Normally I don't post these emails I get from my friend who's deployed in Iraq right now...but I thought some people on this forum would find it particularly amusing....enjoy!
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Okay, I would have sent this out sooner, but I seem to be very good at deleting things off of electronic devices without knowing what I'm doing. I don't think I even need to go into detail of what happened. In my past letters, I've generally attempted to include the events of multiple days so that there is at least more than one interesting event recorded. Today, I'm breaking from the norm and recording the events of just one day. Although this one day contained nothing of massive importance to our success in this war, when compared to all the other days I've experienced here, it was legendary.
So, there I was awake and arming up in the morning, maybe an hour before the rest of my shift was supposed to start turning in and going home. I was there with just one other night shift guy, 4 day shift guys, and a few guys from our command element. We were all assigned to a special duty for the day. The name of the game was "Health and Wellness Inspections", which is really simply a million dollar code phrase for "Quick! Hide your porn and beer cause the cops are coming through and if they find it, they're gonna take it and you're gonna be in trouble!" The base populace, civilian and military, is subject to a statute from Garrison Command called General Order #1. This basically just says that anyone on the base in support of our operations here is not allowed to be in possession of various contraband items which of course GO1 takes the time to list, dissimilar to myself. The violation of this order can lead to all sorts of unpleasant punitive actions. Us, the MPs, are of course more than happy to act as the vengeful "Hammer of G…arrison Command" and go and catch our perpetrators. We loaded up one of our patrol trucks and headed out to a place called "Contractor Row" for reasons I'm sure you can deduce on your own. Nearly all of the contractor residents living here were Third Country Nationals from all over the place, but the overwhelming majority were from India and Pakistan. We did a lot of checking ID cards and paperwork to make sure everyone there was supposed to be there. Once that was done, we set out checking the living quarters for GO1 violations.
Some of the guys on the command element had befriended one of the Pakistani supervisors on a previous inspection, and as a result, our team was invited into this guys trailer and have some coffee. I guess it's some kind of insult to someone from Pakistan to turn down an offer like that, so regardless if we were feeling like drinking some coffee or not, we gathered into his little living room and accepted little shot-glass sized coffee cups and saucers from the host's wife. I know a lot of my people back home have a difficult time imagining coffee outside of Starbucks or Coffee Rush, but nothing really can prepare you for what we were served that day. Let's just say that in spite of the miniscule portion I was given, within a couple sips, all aggravation and fatigue I was feeling due to the disruption of my nocturnal sleeps habits quickly failed and retreated in the face of the caffeinated onslaught. I was good to go pretty much the rest of the day. Wow and it tasted great on top of that hahaha.
Our host and his wife were ridiculously hospitable, and we left, satisfied that we had successfully held up our little part in international relations. We continued on our way to check other compounds and continue to fill the truck with all sorts of confiscated items. It was nearing lunchtime and we were involved in our last check before we were supposed to break for chow, when three Indian men ran into the room and in broken English started yelling "Iraqis inside fence!!!" "Iraqis here!!!" This is an extremely effective way to get a whole bunch of MPs very excited, very quickly. We all darted off towards the area indicated by the Indian men. I know mine wasn't the only mind racing over use of force procedures and searching for adequate cover in case we were about to encounter Johnny Jihad with an itchy trigger finger. You'll be pleased to know that our quick response and tactical thinking was all put to good use to catch both elderly Iraqi women who had climbed over some Constantia wire to steal some trash lumber from the back of this particular compound. We detained them and turned them into investigations where I'm sure they received a nice happy briefing on how it's not a good idea to break into US Army bases cause you could get shot or something of that nature. Sucks for them that they chose to break into the exact compound we were in conducting our inspections at the exact time we were there. Lucky them.
In some of the compounds there are contracted security personnel that are allowed to have some weapons for when they go outside the wire. This is true, but they are very limited. They're allowed perhaps an AK or an AR rifle and perhaps a handgun, all of which are documented with our armory and they are required to show us the paperwork that shows they're authorized to have such things. They are by no means allowed to have 7 hand grenades with duct tape instead of safety pins, 4 Light Anti-Tank Weapons (LAWs), an unregistered AR-15 with the serial # carved off, 6 cases of beer, and porn like we found in one rather frustrated guys room. This was pretty much the find of the day. Had he had some drugs as well, he could have made a clean sweep being in possession of every item listed under GO1. We gladly loaded up the truck with the items and since it was our last compound to check that day, we headed home.
On our way back, to top off the day, we received a dead guy call from one of the Army Living Areas and had to respond. Once there, myself and 2 other Airmen were tasked with guarding the truck. Initially, one would think it absurd the have three MPs guarding one truck in the middle of the Living Area of friendly forces, but I'll let you decide on how smart it is to leave a truck full of porn, beer, and explosives unattended in the middle of an area populated entirely by Army personnel. It was rather amusing to watch these Army Sergeants instantly contract ADD as soon as they reached visual range of the contents of the truck. "Afternoon Airman, what seems to be they status of the situ…a…holy $&!#, is that what I think it is!?". We successfully defended the truck, and the dead guy turned out to be an elderly sergeant who had a heart attack or something. No foul play involved.
In all actuality, we did the checks for two more days after that, but the first day, was really the only one with interesting finds worth mentioning. We confiscated a ton of really good stuff and made Garrison Command very happy, so it was a success, and I'm glad to be back on a normal schedule. I will, however, probably never be satisfied with DFAC coffee ever again hahaha.
