Chai is tea. Overly sweetened, it is served with the tea leaf pieces left in the bottom of the cup, at a temperature I can best describe as ‘volcanic’. Our interpreters make it, some better than others. We had an interesting discussion about the chai they serve in the Iraqi DFAC. (Dining FACility, for my non .mil type readers). One of our interpreters’ brother works on the FOB as well, and Joe (as we call him) had this to say:
Joe: “It’s bullshit.”
Me: “What?”
Joe: “You know, it’s like everything else in the Army. The food sucks, the tea sucks. The tea in [town] is better.”
SFC Moncree: “Yeah, he’s right. The tea in [town] is better.”
What had kicked that conversation off was a discussion of canal water chai, the home-brewed variety of which we had gotten from a local ‘sheik’ while out on patrol. His ‘village’ barely had houses numbering in the double digits, but with multiple families in each house there were close to 150 people. Most of them were small children, and those are the ones I can post pictures of:
Here’s another, with the 1LT Platoon Leader from the unit we’re living with here. We did a joint, combined patrol with his platoon and some IA soldiers in order to distribute a humanitarian assistance (HA) drop.
It was a bit of the normal 3rd world crush when we started handing out stuff. Big kids pushing smaller kids out of the way, no real order to the handouts, despite having the sheik in the back of the truck trying to direct traffic. When we got done with the stuff in the pickup, I grabbed MSG Jones and had my counterpart take his place assisting in the handout of the remainder from the back of the IA HMMWV. Amazing what a little stern talking to in your own language can do for getting kids organized.
Back on the IA FOB, MSG Jones did some great work that week: He got all the IA NCOs to actually wear their rank.
As trivial as that may seem, it’s a big deal for them to take this step. One of the fundamental issues we’ve been having with the IA is the lack of an empowered NCO corps. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read about officers in Arab armies being knowledge / power hoarders, and it’s reinforced pretty much weekly here. Some are better than others, but on the extreme end, one officer had the only Arabic-translated copy of a training manual and kept it on the shelf in his office. NCOs make my job easier. Apparently they don’t understand that, and believe that by loosening their grip on information they actually decrease their powerbase instead of increasing it. Inshallah.
On our side of the FOB, we had a piece of equipment give up its magic smoke (machines run on magic smoke, when it comes out, they stop working).
Not good. To add insult to injury, the AC compressor in SFC Shuck’s CHU also died. Following the line of thought that stupid ideas that work aren’t stupid, he figured out the compressor was overheating, and tried icing it. It worked.
Of course that was not until after we had come back from a mission and he found it so hot in there that the devil was fanning himself in the corner…
And now for something completely different…
Range pics. We spent some time back over at the 25-meter range on the back 40 and I’ve got a couple pics and accompanying story. The boss brought this on himself, and he had to know it was coming eventually, so here goes. We were concentrating on M9, and had brought a couple of the IA officers with us. Toward the end of the range day, the boss watched me shoot the following groups from 25 and 10 meters respectively.
That would be a 7″ and a 3″ pattern, each consisting of 15 rounds from my M9 fired offhand. Seeing this, he decided to challenge me to a bit of a shoot-off, 5 shots offhand, object was to group closest to the dot in the center of our 8 1/2″ by 11″ ‘targets’, from the 25-meter line. The first picture below is my target, the second is his:
Yo soy un pistolero. That would be a 6″ pattern this time. The boss got 4 of 5 on the paper. Next! The previous range trip had us shooting our recently zeroed ACOG equipped M4s. Binden aiming concept, etc, etc. From the prone, at 25 meters, I managed this on the first attempt:
I’m pretty sure I’m the best shot on the team with the M9, but am probably not the best M4 shooter, so I’m pretty proud of that one.
If I remember correctly…Markham, you were a first time no-go at the 9mm range back at Riley….
-CPT Stangle
Nope, first time go. I shot one short of expert there… and I still contend it was due to the swiss-cheese-like targets. Actually, I managed a first time go on all the weapons while we were at Riley. So THIBBT!! 😛