Duh, its about oil

Day 55 24JAN2010:
Looking in front of me and to my right I see seven people sitting near me. Their faces are dimly lit by a green light. Four of them are in full battle rattle. Three of them I consider more and more part of my family every day. The last in full battle is on his way to the same stop as us but I do not know him. The other two are civilians wearing old school flak jackets and odd looking Kevlars and holding what I can only imagine are interesting stories. Are they aid workers, contractors, reporters? I have no idea who they are and it’s too damn loud to ask them and really too late in the day to care. We are all riding in the back of a UH-60 “Black Hawk” helicopter. The eight of us in the rear and a few in the front are going to be flying around northern Iraq for the next few hours as we head to our destinations. It is dark, noisy and I have a splitting headache but I am ecstatic to be leaving our FOB…even if it is only for about 30 hours.
Looking to my left I see a nighttime landscape of Iraq. We pass over larger cities, burning oil wells and what are probably smaller villages. When passing over parts of the county with no lights shining at us the plastic window of the Blackhawk reflects my own image back at me. I’m wearing my ACH (helmet), eye pro (pro = protection), ear pro, IOTV (vest); full battle rattle. I don’t see myself in this getup often and I definitely have one of those “how did I get here” moments. I’m a physical therapist from Alaska flying through the sky in Iraq near the end of a war to go visit some Soldiers in Kurdistan. How did I get here? After a few minutes of self reflection I come back to the now and realize a few things. One, I’m cold. I put on my gloves. Two, my toes are numb. I start moving them. Three, one of the boys is going numb. It’s the one on the left. Some people get sciatica, I get this. It started in grad school from sitting on my wallet for hours studying. I now realize that I’m sitting on a very hard surface, with 40 pounds of gear on my back and my rucksack in my lap. It’s time to shift the weight to the right side and start doing some butt squeezes. I need some circulation to get back to some important nerves.
We land in Kurdistan about 3 hours after leaving FOB Warrior. It’s much colder up here and we have landed on the outskirts of a large city. The lights of the city are bright and there seems to be almost a cityscape with high rise buildings and all. When we get off the bird we are directed to the edge of a sandy hill. Where we are standing it is dark, you can barely make out the two helicopters 200 feet in front of us. It is loud and dark and I realize that there is no one here to greet us. At this instant a NTV (non tactical vehicle = SUV) comes screaming over the hill with its high beams on and comes to a sliding stop right in front of us. As the passengers run out of the vehicle the birds take off. The guys in the car stand in the head lights and start waving the birds back down. They get lucky and are seen; the helicopters circle back around and pick them up. Okay, our ride is here. I guess we were a little early. Another NTV pulls up and we get rides back to the little post we will stay at. I ride alone with some guy from West Virginia who tells me this (Kurdistan) is the safest place on Earth right now. He says he rides his bike for miles in these hills by himself without telling anyone. Pretty sure I won’t get the opportunity.
There are four of us in my party and we all get our own CHU’s. My mattress is comfortable and unlike the one I sleep at back at Warrior, it appears no one was raped or murdered on this one. Score. We decide that we will meet up at 0800 at the DFAC to decide what we will do for the day. I sleep well and wake up to see that I am surrounded by rolling hills that remind me of where Amber is from near Boise, ID. In the distance is an astonishingly modern(ish) looking city with larger mountains behind it. We (US Army) share this post with the Peshmerga; Kurdistan’s Army. I can see them training. They look organized. I get showered up and dressed in the shower trailer. A sign reads “Stop throwing piss in the garbage!” I had noticed a lot of overweight Soldier’s here but I guess the laziness has been taken to new heights here. Really? You piss in a bottle instead of walking your fat butt to the restroom? Really? In the DFAC we eat breakfast and meet up with the one medic who is up here. He tells us that other than one guy with a sprained ankle there is no one else for any of us to see. At this post we have about 40 Soldiers with nothing really to do but guard the gates and monitor who is coming and going. He tells us that with nothing for anyone to try to get out of, amazingly no one is getting injured or sick.
This mission was set up initially to get our Platoon SGT up here to check on one of our medics who is covering down at a remote post about 150 miles from here. He is supposed to be on his way down here to meet us and get the loads of mail we brought for him. He is well loved at home. No one here knows when he will show up. The rest of us, our senior PA, the Brigade Behavior Health Doc and myself tagged along on this mission to see if they needed any medical support. They don’t. We decide to drive down to the United Nations compound where the Soldier with the sprained ankle is. On our way out, we pass a marching formation of Peshmerga Soldiers. They are apparently the equivalent to our special forces. Unlike many of our special ops guys they are not built like brick shithouses. They march, smile and wave.
We get off this post and head toward the UN spot. We drive through an area that looks like new development back in the states. There are large new roads with large intersections. There are many high rise apartments and office buildings under construction. It’s Friday, which is their Sunday, so there are not many people out. But it is almost too quiet and I wonder who is building all this and who is going to occupy these spaces. When you look closely it seems that nothing is finished. Nothing, it’s all very odd.
I see the dude with the hurt ankle. It’s not broken but very swollen and painful. I give him some pointers and that’s it, we are done for the day. We get a ride over to a civilian clinic to get a look at what is available locally and really just to kill a little time. We drive by more empty, unfinished buildings and pull into what looks like your standard apartment complex back in Texas. The yards have some grass and some shrubs and we hear that this is called the English Village but no one that I see looks English. Some of the buildings have company names on them. There is a travel agency, spa, and just about anything else you can think of right in this complex. We pull up to a building with the clinic name on the outside. Not where I would expect to find a clinic. A British guy answers the door and its obvious we just woke him up. He is really nice and welcoming and begins to talk to us for about an hour about what they can do there, the current state of health care in Kurdistan and mentions that he went out last night and feels a bit hung over. It was interesting to listen to for sure. His clinic is owned by a contractor who hopes to win bids from the oil companies who must be doing all the developing here. If the contractor can show that they have the ability to provide medical care for their workers they are more likely to get a job. It seems that this whole area is at a standstill while elections and other deals are made concerning the large amount of oil in the area. We hang out for a while, he shows us his Suburbulance (Suburban turned into ambulance) and we drive away. I think this company is hoping the military will start using their resources (such as their brand new MRI) and make some money off us. I would hope that too.
We drive back to the post we are staying at and eat lunch. We hang out for a couple of hours in the DFAC. I should have brought a book. The medic we are waiting for still hasn’t shown up and still no one knows when they will be here. The behavior health doc (Jill) and I wander around the compound for a little while. We see some Peshmerga wandering around too. One guy runs up and introduces himself. We ask another guy if we can run up to a lookout guard post and take some pictures. He has no idea what I’m saying and I don’t know what he says either but he is smiling so I guess that’s a yes. We take some sweet pics with our 9mm’s pulled out. We see some random buildings. The largest building says “Olive” on it. I have no idea. Again, I can’t believe I am here right now speaking with Peshmerga and overlooking the capitol of Kurdistan.
The rest of our day: 1. Nap 2. Eat dinner 3. Sit in DFAC for 6 hours watching TV, playing cards and waiting for our ride back to FOB Warrior.
The birds come in on schedule and we are lucky to have a direct flight back. Only takes 18 minutes. We touchdown and our ride is waiting for us to bring us back to our CHUs. We learn a Soldier was shot in the shoulder while on patrol today. Kurdistan is what Iraq could be, Kirkuk is not Kurdistan. Our little journey is over and we never did see our medic. Just another day in paradise.