On getting mortared, or The Surreal Life

I haven't written in a bit so I figure I ought to make a few notes.

I'll start by explaining the title:
We were sitting in the clinic going about our business as usual, when I heard a small boom, I asked chris what it was, but he was on the phone with the Houston IT office and didn't hear it. A few seconds later (maybe five), a second boom- this one much louder. I stick my head out the door as everyone else is doing the same thing. We all realize that the Army hasn't notified us that they were going to be making noise and that this is Incoming not Outgoing. The army likes to fire off their Paladins every so often as a show of force and to keep in practice, but they always tell us when they are going to do so.

I yell at Chris that we've got incoming fire, he tells the woman on the phone he's got to go (she asked "What was that?" when the second round went off), we grab out body armor and take off to the bunkers. Our body armor weighs around forty pounds and we're putting it on as we run, so it had to look comical. We sprint to the bunkers and flop down onthe wooden benches. It's only a short dash, but in the space of a minute or so, you've recognized that you are in immediate danger, you've managed to strap this heavy vest on, and sprinted in the 125 degree weather. At this point, no other incoming is heard and we start the waiting game. Will they or won't they?

The Army gets to play at this point too. They track incoming rounds, relay the info to the Paladins, and the Paladins in turn launch a round back to the origin point of the incoming fire- they do this in VERY short order. Our rounds always go boom, unlike the Iraqi rounds which are duds about 25-50% of the time. Unfortunately, the insurgents (most of whom don't seem to be Iraqis but rather other "great satan" hatin' muslims), as slow as they can seem to be, have figured this out. They've taken to putting bags of ice on the mortars to act as a timed delay. If you need me to explain this, you're as slow as they are, but here goes- put the ice under the mortar round and leave. The ice melts, the mortar falls down the tube and launches itself; even in the 100+ weather, the bad guy has a chance to run away like a cowardly little wanker.

So now we've had three booms, two for their side and one for ours. Remember here that ours are unbelievably accurate and they always go boom. We wait.........
Nothing happens while we go about our bunker counts making sure that everyone in the camp is accounted for. Six of us sit in the bunker smoking cigarettes (I don't smoke and really can't stand the smell of tobacco) and making jokes. One of the guys asks if we want a beer. "Sure" "Of course" So the next thing you know, we're sitting there drinking a cold beer. Of course all of the beer in Iraq is nonalcoholic, but it's the priciple of the thing. After about an hour of this waiting, this EOD sargeant comes by to tell us that they are going to be detonating an unexploded HE (high explosive) round in five minutes. A third round? Didn't hear that one come in. Seems it buried itself about five feet in the hard packed ground. Sure enough, in about five minutes we hear a second boom. I can't give you a layout or anything, but suffice to say it was quite loud.

All clear, all clear, all clear and it's back to work. We plan to grab dinner and then take a picture of the crater, but the workers have the thing filled in and cleaned up before we get done eating. Bummer, I wanted a picture for my album.

In other news, we've been getting some overtime as we had to stay up to treat a "Fever of Unknown Origin". We suspect malaria as many of his signs fit, but we have no way of doing blood work here. It doesn't get better for three days and so Chris takes him by convoy to our local Combat Surgical Hospital. It's about a twenty mile ride north to Camp Spiecher. All goes well and the convoy returns without incedent. Last night as we were closing up shop for the night, another guy comes in complaining of kidney stones. 60mg of Toradol and some fluids later he finally pops out a small stone- it wasn't really small if you consider it's origins. He's doing fine now.

Today, I went to C1 to retrieve our earlier patient becaus ehe is doing better and hasn't spiked a fever for them. Luckily, this convoy goes off without a hitch too. I carry a trauma bag with me just in case and everybody knows which vehicle the medic is in. If anything happens, we accelerate out of the area and then I treat the wounded. I hope I never have to.

C1's PX is like a super WalMart compared to ours. They have more on one aisle then we have in our whole store. That's not saying much because their's sucks too. I look for Kool-Aid, but they're out, I look for Gatorade, but they're out; they don't have any alarm clocks, CD-RWs, Pilot Gel pens, memory sticks, etc. I settle for a six pack of nonalcoholic St Pauli Girl, a six pack of nonalcoholic Clausthaler (never heard of it before), another American flag (I'll tell you about that in a second), some CD-Rs, a Cycle World magazine (take what you can get right?), a cold Twix bar (which I forget and leave in the bag- it's now chilling again in my fridge as a lump), two souvineer patches, and some Diet Coke for Chris.

What a day. I'm tired and going to bed.