LSA Anaconda

At last - Dateline Balad Air Base, Iraq (otherwise known as Mortaritaville, Afiraqistan, LSA Anaconda, Joint Base Balad, etc., etc...)

I finally got here on Monday evening. We spent several days at the Sea Port of Debarkation on the Kuwaiti coast unloading and assembling our aircraft. The humidity there was astonishing. The daytime temps were around 117-122 and the heat index was around 135. At night, the temps moderated to around 100, but the humidity rose and again the index was over 125, but with no breeze. Those were by far the most brutal conditions I've ever experienced. The guys worked hard and managed to finish the job a day early with no casualties from either the heat or the work on the docks - Success! Sure took a lot of GatorAde and water....

The weather here in Balad seems quite nice by comparison. The humidity is almost nothing, so the high temps are much easier to take. It gets downright nice in the evenings here, except for the almost constant smog and odd dust storms. The dust is so fine that it hangs in the air for a day or two even after the smallest windy day. The visibility is bad enough that it's tough to fly. Even the small fixed wing Sherpa aircraft we use for light transport are grounded for at least part of most every day.

Life here is really not too bad. I have my own quarters. It's called a CHU (Containerized Housing Unit) - about 14 X 20, airconditioned, electricity, etc. The CHUs are organized in 'pods' of around 30 units surrounded by monolithic 12 foot tall concrete barrier walls. Each CHU is surrounded by another 6 foot wall of concrete barriers as well, so it's a real maze to find one's way around. Safe, though. They used to just pile sandbags around the things. It would take a remarkably unlucky mortar shot to hit your house. All the dining facility/PX type buildings are also surrounded by concrete barriers and have huge pole barn type roof structures built over them as well.

There's supposed to be cable TV, but mine's not working. That's OK because I haven't found a TV anyway and the only thing you can get is the 5 or so channels of AFN (Armed Forces Network).

It's about 200 meters to the dining facility and about 3/4 of a mile to work from there. The food is excellent - lots of fresh produce and fruit, lots of choices, all the ice cream you could ever want. We have a small PX on our side of the air base along with a really nice gym and rec facilities. They have a guitar jam on Tuesday nights, but I'm still waiting for mine to get shipped. There is a Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut near the PX - a Haji mart for local stuff (lots of haggling and so forth) and even a Starbucks-like outfit called Green Beans where I grab a double iced Cafe Mocha on my way to work. I work in an air conditioned office for the most part. I spend a couple hours each day visiting the aircraft maintenance guys in all our battalions, making sure they have all the resources they need and rounding up contractor support and so forth.

F-16 fighters take off in pairs every 20 minutes or so around the clock and there's always a lot of helicopter traffic.

Anyway, sorry to be so long between blogs. Write if you can. I always like to hear from y'all. Here's my mailing address:

CW4 David R. Morse
HSC, 834th ASB
TF 34
APO AE 09391

Goodies are always welcome in Soldier land, but don't feel too sorry for us. We can buy nearly anything non-alcoholic we need.

We had a special ceremony yesterday commemorating 9/11. We put on our 'combat patches' and took pictures of our group in front of the flagpoles on top of our hangar building. It kind of looks like a concrete igloo. It's called a Hardened Aircraft Shelter (HAS). Ours is actually two side by side covered with a single roof - thus the nickname, Double Has.

It's traditional that troops put the unit patch normally worn on the left sleeve on the right sleeve if in a combat zone. You wear that patch on the right side for the rest of your career - kind iof a special moment for some of us.

I don't know if "Stars and Stripes" has a good website, but that newspaper is the best one I've seen in years. Makes the Waterloo Courier look like the rag it's become. We all look forward to it every morning.

Gosh - double iced cafe mocha and a good newspaper for breakfast. Doesn't sound too bad, eh?

The internet service is OK. I am currently sending this from a free internet cafe near my office. I haven't found a good service to hook up my own computer to. There's supposed to be a wireless system, but I can only see a faint connection once in awhile.

There are several places to make phone calls. The system is called SpaWar Europe and calls are about 3-4 cents/minute. The connection is really good and there's no time delay that I can tell. Calling times are kind of odd as we're 8 hours ahead of Iowa time.

Well, time to go back to work. One more in the endless series of Groundhog days. Working about a 10-12 hour day, seven days a week, but I don't know what the heck we'd do if we had a day off anyway... Let's see, it's around 1400 local time, so that makes it 0600 Iowa time - Good Morning!

Later, Dave