The Beginning of the Beige Phase

Let me apologize to all for the delay in my blog. I arrived here on the night of May 11 at about 2000. My OIC and the Chief I am replacing brought me by work to introduce myself to the group. Afterward we had dinner at the Galley and dropped off my bags. I decided that since I was working night shift anyway that I might as well get to it. So, I started working that night, and I haven’t slowed down since.

The base here is like nothing I have ever experienced. With my career being mostly on ships and deployed squadrons, there has never been a time that I have been stationed on an active operating base. I must say that the difference is extraordinary. Because of the fact that all of my combat time has been at sea on Aircraft Carriers, I have never seen the ground aspect of armed conflict. It would be a gross understatement to say that the differences are many. Everything here is blast protected. Every building all the way down to the latrines and showers is protected behind cement T-wall. It seems, at times, that we are constantly driving around in a huge cement mouse maze. The only way to tell where you are is to read the painted signs and emblems on the outside of the particular T-wall you are passing by. The bottom line here is protection, but in reaching the state of protection that you need the result ends up creating the maze mentioned above. Actually, it’s truer than you think. We have to learn our way around base inside the maze. We have to know which turns to make to arrive at award stations. If you don’t learn those reward stations, you don’t get food, BX privileges, money or medical care. Ah, irony. It’s a funny thing.

Another primitive point about the camp is the roads. The primary purpose for this camp is to provide convoys to run supplies. Along with that comes the heavy trucks and armored vehicles to support the convoy and to provide it protection as it travels north and south. Combine the weight of said trucks over a period of time, and you can see that the surface of a road wouldn’t last long. Take that abuse and add the local soil, and you get a really bad outcome. The soil here is very thick hard pack clay. It makes great building material. The soil has three states. Baked hard clay, greasy mud that is slicker than ice, and dust. When the trucks roll into base after a rain, the mud that is on their tires comes off in clumps that soon get packed into the road. The sun then dries the clods so that it creates a driving surface similar to a large gravel road. Once dried on the road the dried clods get pummeled by the same trucks that put them there and they begin to crush into a very fine dust, and it doesn’t take much of a breeze to make it billow into clouds. It is this way everywhere in this region and the dust storms here are infamous. I remember experiencing one in the middle of the Persian Gulf while I was on board the Kitty Hawk. Even 300 miles away and at sea, our visibility was less than 100 feet. Now I know why. Every time a storm comes up, the first thing to go is the visibility because the lead winds of the front stir bring the dust up into the air in mass. So, everything here is constantly dust covered which makes for a completely monotone environment. I stated before that the area in Qatar was colorless. I think that may have been incorrect. Everything has color; beige. From the sky above you to the ground you walk on. Beige. Everywhere. Even the scrub plants around here have obtained the color as if some strange science experiment has caused all of the chlorophyll to turn beige. I think that may be the term I use to describe this deployment. It’s my beige phase.