Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox

Chapter 6: Kuwait

After a long and uncomfortable, ten-hour, knee-to-groin flight, we reached our final destination, Kuwait. I was under the impression that we were going to fly into Kuwait Naval Base, which would have been too good to be true. During my first deployment to Iraq, we had offloaded our ship at the base and staged our assault into Iraq from there. From what I remembered, Kuwait Naval Base was like the Disneyland of the Middle East—good stores, good food, and lots of stuff to do.

But then reality kicked back in, and I remembered I was a Marine. We never got the nice stuff. Instead, we landed at Camp Wolverine to start preparations for our drive to our next staging point. All I remember about Wolverine was that it had a bunch of sand, giant tents, and palettes of water everywhere.

An Army admin service member guided us to one tent and had us drop all of our gear. He then directed us to another tent where we did some paperwork and sat down to await a debrief on our ROEs (rules of engagement) and other rules that we needed to follow in Kuwait and Iraq.

The brief was the typical crap some legal person back in the States usually came up with. It was never realistic. They showed us a few short videos of what we might see in Iraq and how to handle certain situations. Then an Army lawyer came out to answer any questions we might have. Every scenario we came up with, this guy had the answer.

“So, let me get this straight, sir,” someone behind me asked, interrupting the lawyer. Everyone’s head turned to look at the Marine speaking. “If some haji with an AK is in a crowd of people screaming ‘Allah Akbar’ or some crap like that, waving his gun in the air and then starts pointing his gun at me, I can’t do shit until he fires at me?”

All heads snapped back to look at the lawyer, awaiting his response.

“That’s correct,” the lawyer replied. I could hear a few “Ain’t that some bullshit” and “We’re gonna get fuckin’ killed” responses murmured in the background.

The lawyer went on to answer a few more questions before he left. Based on what he told us, we were to follow the ROEs to a “T” and not stray. We had to follow the Geneva Convention guidelines or face punishment under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Obviously, whoever came up with these rules never faced combat situations because I honestly doubt that person would wait until an insurgent pointed a gun and fired directly at him before firing back.

Once the lawyer had left, a group of Army personnel began to hand out small cards with the ROE’s and other rules on them. We were told to keep them in our left breast pocket with our military I.D.; that lasted three weeks, about the time it took for the sweat to soak through our cammies and turn our cards into mush.

We found out that we were going to stay the night at Wolverine so people made their way back to our sleeping area, pulled out their magazines, video games, and anything else to occupy the time. I started playing a little football with a few buddies and eventually pulled out my lucky hacky sack and got a group of people together to “hack” a bit. The day passed with no new word so we all piled into our hooches (tents) and called it a night.

The following day brought with it a new leg of the journey. We found out we were moving closer to the border to an Army base called Camp Victory, the place where our LAV’s were awaiting us. The only thing we really needed to know about the base were the essentials: a PX, good food, and phones. We loaded back onto the buses and made way for our new temporary home.

After serving four years in the military, I had come to realize that it was full of sarcasm and humor. If Camp Victory was what victory was supposed to look like, I would have hated to see what defeat was. Camp Victory was a huge sandbox with a bunch of tents and a couple of buildings that housed the command center. Our company occupied four tents on the east side of the base, and the parking lot for our vehicles was a square marked out by concertina wire with port-a-johns by the side.

When we got off our buses, Gunny was standing by to pass word on the camp rules, tent setups, company fire watch, and layout of the base. Each platoon was assigned to a hooch. We ended up sharing ours with Weapons Platoon. Everyone grabbed a cot and set up his gear and personal belongings as he saw fit, space permitting. Once that was in order, the next thing on everyone’s mind was food—where was it and how did it taste. Gunny informed us of the chow hall locations: the fast-food location with pizza and chicken wings (the good stuff) was a short walk north of our tents; the air-conditioned chow hall with delicious breakfast and cold drinks was a half-mile walk across base. So during the hot days, we would eat fast food, and in the morning we would eat at the chow hall.

Once the vehicles were up and running, we did a few movement exercises to see how they ran. Then, the next step was to see how their weapons fired. About a week before our departure to Fallujah, we left to go outside of Camp Victory to a firing range to test them. The exercise lasted about four days and showed us that nearly half of the weapons were not operational, so we went back to camp and tried all over again. We continued to work on the vehicles to ensure that they were operating correctly. Everyone worked night and day to get them to combat-ready status, especially the mechanics.

And that was pretty much how the rest of the week passed. Each day was about the same as the next. The daily routine was something along the lines of: wake up, shit, shower, shave, eat, go to the PX and phones, fire watch, basic classes, eat, prepare vehicles and restore them to combat ready status, goof around, eat, go to the PX and phones, and, sooner or later, sleep.

March 14, 2004. Gunny Rossignol and Lieutenant Walker took a few Marines and left for our eventual home to prepare it for our arrival in advance. The rest of us packed our belongings and loaded up the vehicles. After doing as much as we could to prepare for our deployment, our company was sent to the staging point, where we were attached to a convoy heading into Iraq. We moved our vehicles into position and hunkered down for the night, imagining what might be in store for us the next day.