To Kuwait: Pt 2 (Almost Landed)
This is part of my Moving to Kuwait series.
The training continued in Georgia.
We took basic medical classes (introductions to bandaging wounds, CPR instruction, etc). Sitting in these classes, there seemed to be too much humor. Sure, you can have a sense of humor, but I wondered if joking devalues life dangerously. Does it turn life into a Hollywood movie?
They also taught us about improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Anything can be used as an IED: potholes, cardboard boxes, trash on the side of the road, water hoses, abandoned vehices, even dead animals. We went through a mock obstacle course that had little (but very loud) fire crackers. A few stepped on the deadly piece of wood that triggered a mock bomb with a loud pop. It was hard enough seeing the trip wires and triggers in this course, and I thought how there would be no way to avoid it in the field without being unrealistically cautious or just never doing anything. I heard a few guys saying that as soon as the soldiers in the field wrote a report on the latest techniques and got it processed by the Army, the insurgents had already moved on to different techniques. My roommate said insurgents even tried to slip an explosive into the sewage truck that was coming into his camp.
The bravado from the military is annoying - especially, that from ex-military people coming back as contractors. There was an odd sense of nostalgia and telling stories.
I felt uneasy about our group being composed of mostly paid contractors. I once heard Chomsky say that, if there must be a military, it should be a voluntary one (sans mercenaries), so that soldiers could vote with there presence if they thought a war unjust.
Money is too powerful a motivator.
On the day of our flight out of Georgia, we got up very early, stood along the little road outside of our barracks with our bags, and waited. Then, we were bussed somewhere else, were we waited. When all the checklists were completed, and everyone’s name had been called, we boarded the plane and took off.
We stopped along the way, and when we got off the plane while it was refueled, we were greeted by a large group of veterans who had gathered at the exit to shake the soldiers hands. Since our group mainly consisted of contractors, it proved a little difficult and awkward for the vets to pick out soldiers from the rest as we walked by.
Seeing the troops greated by veterans, hearing the hired commercial flight crew thank them for their service on in-flight announcements, I wondered if the soldiers ever grew tired of being thanked.
