Nice Package

I think I’ve been asked a half-dozen times in the last couple of weeks just what kinds of things we (I) need sent from home in care packages. Here is the response that I usually don’t have the presence of mind to properly relay:

I can’t speak for every soldier, but I can try to generalize where possible. This is a tricky endeavor, because the last time I made a specific request, I ended up with roughly The Boy’s weight in M&Ms Dark. Delicious though they may be, every man has his limits. My limit, it turns out, was about 11 pounds in a week. Then I had to start sharing. I have that slender figure to worry about.

Candy in general isn’t such a good idea because we tend to be up to our eyeballs in refined sugar here. Chocolate and anything that will melt at less than about 150°F is out until about October. It won’t be that hot outside the whole time, but the inside of a military shipping container is like a sheetmetal sauna.

What I like to have on hand are things that can serve as mini meals when the situation requires. There are a lot of guys living out on COPs that are living off of RipIt and tuna and MREs. Tuna packets are convenient but have gotten old. I like the bowl sized microwaveable soup, chili, etc. They work out pretty well. Anything you can do to encourage healthy eating is probably for the best. Unfortunately, for the most part, ‘healthy’ does not coincide with ‘ships well.’ Dried fruit might work there.

Unique items will be always appreciated. Someone opened up a jar of a local specialty salsa the other day. My face was on fire, but I probably ate two dozen chips worth of the stuff. It’s easy to get desperate for a little flavor. Along those lines, if you have a favorite sauce or seasoning – that would be the kind of thing that I’d keep in the TOC for shared use. You’d be amazed what we’ve tried on the Swiss Steak. Stupid glorified hamburger. “But’s oval shaped! Oval!” The wife sent a package that included dehydrated strawberries and had some Pop Secret. Those were good ideas.

Peanuts are a good snack, particularly the honey roasted varieties. I’m a sunflower seed guy, too, but I have a lot of the plain. If you can get your hands on the David Jalapeño Hot Salsa variety, those are a favorite I’ve never seen sold here.

I’ve told a lot of people that I like the Lipton or Nestea Iced Tea packets for putting into bottled water. That’s really my personal preference, but we go through so much water that, again, a little variety is nice. Gatorade makes some Propel packets that are pretty good, too.

Entertainment is the other need that a care package can help with. The Mom-In-Law sent a half dozen magazines that I’ve been jealously guarding so I can read them before they disappear. She sent the kind Joe won’t normally buy and tend to be in rare supply. Time, Newsweek, US News, the Economist. All good stuff. Don’t get carried away or we’ll be buried in magazines. I always like books, too. I think I’ve said that before. I’ve had people send some of their favorites that I’ve really enjoyed. I try to rotate non-fiction/professional development, literary stuff, and things just for fun, so almost anything would be welcome in that regard. I’ve actually acquired a lot of books off of shelves and piles, here. I justify my hoarding by telling myself I’m saving good books from an ignoble fate somewhere on down the line.

I’ve also been looking for music lately. Every time someone pulls out a guitar and starts playing around, I find myself really trying to absorb every note. It makes me want to buy one and learn to play, but that may be because I’ve seen it done by a few people here. I snagged a Jimmy Buffet CD out of a package sent by a good-natured hippie. (Seriously, you should have seen some of the stuff that was in there, product and magazine-wise. We’re typically not the “Elevated Consciousness” types.) The Jimmy Buffet, however, is now in the mix on my computer and I’m looking to expand the variety I cycle through. If you have favorite music of any type, especially in the no-cost-to-you digital format, I would certainly appreciate that. Good classical stuff, jazz perhaps. My personal preference, I have discovered, lies somewhere in the Punk/Alternative Rock genres. I’m such a rebel.

Other entertainment items will depend on who is receiving the package. Fun is generally few and far between here, so if you have a good idea, it’s certainly worth a shot. If you’re not sure whether our facilities, duties, or commanders will support what you have in mind, feel free to ask.


Things not to send:

Hygiene products, especially in bulk. I still have some things from packages I received early on in the deployment. We just don’t go through them fast enough and we can readily get all the basics. Exception: specialty stuff might be appropriate, depending on who you send the stuff to. The Wife sent some lotion/aftershave stuff because all the shaving was getting pretty harsh on the face. I’m still self conscious about actually smelling good, but it is good stuff nonetheless. I’ve never been much for pampering, but you have to take perks and comfort items where you can get them in this environment.

Movies. The local hajji shops carry every new release out there (and most not yet released) at a fraction of the cost (and sometimes quality) of official DVDs. Frankly, I’m surprised nobody has stepped in on this. At any rate, movies (and TV series) DVDs are all over the place, so it’s really not worth sending those here. Exception: classic stuff and favorites. Those aren’t carried at the local shops. (These shops, by the way, are local nationals contracted to come on the FOB and sell their stuff. We’re not out in the market browsing DVDs.)


There’s the rundown. I should have done that about eight months ago. Now were down to just a few months - roughly the length of an Air Force deployment. (The Air Force is like the rich kid next door that has everything better than you. But he won’t tell you that because he knows you can beat him up.)

And On A Lighter Note

(I feel bad for getting serious on everyone.)



Want to know how I know we have the most high-speed Army in the world?

We have silver plated socks.

Tragedy

Here at Falcon we get Mass whenever someone higher (*note: not that Higher) gets around to sending us a priest. Typically every couple of weeks. On Thursday. Supposedly there are half a dozen priests on Liberty. That’s about an eight second helicopter ride away from here. So close, so far.

This week I just happened to poke my head into the chapel about 20 minutes before an unannounced Mass was going to start. Makes it tough for people to attend when there’s no priest here regularly and no one announces when they do have one coming.

But that’s not the observation I wish to make. The priest this week came from Corps-Iraq, which is four or five levels above us, and he must be based out of the Green Zone. He asked for intentions for the Mass. I didn’t feel like speaking up at the time, but on the back of my mind was our sister battalion in another part of Baghdad that had six people killed when an IED detonated under a Bradley and flipped it over. I’m not an engineer or physicist, but I know it takes a massive explosion, and not your everyday HMMWV-disintegrating massive explosion, to flip a 33-ton vehicle. The kind of explosion that leaves a swimming-pool sized hole in the street.

The priest, who was clearly a caring and engaging man, upon not receiving any suggestions, decided to say the Mass for the folks up in the IZ because they had taken some mortars that day. Mortars hitting the IZ is an almost daily occurrence as far as I can tell, and there were no reports of any injuries that day. It occurred to me, and bothered me, that I couldn’t care less about “the folks in the IZ” when our soldiers were out in sector daily risking getting blown up.

He later interjected as the Mass went on that he just remembered that a couple of nieces of an Iraqi general had been hurt or killed in an IED blast and we could pray for them, too. Now, if I care nothing for forces and journalists and diplomats in the IZ and am more marveled than sorrowful when tragedy happens to other units out here, and sometimes barely feel anything when soldiers I don’t know from my battalion are killed, then I definitely don’t care about the distant relatives of an Iraqi general.

I used to think I had the kind of wide, encompassing heart that could feel pain for those whose lives had never even touched mine. I'm thinking of John Donne's “Any man’s death diminishes me...” but one can only allow ones self to be diminished so far. You cannot absorb the importance of the bells tolling for thee if the tolling is near continuous. At some point you must shut them out. You begin to develop degrees or layers of what suffering you will allow to concern you, and my circle of concern has been brought in so tight that even the death of my peers barely reaches me anymore. There is just too much tragedy to stop and care for it all – for even a fraction of it – and be able to carry on a normal life.

It helps, sad though it may be, that we have gotten so good at whisking the death away. Casualties are on their way to the CSH in a matter of moments. Deaths are seen only by those who are on site at the time and by the leaders who go to visit them before they are sent home. I have largely been spared those horrors, but have had conversations with the people who have had to evacuate bodies or collect remains, and those sights and smells and feelings won't go away for those people. The frequency of tragedy combined with typically not seeing the effects, makes it so much more difficult to respond with the appropriate sorrow when someone is killed.

What really concerns me is that we may be dulling the sense of tragedy of an entire generation of soldiers. (I want that impact to be broader, but such a small percentage of Americans do the fighting for the country that the impact on the future of the US will only be marginal.) Even more, though, we’re creating an entire nation of people so hardened to tragedy that they will not care for anyone’s life so long as that life was not immediately connected to their own. If there are only a dozen executed bodies found around Baghdad in a given 24 hour period, it’s a slow day. When 32 were killed at VT or 9 South Carolina firefighters die, it’s a national tragedy. Car bombs kill and wound hundreds every week. Four or five soldiers die every day here.

We’re operating in a region with a skewed sense of tragedy, and it’s no wonder that the Middle East is in the condition it is with the Arab mentality that cares only for its own, if that, and perpetuates cycles of greater and greater loss that brings that circle of concern ever tighter, caring less and less about the needs and lives of others. I feel infected by that attitude and see and hear it in my interactions with fellow soldiers. And that is worth mourning.

And Maybe the Comics

So here's how this morning has gone thus far:

I got myself up at 0530, on purpose. I consider that a small victory. I wander into the TOC to get myself updated.

The Latest on CNN.

Lebanon: Shit

Gaza: Shit

Iraq: Double shit

The US, immigration, education: you get the idea

Over the radio: "looks like the explosion was in the direction of the mosque"

None of this bodes well and my mood sours. It might be one of those days. Those exciting days, but the bad kind of exciting. I turn to the Star Trib for some uplifting local headlines.

Minnesota economy: slowing

Minnesota unemployment (of particular concern to me): rising

Minnesota education: declining

Minnesota politics: pretty much on par with national politics, which is one of the things that makes me Angry XO


At this point I'm heavily debating going back to bed and, upon waking, making Fantasy Baseball the only news I bother to check.

Minnesotaphile

It has been my observation that Minnesotans are uniquely predisposed to an unnatural bias for all things native to their beloved state and are the only people who will point out these things on a regular basis for others' benefit.

10,000 lakes? Try over 12,000.
Going to Target? Another swell Minnesota company.
Thomas Friedman? Best educational system in the nation? Why, those are ours, too!
I see you're enjoying Spam. Made in Austin, a fine Minnesota city. I played in a tournament or two there; the whole town smells of pork byproduct, but, you know, in a good way.

Maybe it's just me. And Laurel. (Hi, Laurel)

Having hit the four year mark in my Army career has only exacerbated this effect.

But more to the point. We're pretty much churning out concrete barriers here as fast as you can make them. The most lucrative industry in Iraq right now has to be for Iraqis who can make and transport large concrete objects. (Following a close second is probably for the various third country nationals who sew up the mountains of ACU trousers with holes in the crotch.)

Back in the day all we had were Jersey barriers, Texas barriers, and Alaska barriers, all named according to their relative size. Now they have T-walls, Scud Bunkers, Oklahomas, Virginias, Colorados, Idahoes, you name it.

I pointed out to the guys in the TOC, who were most likely not listening anyway, that there were no Minnesota barriers on the current menu. If there were, though, they wouldn't necessarily be the biggest or the tallest or the widest.

They'd just posses a superior moral character.