A Day In The Life........

A friend of mine suggested I do a day in the life blog so here it is. Basically a day here is just like a day back home except that I am in Iraq and in the Army.

I start my day around 0700 when I wake up and do all my morning things such as getting my uniform on. I have to walk about 150 feet to use the bathroom and brush my teeth and shave. We have running water in the latrine trailer and in the shower trailer but it is non-potable which means you cannot drink it or use it for brushing your teeth. You have to use bottled water to brush your teeth which is annoying. There are pallets of 2 liter plastic water bottles between the shower trailer and the latrine so it is not too much of a pain in the ass but I look forward to the day that I can go to a sink and grab a glass of water. Once I am all ready I make sure I have my ID, dog tags and my rifle and head off to chow. You have to have your ID and rifle w/a 30rd magazine with you at all times even when you are wearing your Pt's ( Physical training uniform=shorts, t-shirt and running shoes ). It was an adjustment at first but after almost 4 months of doing it I feel naked without my rifle. Some people have had a hard time with it and have actually left their rifles in places they should not have. The result of that is you get to have your rifle tied to you for 30 days, even when you are showering. We have one guy that has left his rifle 3 separate times, I think he will be spending the whole deployment with his rifle tied to him.

The chow hall, gym and PX are all clustered together and they are about half a mile away from our SHU. It is not a bad arrangement but it is made bad by some of the stupid rules the host unit here has imposed. The host unit is the main active duty unit that is stationed on whatever FOB you happen to be stationed at. In our case it is the 6/9 cavalry from Texas. Basically the rules that I am referring to make that 1/2 mile walk a frequent occurrence during the day. It goes like this, you can wear your pt uniform into the chow hall and into the gym but not into the PX. Although you cannot go into the chow hall in your Pt's when they are sweaty so that means you cannot go and work out then go and eat. If you want to work out before you eat you have to go back to your SHU and change. Why not bring an extra shirt with you to the gym you might ask, because you cannot carry clothes into the chow hall. If you are in your uniform you can use the PX , the gym and go to the chow hall. But you cannot go to the PX then to the chow hall because you also can not carry any type of bag into the chow hall. This all may not seem too bad but when you are on a tight schedule and you want to go to the gym and you need something from the PX and you want to eat it gets pretty annoying. Another rule that we have here that we are all finding rather comical is that when you are wearing your PT uniform at anytime or your uniform after 1800 you have to wear a fluorescent glow in the dark safety belt. Not like we are in a combat zone or anyting, we refer to it as the sniper belt, meaning that it makes us all glowing targets. Though I will admit that it is really not that bad here as far as the threat level here on base but when I thought of coming to Iraq to fight in the war I did not think I would be wearing a glowing belt at night.

After a modest breakfast of watermelon and french toast sticks :) I walk over to the local bus stop. The base here is so huge that they have these little buses that run every 15 minutes 24 hours a day.The buses are driven by KBR employees, we call the buses scooby buses, I don't know why. Anyways there are three different routes that pretty much encompass the whole base. There is the red line, the green line and the blue line. So I jump on my bus and head off to work which starts at 0900.

Basically I am working here as an assistant to the supply sergeant, it is pretty damn boring. The only respite I get from this is when we go on re-supply missions for the teams. Then I get to roll out as the gunner on my MRAP, more on that another time. My day consists of sitting around waiting to do something. Our "office " is inside an old Iraq Army bunker. These bunkers are squat, 1 story, thick concrete shelters. There are 4 big rooms inside and in each room we have built wood walls to create separate offices. My job pretty much is comprised of doing everything that the supply sergeant does not want to do. He is a good guy so it not like he is screwing me or anything. But when it comes to running outside to retrieve stuff from the connexes when someone needs something it is I that does the running. Our connexes are about 200 feet away in the motor pool ( Motor pool= place we park all our trucks) area of our shop. Not very exciting at all, not exactly what I thought I would be doing when I volunteered to come here. Anyways I work from 0900 to 1200 then I take the bus to the gym and lift weights for 45 minutes then stroll over to the chow hall and grab a light lunch then back to the bunker. After lunch I work from 1330 to 1700,1800 ish. Although lately my buddies and I have been forming a coup and escaping at 1630 to go either to the gym to run on the treadmills or go for ruck marches outside.Sometimes if there is something going on we have to work extended hours which has been the case here lately but that will be changing in a week or so.

After evening PT we change our PT shirts and go grab dinner chow then come back to the SHU and hang out. I will usually check my e-mails and all that sort of thing then I either spend some time working on my Army correspondence courses or watching movies on my computer. Army correspondence courses are Army skill classes you can take online that equal out to promotion points for when you are trying to get your sergeant stripes. Which hopefully is something that I will be getting in the not too distant future. Army rank in the National Guard and in the Army is awarded through a point system for the ranks of E-5 and above. So when you are competing with all the E-4's in the state of Michigan for just a few sergeant slots it helps to have as many points as possible. I actually already have quite a few due to all the schools I have been to and with my Desert Storm experience.

So that pretty much explains a typical day for me here at COS Sykes, it really is not that exciting. Although we went on our first re-supply mission the other day and I have to admit it got the old heart racing but more on that in a different blog post.