Kuwait

Date Published: 06 July 2004

Kuwait

Made it to Kuwait. Flight time was 5 hrs to Maine, 2 on the ground, 7 hrs to Frankfurt, Germany, 2 on the ground, 5 hours to Kuwait = 21 hours. Kuwait is strangely only an hour ahead of Germany, or 7 hours ahead of east coast USA. We arrived at about 1930 (7:30pm) and it was already dark. Sunrise/sunset are both very early here - I think the sun rose before 5am today. Right now it is very hot in Kuwait. Getting off the plane I think it was about 100-105 degrees out. We had an hour bus ride to camp, then some accountability formations and a briefing with no new information in it. After that we needed to meet with a liaison/sponsor to determine where we were going and pick up more gear. Chris and I went to get gear first and found out that the Army, in a rare moment of making sense, has surveyed a bunch of soldiers to see what they're buying for duty in Iraq and bought it for us to issue to us. So we got a bunch of nice gear, including 2 more pairs of (nice) boots (we were issued 3 pair at Ft Bliss), a bunch of nice polyester and silk outdoor gear, some gloves, a camelbak, body armor, got fitted for but did not yet receive a nice new style of kevlar helmet, a rigger bdu belt, a bunch of polyester wicking brown t-shirts, 4 pr socks, and yet another duffel bag. So, 99% of this stuff everyone has already bought and we now have duplicates of, but it is a good thought and we get to keep all of it but the kevlar. If you are an IRR soldier getting ready to deploy, I recommend you not buy most of the stuff on this list. You're going to have a LOT of stuff to lug from the states as it is, and the PX here is well-stocked, so anything you forget you can get here. They're not out of anything that I could tell. Plenty of bug spray and all the other things that I kept hearing were in short supply here.

Anyway, I'm here. It's hot. I'm fine. I don't yet know exactly where I'm going or when I'm leaving or when I'll be coming home. I'll write more later. One of my IRR buddies, a field artillery captain, was interviewed by CNN last week (I almost was as well at the same time) and will air tonight at like 7 or 730pm EST, so if you're in the IRR you may want to watch that.

Steve Smith

About Ardalis

Software Architect

Steve is an experienced software architect and trainer, focusing on code quality and Domain-Driven Design with .NET.