Boom

Some days in Baghdad are atypical.

For instance, a couple of days ago I met a General. Granted he was merely a Brigadier, and not really that atypical for a general, but a general, nonetheless, and bumping into one is atypical. As it turns out, he’s the commander of the GRD – the USACE Region that manages the reconstruction program (among others duties). He was working the dinner crowd at the DFAC, meeting the troops and boosting morale.

It rained that day as well, which is nice for the cooling effect it brings, but sloppy in that it raises the dirt all around and slimes walls, windows, and vehicles. As we moved around outside, we didn’t bother hiding from the shower, in part for the novelty of rain, but also in that there was nothing we could do about it. Enshallah. The rain didn’t amount to much so late in the season, barely putting a dent in the annual numbers. Fleur, who manages the compound, will still have to water the foliage this week and next and through the impending summer.

The next morning, it was still cool, but the front that brought in the prior days rain had stirred the landscape and riled up the fine and choking dust. The morning sun was obscured, appearing for the first few hours only as a white disk in the desert sky, almost moonlike in its radiance. All was still, and calm, and peaceful.

Unlike the brief period the day before when the mortars rained down.

With the weekend approaching, I thought it might be a good idea to obtain the Army’s permission to borrow one of their vehicles. I’d like to take Wes to see some of the accessible sights and monuments, and just take the opportunity to experience the freedom of driving, in stark comparison to the controlled movement that we’re subjected to at Camp Essayons, a French word meaning “fubar”. Across the street, the compound that contains our hooches and the DFAC is Camp Freedom, an English word for “luxury accommodations (mind the guards, thank you)”.

As you know, I’m a very good driver, but only if “good” means “sort of aggressive and prone to excessive speeds.” If this designation was on my license, I’m sure I could get a few hours use of a government vehicle with little issues. After all, in the Middle East, aggressive speeding is key to survival. Oddly, this is not the case with the new and improved Department of Defense. They want calm, slow, and downright certified boring drivers behind the wheel.

That afternoon was looking slow, so I jumped into the process with as much vigor as I could muster. The first step towards boring certification is the briefing which was expectedly boring but, thankfully, quite brief. In it, a Master Sergeant presented an awful PowerPoint presentation, wherein she stressed that speeding, aggressive drivers aren’t cool, and that they’re more likely to get into accidents. As if!

Next was to take an on-line course in boring. It was interesting in its design, though, as there was no way to accelerate the learning process. I couldn’t advance from slide to slide until a set time had passed to read it. Worse, if I activated another window to use a different application, the boring class would stop, happy to sit idle until it received my full attention once more.

Bottom line, I wanted to drive around the Zone formerly known as Green, so I agreed to jump through whatever hoops they had for me. So,… midafternoon,… boring course certificate finally printed,… I was just getting back on task when the first round detonated in the compound. No warning, of course, just a deep boom and a shudder, like when a heavy door gets slammed shut a few rooms away.

Ten seconds later, another boom. This one seemed closer.

Ten seconds,… boom. Closer?

Five seconds,… boom. Further?

Boom. Closer?

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

A dozen rounds in all in no more than two minutes – although it’s easy to lose count of both time and numbers. Big rounds, too. Likely 120 mm projectiles, launched from up to 8 kilometers away. Zeroed in on us. Trying to blow us up. Fuckers.

Sometime during this barrage comes the Big Voice, by now a little shaken, to announce the lockdown. Later during the barrage, it was obvious that he had been hit, as his voice turned all staticky, and then fell silent. Further announcements would come in person, as the PSD’s would provide status and instructions as they yelled their way through the spacious halls of the former art gallery where we work. The timing was on the fortunate end, as two or three hours on either side would have caught hundreds of people outside heading to chow. Three hit in the parking lot between the office and the DFAC, one fifty meters north of the office, one hit the Freedom Tower, one hit the security building, one topped a palm tree, and the rest hit just beyond the GRD compound wall.

The lockdown would last over three hours. There were two fatalities and ten other casualties. There was property damage. There were fuel spills and detritus that needed to be controlled and cleaned up. Typically, the All Clear comes ten or fifteen minutes after an attack. Typically, only one in four projectiles actually explodes. Typically, they land further away. This wasn’t a typical event.

We spent the first hour after All Clear status moving about the compound, surveying the damage and collecting bits of shrapnel, both near the blast sites and in some cases, over 100 meters distant. Of course, it could have been much worse, but it did turn out to be a somewhat effective attack on the Coalition – besides the personnel losses, the power supply to our server was damaged by the hit on the Tower and the batteries flagged after just a couple hours. It finally went on line after about 28 hours, forcing 600-800 people out of work for more than a day. Likewise the phone system, which is VOIP, was out of commission. Conservatively, the value of the time lost for these folks was in the low seven figures.

Add the cost of reduced morale to this (although the General was doing his best to assuage this condition) and it’s even more expensive. In the long term, the best and the brightest will be more hesitant to extend their tours here, or come to this shithole to begin with.

In the short term, the fuckers blew up the motor pool, so now I won’t be driving at all.