVD, candy, cokes and big fake designer watches.

Just as we entered the building – one of Saddam’s small “hard buildings” – BAMP!  The familiar sound of a mortar exploding – and close!  Everyone hit the tile floor immediately.  Besides us, there were half a dozen soldiers in the shop, plus the women who worked there.  We all lay quietly and listened as four more rounds exploded. 

In all of the mortar attacks I experienced while I was in Iraq there was never a follow up.  Four or five would come within a few seconds of one another and that was it.  Nevertheless it was the Army’s policy that everyone should go to a bunker until all personnel were accounted for and a sweep of the base was made to discover the location of all exploded and unexploded ordinance. 

KBR employees would report to Operations on the Motorola radios we all carried. (Made in China… which I always thought would be problematic if the U.S. ever got in a war with China.  Where would the U.S. get its two-way radios?)

When the “All Clear” was called, we emerged from the bunker.  I saw a group of soldiers gathered near where Bezawada and I had been looking for his lost watch pin.  There in the gravel parking lot just 10 meters from where we were – well within the kill zone – was a round patch devoid of gravel.  It was obviously the point of impact. 

I’ve said mortars become lethal shards of razor sharp metal, but they can also turn gravel into lethal projectiles.  The steel fence posts near where we stood were pierced with holes, like Swiss cheese.  It had been a very close call – less than one minute away.

Unexploded ordinance was collected by the Army and several times a week it would be destroyed.  The method of destruction was detonation, and the location was west of the airport in an empty field.  It was south of Log Base a few kilometers and the sight of the huge mushroom cloud of dust and debris was very visible.  For new arrivals, who could not yet tell the difference between incoming, outgoing, and a “controlled det”, any loud boom would cause panic.  The newly arrived Guard unit from Kansas was no exception. 

Once after a controlled det the Log Base sirens went off, meaning everyone should head for the bunkers.  Some of my guys and I were against the west wall rearranging some huge sheets of steel left over from the early days when the Army discovered after the fact that their Humvees needed to be “up-armored”. 

We heard the siren, but we also knew that what had initiated it was a controlled detonation.  We say the plume of smoke.  We kept on working – until an irate Sergeant came out of hiding and reprimanded us for not obeying the order.  Sitting in a bunker for an hour or two was always boring, but especially when we knew it was unnecessary.

The same kind of security paranoia would always be reflected at the Mora gate, when a new unit arrived the procedures were increased and at times it made servicing the base difficult as it slowed down the daily visitors, the trash trucks that emptied the dumpsters, the water trucks and the sucker trucks.

Banned from Log Base

One night in March the rain fell all night long.  By morning the flat formerly irrigated wheat fields that had been turned into billeting, offices and warehouses by the U.S. military had been turned into one giant lake by Mother Nature.  Most people probably think of Iraqi as desert, and it is, but it isn’t made of sand – at least not around Baghdad.  It is a clay soil that turns to talcum powder when it’s dry and impermeable brown glue when it’s wet.  The water wasn’t soaking into the ground.  It was going to be there a while, but the Army wanted it gone NOW!  And whatever the Army wants, KBR moves heaven and earth to give them.  Their millions of dollars in performance bonuses depend upon a good grade at the end of the contract period, and good grades depend upon making spoiled officers happy.

Log Base was especially problematic because it sits like a low flat pan, surrounded by the berm of irrigation ditches on two sides, and a cement block wall on all four sides.  We had already had an issue with lighter rains that had flooded the underground black water tank, causing it to flow out onto the ground – a totally unacceptable situation that called for immediate action.  My guys and I sandbagged around the tank and ordered a sucker truck to begin sucking the mix of black water and rain water, just in time to prevent an overflow.

With the night’s downpour the situation was much worse.  The black water tank was sandbagged higher and sucked out, but we still had acres of water, two feet deep, to get rid of.

We found two 4” inch “trash pumps”, so called because they could suck up water laden with a certain amount of debris – trash – and not become clogged.  Four inches was the diameter of the hose.  These pumps were capable of moving a lot of water – but where to?  That was the question.

I suggested we knock holes in the wall surrounding the base and pump the water into the irrigation ditches on the other side of the wall.  Permission was granted and the pumping began.  We pumped day and night, round-the-clock, for two days, and finally began to see some ground – wet and muddy, but ground.

The officers in the TOC (tactical operations center) were whining at KBR to suck the water out of mud-holes that were getting their boots wet as they crossed the dirt roads around their command center.  It was a risk to the pumps on the sucker trucks to suck water off the ground because gravel would invariably damage the pump.  And there were no repair parts, which meant another sucker truck on the “dead-line” (row of inoperable vehicles) – and sucker trucks were already becoming scarce.

The Army had made a feeble attempt to assist in the effort with their smaller 2” trash pumps, but soldiers were not staying with the pumps, and when they weren’t running out of gas, they were sucking gravel into the pump and within a half day, there were several khaki green pumps sitting idle along the road that from Moro gate to the populated end of the base.

I had become friendly with Colonel [name] in recent weeks, to the point where I went directly to his office and asked if he would be willing to write a letter acknowledging the job KBR had done in mitigating the flood waters. (KBR called it flood mitigation – borrowed from the military.  They love fancy names for everything, even sucking up water.)  The Colonel was more than happy to oblige, and typed the letter and signed it while I waited. 

I’m not sure why I got the kudo-letter.  Maybe I was trying to butter Daryl up.  Maybe I just wanted to get better acquainted with the Colonel.  It wouldn’t matter because I was just about to be on both their shit lists.  I stayed on Daryl’s so it would mean added to the Colonel’s and another black star beside my name on Daryl’s.

Normally I arrived on Log Base after they bus had arrived with my guys, but on this fateful morning I arrived just behind it.  What I saw pissed me completely off.  I had never seen it before and had no idea that it had been going on since the Kansas Guard had arrived, taking over the command duties at the TOC – to the chagrin of the other stationed at Log Base, who were “regular Army”.

The two guards at the guard shack located between the incoming and outgoing lanes, just in front of Sergeant Georgia’s escort duty shack, were frisking my guys.  They’d been made to exit the bus and then they were being treated like security risks.  They were all “green badges”, and had passed the military’s own ridiculous screening process for TCN’s.  I say ridiculous because I had taken some of my men to the private contractor who charged the U.S. taxpayer for this “screening” process.  My “red badges” had been turned into “green badges” – meaning they didn’t need an expat with them at all times – when they were asked their height, marital status and religious affiliation.  Nothing more; that was it!

Green badges notwithstanding; the fact that they had just ridden a bus from a virtual prison camp didn’t matter; that they entered Log Base every morning to clean the fucking toilets didn’t count; they were being frisked.

Of course this was several years before TSA was destined to submit this same guilty-suspect-until-proven-innocent degrading pat down to every American boarding an airplane – and now a train.

Like I said – Wiley Coyote – got out of his pickup truck and began making a video with his camera, and kidding with the guard about how dangerous little Limbadri was.  “Be careful Hammer, he’s a thoroughly dangerous man,” I mocked.

When the frisking was done and the guys had gotten back in their bus and me in my little green Mitsubishi the guard I called Hammer stopped me with an outstretched hand.  “You gotta wait here Mike.  I just got a call from the TOC, “ he said – with a serious look on his face.

I thought he was kidding, because he’d actually done that same thing to me before.  I slipped my foot off the clutch and began to move forward when he lunged toward the truck and this time with an emphatic tone in his voice said, “I’m serious Mike.  I just got a call from the TOC.  They’re sending a gun truck down to escort you to the Colonel’s office.”

Adrenaline hit my system.  It always does when I’m in trouble, and it takes a minute for my head to overcome the natural “fight of flight” reaction.  This will be interesting I thought.  I’ve never been escorted by a gun truck to a Colonel’s office. 

In only a couple of minutes a Humvee with a soldier atop it, manning the .50 caliber machine gun that made this a “gun truck” pulled up and made a u-turn in front of me.  The driver jumped out and ordered me to follow him to the TOC.  I had an idea what it was about, and as I passed Sergeant Georgia’s shack I had an idea who had blown the whistle on me.

On the way to the TOC we passed the guys, who were just filing out of the bus.  They watched me pass with bewildered looks on their faces.  I returned their looks with a wave and tried not to look worried. 

Then past the DFAC, around the building that housed the Iraqi barber shop on the left, and on the right the place where Bez and I had nearly been blown up; Past the basketball court on the left, then another left finishing the loop at the north end of the base and headed back south on the one-way road; past empty swimming pool and into the parking lot in front of the TOC.

I was escorted to the Colonel’s office, where I had been just the day before under very friendly circumstances.  The Colonel was sitting at his desk when I entered.  “Hi Colonel,” I said in a friendly tone. Adding, “Am in in some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know Mike,” he replied.  “Are you? I understand you were taking photos of our security procedures.”

Yep, I thought, that would be according to Sergeant Georgia. 

“Yes I was, but cameras are not against the rules around here, so far as I know.  We’ve all carried ‘em since I got here.”

“No, you’re correct.  Cameras are permitted, but you don’t agree with what we’re doing do you?”

“No Colonel.  I don’t.  I don’t think my men should be subjected to a pat down every morning when they’ve just come from a prison camp.  They’re not Iraqis – they’re Indians, and they’re working here just like you and me.”

“Let me see your camera Mike,” the Colonel requested, and I complied, knowing that what he would see wasn’t going to win me any favor.  Weakly on the camera’s little speaker I could hear my voice saying “Watch Limbadri Hammer, he’s a thoroughly dangerous man.”

“You were actually making fun of our security procedures is sounds like to me Mike.”

“I’m sorry sir,” but couldn’t finish my apology before he angrily cut me off.

“No you’re not Mike. I believe that’s totally disingenuous on your part.”

He was right, it was, but it’s the kind of thing that just reflexively comes out of one’s mouth when an Army Colonel – even a weekend warrior one – is dressing you down for insubordination.  The discussion was mercifully cut short when Daryl burst into the office.

“Colonel sir, I’ll take care of this.  Don’ you worry.  Mike he ain’t eveh been in da military an’ he don’ know how things works.  I’ll take care of Mike sir,” he said, rocking his cocked back head as he spoke.

“Mike you go on outside.  You and Juan gonna change places, so you go get yo stuff, and Juan he already at the break room.  You give him da keys to yo truck and den you wait deah fo me.”

Juan was another labor foreman who’d arrived a couple of months after I had, and he had been placed in the Staging Yard in charge of another crew of Indians.

I drove around the block to the CONEX and there were all my guys standing in a huddle around their new Labor Foreman, Juan.  I knew Juan, but barely.  He was a Mexican-American, and frankly he could have passed for an Iraqi, with his darker complexion, black hair and the moustache that traced his upper lip – except for one thing that marked him as an American – his ever present spit cup.  I never saw him without it.

The guys knew something serious was up, but when I told them I was leaving and Juan was taking my place several of my Telugus burst into tears.  They were inconsolable, and it was all I could do to keep from joining them.

I didn’t have much to gather – a jacket, and a pair of rubber boots – and no more than two or three minutes to say goodbye when I heard Daryl’s truck crunching gravel behind me.  “Let’s go Mike,” he said.

I climbed in and was summarily dumped at the staging yard, where Juan’s crew was just as bewildered, and not too happy about losing their boss.  They had all arrived from India and been assigned to the Industrial Zone during the four months I’d been on Log Base, and although I’d seen many of them, and knew them by their faces I didn’t know any or them – except for one.  Bob was there, and he greeted me with a huge grin.  “Sir Mike, ya ya you are ga going to be our new boss?”  Bob spoke better English than most of the men, but he stuttered a bit.  I shook hands all around and then began learning the names of my new charges.

To this day I don’t know how Daryl got the word so quickly.  He must have whisked Juan up on his way to Log Base and blown the doors off his big white Ford pickup truck to make his entrance just minutes after my own arrival in the Colonel’s office.

The Baghdad Staging Yard

Since I’d been assigned to Log Base the number of Labor Foremen had increased to four, with the addition of Juan and Alan, the baby-faced ex-marine who had been hired in Houston the same day I was.  He’d been just few weeks behind me – just in time to take the road cleaning duty when I’d gone to Log Base.

Ryan had been promoted to General Labor Foreman, and Tee was the Chief of Services for the Industrial Zone.  So I answered directly to Ryan.

The number of TCN’s had increased as well.  There was a total of around 25.  It was the custom of the labor foremen to eat breakfast early and then convene at PPI-2 where we’d greet the guys as they filed out of the camp in the pre-dawn darkness.  We all parked out of the way as hundreds of Indians poured into the large white TaTa buses that carried them to their various job locations in the northern sector of BIAP.  Many of them were higher paid plumber’s helpers, electrician’s helpers, carpenters, HVAC repairmen, and truck drivers – but most of them were unskilled laborers, like our bunch.

As they filed out, usually in the same order every morning – the early ones, always early, and the stragglers always late.  It was with incredible sadness that I watched the first morning after my ejection from Log Base, as the mini-bus pulled up for my “ten little Indians”.  They saw me next to the little Ford pickup that had been Juan’s, and instead of boarding their bus they all gathered around me.

Bezawada, who was beginning to speak a bit of English, but not much, walked up to me and I shook his hand and then pulled him into a hug.  He began to sob, and that caused me to cloud up.  We had developed a strong bond during our few months on Log Base.  Anyone who’s been in a warzone, and spent hours together, many of them under the threat of imminent death will tell you that it makes brothers out of strangers.  Bezwada didn’t consider me a brother, but more of a father, and I couldn’t have loved him more if he’d been my son.

He took my hand and put it on his head, holding it there, saying “Sir, no more camera, no more camera.”  I didn’t have to ask what it meant to place my hand on his head.  I knew he meant for me to swear an oath; to make a serious promise, that I would never take another photo.

In Bezawada’s mind my camera had cost us both dearly.  It was simple logic, and inescapably true; it had.  But I knew it was a promise I couldn’t make.  I told him “No, Bezawada, I can’t make that promise.”

“Camera no good sir, camera no good,” he kept saying, refusing to give in.  Finally I pulled my hand away from his head and gave him another hug.

We both cried while Labor Foremen and laborers looked on, somewhat bewildered.  They could not have possibly understood, or felt, what Bezawada and I were feeling.  

I did make one promise – to myself.  I promised that I would keep teaching Bezawada English as long as he continued to be such a dedicated student.  At the same time, I knew that a good part of Bez’s dedication was because of what it meant to him to be cared about; and not just by anyone, but by an American.  All the Indians held Americans in awe, and treated us with much more respect than we deserved.  I was probably the first white man many of them had ever spoken to. 

I told Bezawada I’d see him after work, and headed to the Transportation Yard with a pickup load of guys.  Bob was riding shotgun.  Grinning from ear to ear he said, “I’m sa sorry for Bezawada sir, but I I I’m happy you’re back.”

The Transportation Department had taken over the building where Tee’s office had been when I first arrived, and now the Labor Foremen of O&M Industrial Zone met in a CONEX that had been retrofitted with a wooden false front, a regular door in one side, and an HVAC unit – combination air conditioner and heater – hanging from an rectangular opening in the other.

Ryan, was the General Labor Foreman, and that made him the boss of me and Alan.  The truth was that we took turns at being in charge.  Whoever sat behind the desk was in charge.  But being in charge just meant calling out the names of the twenty or so TCNs to sign the daily [check the name of the daily safety lesson].  It was one of the senseless rules that one lives with when you work for KBR, which is really just an echo of the Army’s moronic compliance with regulations that defy logic. 

The TCN’s could understand English if it was spoken rudimentarily, without using tenses, and complicated verbs they weren’t familiar with.  Rather like the “Pidgin English” spoken on some of the Pacific islands.  The Indians were learning fast, but they still couldn’t understand a safety lesson read from the prepared printed copies their signatures were verifying they’d been given.

It always amazed me when men that should have been smart enough to dumb down their speech, and further up the “chain of command” (which certainly didn’t signify further up the chain of intelligence) while giving a totally incomprehensible lecture on a topic of safety that was also entirely unrelated to their specific job.  All I could do was shake my head in disbelief.

When I did speak to my guys it was in simple language, and I even began to adopt some of their phrases.  For example they would refer to when they arrived in Iraq as their “coming time”, and when speaking of when they would leave Iraq it was “my going time”.  There was also “time passing”, which referred to any leisure time. 

One of my favorite “Indianisms” was Krishna’s reaction to an enormous Russian cargo plane that shook the Staging Yard as it took off from Baghdad International low enough to reach up and touch – so it seemed.  He said, “Sir, too much down!”  I still laugh at how perfectly correct he was.  It was damn sure too much down.

The TCNs signed their daily safety roll call, but I ignored the official topics and gave them the same relevant messages in rotation – Watch out for traffic, especially the insane young soldiers who were only a few years past their first driver’s license and driving two ton Humvees as if they were hot rods.  They would have been dangerous enough with a clear view of the road, but worse because of the tiny windows that restricted their vision.

Don’t pick up unexploded ordinance.  “Tell boss if you see boom boom.”  Boom boom was anything that would, or was blowing up. 

Cover your face when it’s dusty.  Drink plenty of water.  Lift with your knees.

I drew stick figures on the dry erase board and the guy’s favorite lessons were when someone was run over or blown up.  I would name the victim – one of the guys – and they couldn’t wait to come into the office to sign their name and see who the day’s victim was.   I enjoyed it as much as they did. 

Maybe the lesson was about not picking up boom boom, and the day’s foil was Davilal.  There would be a stick figure reaching for a mortar and then in the “after” drawing Davilal would be flying through the air in pieces.  Lots of red marker for blood, made the point.  And at the same time the message transcended the language barriers – all of them.

The half hour we all spent laughing and kidding with the guys was the best part of the day, for all of us.  Then we split up and went to our respective jobs.  Alan would take his four-man crew and hit the roads,  I’d take my crew to the Staging Yard and most of them would begin policing the yard, picking up the piles of trash and bottles the drivers had thrown out overnight.

I’d take two guys and while they walked the main road from Castle Gate on the east to Moro Gate – the entrance to Log Base – I’d follow in the little pickup with my flashers on.  It was the most efficient way to get the IZ cleared from the nights clutter before 08:00.

The Staging Yard was considered to be the shit end of the stick, but I loved it.  It was filled with activity.  There was an entrance on the east side facing the main road, and an exit on the west side.  There were two KBR employees who with a crew of three or four English speaking Indian boys assigned rows to incoming convoys.  They lined them up two abreast between the rows of Jersey barriers.

The yard was separated from the main road by a row of Jersey barriers topped with razor wire.  On the west side there was a 12 foot wall made of concrete T-walls – sections of reinforced concrete slabs about eight feet wide.  They were called T-walls because they were shaped like an inverted T.  The base they rested on was thicker than the wall.  Imagine Jersey barriers (the moveable concrete barriers that separate lanes on many U.S. highways), only 12 feet tall.

T-walls also lined the entire backside of the Staging Yard – the dangerous side because it was the north side, and that was where incoming rounds came from.  An aborted effort had been made to extend the height of the walls with a screen made of angle iron fence posts attached to the top of the wall, strung with wire and a mesh fabric.  The idea being to hide the yard from snipers in the tall buildings on the other side of the north perimeter wall, but not only was it unnecessary, it fell down in the first strong wind.  It seems elementary that if you can’t see them they can’t see you, and nowhere in the Staging Yard were the building – nearly a kilometer away – visible.

In the Southeast corner of the staging yard, extending east into the adjacent Recovery Yard – where wreckers were dispatched to drag back burned out and blown up vehicles – an area had been walled off for the military escorts and a KBR office module.   There were tents for the escorts to sleep in and an ab and shower unit.  There were also several modular office units for the Army logistical personnel who scheduled the convoys in and out of Baghdad.

KBR had a manager who lived in a remodeled CONEX and officed in a 40 foot office module parked next to it.  Rick had been a KBR driver and had been wounded in an attack on the convoy he was commanding.  After recovering from his wounds he had decided he wanted a little less dangerous duty.  Although he and I both worked for KBR he was assigned to a different “task order” than I was.  Because I was always in the yard, and had a direct radio to the transportation department when the John-Wayne showers were out of water, it naturally fell on my shoulders to keep the tanks full.

Rick told me he’d had a hell of a time keeping the two [find the size] tanks filled.  The Iraqi drivers were just using too much water.

We walked over to the closest showers and I noticed the water was just pouring out of the end of a ½ inch plastic pipe.  It was threaded on the end, and I asked “Where’s the shower head?”

“Hell,” he replied, “We can’t keep shower heads or faucet handles because the drivers steal them.”

I said, “Well I think I’ve got an answer to both problems.”

I called Tee and told him I needed a plumber.  It was his job as Chief of Services to write the Service Order and turn it in to Lucy at the Service Order desk at Wayne’s World.  Within a few hours I had a plumber.  I can’t remember his name but he was a hoot – tall think California biker type, with flames tattooed on his forearms.  I told him what I wanted.

I said, “I want you to cut the threads off those plastic pipes where the shower heads were, and glue some ½ inch caps on them, but first drill about three small holes in the caps.  I’d say about 1/8 inch in diameter.”

He grinned, because he understood like I did, that a. the drivers wouldn’t be able to steal the shower heads because there wouldn’t be any, and b. the high pressure stream of water coming from three tiny holes would keep them from turning the valves full on.

He had the first one in place within a half hour and we gave it a try.  Sure enough, anyone who turned the water up more than a scooch was gonna blow the hair right off his noggin’.

It worked perfectly.  Water conservation was automatic.  The drivers couldn’t just let the water pour over them like there was an unlimited supply, and believe me – Middle Eastern truck drivers don’t give a shit whether there’s anything left for the next guy or not.

Officially my job was simply to supervise the Indian laborers, but that was stupid easy.  They knew their jobs and they did them without question.  The weather was getting hot, and when the guys weren’t picking up trash, they were seeking shade, and some of them had made friends with some of the drivers over the previous weeks – drivers that were regulars, showing up every few weeks on another round trip from Kuwait.

Remember Paresh?  He had shown a flair for the import business and was paying drivers to bring back merchandise and selling it to other Indians.  He was selling blankets – evidently nicer than the ones PPI provided, cigars, jars of Indian styled pickled peppers, and I suspect booze, although he never was caught at that.

I didn’t care what the guys did so long as they stayed in the yard, kept the trash picked up (which, with 500 to 700 trucks was a continuous job) and were handy whenever I needed a crew for some task outside the yard. 

One day, when I couldn’t find a single Indian, because they had all disappeared down the long rows of trucks in search of shade, I lost my cool.  I lined them up after lunch and read them the riot act.  I use the word fuck a lot.  Not in polite company, and if there is anyone reading this that is offended by the word, then I guess you’ll just have to take a black marker and do some “redaction”.  Believe me, in the rough company of men, we all used the word.

A couple of the Indians knew fuck was a bad word, and complained to Ryan – Sir Mike was not showing respect.  Ryan did what KBR bosses are supposed to do and reprimanded me.  He could have given me my first written reprimand, because KBR is big on issues of “respect and dignity” (ironic I know), but he didn’t.  I was ashamed and couldn’t have felt worse. 

On the one hand I was pissed that they had been so sensitive to the word, but on the other, it tore me up that any of them had doubted my respect for them.  I never did it again. 

Oh I used bad words again.  In fact a couple of years later I would be called to HR and receive a verbal reprimand for calling two completely worthless Logistics Supervisors “pieces of shit”, to their face.  I had just referred to them as such in private and didn’t want to be disingenuous.

In almost every respect the truck drivers were on their own.  The military provided them with armed escorts to and from Kuwait, or the northern border with Turkey, but once they were in the Staging Yard there was no food or water provided. 

Rick had been storing bottled water in a 40 foot CONEX and handing out to the drivers occasionally.  The water came from loads that had been damaged in transit – shot up – or extra loads that were more than were needed by whichever unit had ordered it.  There was a cache of it in the Recovery Yard They seemed to be available on a fairly regular basis, so I began handing out water every day.

I experimented with several methods to keep the drivers from taking more than their share.  The best seem to be to write the date and the number of bottles on the back of their “factura”, which was the paperwork each of them had for the load they were carrying, or had carried.  Some of them tried to cheat by coming back with other copies of the same paperwork, but we were on to them.

The guys enjoyed the task of helping hand out water – it was more interesting than their usual duties.  I rotated the duty among the ones who liked it.  There were others who preferred what they were doing.   But everyone liked to pitch in when we had a tractor trailer load of bottled water to offload and store in the shipping container.

The container had a big ragged hole in the top of it, obviously from a mortar that had hit it at one time.  Somehow the drivers discovered the hole and we began missing boxes of water, even though the container was padlocked at night.  The mystery was soon solved and we stuffed the hole with razor wire.  Problem solved.

There was a young Iraqi who worked as interpreter in the staging yard.  He officially worked for the Army, but was available to help me as well. 

Occasionally a truck driver would approach me with a problem, because I was the most visible white man in the yard, and I was present most of the day.  Usually it was a question about when someone was going to come for their load.  It didn’t seem to matter to some of the “clients” who had ordered the merchandise the driver had on his truck, that he was losing time waiting to be offloaded. 

I had bought the Pimsleur course in Arabic and was listening to a lesson every day, and I was picking up a few words from the drivers I visited with, but I needed Husam’s help in understanding anything that wasn’t pretty simple.

Husam and I became very good friends, and his DOD badge gave him access to the DiFac, so most days we would eat together.  The Carpenter Shop had built a covered area with picnic tables in the back corner of the Staging Yard for the guys to eat their rice plates – which one of us with a truck would go and fetch from the kitchen PPI had set up in the IZ.

I kept my promise to myself and Bezawada and every evening after work I would go to PPI-2 and tutor Bez in English.  There was always an interested group of his roommates, and sometimes men from other living containers.  I would help him read from the children’s books I had, and then create words using the little metal slate and the magnetized letters.

The 40 foot container the men lived in would have sent me to the nuthouse.  Like I’ve said, I’m claustrophobic and with five bunk beds along the wall, and another crosswise at the end of the container, and lockers lining the opposite wall, you had to turn sideways to pass in the space that was left.  There were no windows and no alternate means of escape if the front door became blocked. 

After a half hour of lesson, and a few more minutes of conversation, I would be offered parting gifts of cans of orange soda, or Sprite.  The guys always seemed to have a supply of them stuffed in their lockers.  Then Bezawada, dressed in the traditional skirt worn by the men in Andhra Pradesh, would walk me to the gate – hand in hand.  It was difficult for a cowboy like me to hold another man’s hand, but I knew it was normal in the Indian culture, and I could sense Bezawada’s pride as he walked his “father” to the gate.

Speaking of cowboys, the south Texas rancher, John – who had hired on the same day in Houston – and I were becoming pretty good friends.  We didn’t work in the same area, but we lived not far apart at KBR Regional, and often had dinner together at the DiFac.  We seemed to have a lot in common, both having messed with horses all our lives.  He also reminded me in his speech and manner of expression of my great-uncles on my dad’s side of the family – all of them being from Texas.

John was pretty reclusive and I gathered from things he said and the way he wore a shirt until it was practically falling apart, that he was extremely frugal.  He didn’t have any friends that I knew of, and said as much.  He said he always enjoyed, visiting with me, and the feeling was mutual.

I Become the English Master

I kept going to Bezawada’s room every evening, with the exception of weekends.  I needed a break, or I felt like I was going to burn out from the steady routine.  There was very little to differentiate one day from another and we all said that in Iraq “every day is Monday.”  Taking a break from my tutoring gave me a feeling of “weekend”.

It was only a short time, maybe two weeks, when the order was handed down that no KBR employees were to enter the TCN living quarters.  I don’t know whether it was an order from the management of KBR or of Prime Projects International, but one evening the Sri Lankan guards refused to allow me inside the camp.  Bezwada was at the gate to greet me as usual, and since I couldn’t go in, he came out, and we had our English lesson in the bed of the truck.

The next night when I went to the PPI-2 I was approached by the head of PPI-2 Security, an older Sri Lankan gentleman who said “There are other men who would like to learn English.  Would you teach them sir?”  I was a bit surprised at the request, but pleasantly so. 

He offered me the use of the “television room”, which was located in another one of Saddam’s “hard buildings.”  These little buildings were scattered all around BIAP and must have been used as offices and living quarters for his soldiers, or “Republican Guard.”

There were still some dry erase boards stored in the abandoned restroom in the Industrial Zone.  The next evening I showed up with one of them, and a supply of notebooks and pencils from the KBR office supply store.  Yep… I expropriated them.  I ripped of the American taxpayer for some school supplies for the TCNs.

The word had spread and the first evening I had about 20 students, and ran out of notebooks.  The next evening there were 40, then 60.  Fortunately for the American taxpayer, the number didn’t continue to grow exponentially.  I think there were more men there out of curiosity, and perhaps for the free notebooks and pencils, than there were serious students.  Within a week the size of the class had settled down to the serious students – about 15 regulars.

Bezawada, bless his heart, was always there, right in the front row.  Unfortunately for him the lessons quickly became too advanced for him.  I felt badly but all of the other students had a basic understanding of English and my lessons were more about using past and future tenses, and grammar.

I am not a teacher.  Hell I was barely a student.  I found my lesson suggestions on the internet.  I never really found a curriculum that fit my needs but always managed to come up with a thirty minute lesson that was educational and at the same time entertaining.

The medical office was adjacent to the television room, and one evening one of my students said the doctor wanted to speak to me.  She was an Indian doctor, whose name I can’t recall, but she was interested in working for KBR.  She was of the opinion that they would hire her, and in fact they were hiring people from countries other than the United States, and had been, for administrative positions.  Mostly they were Bosnians, and there was a large contingent of them in the offices at KBR Regional.

I didn’t discourage her from believing KBR would hire her, although I didn’t encourage her either.  I expressed my doubts, but told her I’d do some checking.  “By the way,” I added.  “Perhaps you could do something for me.”

I told her I was interested in obtaining the names and addresses of two Indian men who had recently been returned to India – one for a serious injury, and the other because it was discovered that he had testicular cancer.  I had actually been introduced to the young man with cancer, and knew how devastated he was because he was returning without having earned enough money to repay the indebtedness his family had assumed to send him to Iraq.  Incredibly his 2,000 coworkers had “passed the hat” and raised one dollar per man.  He was returning with $2,000 in cash – enough to make a big dent in his debt.

The doctor gave me the names and addresses of three men the next evening.  It was information I had hoped I would be able to obtain before I left on my first R&R, and my departure date was rapidly approaching.  I was to meet my wife Holly in Spain – and Cameron Simpson, an investigative reporter with the Chicago Tribune.

Cam Simpson and the Chicago Tribune

I had access to the internet – we all did.  The Army had internet “cafés” for the soldiers and wearing a D.O.D. badge qualified KBR employees to use them.  In addition KBR had several desktop computers connected to the internet at Wayne’s World in the same tent where I’d first met Tee.  It was there one evening where I sent an angry reply to the journalist of an article I’d just read in the Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that has been printed and distributed to servicemen since World War II.

The article lauded KBR for the wonderful job it was doing of providing logistical support to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I don’t remember the details, but it probably showed photos of expat KBR employees, and none of the men I considered the backbone of KBR’s efforts – the men doing all the dirty work for practically nothing in comparison to the huge wages being paid to guys like me. 

The email address of the journalist who wrote the article was listed at the end, so I vented my spleen in an email to her.  I’d been warned that the military monitored every phone call and every email and we should therefore mind what we said, lest we lose our jobs.  I didn’t believe that was possible, and even if it was, I didn’t give a shit.  I told the journalist just who it was that was preparing and serving the food, washing and folding the clothes, wiring and plumbing the hootches, cleaning the toilets, delivering the water and driving the “SST” trucks.  The army’s acronym for sewage and sanitation transportation, but we called it what it was “shit sucking trucks”.

I also told her the TCN’s were living 12 men to a shipping container, eating a monotonous diet of rice three times a day, working 12-hour days, seven days a week, with never a day off.  That they were being paid just over one dollar an hour, and – the most odious part of the whole wretched affair – they had all paid an illicit agent in India or the Philippines a huge fee, which most had borrowed the money to pay at loan shark interest rates.

I hit send, and felt better for having set the record straight – even though I knew I’d never hear anything in reply.  I was so wrong. 

Two days later I received an email from a reporter by the name of Cameron Simpson.  I didn’t know, but a quick Google search informed me that he was an award winning investigative journalist, currently writing for the Chicago Tribune.  I’ve lost the email, to my chagrin, because it was to be somewhat life changing – but it went something like this.

You are just the guy I’ve been looking for.  I’ve been investigating the military’s use of third country nationals, men from Nepal, the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka, and I need someone on the inside who has firsthand knowledge, and can feed me information.  I was stunned, and a bit sick from the adrenaline that my brain dumped into my bloodstream at the idea of covert activity.  I’ve never been a good liar and would make a horrible spy. 

That’s what I felt like.  I felt as if I was being drafted to spy on my own government.  Not by revealing any top-secret documents; but certainly it was easy to see that the military’s use of poor men to do the menial and often dirty and difficult tasks that soldiers once did for themselves was not something the Army could be proud of.  And I was sure they didn’t want it shared with the world. 

I felt that Americans needed to know.  I believed they would care.  I was wrong.  They didn’t, not the majority of them.  But some would, and I guess that’s why I’m sitting here now, at another keyboard, eight years later; hoping that some of them will care; because very little has changed.

Cam and I exchanged a few emails and he wanted to know when we could speak face-to-face.  I told him it would be another nine months before I planned on returning to the states, but that my wife Holly and I had plans to meet in Spain for my first R&R in April.  I was surprised when he said he’d meet me in Malaga, and a date was set.  I said to myself “This guy must really be serious.”

I have a strong personal conviction that everything happens for a reason.  There are times when that belief is what holds me together when life seems to have sent me Wiley-Coyote-style past the edge of the cliff, with seemingly nothing to catch my fall.  Like Wiley it always happens unexpectedly and usually because I’m following plans I got from the AJAX Company – or might as well have.  Who am I kidding – I’ve never followed a plan.

R&R in Spain

The trip got off to a bad start.  [refer to journal for details]  We rented a car and had plans of spending our two weeks together exploring the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula from Malaga on the southern Mediterranean coast, to Gibralter, and then north to Cadiz, east through the mountains and then back to Malaga.  I had chosen Spain because it was close enough to Iraq that my travel allowance of $850.00, given to each KBR employee for the two interim vacations taken between what was termed “end of contract”, the annual vacation that KBR employees were granted on the anniversary of their signing on.  The allowance for the annual R&R was around $1,350.00, enough to get you back to the United States.

Holly and I met Cam, at a restaurant in Malaga.  He had brought along an associate, another reporter with the Chicago Tribune, Aamer Madhani.  Aamer was very Middle-Eastern in appearance.  He was dark complected with black hair and my first thought was that he could pass for Iraqi – especially with the several-day-old beard he was sporting.  He was half Pakistani – but born in America. 

We spent the day together, talking about the issues surrounding America’s use of TCNs as a source of cheap labor in the logistical support of its military operations.  The trip to Spain was just another on a series of far-flung journeys on Cam’s search for facts and information on a subject he seemed passionate about.  He showed me his passport, bulging with added pages, and filled with stamps from dozens of countries.

Cam had won the George Polk Award in 2003 for the article, “Tossed Out of America,” which uncovered how the U.S. government targeted men from Muslim countries living in the United States for mass deportation even though they posed no risk to national security.  Now he was investigating the illegal trafficking that had resulted in the deaths of about a dozen impoverished men from Nepal who were kidnapped and killed while being transported to Iraq for jobs that supported U.S troops.  The information I had was an adjunct to that story.

None of us knew it at the time, but Cam would become a two-time winner of the prestigious Polk award as a result of the work he was doing, and in a small part I would contribute to it.  My first contribution was the names I had gotten from the Indian doctor, along with the men’s addresses in India.  A larger and riskier contribution was proposed when Cam asked, “Mike, do you think you could get Aamer inside the Indian’s camp if we can get him imbedded on BIAP?”

My reply was immediate.  “Yeah, actually I can.  In fact I’m probably the only white man on BIAP who can just drive him straight into PPI-2.”  As I’ve said, the guards at PPI-2 waved me right on through the gate every evening.   The English Master would not be questioned, and I was sure the same was true for anyone he brought with him.

We all went to a bullfight together – our first.  Afterwards Holly and I said goodbye to Cam and Aamer with promises to be in touch.

Holly and I made our tour of the southern tip of Spain, even crossing to Morroco for a day in the Medina of Tétouan, which was like visiting the set of an Indiana Jones movie.  Rather than resting and relaxing, the vacation was tense.  We argued – or perhaps in fairness to Holly – I argued over everything.  She drove, as she always had, preferring to have her hands on the wheel, and that frustrated me as we negotiated the steep narrow streets of the otherwise beautifully whitewashed villages of Andalusia.  And money was another cause of tension.  Spain was not an inexpensive destination.

Things are heating up in the Staging Yard

The mud had dried and turned to talcum dry dust when I returned to the reality of war in Iraq.  My war was with Daryl Johnson.  He had an uncanny ability to drive up in his white Ford pickup at exactly the time I was doing something that wasn’t exactly “in my lane” – one of the popular catchphrases used by KBR manager types.

He’d done it several times while I was on Log Base Seitz – most memorably just after I’d made my introduction to the incoming Sergeant Major.  She was a tall female, blonde and I’d judge in her mid-forties.  I approached her as she left the KBR laundry drop-off, which, as I’ve said, was part of the ab and shower unit complex situated under the big mortar roof next to our break room CONEX.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Mike, the KBR Labor Foreman in charge of the guys you’ve seen cleaning the ab-units and showers here.  Do you know anything about these guys – the TCNs as they’re called?”

She told me that she didn’t know anything about them, and in fact had been under the impression that they were Iraqis, and was surprised to discover they were from India.  I gave her my two-minute crash course – the one I gave anyone who didn’t know the details of their living conditions, low pay, and lousy living conditions.  And they I added that they were taking ice-cold showers at the camp where they were billeted because the sub-contractor wasn’t supplying enough hot water.

That’s when I made my pitch and asked her if she saw any reason why the men couldn’t use the very showers they were cleaning to take a hot shower every day – qualifying my request by adding that they would only use a vacant shower when soldiers were not using it.  I didn’t tell her I only wanted official permission to do what I was already doing illicitly.

She smiled and said she really didn’t see why it would be a problem, but she’d have to take it under advisement with her superiors.  Just as we shook hands and exchanged a cordial goodbye, Daryl pulled up in front of the break-room.  I saw him out of the corner of my eye.

“Mike,” he summoned, after the Sgt. Major had walked out of earshot.  I approached his truck and he said, “Mike.  I know what you up to… I know you tryin’ to butter up the new Sergeant Major and get showers fo dem guys a yours.  Well it ain’t happenin.  I’m goin’ now to talk to that Sergeant Major and tell her all bout you.”

He must have done just that because, although on such a small base I had occasion to be within speaking distance of here several times after that, she never looked me in the eye.  She never acknowledged my presence again, and I knew better than to bring up the subject.  It didn’t really matter.  Until I was thrown off the base my guys continued to have their hot showers. 

Now I was in the Staging Yard and Daryl was trying to thwart another humanitarian mission.  I was in my little Ford crew cab truck with Sergeant Cook, – black female and in charge of the small contingent of soldiers at the convoy office – in the passenger seat acting as armed escort for the Jordanian, or Egyptian driver in the back seat.  He had come to me for help.  He was very upset because he’d lost two spare wheels and tires.  They’d fallen from his truck as he was coming from the West toward the Industrial Zone.  He hadn’t discovered them missing until he’d arrived at the Staging Yard.  He thought he knew where they might be, but was in a panic to get back before someone found and claimed them.  They were worth about $300 to $400 each, which is a lot of money to a driver who only earns $1,000 a month.

Had we been one minute quicker in leaving the yard we could have gotten away without a confrontation, but Daryl’s timing had been dead on again.  The gravel scrunched under his tires as he braked beside me, driver’s window to driver’s window.

“Mike, where you goin’ with dat Sergeant?” he asked accusingly. 

“We’re taking this driver back toward D-9 to see if we can find a couple of tires he lost,” I replied.

“That ain’t in yo job description Mike.”

“I don’t care Daryl.  Just consider that I’m doing it on my own time.  You said when I first came to work for you that anytime I got my work done I could go to the PX if I wanted to.  So why don’t you just consider this a trip to the PX.”

“Don’t make me send you to the house Mike.  Now you take dat Sergeant back to her office, and put dat driver back where you got’im.”

“Sorry Daryl,” I said.  “Not doin’ it.”  And we drove toward D-9.

I had ceased to give a shit whether I kept my job or not.  Daryl’s threats to “send me to the house” were not going to cower me into ignoring the guy next to me.  I’ve never been a blood donor, or an active participant in any charitable organization, but neither have I ever failed to help the guy, or gal, next to me if they needed it.

I’ve helped many a hitchhiker in my life, and probably saved at least one of their lives.  I was driving from Wichita, Kansas to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1988, three days before Christmas.  I was in my dad’s GMC dually pickup with a one ton piece of steel in the back.  Actually it was several pieces that fit together like a puzzle – an injection mold for a motorcycle helmet.  Mom and Dad had moved their factor to Calgary after they’d gone broke in Wichita.  But that’s another book.

I was somewhere just past the Montana-Wyoming border entering a mountain pass when snowflakes as big as pancakes began to float softly to the ground.  Within a half hour I was in a full on white-out blizzard.  Up ahead, just beyond the car in front of me I saw the figure of a man walking beside the highway.  I was incredulous that anyone would pass a man under those conditions, but the driver ahead of me did just that.

I stopped and threw open the pickup door and a homeless guy named Jim struggled to climb into the cab.  It was a full fifteen minutes before he could utter a word, he was so cold.  Dressed in light slacks, regular street shoes and a medium weight jacket with a stocking cap on his head, he was on the very verge of freezing to death.  A fact he confirmed when he told me his story.  He said he was so cold he was about ready to just lay down in the ditch.

He told me he had walked and hitched rides from Casper and was headed for Great Falls, where he’d heard there was work.  I dropped him off at a homeless shelter in Great Falls and gave him 20 bucks.  I also told him I’d be returning right after Christmas and that I didn’t think Great Falls was a great place for a homeless dude to spend the winter.  If he wanted, I’d give him a ride back to Wichita, where winters weren’t exactly warm, but they weren’t exactly bitter-assed cold either. 

He was surprised to see me when I called for him a week later, and he was sporting a heavier – somewhat used – coat he’d bought at the homeless shelter’s clothing store with part of the twenty I’d given him.

I saved a prostitute in the midst of receiving a beating from her pimp once, just off of Harry Heinz Avenue in Dallas once too.  She’d just offered me her services as I entered a 7-Eleven for a six pack of Cokes and as I was leaving the parking lot some black guy began whalin’ on her.  I did a U-turn and threw open my door, and hollered at her “Come on.”  She outran the pimp and climbed across my back into the passenger seat as I hit the accelerator.  He was hot on her heels.

I gave her a few bucks and dropped her off with her assurance that that was all she needed.  I’ve kicked myself a hundred times for not having presence of mind to insist that she let me take her to a women’s shelter.  The truth is, she probably went right back to work.

My point is, I don’t set out on humanitarian missions.  My belief is that the world could eliminate the United Way, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army if we’d all just help the person next to us when they need it.  Not that those aren’t good organizations, and necessary ones in the world as it is.

I damn sure wasn’t going to let Daryl or anybody else dictate my conscience to me.  I was looking for a job when I found this one, and no job was worth more to me than my self-respect.

Ice and MRE’s for the TCN truck drivers

It was getting hotter and hotter in Iraq, and although we were managing to find enough bottled water for the drivers, it was hot water.  The temperature was climbing into “meat-thermometer” range.  Standard mercury bulb type thermometers, totally adequate for any temperature measured in the United Sates, were blowing their bulbs as the temps climbed into the low 100s.  We began to use a lot of ice – we, meaning the privileged classes – soldiers and KBR employees.

There was a KBR managed ice plant located just a half a click away in the Industrial Zone, and they churned out thousands pounds of ice every day.  Soldiers were given all the ice they wanted, and we had an ice chest that we kept filled.  But nobody had made any allowance for the truck drivers who were sweltering in the shade of their trailers.  Some of the luckier drivers had air conditioning and left their diesels running during the hottest parts of the day.  But most of them didn’t.

I found the man in charge of ice distribution, Julian Penner, and asked him if it would be possible to drop of a few pallets of bagged ice at the Staging Yard.  Julian told me how tough it was just to keep the soldiers supplied but said he’d see what he could do.  Sometimes they did have a bit left over at the end of the day.

A couple of days later a white bob-tailed deliver truck with a reefer unit over the cab pulled into the Staging Yard – with a few pallets of ice.  It didn’t take long for the mob to gather as I tried to organize a hand out of ice.  A pack of hungry street dogs fighting over a discarded pork chop would have been more orderly than this bunch of hot sweaty truck drivers.

I was screaming and yelling at them in Arabic to line up.  I’d gotten the words from Husam.  I don’t know whether they understood me or not, but what they did understand – after I slammed the sliding door shut on the precious bags of ice and sent the truck away – was that I was in charge. 

The next time Julian sent an ice truck I had the driver park along the back wall so I had at least one side under control.  Before I opened the door I made them line up.  I made it understood that each man could have four bags of ice, and if he wanted more than that, all he had to do was go back to the end of the line and wait his turn again.

Drivers who were parked on the far side of the staging yard began to work together.  One would watch the stash of ice while the other would run back to the end of the line.  I admired their ingenuity, and it didn’t matter to me, so long as nobody crowded.

I was instantly aware of any crowding – even though at times there were a couple of hundred men standing in line – because a roar of loud yelling would ensue.  I wouldn’t have any trouble finding the offender because he was at the center of the turmoil.  In Arabic I would say “rooh lil akheer” (go to the end). 

“Hatha sadeeke,” the offending driver would plead. (this is my friend)  Once my reputation had been established this was usually accompanied by a smile, knowing that we were playing out a scenario that had one ending. 

I would say, “Hataa loo can umaak,” (even if it’s your mother) And then I would take the driver by his big burly hand saying, “Rooh lil akheer, habibi” (Go to the end my dear).” And the other drivers would laugh.

They respected my authority and I think what helped was that I tried to speak their language – which was predominately Arabic.  And I cared about them.  They knew I cared.

In addition to ice and water, the Army had placed a small 20’ CONEX filled with MREs – meals ready to eat – in the yard, next to the 40’ CONEX we kept water in.  The MREs were to be handed out to the drivers whenever the roads were “red”, meaning that the military had declared them too dangerous for convoy traffic.  That mean the drivers were “officially” detained, as opposed to the usual delays they suffered.  Since they were being detained officially, the Army assumed some responsibility for feeding them and it only made sense for me and my guys to hand out the food, since we were already handing out the water.

Without a system the drivers gamed the system and the container would empty out within a couple of days.  It was difficult to keep track of the drivers who showed up for MREs several times a day.  I printed up little paper slips that would be given to arriving drivers, to track the number of days they were in the yard.  I submitted it to the military authorities in the escort office for approval, explaining that rationing the MREs intelligently should stop the food “hogging” that we all knew was taking place.

The slip had a series of numbers and a place for my signature.  The first day a driver was given one meal and the first number was X’d off – then the second day another meal, and the third day and beyond two meals per day. 

Leave it to the drivers to find a way to cheat.  As drivers were leaving the yard they would give their meal ticket to a friend.  We caught a few, and I’m sure missed a few, but overall the consumption of MREs was greatly reduced.

Busted!

In June I received the fateful email from Aamer stating that he had been successful in being “embedded” and was currently located at Camp Stryker  I emailed him back and told him to meet me in front of the PX located on North Liberty at 17:30.

Sure enough when the security guard at PPI-2 saw the familiar sight of the English Master in his little white Ford Ranger he pushed open the gate and let us through.  I gave my customary wave and friendly hello as we passed. 

The “television room” was located at the far  pointy-end of the little triangular pizza slice shaped piece of real-estate that was PPI-2.  It was a hard building and I parked in my usual spot on the backside of the building – back being opposite the more active side where men lined up to use the few telephones PPI provided for long distance calls to India – calls that cost the Indians several times more per minute than calls made by the privileged classes.  In fact, if a KBR employee happened to be from the Houston area calls home were free.  KBR numbers in Iraq, via satellite connection, were Houston local numbers.

I went in to teach English, and Aamer – looking, as I said, very Iraqi – took his camera and notepad and entered and disappeared toward the rows of living containers in search of Indians to interview.  After my 30 minute class was over I went in search of Aamer and found him inside a CONEX talking to a small group of English speaking Indians.  I was nervous, and had noticed a group of Indians gathering outside the door with the same look on their faces I imagine chickens have on theirs when a snake has entered the hen house.  They were clucking as well.

Aamer hadn’t gotten enough.  He wanted  more – so the next day we met again.  This time for some reason I didn’t go looking for him after my English class.  I went to my truck and waited.  And waited.  After 45 minutes of waiting one of my students came to the truck and said “Sir,” grabbing his collar with his finger in the universal sign for nabbing someone, “Your friend.  PPI find and take.”

“Shit. Fucking shit!” I said to myself, probably out loud.  “Thank you.” I said to the student, who continued to stand there as other students gathered around him.  They knew this was not good, although I don’t think they knew why, or what my friend was doing in the camp to begin with.

I raced through my options, and quickly rejected my first impulse, which was to rush to Aamer’s rescue.  I had no idea what he had told the PPI authorities who now had him in their custody.  Without knowing his story I stood a good chance of screwing it up.  I had no choice but to simply leave him to his fate.  I couldn’t imagine that it was life threatening, although he later told me one big Brit threatened to beat the shit out of him.  And probably would have except for the restraint of a superior.

I went back to my hootch and sat there.  I full expected the MP’s to be knocking on my door at any minute.  But nothing happened.  Time passed – slowly – and I finally called it a night.  I woke up the next morning and followed my normal routine, somewhat amazed that it was so normal.  Nothing happened until noon.  I was in the little military logistics office when Tee opened the door, looking for me.

Tee rarely came to the Staging Yard, so that in itself was unusual.  He said “Mike, Casey wants to see you in his office right away, and I think you’re in big trouble. Something about impersonating a newspaper reporter in the PPI camp last night,” he added.

“No Tee.  It was a real reporter, and I’m the one who helped him get in,” I corrected him.

“Damn Land, I wish you’d lie about it,” Tee said sympathetically as we headed for his truck. “I really kinda like you, and I hate to see you go.”

“I’m not sure I’d lie to save my life Tee.  I probably would, but I know I wouldn’t lie just to save my job.  But don’t worry, I won’t leave until the day I’m supposed to, and if that’s today, well then I guess that makes it the day I was supposed to.”

When we got to Casey’s office Tee’s mom Bobbie offered me a piece of cake from a platter that still had three pieces.  “No thanks,” I replied.  “Adrenaline kills my appetite.”

I wasn’t afraid, in fact I was rather excited because I knew I was going to have an opportunity to “say my piece”, and tell someone in authority just what I thought about the way TCNs were being treated like third-class citizens, in spite of the fact that it was them doing all the hard dirty work, and sharing the very same risks as the rest of us.

All the same, old reactions don’t go away, and the feelings in my gut, the adrenaline rushing through my veins was the same as when I’d been a kid and I was about to get the business end of my dad’s belt.  I wasn’t, or at least I didn’t think anyone was going to beat me, but that primitive part of my brain that only knows danger as danger was still pumping my veins full of “fight or flight” juice.  I wasn’t running, so that mean I was preparing for a fight.  Imagining the questions and preparing the answers.

Casey was courteous – in an officious way – and asked me to tell my side of the story.  He’d already gotten his side from the military.  KBR does NOT like to be told by the military that one of their employees has done anything to upset them.  And this had upset them.  They had imbedded a reporter on their base and he had been caught somewhere he did not have permission to be. 

Imbedding in case you didn’t know, or hadn’t guessed, is the military’s way of controlling the press.  Aamer had had to submit his story idea to the military, and it had to be approved before he had been given permission to even be on BIAP.

The meeting with Casey was short, and ended with his orders for me to write a one-page summary of my actions.  I wrote it, and knowing that it would be the official record of my activities I was sure to put a paragraph describing the living conditions that had prompted my insubordination.

I went back to the Staging Yard and continued my duties, wondering when the next shoe would fall, and just how many more days I would be a KBR employee.  I didn’t think many, and neither did any of my coworkers.  They weren’t critical of my actions, just a bit incredulous.  Why, they wondered, would anyone risk his job for such a stupid reason?  What good could a reporter do the Indians?

Scott Mount

Two days after my meeting with Casey, Tee came to take me to the Project Manager, Scott Mount’s, office.  The Project Manager was as high as it got up the KBR “chain of command” in Iraq.  I fully anticipated that I was about to get the boot.

As we entered the office building where Scott’s office was located I secretly hit the record button on a MP3 player in my shirt pocket.  What follows is a transcript of that meeting.  It was a 42 minute meeting and I’ve reproduced it in its entirety because it pretty well summarizes the existing situation concerning the TCNs in Iraq at the time.  And for that matter, very little has changed in the six years that have passed from then until now.  I would like to add that, although this recording has been in my possession since I made it, I only just now listened to it, in transcribing it for this book.

I was able to transcribe almost every word of the conversation, however in the few instances where it was unintelligible because two people were talking at the same time, or the words were too faint to understand, I have indicated with (?).

MIKE: Hi Scott.

SCOTT: What do I call you, Mike?

MIKE: Call me Mike.  My parents gave me two names and called me by my second one.

SCOTT:  Yeah, I know how that goes.  I want to talk to you about this PPI thing and this reporter thing. Number one, I’m a little disappointed that this happened the way it did.

MIKE: Okay.

SCOTT: If you had some issues you should have come to us.

MIKE: (?)

SCOTT: Let me finish.

MIKE: Okay I will, but I want to address that, but go ahead.

SCOTT:  I’m a little perturbed at how this went down.  I understand your concern, but I’m as concerned as anybody here.  Includin’ you.

MIKE: Okay

SCOTT: We have certain conditions when you’re employed that you have to go by.  One of ‘em is contacting the media.  It’s not your job to do so. If you have concerns, there’s a chain of command.  You ever been in the military?

MIKE: No.

SCOTT: Did you work back home… What’d you do back home?

MIKE: I’ve been self-employed all my life.

SCOTT: Well there are things that you do here, of a political nature that affect all of us.  And there’s some things that probably you don’t understand how all this works.

MIKE: I’m sure that’s true.

SCOTT: And I can tell you that when I was a young man, seeing people in dire straits – it always affected me.  It still does today but I’m a little harder now than I was. Plus I have a lot more common sense.

MIKE: Okay

SCOTT: Let me explain to you what you do when you do something like this.  Not only do you put the company that you’re working for in jeopardy, you also put in jeopardy – possibly – force protection on the base camp. 

I want to clarify at this point that throughout our conversation Scott Mount continued to bring up the issue of “force protection”.  This refers to the protection of the personnel “inside the wire” (on the base) from the ever present dangers that exist “outside the wire”.  It is very important to note that Aamer Mahdani, the reporter in question, had the military’s permission to be “inside the wire”.  

When he entered PPI-2 he was not entering an area occupied by the military, but rather a private camp, operated by Prime Projects International, located well inside the perimeters of BIAP – a camp which sole purpose was the housing of TCNs.  Any prohibition from entry was on the part of Prime Projects International.  They were the only party offended by the incursion of a reporter whose intent was to expose the deplorable living conditions inside the camp.

They complained to the military and to KBR, because of the involvement of a KBR employee.  The military wanted an explanation, and KBR was embarrassed.

It is a ridiculous stretch to insinuate that Aamer’s presence inside PPI-2 was in any way a threat to force protection.  And the men he ran from were not military security, they were employees of PPI.

There’s a reporter come in here taking pictures of things – and he’s got a video camera – for whatever reason.  Do you realize that most of these Indians are Muslims?  You understand that?

MIKE: No they’re not.  They’re Hindus.  I know what they are.

SCOTT: Well.. you’re not getting’… let me tell you somethin’ what you don’t know (?) and let me tell you what that does.  Let’s say somebody back home knows their family and knows they’re over here.  Then they see they’re over here supporting something like this. 

See you got that look on your face, and it annoys me already.

MIKE: You’re gonna be annoyed by me.  I can tell that right now.

SCOTT: You’d better not now.  Just listen to me.

MIKE: Okay.

SCOTT: Okay

At this point in the conversation I was not going to be scolded like a school boy and forced to listen to things that weren’t true.  It was time to level the playing field and let Scott know that I didn’t give a shit what his title was, I was a man the same as he was.

MIKE: Are you gonna hit me?

SCOTT: Ha ha! Do you feel that way?

MIKE: You said I better not annoy you, and that sounded like a threat.

SCOTT: I’m trying to talk to you.  Do you understand that? This is a serious matter.

MIKE: I know how serious it is.  My job’s at stake.

SCOTT: No it’s not.  It’s not at stake.  That’s what I want you to understand.

MIKE: Okay.

SCOTT: You don’t need to come in here with an issue and an attitude.  You just need to listen to what I have to say.

MIKE:  All right.  I’ll be quiet, but so far the only attitude I’ve detected is yours.  Go ahead.

SCOTT: Sir. Don’t push my buttons.  You understand?  Don’t push my buttons.

MIKE: Is that another threat?

SCOTT: Do you understand I can terminate you right now?

MIKE: Yes. I expect to be terminated.

SCOTT: No you don’t.

MIKE: I do too.

SCOTT: You don’t understand me.

MIKE: Then you don’t threaten me anymore and I’ll sit here and listen to you.

SCOTT: I haven’t threatened you.

MIKE: You have told me…

SCOTT: You are trying to intimidate me.  You’re intimidating.

MIKE: If you’re intimidated, I can’t help that.

SCOTT: Yes you can.

MIKE: I’ll be quiet and listen to you.

SCOTT: I don’t think you’re going to sit there and be quiet, but I hope you are.  When I ask you to speak, I want you to speak your mind.

Do you want to get off on the right foot?

MIKE: Yeah. I’d love to.

SCOTT: But, you’ve got to understand that what your actions have caused may be some kind of irrevocable damage.  Do you understand what reporters do?

MIKE: Yes I do.

SCOTT: What do they do?

MIKE: They report.

SCOTT: What do they report?

MIKE: Good reporters…

SCOTT:  Do you think they report the truth?

MIKE: I think that they can.  I think that depends upon the reporter.

SCOTT:  Then you’re being naïve.

MIKE: No.

SCOTT: Do you know this guy?

MIKE: I don’t know him much better than I know you.

SCOTT:  See, and that… that’s the dangerous part.  Cuz we don’t know what his motives are.

MIKE: I do…

SCOTT: I understand yours, and I applaud them.

MIKE: I know more about his motives than you do.  I know he’s partnered with a man who’s married to a Nepalese woman.  And he has a personal interest in the Nepalese TCN issue, as well as the Indian TCN issue.

SCOTT: As do I. These folks worked for me and I have a real strong background in taking care of the people who work for me.

MIKE: May I address one thing that you said earlier in the conversation?  I did try the chain of command.  I talked to Daryl Johnson early in the game about what I saw, and how I felt about it.

SCOTT: You didn’t come to me, you didn’t come to Casey.

MIKE: I came to Casey with another issue, and it died with Casey.

Casey becomes angry at this point because I pointed at him when I referenced him.   It seemed to me like a silly thing to get so upset about, but I apologized.

SCOTT: You just can’t be quiet.  You just continue to argue.

MIKE: I just wanted to address that one issue, and now I will be quiet.  I’ll zip my lip. 

It struck me funny and I laughed.

SCOTT: It’s not funny Mike.

MIKE: No… I know… it’s… just as far as I can’t keep my mouth shut.  Go ahead.

There were several seconds of silence, as Scott seemed to ponder whether to continue talking to me.

SCOTT: You know what… this is not going to lead anywhere good, I can see, because you’re not going to have the seriousness that we need to have in this conversation – or the maturity. I don’t need you to keep talking back to me.  I really don’t.  I didn’t bring you in here to chew your ass.

MIKE: You brought me in here to educate me I guess.

SCOTT: See, you just can’t stop.  Don’t make me terminate you for being… I’m not going to use the word.

Just, let me tell you what.  You don’t understand how this works.  You don’t understand chain of command, and your role in this.  Your role is to sit there and listen to me. Okay?

Now I don’t want any smart –ass remarks.  Don’t jeopardize your job by being… by being disrespectful to your chain of command.  Just chill out.  Okay?  And listen to me.  If you’ve never been in the military one thing you don’t understand is force protection issues. 

People can say they are a lot of things, and then come in here and do things that aren’t right.  Okay?  We’re in a very hostile area.  And this gentleman wasn’t your normal blue-eyed, brown haired American… come in here to do a report.

He actually ran from security guards.  That squirreled everybody up.  And then to find out that you’re involved in this added another twist to it Mike, and that twist is that you may be involved with something that you didn’t have authorization to do for the company.

I know you’re concerned, as I am.  I mean, we stay on this situation every week.  We go in there and we… for lack of a better word… threaten to pull the contracts on some of these subcontractors because of the way they treat people.

Agreed?

You can answer yes or no.  Don’t you think that’s the right thing to do?

Now he’s asking me to talk.

MIKE: Yes.

SCOTT: We stay on these folks.  We’ve even made them clean up their areas; organize their trailers better.  Casey and another Site Manager continually make sure that these folks are taken care of.

Now… the issue of pay.  Do you have an issue with that?

MIKE: No.  Agency fees.

SCOTT: What do you know about agency fees?

MIKE: Quite a bit.

SCOTT: What about em? What’s your concern there?

MIKE: Some of them work six months to a year to pay off their agency fee before they bank a dime.  They charge exorbitant fees – anywhere from 70 thousand to 200 thousand rupees each.

SCOTT: They know that right up front when they sign their contract.

MIKE: Yes.  That doesn’t make it right.

SCOTT: Mike.  When you sign a contract, you’re agreeing to those terms.

MIKE: Yes.

SCOTT: There’s no concern about… You have no issue in that.  Neither do we.  You know what we do?  We ask them to provide x amount.  We ask them to give us a bid.  We go out and get three, four, five bidders – and sometimes we don’t get any replies. So we pick from the best, from the government’s standpoint – from the Federal audit agency requirements… standards.  And when they come in here we try to insure that they’re taken care of.

I’ve had guys who work for me.. I mean I’m close to these folks, and don’t think there’s ever a day that goes by that I don’t ask ‘em “Is everything okay?”

Now is it ever going to be to your standards?  Absolutely not.  Why’s that?  Unless they’re a direct hire from us… and guess what?  Their pay still won’t be equal to yours.

MIKE: I don’t expect their pay to be equal to mine.  I have no problem with it.  They’re being paid more than they’d be paid in India.  That’s the financial coercion that takes place.  That’s why they take these jobs – because they have very little alternative.  That’s why they’re willing to pay an agency such an exorbitant fee.

What about the man who works for three months, gets injured, gets sent back to India?  He still owes a debt.  These men don’t have that much money.  They borrowed it from family, friends or banks.  I can tell you of one man who was injured, in this camp, sent home.  He was crying as they sent him home.  All he had was a dislocated wrist.  He didn’t want to go home.  Because to go home means to face financial disaster, because he mortgaged his property in order to pay that agency fee.

Now he’s worked for three months, PPI holds his last check to pay for the airfare; he’s had two month’s pay.  He’ll go home, and owe the majority of that fee – he can’t pay it – and he’ll lose his job.

This is the inside story.  These are the things that you don’t know – or perhaps you don’t know – that I do know.

SCOTT: I know these things.  I was concerned.  You can’t effect change doing it the way you did it.

MIKE: We’ll see.  That’s yet to be determined.

SCOTT: No.

MIKE: That’s yet to be determined.  Do you know the newspaper represented by this reporter?

SCOTT: Chicago Times or something like that.

MIKE: The Chicago Tribune – a very large paper.

SCOTT: They don’t run India. They don’t run Sri-Lanka.

MIKE: No they don’t run India.  The only think that will happen is public support, public opinion.  Americans will have to get mad about this.  They’ll have to get angry about it, and the only way that’s going to happen Scott, is if…

SCOTT: You need to join the Peace Corp.

MIKE: Maybe I will.

SCOTT: You can’t do that working for the company.  You could have come to me and we’d have brought it to our Media Relations.

MIKE: You know what?  That would have gone nowhere, and you and I both know it.

SCOTT: You don’t know that.  You’re assuming that I’m not going to do anything.

MIKE: I made a lot of assumptions. One of the assumptions I made was that I was risking my job.  And I was willing to do that.  There aren’t many men who are willing to risk their job for something that doesn’t affect them personally.

I need my job.  I’m in debt.  I’ll go home just as broke as the man with the bad wrist.  I’ve done a good job, and to be honest with you, the load’s off my shoulders.  I’m through with this.  I’ve felt very light for the past two days.  My mission is accomplished.

I’m not a religious person, but I’m a spiritual person.  I believe that God has a hand in everything.  I think if God needs an Oak tree, he’ll plant an acorn 200 years before he needs the tree.  I didn’t know why I had this strong desire to teach English when I first got my guys back in November, but if I had not been the English teacher I never would have been able to get the reporter into the camp.  There’da been no other way.  I’m probably the only white man in BIAP that could get this man through without a question asked.

I didn’t do that… God set it up – in my opinion.  Now I don’t expect you… you don’t have to agree with me, but it’s pretty hard, in my own mind, as I look back at the way things have happened…

I sent one email and found the ONE investigative journalist, of any stature, in America… with one email found the one man who was already on this issue.  And felt like I was a gift from God for him, because somebody could give him names…

SCOTT: You can’t sneak people into a camp, without authorization.  And you had… you and him had no business being in there…

MIKE: Sometimes… sometimes throughout history

SCOTT: Ya need to listen to me.  This is a force protection issue.

MIKE: I know.  I know.

SCOTT: And this guy is under-cover.

MIKE: Everything is a force protection issue here.

SCOTT: As soon as you understand that, and it’s complicated.

MIKE: I understand.  No, no, let me tell you this, if I had thought for a minute – and you may think that I don’t have a brain in my head – but if I’d thought that I was jeopardizing anyone’s life – other than my own – I never would have…(Scott offers me a Coke) yeah I’d love a Coke… never would have helped him get in that camp if I’d thought I was jeopardizing anyone’s life – except mine.  I would jeopardize my life.

SCOTT: Well I wouldn’t want you to do that.

MIKE: I know, but I’m willing to.  Tee, you know me.  Would I risk my life?

Tee. I believe you probly would.

MIKE: There are men on this camp right now walking free because other people did things they weren’t supposed to do, and risked their lives when they weren’t supposed to.

SCOTT: I’ve given my time to my country, don’t preach to me that way.  I know exactly the way it is.  Let me tell you the way it is here, you can’t go about it the way you did.

If you had come to me, we could talk about it and we could deal with it.

MIKE: You know, if I had any faith in that I would have Scott.  I don’t know you, but as I worked my way up the chain of command around here I never got any results.  I never got anything except the idea that if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna have to happen on the sly – it’s gonna have to be a secret.  If I’da thought for a minute…

SCOTT: That’s wrong.

MIKE: It may be wrong, but I’ve never met you before.  How else do I meet you except through the proper chain of command?

SCOTT: Walk right in here.  I have an open door policy.  You can come right in anytime you want.

MIKE:  I may wish I had, if you and I get to know one another and I find out you’re the kinda man that woulda listened.  And would have done something about it, rather than just give it lip service, and nod and tell me he was glad that I took the initiative.  I may wish I had.

SCOTT:  You talk the talk, but ya gotta walk the walk.  Ya gotta come in here and give it the old effort.  You don’t have any faith in it, how ya gonna know if you don’t test the waters?  You didn’t come in here and speak to me.

MIKE: No sir I didn’t.

SCOTT: You didn’t speak to Casey about it.

MIKE: Not about this issue.  I spoke to Casey about another issue.

Casey – What was that issue, out of curiosity.

MIKE:  Well you remember what it was.

CASEY: No, I’m asking you.

MIKE: A cost avoidance measure proposal that I offered you, concerning the Iraqi trucks at Log Base Seitz and how we could save 400 and some thousand dollars a year.

CASEY: Carry on please.

MIKE: What happened to it?

CASEY: We’ll talk about that.  I just wanted to make sure we were on the same wavelength.

At this point it seemed to me that the CAM proposal was a rat Casey was sorry he’d baited our of its hole and wanted to chase back where it came from.

MIKE: Well that’s the issue.  I don’t know whatever happened to it, but I took it past..

SCOTT: We can’t use Iraqi trucks in here.

MIKE: You can’t use Iraqi trucks where?

SCOTT: Anywhere.

MIKE: Well they’re on Log Base Seitz, being used.

CASEY: Mike the reason I asked you that question is because here again…

SCOTT: See you don’t understand how all this works do you?  You have no clue.  It’s force protection.  WE CAN NOT USE an Iraqi contractor to come in here because we have to have one hundred escorts.

Now who needed to be educated about “how things work around here?”  Scott seemed to be totally ignorant of the dozens of Iraqi dump trucks, front end loaders and cranes that were being leased from Abadrani.  He had thought I was suggesting the use of Iraqi trucks, rather than just the opposite.

MIKE: We can get rid of the Iraqi trucks was my proposal.  We could get rid of em and use the little Mitsubishi dump trucks and save about 400 thousand dollars a year.

SCOTT: Is that what you just told him?  I thought you said savings, using Iraqi trucks.

MIKE: No. It was ABOUT the use OF Iraqi trucks, not using Iraqi trucks, but about NOT using Iraqi trucks.

This exchange was interrupted by phone call, and Casey – sitting next to me – leans over to talk to me quietly.

CASEY: It was submitted – through the chain of command.  Scott is trying to explain as far as the chain of command.  That didn’t need to be updated to Scott.  It was taken to me and it was resolved.  That’s the chain of command.

A situation like this has definitely gotten the attention of Scott and certain higher ups in the company.

MIKE: Let me ask you a question.  Is there any method of feedback to the person who makes a suggestion or a cost avoidance measure so he knows that something is taking place?

CASEY: Absolutely.

MIKE: I never heard another word about it.

CASEY: That’s my fault, but you could ask.

MIKE: I suppose, but I assumed that was the end of it.

SCOTT:  Sometimes we submit things to the government and they don’t always allow us to change the way we do business.  Sometimes it takes time to get things approved by the government.

MIKE: Okay.  I don’t want to argue that point.  That’s not the issue today.

At this point there were several seconds of silence.

MIKE: I understand perfectly well why you’re unhappy… with me.  I wasn’t a good troop at all.

SCOTT: Mike I just needed you to communicate with me.  If you do it on the sly, that makes me nervous.

MIKE: I understand that.

SCOTT: I’m a bleedin’ heart.  I’m a father of seven kids. I got six grandkids – two mother-in-laws.  I understand emotions.  And I’m an emotional guy.  I don’t like seeing people livin’ here in those conditions other than the way I want them to live – which would be equal to the way live. That bothers me.

It bothers me that this company will not let me direct hire these folks where I can.

But let me tell you what we’re doing in the meantime.  As these contracts arise, we put them out for other folks, or we ask other companies to bid.  Our next “scope of work” will insure that, not only will we get the right, proper conditions for these folks – square footage, number of showers per head, ah… decent containers… new containers… they’re fed properly.

We’re gonna own this stuff, so it’ll be our responsibility then to take care of it after so many months.  I think it’s… ah… six months time period.  That’s still 90 days out from rebidding these contracts. The amortization rate is six months to nine months from now.

That’ll help us improve that lifestyle.  Then we won’t have to depend on some other contractor to spend their funds getting’ that work done.  Then the U.S. government is going to be paying for it, which they already are, but then we’re going to be able to quality control it.

MIKE: I’ve wondered why KBR didn’t employ these guys directly and take care of them.

From my observation, KBR is first rate when it comes to logistics, and uh… power, water, etcetera.  I mean I’ve never seen a… can’t  imagine a better job being done.  The contrast between PPI camp and KBR is uh… testament to that.

SCOTT:  Well.  Here again.  I’ve been doing this for ten years, and you haven’t been doing it more than what?

MIKE: I haven’t been doing it at all.  I’m a damn Labor Foreman.

SCOTT: That’s what I’m talking about.  You need to come talk to me.  I can share this stuff with you.  I don’t have anything that’s a secret unless it has secret clearance written on it.  Then you don’t get to see it.

But anything I know you can know.  What you’ll understand is, I can explain to you why we don’t direct hire these folks.  Cuz our legal will not let us.  Halliburton legal will not let us.  We did it in several countries, in Hungary and Croatia we’re having to pay social security on these folks, and it’s just ridiculous.  We’re in a war zone and we’re putting this thing together and we should not have to do this.  And that’s why we’re having to go through a labor provider – what you would probably call a… what’d you call it in your letter?

MIKE: An exporter of cheap labor, or something like that.   And it’s not just.. understand also Scott this is… these guys in Iraq are miniscule compared to the worldwide problem.  There are literally millions of these guys…

SCOTT: In their own home land they’re treated like shit.  Go back there and visit ‘em.

MIKE: Well I haven’t been there, so I can’t address that… or deny it.

SCOTT: Casey’s from the Philippines.  He can tell you how Filipinos live.  And that the money they’re makin’ now is probably three times what they make at home.

MIKE: I have no problem with the money.  I don’t even have a problem with the living conditions.  The food needs to be better.  There needs to be some variety.  They complain more about the food than they do anything else.  Telephones.  They need to be able to make a phone call without spending a half a day’s wages to make a fifteen minute phone call.  That could be taken care of.

But the problem, as far as I’m concerned the snakes in this whole wood pile, are the agencies that are sucking their blood, and in their own countries.  Suckin’ their blood, and for a man to be financially ruined because he’s trying to come over here and risk his live…

SCOTT: He shoulda never signed the contract if it was going to ruin his life.

MIKE: Let me tell you what.  If I held a gun to your head and said “Sign this contract, or I’m gonna shoot you.”

SCOTT: They’re not doing that.

MIKE: The gun is their poverty.  The gun is that their alternatives are so bleak.  A man with a family will do anything if he’s faced with that kind of poverty.

SCOTT: (?)

MIKE: And they do, but this is where the pressure has to be placed. It has to be placed by the American people on the Indian government, to change that kind of thing.  But the American people have to be aware of it, and they are not now.  In fact…

SCOTT: The American government (?)

MIKE: I’m not a real fan of the American government.

SCOTT: Be careful.  You’re workin’ for em.

MIKE: I live there. You know… it’s pretty hard for me to escape.

SCOTT: There’s a code of business conduct here.  You don’t want to get out there and belittle your country.

MIKE: I thought it was America.  I thought I could say whatever I felt like saying about my country.

SCOTT: Uhhh… you can and you can’t.

MIKE: I know.  I do know, and that’s one of the things that’s wrong with the country now is that used to be a platform we stood on, and we no longer make as much of it as we should.

SCOTT: I agree with you there.

MIKE: And I do have some experience there Scott.  I have been ah, I have been– on a local level – the victim of practically a Nazi regime.  But that’s a whole nuther story. 

SCOTT: Where are you from?

MIKE: I’m from Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado…  recently Florida.  Jacksonville, Florida.  I made my living for the past 20 years as a producer of boat shows and home and garden shows.

SCOTT: Cool. I just bought my boat.

Scott shows me a framed photograph of his new boat, and we exchange a bit of small talk about boats.  I share the fact that I’m a sailor, and a Coast Guard licensed captain, and Scott makes a joke about sailors versus motor-boaters.

SCOTT: You gotta know that I’ve got some great people workin’ for me.  And they’ve got the same concerns that you have.

MIKE: My initial contact with management around here was Daryl Johnson, and I couldn’t have less respect for an individual than I have for Daryl – in that regard – in terms of caring about other people, and caring about these Indians.  Believe me.  We’ve been round and round over the issue.

SCOTT: Daryl cares.

MIKE: He brings ‘em ball caps from home.  That’s the extent of his concern.

SCOTT: Well ya know what – that’s still somethin’.   A lot of these guys don’t give a (?) nickel.   I think you’ve got Daryl all wrong.  Daryl’s a good American. He served his country.

MIKE: I didn’t address that issue – his patriotism… I didn’t address any of that.  I was talking about his concerns for these TCNs.  That’s the only issue that I have… that I’ve raised with Daryl.  He’s treated me kindly.

I don’t think I’ll be much of an issue to you from here on out.  This is a weight off my shoulders.  I carried it as long as I knew these guys were comin’.  But they’ve come and gone now.  I don’t know what more trouble I can get into.  But I know you now.  I feel more comfortable about knocking on your door.

SCOTT: Well, you should.  I don’t bite.  I’ll tell you, I’m an emotional guy, and when you come to me with an attitude… I’m the Project Manager, and you’ve got to come to me with your hat in your hand, whether you like it or not.

MIKE: Well, I didn’t come in here as your employee.  I came in here as another man.  I figured my job was toast anyway.

SCOTT: A bad assumption, see.  You need to come in here and test the water before you start assuming I’m an asshole and you’re gonna get fired.

MIKE: I didn’t necessarily think you were gonna fire me because you’re an asshole.

SCOTT: (Addressing Casey) Did I ever say a negative thing about this guy before he came in here?  All I wanted to know was why, and what…

MIKE: Well why , and I hope you know that whatever I did I certainly didn’t do for myself.  My heart was in the right place.  I like to think I’ve got a caring heart.  I cared about my men.  I cared about their situation.  I cared enough about em to teach em English.

SCOTT: If you care enough, then elevate it to me or Casey, and if I (?) then you can go above me.

MIKE: At your next earliest convenience I do have issues, or concerns I’ll call ‘em, about the TCN truck drivers out there in the Staging Yard where I work.  I don’t know why God had to put me there.

SCOTT: We can talk a little bit about that right now.  Let me tell you about those guys. That’s up to the government.  They run that yard.  Movement control team.

MIKE: They just reclassified it, which is good.

SCOTT: But they still have the same issues.  The commanders don’t want ‘em in their dining facilities.  And I know for a fact that these folks come from god knows where, Jordan, Turkey, or wherever, on one tank of gas.  Nobody gives ‘em any money to fill up.  They’ve got their cookin’ utensils under the belly of the truck.

We’ve tried… we’ve got showers out there I think? We’ve got a tent?

CASEY: Yes.

SCOTT:  But the bottom line – and I know this is gonna sound strange, maybe harsh – but I’ve seen it – most of these folks don’t have an issue with the way they live.  If they miss a meal, now that bothers ‘em.  But you could give ‘em a million dollars and if they live in a tent they’re probably still gonna live in a tent.

MIKE: I have no problem with ‘em livin’ in their truck, under their truck – and I agree with you.  They can sit on that little platform out beside their box, cook a meal and eat it and drink, and smoke their water pipe, and they’re happy that way.

The only think I’ve seen, and it’s been improved lately, when we go two or three days without shower water, or on a 110 degree day I can’t get any ice out there – but that’s improved.  And to be honest with you, the situation has improved in the past couple of weeks.

SCOTT: You’re not attached… Is he attached to Task Order 88?

MIKE: No.  I’m not doin’ my job.  I’m doin’ more than my job.  I’m rationing the food, the water and the ice.  I’m responsible for gettin’em the ice on a semi-regular… on a regular basis now.  And, uh, getting them food from the Army.

SCOTT: That’s not even your scope of (?) they’ve got their own.

MIKE: I know it’s not. But they don’t do it. It has not been done. It wasn’t being done.

SCOTT: Have you brought this to the attention of Tee?

MIKE:  I have uh… Tee knows what I’m doin’ out there. Tee sees what I do.

I set up a ration slip so that I can give them… you see if you just hand out food they’ll all show up.  What I’ve done is come up with a ration slip.  I got it approved with the Army, and got it approved by Rick, who is the Logistics guy.  He works for JMMT.  He’s supposed to be the Logistics Coordinator for the yard, but quite honestly, I do his job.  And I don’t mind.  It gives me something to do.  If I didn’t have his job I’d be bored outa my mind.

I’m learning Arabic and I like speaking to the drivers.  I enjoy talkin’ to ‘em in their own language.

But I came up with a little ration slip so we know how many days they’ve been in the yard.  The first day we give ‘em one meal, the second day we give ‘em a meal, and then the third day we give ‘em two meals – two of those meals-ready-to-eat.

And I can tell by the container of food usage that we’ve slowed down… before a half container of food would be gone if we handed it out to everybody, because you couldn’t tell who’d been there long enough to be hungry and who hadn’t.  Although a lot of ‘em show up without any food cuz they’d been ten days in Scania, or 15 days somewhere else before they got there.

SCOTT: Be careful and make sure you don’t do somethin’ wrong there.

MIKE: Okay

SCOTT: We’re not tasked to hand out food to those folks.

MIKE: Well the Army is happy to bring it.

SCOTT: If they wanna do it, let them.

MIKE: I’m just helping.

SCOTT: And you don’t have enough to keep you busy?

MIKE: I’m the Labor Foreman for the crew that picks up the trash in and around the trucks.  They stay busy, but as a Labor Foreman, unless I go out there and pick it up with ‘em… naw… you know how it is.

SCOTT: Do you keep him busy Tee?

Tee. (says something too low to transcribe)

MIKE: I stay busy.  Do I need to be?  Don’t throw me some busy work.  I’ll volunteer to go home if all I’ve got’s busy work.  I wanna be productive… in what I do.

SCOTT: You have to be productive, or we get rid of you anyway.  We’ve got 84 hours to fill in a week.  You say you don’t have enough to do, then Casey you need to address that.

MIKE: I do have enough to do, but a lot of what I’m doin’ is not what I’m tasked with, and not part of my job description.  I’d like to continue to do what I’m doin’.  Maybe I need to work for a different department or something.

SCOTT: The Peace Corp!

MIKE: The Peace Corp, probably.  If I’m here long enough to get my debts paid, maybe I will.  I’ve thought about teaching English in foreign countries.  It’s a very satisfying thing to do.

I’m a Liberal, and I’m surrounded by people that are less Liberal than me.  It’s not as hard on them as it is on me.

SCOTT: I don’t care.  I like people to be individuals. Hell, I used to teach high school, and coach, and I love people to be their own character.

MIKE: Then you’ll love me.

SCOTT: Right.  But that bein’ said, just remember, the company has policies.  I have to take this to the “three-star” that I work for and let him know that you had no IL- intent.  He didn’t want to get the company in a bind, that he wants to expose the companies that hire these folks in the conditions that they hire ‘em under, and feels they’re more or less bein’ held hostage.

Is that pretty much… pretty accurate?

MIKE: Pretty accurate. The people that I think are the villains – and I said in my report – are not KBR.  I think the villains are the agencies in their own countries that are bleedin’ ‘em to death for this agency fee.  That’s who I’d like to see ended.

And I think these guys who are workin’ on this issue for the Chicago Tribune feel the same way.

SCOTT: Well – I can tell you from experience, reporters report what they wanna report, not what you want ‘em to report.

MIKE: If I didn’t feel like we were on the same page and they didn’t want to report what I wanted to report I wouldn’t have…

SCOTT: (?) You understand what I’m talkin’ about.  Because from Dan Rather on down, I’ve never seen a reporter report accurately what you want ‘em to report.

MIKE: Unfortunately reporters – and you’ll probably agree with this – if reporters knew anything about what they were reporting, they probably wouldn’t be reporters.  (I go into a pretty lame analogy to make this point, but from here on it’s just conversation – wrapping it up.)

We shake hands and agree to be friend, but as I leave Scott asks Tee to stay for a second.

I waited for Tee in the outer office.  As he came out he didn’t look too happy.  “Come on,” he said.  “We’ve got fifteen minutes to get you and all the guys out of the Staging Yard.”

“What?” I asked incredulously.  “Why?”

“Because that’s Task Order 88, and we’re Task Order 89.”

“Well so fuckin’ much for bringing my issues to Scott!” I said.  “I can’t even believe I fell for that shit.”

My men and I spent the next two weeks chopping weeds in a big empty field in the west end of the Industrial Zone – in the blistering sun and 120 degree heat.  I don’t know.  Could that have been considered busy work?

While we were wasting time, but staying busy, the Staging Yard was filling up with trash.  The road crew was still picking up trash, but JMMT didn’t have enough TCN manpower to keep the Staging Yard cleaned up.  Rick’s crew tried to cover their regular jobs of cleaning the ab and shower units in the Army escort area and police the Staging Yard, but it was just too much for four guys.

I don’t know where the order came from, but after two of the most boring and miserable weeks of my life we were reassigned to the Staging Yard.  I reinstituted the ice deliveries, which had been halted because the soldiers – believe it or not – couldn’t keep law and order among the truck drivers.

I asked Sergeant Cook – the young female in charge – why they’d stopped the ice deliveries and she said “Mike, I just got pissed off.  My guys just couldn’t control that bunch of crazy truck drivers, so I sent the ice truck away and told ‘em not to come back.”

I asked her if I had her permission to start the daily deliveries again and she said yes, so long as I could keep them in line.

One day the truck showed up at the usual 10:00 and Sergeant Cook came rushing over from the escort office with two soldiers.  When she saw me she told her two soldiers to stand down, and I heard her say, “It’s okay.  Mike’s here.” 

She turned to me and said, “Mike.  I didn’t see you out here in the yard when the truck pulled up, and I thought, damn we better get out there before they open the door to that ice truck.” 

I couldn’t help but feel a certain satisfaction that I was able to elicit more cooperation from the drivers than the military was capable of.  It put a smile on my face.

The next several months were as happy as I’ve had in my life.  My days were always interesting, and I enjoyed the camaraderie of my coworkers, Ryan, and Alan, and my crew of Indians.  I also developed a lifelong friendship with Husam.  We ate lunch together in the DiFac almost every day.

Husam risked his life by coming from Baghdad to work on the U.S. military base every day, as did all the Iraqis who worked there.  I always asked how things were in Baghdad, and they were always worse, never better.  The electric power was completely undependable erratically available just an hour or two per day.  Husam was buying power from an enterprising neighbor who had run a spider web of cables from an old diesel generator.

I was no longer welcome in the Indian camp, so my days as the English Master came to an abrupt end.  In fact the same man who had taken the time to call me just a few weeks earlier, to thank me for teaching English to the TCNs – PPI’s General Manager – had summoned me to his office at PPI-1 just to tell me I was banned from entering either camp. 

So, now that I was banned from Log Base Seitz, and banned from the PPI-2 Indian camp I only saw my “ten little Indians”, and my favorite English student Bezawada, for a few brief minutes in the morning as I loaded my crew for the staging yard.

Several of the guys wanted to be transferred from Log Base to the Staging Yard, but I tried to tell them that they had it made where they were.  Other than the mortar attacks, which were still occurring, but with somewhat less frequency, it was a much easier life for them there.  Juan was a good boss, and they were all fat and getting fatter from the good food they enjoyed at the Log Base DiFac.  In spite of my discouragement Limbadri managed to trade places with one lucky Staging Yard Indian.  My little black elf was determined to follow me.  And I was glad to have him.

I managed to keep my nose clean, which is not to say I became a model employee.  Not the kind of soldier KBR wanted me to be anyway – the kind who follows orders obsequiously, without question, regardless of whether they make any sense or not.

One hot afternoon my guys were unloading another semi-trailer load of water – one that for some reason or another was unwanted or unneeded by whoever had ordered it.  It had to be unloaded so the driver could return to Kuwait.  The CONEX was full, so we were handing full cartons of bottles into the anxious arms of a line of drivers who never passed up the opportunity to cache a supply of free water – when Daryl pulled up in his big white Ford truck.

“Mike, get them guys down offa dat truck,” he ordered.

“Why Daryl?” I asked, as I approached the truck.

“Because that’s not their job.  Dem mutha-fuckas ah not sposed to be unloadin’ no damn wata trucks.”

“They’ve got their work done Daryl,” I replied.  “The yard’s clean.”

I’d decided to draw a line in the Iraqi dust.  I was right, and Daryl was wrong, and this was a stupid order that I wasn’t going to obey.  Daryl didn’t know that yet.  He still thought the rule applied – I’m the boss, you’re the employee and you’ll do as I tell you to.

“Mike, I’m tellin’ you to get them guys down off that truck right now.”

“I’m not gonna do it Daryl.  The guys enjoy helping.  The truck needs to be unloaded.  The drivers want the water, and I’m not doin’ it.”

“Mike, don’t make me send you to da house,” he said, thinking he’d thrown down the King and trumped my Jack, but he was wrong.  I’d had all of Daryl’s bullshit I was gonna take.

“Let’s go see Casey right now, Daryl,” I said, as I headed for the passenger side of the truck with every intention of taking the situation “up the chain of command”, as KBR types were so inclined to call it.

“No, Mike, we ain’t takin’ this to Casey.”

I stopped and stepped back to within a few inches of the open driver’s side window and said through my gritted teeth, “Then Daryl, you either fire me, or leave me the fuck alone.” 

He threw the truck into drive and spun the tires, leaving the yard in a cloud of that talcum-powder-fine dust.

I’d meant it, and evidently he knew I meant it, because as long as he was my Site Manager – which was only to a few weeks longer – he never said another word to me.

Ice cream and Insulin

On the far side of the yard, the last half-dozen rows were reserved for a freight company, which ran over 2,000 refrigerated trucks, hauling all the food and fresh fruit and vegetables consumed by the military and their sub-contractors – those who carried the proper identification – in the many DiFacs located in the complex of bases surrounding the Baghdad International Airport – BIAP.

I’d seen boxes of frozen biscuits, sausages, chicken wings, etc. thrown in the dump – probably from a reefer that had lost its refrigeration for one reason or another.  I have no idea where this food originated from, but probably from kitchens in Kuwait. 

I can’t imagine it was all flown in from the States, but there was one item available in the DiFac that must have come from America – Baskin Robbins Ice Cream.   And my favorite flavor was in the freezer practically every day, Caramel Praline Pecan.  Who’d a thought that in Iraq I would find all the Baskin Robbins ice cream I could eat.

I mention this to tell a story.  A story that to this day pisses me off more than just about anything I experienced in Iraq because it so illustrates the hypocrisy and cultural bigotry that existed on the base.

A driver came to me in obvious distress.  He was a Jordanian, or perhaps a Syrian, and spoke very broken English.  I found Husam to interpret, and discovered that he was a diabetic and had been out of insulin for several days.  He was beginning to feel the effects of being without his medication and was desperate for some help.

There was a young soldier, a sergeant, who worked in the escort office, who had helped me once before with an injured driver.  The driver had badly burned his hand when his small kerosene stove had fallen over and spilled setting it on fire.  He’d been trying to cook in the air conditioned cool of the cab of his truck.  I can’t remember the soldier’s name, but he was a very kind and compassionate individual. 

Once again he offered to act as armed escort and accompany me to the Army’s TMC  – Troop Medical Clinic – to seek help for the diabetic driver.

We arrived during lunch time.  The clerk at the front desk took some information and offered the three of us a seat.  We sat down in a row of chairs along one wall of the hallway leading back toward the examination rooms. 

After about a 15 minute wait, the doctor – a Colonel – and his small entourage entered the front door.  One of the persons with him was a young, very attractive, Iraqi female.  I stood up and introduced myself, shook the Colonel’s hand, and described our situation.

The Colonel explained that there were several types of diabetes and in order to know what to give the driver he would have to know more.  He turned to the Iraqi woman and gave her instructions as to what to ask the driver.

She turned to the driver, who was still seated, and began to speak to him in Arabic, which of course only she could understand – that is,  she and the driver.

Suddenly the driver rose from his chair, with his fists clenched, screaming at the woman – also in Arabic.  I grabbed him by the shoulder and said “Calm down man.  What in the hell is the matter with you?”

The Colonel became extremely agitated and sternly commanded me to “Get this man out of here now!”

Over my shoulder I could hear the Colonel saying something about not being responsible for these truck drivers and only seeing them in the first place as a courtesy, and if we can’t control them then he’ll not see another one…. The escort and I led the driver outside the building.

When we got outside I asked the driver what had happened.  Why had he gotten so mad?  What he told me came a shock, but not a surprise – once I had a second to consider it. 

The driver, still visibly upset, said “She say to me, you son of pig, what you do in my country?”

“My god,” I said to the Sergeant.  “She said that to him in front of all of us just as calm and collected as if butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth.”  He was as shocked as I was.

I took the driver back into the TMC and approached the Colonel.  “Sir, I’ve got the driver calmed down and he really is in bad need of some insulin, if you’d see him I think I can promise that he’ll behave himself.”

“Well, I can tell you that I will not see any more of these drivers if you can’t keep them under control,” he replied indignantly.

I said, “Well sir, I think you’d understand if you knew what your interpreter said to him.”  Then I related what the driver had told me.

“I’ve worked with Jasmine (or whatever her name was, because I don’t recall) for six months and I know she would never say a thing like that,” he replied, even more indignantly.

I held my tongue.  My most pressing need was insulin for this driver, and it would have to take precedence over the incredible urge I had to give this asshole a lesson in critical thinking.  I really wanted to ask him just exactly what he thought she might have said that would bring him to an instant boil, but instead I just smiled and said, “I’m sure you’re right.  I must have misunderstood him.  Do you think we could get him fixed up?” 

We got our insulin, and headed back to the Staging Yard.  As I left I wondered if the Colonel and his entourage had enjoyed Baskin Robbins ice cream for dessert.

Summer turned to fall, which meant the temperature dropped to a more reasonable 100 degrees in the afternoons.  Tee, who got along with Daryl only marginally better than I did, but had just as little use for him, had moved transferred to an adjacent camp, and Ryan was promoted to Chief of Services.  That left the position of General Labor Foreman open, and I’ll always wonder why I didn’t apply for it.

Our area had not had a Logistics Foreman, and there was talk that the position was going to be created.  The IZ was becoming a busier place, and what had been just a Site Manager riding around in a pickup truck, borrowing a desk in the Service Order Office whenever he needed one, was going to become like all the other camps – with the same org chart, filled with personnel. 

We had just added an Operations person named Terry – a mouthy, overbearing sort of guy, but in such a friendly way that I couldn’t help but like him.  For some reason he reminded me of Wolfman Jack.  He was temporarily using the second desk in Lucy’s office.  Lucy’s 21-year-old daughter had also recently arrived, and was Daryl’s “Admin Specialist”.  That meant three members of Lucy’s immediate family were living and working for KBR on North Victory.  Lucy’s son Sammy had joined Juan on Log Base (why they needed two labor foremen there was a mystery to me), and her sister was in charge of the Sign Shop at Wayne’s World.

It wasn’t unusual for entire families to sign up with KBR.  I’d heard the small town of Leesville Louisiana was in the midst of a residential building boom of new houses purchased by its KBR employed citizens.  The Leesville “Red Neck Mafia” had just recently made the news for a beating some of them had given a fellow employee.  I had been on R&R when it happened, but it was a totally credible story.

The Industrial Zone was beginning to fill up with new tenants which included a variety of sub-contractors.  There was a new asphalt plant, and a contractor that was up-armoring and adding air conditioning units to thousands of Humvees.  The Turkish owned plant that produced the 12’ tall blast walls – better known as T-walls – had expanded, and they were cranking them out by the endless semi-tractor load.  And KBR had been expanding as well.  The New Construction department had begun erecting two large metal buildings of 100,000 square feet; and they were beginning to assemble the huge components of an enormous above ground water treatment plant. 

I’d watched for weeks as trucks had come through the yard carrying enormous unidentifiable sections of something industrial looking – all painted black.  The plan was to eliminate the enormous expense of running hundreds of sucker trucks 23 hours a day to haul the three million gallons of blackwater produced each day on BIAP, to the dump stations that pumped it to the Baghdad water purification plant.  I don’t know if for a fact, but I figured that if the municipality of Baghdad wasn’t even able to provide its citizens with electricity, most of that blackwater was going straight into the Tigris River.

Even in late ’05 we were hearing that the war in Iraq was a temporary affair, and there were promises of bringing home troops, and reducing America’s presence there.  I knew better.  The military was replacing tents with permanent buildings, paving roads and building a multi-million dollar sewer plant.  There was every indication that they meant to be there permanently.

The IZ didn’t have the responsibility of billeting troops, but it was unique from the other camps around BIAP in that there were so many industrial tenants.  Operations and Maintenance – Industrial Zone, was going to need a Logistics Coordinator and I was being considered for the position by everyone but the Site Manager.  But he wasn’t going to be there long enough to make the decision.

“Log One”

It was time for my “end of contract” R&R.  I’d been in Iraq a year, which was as long as I had originally intended to be there, but things had changed.  Holly and I had decided to divorce.  It was totally amicable, and we still loved one another, but I didn’t want to return to Jacksonville, and sharing custody of her two young sons meant she wasn’t going to leave.

I had really stuck my neck out and offered to buy her a business with my next year’s income.  I think you already know that I’m impulsive, so you won’t have any problem believing what I’m about to tell you.

Holly had gone to work for a local Chiropractor as the manager for a money-losing weight loss franchise he owned.  She’d turned the business around in the year she’d been there, when he told her to clear out her office because he’d sold the franchise.

When she told me it infuriated me.   I replied over the phone,“Ask that son-of-a-bitch how much he wants for the business.  He hasn’t signed any papers yet I’ll bet.  If he doesn’t want too much for it I’ll buy it for you.”

We’d paid off most of our debt with my first year’s wages, and my second year’s was enough to buy the business.  Like I said, I didn’t want to be married to Holly any longer, but it wasn’t because I didn’t love her.

At the time we were given three weeks R&R when it was the “end of contract”, and although I flew to and from Jacksonville, I was just passing through on my way to Kansas to visit my kids, and Mazatlan, Mexico to get reacquainted with some good friends. 

I’d befriended my “pulmonia” driver on a vacation there eight years earlier.  Pulmonias are iconic and unique to Mazatlan.  They’re built on a Volkswagen chassis, powered by VW engines in the rear, but look like five passenger dune buggies, with a hard surrey top.  And they are all white.  

Paco was just a skinny 23 year old Mexican kid with a young wife and baby daughter, but there was something special about him – some mutual compatibility that immediately turned to friendship.  I’d flagged him down as he whizzed by on a side street to help my girlfriend Jan, and me, look for a pair of glasses I’d lost.  We didn’t find the glasses but hired Paco to spend the rest of the day showing us around Mazatlan.

Then we hired him for the following day, and took him with us on a two hour sail on the replica of the Nina, which was spending the season in Mazatlan.  It was the very same vessel that had been used a few years before in one of the two movies made in 1992 to commemorate Columbus’s voyage.

Paco had lived all of his life in Mexico – son of a maker of fishing nets – but this was his first boat ride.  I guess even then I had the idea that everyone should be able to speak English, but especially someone who made his living by hauling gringos around in his taxi, because the night before we’d found an English language course on cassette tapes and bought it for Paco.

As we were taking a tour of the Mercado Central I noticed Paco eyeing a tape player.  I asked him if he had a tape player to play the cassettes on – using my very poor Spanish and a lot of sign language – and he said no.  So I bought him the player. 

By then, Paco was beginning to think we were pretty special gringos, but I had no idea how special until he bought a small bunch of fresh flowers in the Mercado.  I thought they were for Jan, but he led us to the large catholic cathedral just a few blocks from the market.  I thought it was just part of the tour, and wasn’t sure what the flowers were for until we reverently approached a large figure of Jesus in a niche at the side of the main cathedral.

Paco laid the flowers on the altar and thanked Jesus for his new friends.  Those are the moments in my life that I hold dearest.  The ones I never forget.

We had to buy a pair of slacks for me and a dress for Jan because that evening we were invited to the “bautiso” of Paco’s godson, the child of his best friend Diego.  After the ceremony we all walked to Paco’s parents humble little home, on a dirt street, in a middle-class Mazatlan neighborhood.  Coins were tossed for the neighbor children, and then the fiesta began.  With music from an old radio, we danced on a dusty tile floor – furniture having been moved out of the way.  And I fell in love with Mexico.

I returned three times that year, once to deliver my then 19-year-old son Zach.  He’d graduated from high school and wasn’t interested in going to college right away, so I suggested a sojourn in Mexico.  I knew he would be adopted by the family who had adopted me, and they did.  They called him “Mayk Yune-yer”, and he stayed for three months.  I flew back down to escort him back to the states, and visit my friends, and as of my R&R, I hadn’t been back.  The lack of time or money, or oftentimes both, had prevented my return.

I asked Zach – then married and attending college – if he’d like to go with me and surprise Paco and his family.  Of course he did.

We remembered the landmarks, although they’d changed the name of the milk bottling plant that had always been the destination we’d given to taxi drivers from …. To Lala.  From there we knew the way.

The driver dropped us off one block from the house of Paco and Lupe – Paco Junior’s parents.  Paco and his wife Cheli had lived in the bedroom off the small patio the last time we’d been there, but that was 8 years earlier, and we had no reason to believe they still did.

As we approached the house – now on a paved street – there sat Paco and Lupe in the shade of the the little ficus tree.

I said “Hola Paco.  Hola Lupe,” and they stared at us for a full thirty seconds before their expressions changed from surprise, that two strange gringos would know their names, to a look of amazed recognition.   Paco’s younger brother Julio appeared in the doorway and I mistook him for Paco.  Zach and Juli were the same age, and had hung out together.  While they were renewing their friendship someone called Paco, who was then living in his mother-in-law’s house a block down the street.

Within a few minutes I could see a much larger Paco running toward me.  In eight years he’d added a few pounds, but nothing else had changed – including a friendship that will last a lifetime.

Zach spent the weekend and then flew back to the states.  I stayed two weeks, and since it was coincidentally Paquito’s vacation from his job as a bus driver for one of Mazatlan’s fancier hotels, we decided to rent a car and take a three-day trip to Guadalajara, stopping for a day at Puerto Vallarta on the way home. 

Paco and Cheli’s  daughter Katya, was now a young lady of 12, and they had another baby girl named America.  Not after the country, but rather Paco’s favorite soccer team.  I left Mexico with a promise to return for Katya’s Quinceanera, December the 8^th, 2008.  I’d also promised to buy the beer – no small promise for a Mexican Quinceanera with 300 guests.  That would make me the “Padrino de cerveza”, and proud to be.

It’s a promise I kept.  I sailed alone from San Diego in my 32’ Kendall cutter the day after Thanksgiving, 2008, and nine days later, because of poor winds, I anchored off the beach of Cabo San Lucas and took Mexicana the rest of the way – arriving the day before the Quinceanera.  I returned for my sailboat “Liberty” a week later and finished the voyage to Mazatlan.  Liberty is still there as I write these words, although I’m currently in Guatemala.

When I returned to Iraq

Toifor came through the Staging Yard twice a day to suck out the 45 portable toilets that were dispersed around the perimeter of the yard.  They were supposed to replace the toilet paper and keep one roll and a spare, but we couldn’t keep toilet paper in the porta-jons.  And it wasn’t because the drivers used it for its intended purpose – because they didn’t.  Just like the Indians, and most of the inhabitants of the Middle East and Asia, they clean their behinds with water.  That’s why – so they say  – you always shake hands with the right hand.  The left one is reserved for personal hygiene.

KBR QAQC personnel, (Quality Assurance Quality Control) were the rules and regulations police.  They weren’t very present in the early days in Iraq, but they were beginning to arrive in greater numbers.  Their job was to inspect, inspect and inspect to be sure everyone was following the SOP – standard operating procedure – and catch infractions before the DCMA did.

DCMA stands for Defense Contract Management Agency, a unit of the U.S. Department of Defense.  The agency is responsible for managing contracts to ensure that supplies and services are delivered on time and within cost, and that they meet performance requirements.

They had a specification for everything, Including how many rolls of toilet paper were supposed to be inside a porta-jon – at all times.

No matter how many times we were inspected they never seemed to understand that the average lifespan of a fresh roll of toilet paper in the Staging Yard was however long it was until the next driver took a shit.  If there was a roll in outhouse he was taking it back to the truck.  Not for its intended purpose but for all the other things toilet paper was good for – like wiping the windshield or blowing his nose.

Toifor was a company that had begun servicing the military’s portable toilets when KBR was in Bosnia.  They had come along for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and had grown into a multi-million dollar enterprise.  In the IZ and Log Base there were about 250 portable toilets and Toifor was getting around $14.00 each to clean them.  The guys running the sucker trucks, mounted with pressure washers were from Eastern Europe, Bosnia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia.

The most odious part of cleaning toilets in the Staging Yard was retrieving empty water bottles discarded by drivers down the hole – into the tank.  It was as nasty a job as you can imagine.  I would sometimes watch a driver enter the porta-jon with his bottle, and if he exited without it, I was on him in an instant, demanding that he retrieve his bottle.  Of course there was no way to stand guard over 45 porta-jons 24 hours a day.  It would have been as impossible as explaining to the DCMA inspector why the porta-jons in the Staging Yard were perpetually nasty.

to be continued…