Be careful what you wish for......

I had said something about missing trees and rivers, etc. Well This week I got to do some traveling- I got sent to Baquba to help out. They have three medics here normally, but one had to take emergency leave and one had R&R scheduled. This is an active area and they always want to have two medics at every site so I got voted to go.

I left my base on Tuesday for C-1. The plan was to catch a convoy on Wednesday to C-3, but as with so many things involving the military, it was hurry up and wait. We left Friday. It's about a three hour ride through Indian country. I got to ride in an armored Humvee, but the convoy commander and his driver were like Laurel and Hardy- they argued about everything along the way and were just generally stupid. The driver made one wrong turn because he hadn't been paying attention at the abbreviated briefing (which differed from the ride up where they apparently made every wrong turn they could including going through town twice). The gunner sat up top taking photos. (Note here- normally civilians are not allowed to ride in vehicles with crew served weapons as it negates your "noncombatant" status. Given the volatility of the area, and the fact that the insurgents couldn't care less about who you are, we take the safest ride we can.) We had one Humvee break down and it had to be towed.

The ride down was interesting though, I got to see a lot more of Iraq than I previously had. I got to see more of the Tigres River and irrigation ditches and more of the roadside stands. We passed a lot of roadside stores- kind of an Iraqi strip mall. I got to see lots of houses and service stations as well as a few power relay stations. Small children waved, adults just watched us pass.

Well I'm here now. It's a decent camp, but not mine.

Time to do some work........