Christmas in Kuwait... not many married couples can say they spent their first Christmas together in Kuwait, in a war zone! Oh well, Taryn and I can. Man, am I sore! Yesterday we had PT and had to do lunges. Those never bothered me before, but now my butt and legs are sore! Along with everyone else. It looks like 75% of us are walking a little funny. This morning my squad opened Christmas presents that we bought for each other doing the whole "Secret Santa" gift exchange idea. Which was pretty nice. Our tent has a Christmas tree with lights that's 3 ft. tall and lights outside on the tent. Pretty. Taryn and I also exchanged gifts. She got me 2 DVDs and a card. I got her one DVD and no card. But the store here didn't sell a single wife Christmas card! I was shocked. Last night Taryn and I just hung out and played air hockey and foosball. The other day we had IED training. They told us they found over 10,000 IED's this year aolone! THey're making them out of everything. From pop cans to stkicking them in dead animals, posters of Sadam, car curbs.... pretty much anything! They're also starting to run wires across roads so that they will decapitate the gunner up in the terret of the hummer. So we built... not me personall, but the troops are building poles that stick up on the front bumper to break the wire before it gets the gunner. Well the Iraqis caught on to that so now they're connecting those wires to IED's under bridges! So when the pole snaps the wire the IED blows up and kills the gunner. So now when we go under bridges... the gunner goes inside until they clear the bridge. The instructor also told a story about when they were in a convoy, Iraqis ran out with an RPG so they whot him. His buddy came running up, picked up the RPG to shoot the soldiers, so we shot him. Well, a third one came and tried the same damn thing as the other two that he just saw get killed for, so they killed him, too. IDIOTS! Well I can't say they're idiots 'cause they are pretty smart when it comes to the IED's and stuff. I guess when they plant them they act like their car broke down, they get out and pop the hood and look around for a place to bury it. At night, one guy goes out, digs the hole and leaves. A few hours later, the next guy comes and drops it in the hole. A few hours later, the next guy covers the hole and leaves. Sneaky bastards. It's so hard to tell when a car has a bomb in it though 'cause there's 5,000 cars parked on the side of the road every mile. So there's a little something I learned. Well, tomorrow we have PT again so I'm gonna lay down and watch a DVD.
Love you guys!
John Ward
#27
Yesterday morning we flew into Kuwait and it was just how I had imagined. A whole lot of land with nothing around it. Sand and rock. That's everything that makes this "beautiful" waterless beach. We had to take about a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to the base from the airport and they needed 2 people on each bus to be "shooters" in case our convoy got attacked so I volunteered for that. The only thing I did was get 30 5.56 NATO rounds for my M-4 and sit at the front of the bus. The busses all had curtains pulled closed over the windows and we had a Kuwait police escort for the majority of the trip... which to me defeated the whole purpose of the window curtains cause any smart terrorist should know that someone important is in that bus if it's getting escorted. Something I saw that I thought was funny was on the way to the base there was a normal street sign, not a homemade one, but a real one that said, "Kuwait Camel Racing Club" and it had an arrow. I just kind of lauged to myself. So today was a typical military day. We all fell out in formation to go test fire our weapons to make sure they were all functional. We stand outside in formation for about 45 minutes and then they tell us to go back in our tents until they can get our transportation. So we go back to our tents until 1045 and fall back out. Waited around again for about 20 minutes until they tell us to just go eat lunch. So we march over to the chow hall, eat, and get back into formation, wait around again for about 30 minutes. Then they tell us to go back into the tents and wait and that we're on "stand-by" which means pretty much wait for the word to go. We sit in the tents for about ten minutes which was nice because it was a chance to take our gear off. Kevlar helmet, 50 pound flak vest, and tack vest. So they call us back out and we get back into formation. This stime we get on the busses and hummers and drive about an hour out to the range. Why they picked this certain land one hour away from base, I don't know. But we get off the bus and there's about 15 camels just standing there. Eventually, the Arab guy in the full typical Arab atire walks behind the camels with the stick. He has the long dark clothes almost like a dress on with with the scarf covering his face. Keep in mind, there is absolutely nothing around. So this camel herder or whatever he is, is just walking with these camels and I have no idea where he could have came from. It was kind of weird to me. One of the sergeants was saying that they just set up camp over night wherever they stop and continue on the next day. To me, the camel is a pointless animal, the Arab guy has no home and is going to probably trade the camels for something. The dude has nothing but camels. So what's the point of the guys life? He has NOTHING but camels. So get 5 rounds, shoot them, and then get back on the busses and go back to base. A long hassle just to go shoot 5 rounds out of my M-4. Now my gun is dirty and have to clean that tomorrow. The best part of it all is that, when we actually get to to where our mission is, all of our weapons are going to be put in storage. So all of that hassle for nothing. Ok, that's about all for 20 December and 21 December. Oh, I forgot to mention another sign that I saw on the way to the base. It said, "God Bless US Troops." So to all of the tree huggers who think we don't belong here... I guess the people on the suffering end of the situation think differently.
Love you guys,
John Jr.
#27
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