This is the unedited series of postings I did on the CoFR BBS while I was deployed to the desert in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is probably too long to read in one sitting unless you’ve got a lot of time to kill so… it’s been arranged according to date originally posted.

September 16, 2002

Welcome to the first in an irregular series of reports, outlining my stay here in the Big Sand Box.

Dirt and rocks… When you tell someone you are going to deploy to the desert, the image in their mind is of brown rolling sand dunes. Not here. Dirt and rocks. All gray. Everything, inside and out, moving and stationary is covered in a talcum power type of gray dust that’s impossible to get rid of. But you know what? I like this place WAY better than Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB) in Saudi Arabia.

The C-5 landed at around 0445 and as we stepped out of the plane, we were greeted by a blessedly cool and breezy morning with the Sun just beginning it’s 12-hour journey across the sky. The other two Suns would rise in a couple of hours. There are three Sun’s in Qatar in case you didn’t know.

We inprocess and head to our new living quarters for the next 4-5 months. 7 man Temper Tents. We have wooden floors, wooden partitions inside which create cubicles for the rooms, a TV and a DVD player. As soon as supply gets more refrigerators we will have one of those as well to chill our bottled water. In the past month, Camp Andy has replaced the shower and crapper tents with hard wall “Cadillac’s” which make life much better. The Chow Hall tent is open 4 times a day and, for the most part, has better food than PSAB.

It is wonderfully cool in the morning. The Sun starts rising around 5 am and I sit on our little couch (a couch consisting of one cot on the ground and another cot lashed to it to form a back) on our porch (consisting of wooden pallets on the ground with plywood nailed on top) drinking my chow hall coffee and smoking my morning cigarette while enjoying the cool breeze. But then… when the Sun has been up for a while, it rises like some angry, evil Inferno God and lives only to smite down all people wearing desert camo pattern boonie hats. I can’t complain though. It’s hasn’t gotten over 106 since I’ve been here and that’s better than the 120 at PSAB.

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