Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox

Chapter 11: Sandbags

Those of us who were lucky, or unlucky in some cases, to stay back at the camp while these missions were being conducted had a lot of work in store for them. Our part of the camp needed a lot of work to make it livable. Gunny Rossignol was quite efficient at getting things in motion to establish a new home for us. Iraqi contractors started to build wooden floors in our tents to keep the dust from flowing around too much. Some were assigned to help these Iraqis in cleaning up the garbage that was left behind. Another big priority was to establish an ammo depot and set up our recreation tent, the maintenance tent, and the armory tent. We also needed to create a concertina fence around our parking lot. Before we acquired a shower trailer, we had only one place to take a shower, so a wooden gravity shower with a huge water tank, which didn’t last very long, was built. Also, for a long time we had no clean port-a-johns, so we built two outhouses and a urinal. In order to keep the outhouses clean, someone had to empty out the cans where the crap went, which meant someone had to douse it in gasoline, burn it, and stir it to make it evaporate quickly. Additionally, everything needed to be fortified. This was where the infamous sandbag working parties came in.

Gunny’s second in command was the headquarters platoon sergeant, Sergeant Richard Jibson. Whenever people saw Sergeant Jibson walking toward their platoon’s area or even close to their vicinity, everyone disappeared. Toward the middle of the deployment, he was nicknamed Bad News Jibbles by the lance corporals because almost every time he came over, he had to form a working party to do something, and it was most likely for sandbags. I’ll give Sergeant Jibson his due: whatever he was tasked to do, he completed in a quick and timely fashion and to the best of his ability. Not only that, but he was really a nice guy. Unfortunately, the reputation of working parties followed him.

Just outside the perimeter of our little base was a large patch of sand that was extremely soft and had very little vegetation growing in it. This made it an ideal site to gather sand for the sandbags. What started off as a flat area of sand became a giant crater.

I don’t know who supplies the military with sandbags, but the company must be making a fortune. Whoever they are, if they quit supplying them, a lot of junior enlisted Marines would be happy. Sandbag filling is comparable to the older military generation’s punishment of peeling potatoes. We would spend countless hours digging and filling hundreds upon hundreds of sandbags for hours on end.  It just sucks, and it’s cruel punishment, especially under the boiling hot Iraqi sun.

The sandbag working party is feared mostly by the lance corporals and below, but non-commissioned officers (NCO), such as me, have been known to volunteer (or were “volun-told”) to participate in these working parties. The equipment needed for this particular chore was sandbags and an e-tool (compact multi-tool that can act as a shovel). We would break into teams of two: one would hold the sandbag open and tie it when it was filled, and the other would shovel. The attire worn usually varied depending on the person and the temperature. Some would wear just their PT gear (shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers), others would wear boots, trousers, and a T-shirt, but no one ever dared to wear a full utility uniform or he would risk overheating.

There were side effects from doing the sandbag working party. Some were more serious than others, but they were all annoying. Overheating was probably the most serious, with some becoming too dehydrated and ending up in corpsman station, where they were administered an IV. Other lesser side effects included griping, sand in the eyes, congested nose from the sand, bad farmer’s tan, and loss of time at the internet center or doing something else not involving work.

I would guess that we must have filled, at minimum, ten thousand sandbags. We filled sandbags for things that didn’t even need it. We built a few bomb shelters, massive walls around both personnel tents, and walls around all of the headquarter tents. Sandbags held down the concertina fence and fortified the COC, the ammo dump, and many other things. It seemed as if every day we needed five hundred more sandbags for some new project Sergeant Jibson was tasked with.

We even tried to get around all the sandbags. We would double bag or stuff sandbags inside sandbags to make the pile go away. But just when we thought we had finished, someone else would come out with a few hundred more for us to fill. They were never ending.

Although many hated the sand pit, it was a place where the men made bonds and relieved stress. I would walk past the pit sometimes and listen to a group of Outlaws complaining about something: sandbags, NCOs, food, the weather—basically, anything that needed to be bitched about. But through all the complaining, I would always hear laughter or a joke. It formed a bond among the Marines because everyone had to do it, and everyone understood the pain involved in doing it. It also taught teamwork, something that was sorely needed in the beginning since most of us hardly knew one another.

When our relief arrived at the end of our tour, we were envious. From our viewpoint, they didn’t need to build one more thing; we had done it all for them. All they needed to do was the maintenance and upkeep of the base. Lucky bastards. We had built them a sandbag fortress that could withstand an assault by a battalion's worth of insurgents.

Somewhere out there, at any given time, I know there is some junior Marine cussing under his breath or complaining with a group of his peers about how much he hates sandbags. The sandbag will forever be feared by many.