Greetings from Camp Virginia, Kuwait-  
29 JUN 07
It has been a grueling and seemingly endless five months of training and preparation. From South Carolina to Kentucky, to Mississippi and beyond, I have finally said my farewells to the U-S-of-A and embarked on this the journey to end all journeys.  Anxious, nervous, and scared as I may be, one thing that makes me instantly happier is the fact that I have finally begun the process of getting it over with.
 
The here and now is 11:33pm, June the 29th 2007 and I am writing from the edge of my cot, nestled tightly amongst others, and within the confines of an Army green G.P. Medium tent somewhere in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert.  We arrived here in Kuwait just over a week ago, our flight took us from Mississippi to Maine, from Maine to Germany, and from Germany to a small airport just outside of Kuwait City.  As was to be expected, we nearly melted to death inside an enormous airplane hanger while we waited anxiously for our
bird to arrive.  I was the Sergeant in charge of the dreaded “Baggage Detail” and was responsible for loading over 2,000 duffels, ruck sacks, and tuff boxes – our final weight was something like ridiculous like 65,523 lbs. The weapon systems alone were so heavy that we had to load and unload the plane’s baggage compartments exactly evenly so that the belly of the aircraft wouldn’t buckle underneath the uneven pressures.  We only had one hand get caught in the conveyer belt (Privates will be Privates) and for the most part, only 9 out of 10 of us walked
away with serious lower back injuries.  Boarding the plane was pretty similar to war movies like “Jarhead” in which most guys’ goal for the 20 hour flight revolves around getting a phone number from one of the cruelly placed yet beautiful flight attendants.  What they intended to do with Elga’s digits while they were away at war for a year plus is beyond me but then again, the world is always in need of more idealistic thinkers, right? The most amusing part of the whole trip for me was the
 
The most amusing part of the whole trip for me was the fact that this was the one airplane in the world which only allows you to board if you DO have a weapons.  As a matter of fact, most all of us carried on a heavy automatic machine gun, an M-4 rifle, a 9mm pistol, a minimum of two fixed blade knives, and even a pair of brass knuckles to boot. This was
all very cool until it came time to go sleepy and the already jam-packed isles and seats became a gauntlet of hard steel and sharp corners.  Once grounded in Kuwait completed with Sgt Hausmann’s baggage detail, we piled on charter buses and sped off quickly into the night.  I think this was the first time the war became “real” to a lot of the guys because as soon as we left the airport, the first two guys in each bus were given a magazine of live ammo and assigned as the “Designated Shooters.” 

Should we find ourselves in a sticky situation en route to our base I suppose the rest of us “Non-Designated Shooters” would be expected to either pretend to have ammos or just be reduced to using our rifles as misshapen clubs.  Either way, the first few hours in the Middle East was an experience I wont soon forget; scarier still is the fact that this was merely the tip of the iceberg. 

Three hours later and as soon as we lost the cover of night, we pulled into Camp Buering as this was to be our home for the next four days.  Briefing upon PowerPoint upon informational video later, we emerged from the in-processing tent ready for hibernation.  Our digs at this transitional FOB (Forward Operating Base) were nothing more than a 300 ft.  

  
long tent that resemble a large tube that was half way buried under ground. These tents “supposedly” accommodate 100 soldiers and even though we were only 80 or so big, I still got lucky enough to have to sleep in the middle with all the bags. Better still is the blow-back effect the lovely Kuwaiti desert provides us in which the simple opening of either of the tent’s two doors results in a massive rush of hot air being sucked into the tent and melting upon all those inside of it.  And although there are
 

countless other annoying and down right torturous aspects associated with this style of living, most of us are so tired day in and day out that there is actually very little that can come between a soldier and his sleep.

The next four days were

filled with more briefings to include First Aid, Acclimatization, Arab Cultural Awareness, Road Side Bomb Familiarization, Telecommunications, etc, etc. The amenities at Camp Buering are actually quite nice, a pleasant surprise to say the least. I'm sure all the wannabe hardcore soldiers would not appreciate my telling you this, but most of the FOBs in Kuwait have some combination of Taco Bell, KFC,  

McDonalds, Baskin 31, Panda Express, and my personal least favorite ....Starbucks. As far as military-run facilities goes, we have a PX/BX (aka General Store), Laundry Services, a Barber Shop, Uniform and Alterations, Phone/Internet Tents, and even a Beauty/Nail Salon for the females. No comment on that one.

Our last day in deep Kuwait was spent on a weapons range in an even more remote area of the desert. One of the first things anyone will notice once they step into a combat zone is the complete abandonment of conventional military training procedures. In a word, that means that instead of strictly controlled firing range where safety and organization are paramount, here in the middle of no-man's-land we pretty much just grab as much ammo as we can hold and fire it off into the endless desert oblivion. More over, I think the real training value from an event like comes later in the day when it is time to clean weapons.

 
Try to imagine covering yourself in motor oil, working up a sweat, and then rolling around in the sand; this should give you a good idea of what it is like to try and clean up after enduring the better part of the afternoon in a sand storm. Once officially checked-in for operations in Iraq, we packed up and headed north to the FOB we will primarily based out of.  Camp Virginia seems to be roughly the same sized as Camp Buering but then again, it is really impossible to grasp the vastnesses of these places.  For the most part you quickly locate the bare essentials (chow hall, PX, phones) and then just make a little Hansel and Grettle trail back to the tent you are sleeping in.
 

I say this because every tent, every court yard, every storage facility, and every parking lot, looks exactly, one hundred percent, the same.  Kind of funny to watch people wonder around aimlessly at night, that is if a good spades game hasn’t kicked off yet.

The unit we are replacing here at Camp Virginia is coincidentally from....you guessed it, Wisconsin.  I do get a good amount of heckling for being cosmically “reunited with my cheese brethren” and to be honest, it does feel kind of nice to be around the Midwestern hospitality I have come to miss over the years.  Right now we are in the middle of what’s known as “Left-Seat-Right-Seat Rides”

and basically consists of the Wisconsin National Guardsmen systematically taking us out on the road with them one person at a time. Talking with our counterparts and trainers, we have gotten some really good clarity as to what our mission will be for the next 353 days and counting.

Essentially, we are an armored escort for anybody who needs to get in and/or out of Iraq.  The missions are broken down into long runs, which go as far north as Mosul lasting over 20 days long, and short runs which are quick overnight trips to the bases just south of Baghdad. From the “glass is half full” mindset, it’s pretty clear that we are going to be seeing literally the entire country side.  The filmmaker side of me thinks that this will be a perfect way to get a firm grasp of the bigger picture here in Iraq. The greatest threat for these missions has been pretty consistent, IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (i.e. roadside bombs).  Fortunately for us, most insurgents are amateur at best when it comes to buildings and emplacing these roadside bombs and more often than not, they come as more of an annoyance rather than catastrophic killers. Speaking of film, I’m happy to report that my camera has

been seeing and experiencing everything we have done since we left the states.  I came upon a bit of luck just before I returned from pre-deployment leave and found soldier friendly organization to outfit me with over $6,000 worth of professional digital video equipment.  Everything from a $5,000 High-Def camera, professional grade wireless mics, studio quality lights, and helmet mountable mini cams, you name it, I got it.  We have already set up a controlled studio-like environment in the back of my barracks for conducting interviews and after-action testimonials.  All told, there is no question that the end result will promise to be something unique, revealing, and important in the quest to tell the tale of one of the nation’s most controversial wars.

Well, it seems as my precious free time is coming to a close for today.  I will be going out on my first mission at 2am tomorrow morning so best I get some shuteye while I still have the chance.  My nerves have yet to really manifest themselves in terms of preparing go out in sector for the first time yet, something tells me that will all change as soon as we cross the border.  Giddy Up!

Sgt Haus....out

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