This morning we loaded up and came about 75 clicks North of Camp DoHa. On the trip up I got my first real look at Kuwait and saw my first camels. DoHa is right on the Persian Gulf and is in an urban area, this place I'm at now, Camp Buehring is in the middle of nowhere...I mean it's like the face of the moon. We had to drive several miles up an unpaved goat trail to get to the camp. We had to stop a few times because we couldn't even see the road for the blowing sand and we got stuck in the sand once. There is nothing here, the Army just came out in the middle of the desert and bulldozed great big burms around the entire perimeter, then laid mines and barbed wire and christened it Camp Buehring. Well actually, they initially named it Camp Udari, but during an insurgent attack here some Full Bird named Col. Buehring was killed so they renamed the camp in his honor.

Everything here is tents or trailers. When we came in we were right in the middle of a sand storm and I can't even begin to articulate what it's like. We have to wear goggles and bandanas or dust masks to even move around. The sand is like dust and you feel like you're drowning in it. When I first arrived I thought to myself that if I was looking for Hell I had surely found it. However, that sand storm only lasted about an hour and after things cleared off I discovered that this place isn't so bad after all. I'm still overwhelmed at the vast nothingness of this place, but as far as a place to train for the next week it's not so bad. I'd much rather be here than back at Camp DoHa, that place was a circus. Although we're in tents here vs. the building in DoHa, I'd much rather be like this because there are only about a dozen of us in this tent and we can get some sleep. This place is much, much cleaner and calmer. The only people here are Army, Marines, and a few Kuwaitis who are contracted to work the chow hall or maintenance. They even have a Burger King and a Subway here…in trailers right out in the middle of the desert…I couldn't believe it. They have a little PX, a Post Office, Chapel, phone center, library, and internet café…all in tents or trailers.

It is loud here because everything is ran off generators, even the water for the showers is pumped from above ground tanks by generators. As I walk around this place I am in awe of our accomplishments in waging modern war. Throughout the history of warfare, the challenge of moving men and material and then supplying them has always been half the battle. In contemporary military movements, we just make what we need wherever we need it. I think back to just 65 years ago to our Army stationed in the deserts of North Africa and what they would have thought of this. I can write and take pictures of what I'm experiencing and then upload it to my website for you all to see instantly. Better yet…I can do it while eating a Whopper with cheese, drinking a Diet Coke, and sitting in the air conditioning. I wonder if future generations of soldiers will be able to come here in the morning, execute their mission, and be back home in bed that night.

I'm going to be here for a week to ten days for combat out of the truck training and then I'll head further North, cross the Iraqi border, and catch up with my Unit and get to work.

Thursday

Today I spent my day off mostly getting organized and prepared for this upcoming training. I've got my Combat Vest and Body Army fitting as well as they're going to so I taped the straps in place. I put together the new, (lighter) helmet they gave me here in Kuwait and had some rank sewn on some uniforms and hats. Then I did some wandering around and checking things out. I still can't get over the landscape and sand here. I always enjoyed the desert of America and Mexico, but this is nothing like that. Our deserts are teeming with life, both plant and animal. This place doesn't have plants or even bugs that I've seen yet. I guess I did see a mouse but I'm sure he came in with the GIs.

The ground is much like concrete with about an inch of powdery sand over it. The Kuwaitis are digging a well or something right by the chow hall and although they have a backhoe at their disposal, this stuff is so hard they can't use it. They have to break up the ground with jackhammers, and then have the backhoe clean out the rubble. They're down about ten feet so far and the soil, (if that's what you want to call it) looks the exact same from top to bottom. No wonder nothing grows here. It's much different here than it was back at Camp Doha, on the coast. That was much more like Texas…this is an entirely different world up here.

I sure am thankful that we haven't had a sandstorm today…not yet anyway. It's been pretty nice today, hotter than yesterday. I'd guess it in the 80s. You can just tell by the way the sun burns that it's just about to get hotter than Hell around here.

These Kuwaitis are very small people…or at least the ones I've met so far. I hope that's the case with the Iraqis as well. They seem friendly enough but they stir clear of us as much as possible. I haven't been to or even drove through a city yet, so I haven't really experienced much of their culture yet. When we came from the Kuwait City Airport to Camp Doha we were forced to keep the curtains closed so I didn't see any of the city. When we came from Camp Doha to Camp Buehring we were supposed to as well but there wasn't very many of us on the buss so I was able to get by with opening the curtain between camps, but we didn't go through any cities.

Something I haven't seen yet is oil wells or any sign of it other than that oil refinery by Doha. Not sure where they're keeping all that.

I'm still not real sure of where I am except that I'm at Camp Buehring and I'm about 75k North of Doha. I only know that because of my GPS. However, I downloaded a map of Kuwait today and intend to figure it out tonight.

It's nice to be around real troops again, it's been a long time since I have. It's taking some getting used to though. This boonie hat that is issued with the Desert Combat Uniform is new to me. I like it, it's very cool in hot weather and even has screened vents to let the air out; however I don't like the way it flops down on the sides. Therefore, I got mine wet back and Benning and put creases in it and tried to get the sides to fold up, much like a cowboy hat. I soon learned that we can't do that…a Captain jumped on me at Benning about it and then a Sergeant Major at Camp Doha so I figured I'd better not do that and fixed it. The kids will like these hats too. I think I'll wear them for a month and then send them home and buy another one until all the kids have one.

I also jumped all over some Privates back at Doha a little harder than I should have. Two of them got in a fight and I broke it up and blew up on them. The Captains were dying laughing at me because they keep saying they didn't believe I used to be a Drill Sergeant because I'm too soft-spoken and calm. I went back into Drill Sergeant mode on those kids and the Captains really got a kick out of it.

Another arduous thing about being on Active Duty is always having to be cognizant of your uniform, weapon, gear, words and actions. When you get up from the table at the chow hall or walk out of the latrine or anything…one must pause and make sure you have your weapon, Pro mask, and all your other gear…as well as that your uniform's pockets are all buttoned, your hat on straight, and no boot strings hanging out. It's even worse here because we're dealing with loaded weapons so that's another constant concern. You must always be aware of your barrel position, or muzzle awareness as the Army calls it, and that your rifle is on safe.

I found out a couple good things searching around today. I went to the Camp Post Office and asked to buy stamps and found that anyone in the theater of operations here can send letters and post cards for free. That's great.

Finally…I leaned of another great service the Army has for us. The military has their own phone systems linking all military phones around the world called DSN. They are now offering us use of DSN phones to call home on. This means I can take my phone card and call Camp Dodge in Des Moines, then have them patch me through to the civilian line with my card. This will only charge my card from Des Moines and not the overseas rate. That's cool.

Well…I'm going to go take a nap. Probably is my last one for a while.

Friday PM
I just found out they're taking us into the desert for three days of training. This is going to suck! Therefore…it'll be a few days before you hear from me again.

Monday
Just got back from maneuvers in the desert and as I predicted…it sucked!! I'm telling you, between Ft. Benning and here I have had some intense training over the past three weeks…I feel like my head is going to explode and my body is about to fall apart. I've got kinks on top of kinks in my back and neck from sleeping on the ground, bruises all over from jumping in and out of those trucks, and every muscle in my body aches from too much physical activity. What they did is took us to a training area, (for lack of a better word) out in the desert just a few clicks South of the Iraqi border. This wasn't any official training area, no fences or buildings or trailers or anything. The only thing civilized they had was a generator producing enough electricy for a couple big lights and about a dozen port-a-potties…that's it. For four days all we had to sustain us was cases of bottled water and MREs. We had no hot meals, no cold water, no showers and worst of all…no caffeine!!

For security, they have Humvee guntrucks on each of the four sides of the training area, which was several miles around. They also had Blackwater out there watching us. This is a business started by former Special Forces to protect us over here. They are civilian contractors but all former Special Forces of some kind. They had one of those unmanned drones that they flew around over us, day and night, which had both a camera and inferred in it so they could spot creeps sneaking up on us at night from their body heat. They had SUVs they work out of monitoring the cameras from outside our perimeter. If they spot something, they contact the guntrucks and then us via radio, and then we all three engage the target. We also pulled guard duty of course.

I had my first experience with the enemy up there. Yesterday during the day, there was a white pickup that came out with two Hajis in the back watching us with binoculars. Our gun trucks went after them but as soon as they did, they took off and that truck easily out ran the Humvees. This is what they call 'probing' and is meant to test our weaknesses they say but I suspect is more to simply harass us than anything. Then, later in the day, a local man and his son drove up to a guntruck and got out and was friendly to the MP. After a short visit, he offered the MP a pack of smokes. The MP refused them but Haji insisted and dumped them out on the hood of the truck to show him they were safe. The MP finally accepted them simply to be courteous and to get the encounter over with. Haji shook his hand again, was friendly and said goodbye and left. The MP had no intention of smoking them of course, but when he went to throw them away he noticed something amiss. After further inspection he found one of them had enough explosive in it to blow his head off when he smoked it.

Throughout the day the Haji in the white pickup probed us several times, each time from different spots of our AO, (Area of Operation) and each time would bolt as soon as the guntrucks approached. I asked the Captain why we don't fire on him and he said that if we were in Iraq we would but had to be more subtle while in Kuwait. I thought that was ridiculous because there was no doubt these were Iraqis probing us.

So…last night, we went to bed feeling a little trepidation from the day's events and was vigilant of a nighttime attack. Sure enough, exactly 0300 someone came running behind the sand dune where several of us were sleeping yelling that the guards had seen intruders inside the perimeter. All those high-speed kids sleeping in their boots and with their rifles jumped up and took off. I jumped up too but had my pants off and couldn't see anything. I felt around for them and finally found them and pulled them on. Then I couldn't find my boots. When I finally did I had to pull out all the crap I'd put in them to keep the scorpions out. Then I stood up and went to buckle my pants and the buckle was gone. After a moment, I figured it out…I'd put them on backwards. So off with the boots, off with the pants, and had to go through all that again. Then I felt around and couldn't find my other magazines of ammo so finally I just decided to go with the one I had locked & loaded. I figured my 30 rounds along with all the other guys ought to be enough. By the time I was up and ready, I was all alone. I took off in the direction they had all went but couldn't see or hear anything. I went down about 200 meters and just stopped and listened but to no avail. I waited about 5 minutes and said 'the Hell with it', took a piss and went on back to bed.

About a half an hour later, they all came back and I found out what happened. That recon airplane that was flying over us watching out for us crashed and the Blackwater guys came into our perimeter, (against the rules) looking for it. We've got this one gung ho Private just out of Airborne School that happened to be the one to come over a dune and find them. I guess he, full of adrenalin and thinking it was Haji, just about lit them up but was with an older LT who stopped him. I guess it scared the living shit out of those Blackwater guys when those dogfaces came over that dune…I'd have liked to seen that.

So that was our excitement for the maneuver…I'm sure there will be plenty of stuff like that to come.

Another funny thing happened when we first got there on Friday. They informed us we could not eat within 100 meters of where we slept because the food we drop will attract mice and rats…which in turn attract the snakes. They then informed us there are 23 species of deadly snakes in the area including the Horned Viper, which is the world's third most poisonous snake. Upon hearing this I thought to myself…that's BS. They're just trying to make us more uncomfortable by forcing us to eat in the cold. Believe it or not, it gets cold here. It was 42 when we got up yesterday morning at 0400 and then 88 degrees about ten hours later. We had three people go down to heat stroke over the past three days. They just stuck IVs in them to rehydrate and Medivaced them to the rear.

Anyway…I thought that was crap because there couldn't be any mice or rats out here because there's nothing to eat. Besides…where would they live? There's no buildings, no vegetation, not even rocks to crawl under. I'd also looked around and hadn't seen any holes they could have burrowed down in. I also figured the same to be true with the snakes…where would they live and what would they eat? However, I was soon proved wrong. Sure enough, when the sun went down the desert came to life with bugs, regular mice, and Kangaroo Rats…they were running all over. I still don't know where they live and can only assume they've adapted to live off the bugs. I don't know what the bugs eat. Those Kangaroo Rats were friendly too, they'd come right up to us…one even ran under my neck while I was sleeping. We didn't have any snake sittings but I guess someone did find one of those camel spiders and shot it. I didn't see it though so I don't know if it was as big as I've heard.

As much as it sucked the training was good. First and foremost, I put a ton of rounds through my weapon and have gained confidence in it. I learned it was accurate at Ft. Benning when we qualified on the range, but that was only 40 rounds. I was issued seven brand new, 30 round magazines which is great because older magazines get where they won't feed well. I put several hundred rounds through it out there which has now given me weapons confidence…which is critical up North. I also learned first hand what the sand does to these M16s. We had to clean them twice a day or they would jam up.

I also learned had difficult it is to fire from a moving truck. We had training on that which taught us how to lead or follow a target depending on if we're shooting from the truck and if they're moving as well. They actually sent us down a seven mile road with pop up Haji targets we fired at from the truck as we moved along.

These last few days have been rough, but it was very good training and has forced me think of this impending combat in a different perspective. Since the shock of the September 2001 attacks on America, then throughout the process of this war, and then finally through the long endeavor of me actually getting here…many people have asked me if I was scared and I am not. In my mind, this will be just another fight. I've been in plenty before and I think I have a couple left in me. I've witnessed, both first and second hand, many fights throughout my years in the nightclub business, and studied the history of warfare intensely as a personal hobby, and last but not least…am a combat-trained soldier in the US Army. Due to all this, in my mind I have not been afraid of what I'm about to face and because of that, have baulked at this recent training and would have preferred to simply get on with it, get it done, and get home. However, after these past three miserable days in the desert, I've come to think another way about this. Drawing from arduous lessons learned over the past year and a half here in Iraq and Kuwait, the Army has done a very good job at learning from our mistakes and experiences up North and implementing them into training for us incoming soldiers and Marines. They have created special teams to train us, consisting of former Special Forces soldiers and Marines. These guys were really good, and they've all been there and are talking to us from first hand experience. They instilled in me something I had not thought I needed but am grateful to have acquired. They have been able to make a science out of combat. My idea of combat has always been to react to the situation with one's warrior spirit, relying on your intelligence and training to promote overwhelming violence. They have trained us over the past few days to incorporate specific ideas to promote faster and more reliable ways to kill the enemy. They in fact, have reprogrammed us against all the Cold War ideologies of warfighting that the past few generations of soldiers and Marines have been instilled with. I won't bore you with all the details but give you just one example here of what I call 'science' so you'll understand what I'm talking about. The Army has always taught us to shoot tight shot patterns. When firing, they want our bullets to hit as closely as possible. They've also trained us to fire in what they call 'Controlled Pairs', which means two bullets, precisely placed in the target, preferable high center mass on the enemy's body. Here they've taught us that the human body is over 80% fluids and therefore to think of it as many, many individual rivers flowing through the body, each with different functions. Therefore, contemplating combat scientifically, two bullets into the body within the same square inch will affect the same 'river' within. Of course being shot is usually deadly, but in combat one must think beyond just killing, one must consider the time between the bullet hitting the enemy and the enemy no longer being a threat. With NATO forcing us to use these supped up .22s , (5.56 or 223 on the civilian side) we have learned since Vietnam that there is often considerable time between point of impact and point of incapacitation or death. During these critical seconds, the adversary may have time to fire a round, implement a bayonet, or set off an explosive device he was carrying such as a grenade or bomb. Therefore, in combat, we endeavor to cut down this critical time and they have learned that by spreading out the two shots, and disrupting two different 'rivers' in the body, we can greatly reduce the risk to ourselves in those few seconds. The Army calls this the rule of 4" 400%. They've found that by putting the bullets 4 inches apart it increases the effectiveness against the human body 400%.

This is just one of the many useful things I have learned the past few days.

So now I'm done with my training, thankfully. As I said, I feel like my head's going to explode from all the knowledge the Army has instilled in me recently. We're all done and just waiting on standby for the convoys coming this way going North to wherever each of us is going. Three of us left already today, five more are scheduled for later today. I don't have a scheduled pick up yet but they said it will be this week sometime, probably tomorrow. Today I'm resting up, (slept in until 6:am) and eating some good food at the chow hall to get my system regular again. I did laundry for the first time in Kuwait. I was thankful for the time because I was out of clean clothes and that uniform I wore the past four days was filthy. I'm also going to buy some ammo pouches today at the PX that will hang off my Flack Jacket, (Interceptor Body Armor i.e. bullet-proof vest) so I can get rid of my pistol belt and suspenders and save that much weight, and it will also help to keep me cooler. I'm looking forward to another shower as I still don't feel clean. I washed three times before the water was clear at my feet…that sure felt good.

I'm just about out of here so this will be my last post to this site from Kuwait. It costs me $5 to hook my computer up to the network at the Internet Café so I'll end this for now. There won't be anything exciting from now until I get to Iraq so my next post will be from there.

Out from Kuwait.

Photos from Camp Buehring, Kuwait

Map of Kuwait

I've put this Red X on the spot I think I am, however I'm not 100% certain. There are no maps around here, for obvious reasons, and I haven't been able to find much on the internet about Camp Buehring. I'm basing this estimate off my GPS readings and talking to several
permanent party soldiers.

A photo of my footprint at Camp Buehring, Kuwait..doesn't this remind you of that photo of the footprint on the moon? That's what this place is like...the surface of the moon.