I recently had a gate guard duty for two weeks. I had the main gate to the FOB, which included three Iraqis, six Ugandans, and one other US Soldier. After all our miscellaneous requirements were considered, the duty was six hours on, six hours off.
By the end of the duty, I was pretty tired and glad I could finally catch up on sleep. The day shift was usually quite busy, logging an average of one convoy every five minutes or so. The night shift not so much, logging an average of three convoys every shift. Once I even went an entire shift without a single convoy!
It was a boring detail, but it was a nice change from running one or two patrols every day, and a patrol almost every night.
While I was on this detail, I had the opportunity to work with Ugandan contractors. They were hired by a security company SOC-SMG and were paid fairly well for their country. English and Swahili are the official languages of Uganda, and all their school is taught in English, so they all spoke English.
They have an interesting accent though, so some were much easier to understand than others. They are all extremely polite, pretty well educated, and quite up-to-date on current events. From talking with them, I've added Uganda to my list of places I might visit for my next deployment's mid-tour leave.
I had my birthday during the guard shift, too. It was pretty uneventful, except I went to the MWR during a pretty busy time, and got to jump to the front of the line to use a computer. I stayed on for about an hour and a half instead of the normal thirty minutes. I treated myself to a little ice cream to celebrate, too.
Speaking of leave, I finally get to go. I'm in Balad right now, and am currently schedule to fly to Kuwait on February 4th. I expect to land in Sydney on or near the 6th, and will spend a few days each in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. I might also drive up the coast between Brisbane and Cairns, and check out the Great Barrier Reef. I intend to hop over to Auckland, New Zealand for a couple of days, too. After all that, I'm going to Melbourne for about five or six days, then going back to Sydney to fly to Kuwait.
I should be back in Iraq doing patrols around the first of March. |
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make sure to say "Hello" to the Aussie gals for me, I visited them in 96-ish, I'm sure they're still as plentiful now as they were then, just pick the color, size and shape
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: They often had soft serve in the mess hall, and we were allowed to stand in line for the opportunity to send a MARSGram...
) But those Ugandans were the most hospitable folks and cleared out a nice cool tent for us to live in. Nicest guys ever!
....FOB Dragonbreath (Or Someshit) had a female SGM who liked to check sock color
....wearing white gym socks??? No entry into "her" FOB....
