Below is the third letter home from J, my best friend and college roommate who is being deployed to Iraq soon as part of the National Guard. In J's last letter, her medical unit (which is going to be attached to a military police unit in Baghdad) was training at a U.S. base where soldiers learn some Arabic, undergo combat training and simulate the conditions of a base in Iraq.
In this letter, J describes the freedom of taking off her body armor, Humvee rollover training, and lessons ranging from clearing booby-trapped buildings to working with an Arabic translator. She ends by expressing the thrill and anxiety over her impending first deployment. There is very little editing; only small changes for curse words or identifying details. Enjoy.
Ch 3-The Real Sh--'s Almost Here (3/23/08)
Howdy All! Okay, I know its been a long time since ive written last (or at least it feels like it). These last few weeks have really flown by. I actually have some good news to report. The next day after I wrote you last, they changed the rules on the wearing of the gear. We no longer had to wear it on the FOB, just when we went out for training!! You wouldn’t believe what a morale booster that was. People were walking around, almost flying, with smiles from ear to ear. You would have thought they had been issued a six pack at the chow!!
Then we were originally told we would be moving into the buildings around mar23rd, that got moved up to mar17th, which then got moved up to mar 11th!!! So yes, no more porta potties. No more having to wake up and get dressed up just to go to the bathroom. No more walking a while to get to a shower. Its all 10 ft. away and inside. No more freezing your butt off in the tents while a cool breeze brushed against your face every time the wind picked up!! What happened is that there were too many units waiting to be trained and needing to get out to the FOB, so they had to shuffle some other units into town sooner.
All the days have been running together since I last wrote so its kind of hard for me to recall what we all learned this time. I know we had rollover training which was pretty cool. They put 5 people in a HummV (2 in front, 2 in back, and a gunner sticking out of the top), we got all strapped in, and then they slowly turned us upside down on a rollover simulator. Of course a real rollover will never be that calm, but it really gave you an idea of how extremely discombobulated you arefor a moment trying to figure out where everything is while you are upside down.
Now, this is how its supposed to work. When you start rolling over, everyone shouts “Rollover”, the 2 people in the back are supposed to unstrap the gunner and pull him down and into the vehicle so he doesn’t get crushed when you roll over. Then while hanging upside down you open up your door first, put your hand above your head on the ceiling (to brace yourself from crashing so hard when you undo your seatbelt) and then you release your seatbelt. Grab your weapons, help anyone that needs it, and then get out. It’s a little easier for short people because we can contort our bodies better. It’s the over 6ft men that really have a tough time. You don’t realize how disoriented you are and this is all in slow motion! Theres no way things would run that smoothly if it happened for real, but they just want to give you a little feel for it so you are not totally lost if it happens to you.
We trained for about 5 days on how to meet the Iraqi Police chiefs we will be working with and how to use a translator for this purpose. We also practiced meeting Sheiks (tribal chiefs that control a certain district, per se) and how to talk and work with them through a translator. They also covered some of the things we will be doing at the Iraqi police stations in order to help them get up and running on their own.
We did about 5 days of learning to clear out buildings, look for IEDs, booby traps, and just more training on what steps to take if we get hit while doing patrols on foot and in vehicles. We had a few days of catch up training for those who missed and a few days to just start packing and relax a little. Then for about 5 days they just let us do missions to see how we handled them and reacted to them. Yesterday we started our testing out phase. We will be running 24hr operations (people of different shifts) with everyone doing there jobs on how we will pretty much do them overseas. They combine everything we have learned so far, attack us, and grade us. If they don’t think we are ready, we stay and train and don’t go over until we pass. However, up to this point they have been saying that we are the best unit to have come through Ft Dix, so I don’t think we should have any problems passing.
We get done with testing out on mar 25, turn in and clean everything on the 26th, and then as soon as we are done we that we are set free and ready to go home on the 27-31st. Soon after that (cant tell you official date, cuz then I’d have to kill you) we head over. I wont be able to contact anyone for awhile. I don’t exactly know how long, but I will as soon as I can.
Love you all. I cant wait to go home and hold my baby (babies to include hubby) !!
Love ,
J
