Welcome to Balad

"Alarm Red" sounds so much better than "Take cover! Incoming!"...

...but that's what it means. We get mortar and rocket attacks here on a daily basis. We take our PPE (personal protective equipment, consisting of a bullet-proof vest with heavy plates and a kevlar helmet) to work and home, so it's almost always handy when we need it. At the moment, we aren't required to wear/carry it everywhere, which might be a rule they waived due to the heat.

With any luck, we'll get the warning before the first mortar/rocket hits. But sometimes, we hear a muffled BOOM, after which there are a few moments of dead silence, then the Giant Voice (loudspeaker system hooked up all over base) hums to life, concurrently with the LMRs (land mobile radios, used more or less like a walkie-talkie): "Attention on the net. Attention on the net. This is Panther. Alarm Red, Alarm Red, Alarm Red. Don your personal protective equipment and take cover. I say again, Alarm Red, Alarm Red, Alarm Red. Don your personal protective gear and take cover." This is followed by a steadily rising (LOUD) siren over the loudspeakers that hits an annoying tone and sustains it for 3 to 5 minutes.

Wherever you are, you don 'em if you got 'em and take cover. There are sand bags everywhere, stacked three to four feet high in the Air Force compound (but in the Army compounds, in some places, a foot or less). Then we sit/lie down and wait for "All Clear." Usually, however, the net will crackle to life every five minutes or so with, "Attention on the net. Attention on the net. This is Panther. Alarm Red is still in effect. Say again: Alarm red is still in effect. Remain under cover. Panther Out." (Panther is the command post call-sign, incidentally, in the proud tradition of the Tuskegee Airmen.)

You literally "get down" because of the nature of the blast, should one land near you and should it actually detonate: they blow up. That is, they explode at something like a 40 to 45 degree angle upward. If you're down and nearby, you're far more likely to walk away without life-threatening or life-changing injuries if you just get down like you have good sense.

There's nothing to do when you take cover, unless you happen to be carrying a good book/computer game/cards/dice in your cargo pocket. You just wait it out. Alarm Reds usually only last twenty or thirty minutes, but this morning, we had one that went two hours.

It started at 0610, or so I'm told. I slept through it. Then I slept through my alarm (just a setting on my watch, not very loud, but it's always been sufficient before). I came to at 0650, realized I was about to be late for roll call, leapt into my uniform and grabbed my PPE, and headed for the ECP (entry control point), through which I had to pass to get to my office. It was lined with Airmen sitting and lying against the sandbags, all wearing PPE. I walked up and said, "Are we in Alarm Red?"

Duh, huh? So I took a seat and got as comfortable as you can get on gravel. Here they are, waiting for the Alarm Red to pass.

So I kicked back kinda like this dude here, 'cause it looked so comfy:

First I played with my watch a bit, to make sure the alarm was set properly and all. Then I watched the Predator* circle. Then I dozed off. (You'd be amazed how comfortable rocks can be when you're wearing all that gear.) Next thing I know, I hear, "Ma'am?" Pause. "Lieutenant?" Pause. "LT!"

I peeked out from under my hat. "What?"

"You have a beetle on you."

"Well knock it off."

"I don't think you want me to. It's in the...folds of your clothing."

I looked up from my position there on my back. All I could see was bulletproof vest. "Where is it?" I was feeling around, but didn't locate anything that felt like beetle. I stood up, shook my garments the best I could, and nothing came out. Hm.

Of course, I immediately made a snide comment about how the bug's probably crawling into my drawers. I wasn't concerned about being bitten or stung. The military's pretty good about warning us about all the dangerous critters wherever they send us, and this one didn't make the list. After a minute or two, I'll be damned if I didn't feel that thing trying to crawl into my drawers. I shamelessly slapped my crotch and legs and did a little dance until it stopped. But see...we were still in Alarm Red. I couldn't just bolt off to the nearest john, yank down my britches and extract the encroacher. So there I stood, occasionally shaking my leg or slapping myself like I was spastic, until it finally dropped to where my boots were bloused and I released it. Here it is, next to my boot (for a quasi-scale).

This morning's Alarm Red was the longest in recent history, I'm told by those who've been here a while.

For my loved ones who are reading this and freaking out about now, perhaps I should add that mortars are by their very nature difficult to aim. They require a few practice shots to home in on the target, unless the person firing it just gets lucky. And that's assuming that person even has a specific target in mind. Around here, they don't seem to even know what they're firing at. If they have more than one round (or whatever they're called), in order to hone in on a target, they must fire, have someone watching with binoculars who can give some aiming direction, and fire again. Usually, they're high-tailing it after the first, because we're going after them or firing back (if they're in range). Oh...then it has to blow up like it's supposed to, as well. This often doesn't happen, on account of they are using ordnance that went bad years ago.

The Army troops don't take cover or don protective gear during Alarm Reds, for reasons that defy understanding. They just keep walking around like they have good sense, even if they're at a favorite target area, such as the BX. I suppose a year in a combat zone might make you fatalistic like that. For this reason, you rarely if ever hear of any Air Force personnel being injured or killed from mortar attacks here; Army casualties are a little more frequent (but not much). Every now and again, the insurgents will have what is called a "golden BB," where they make a direct hit on something or someone, but its very rare. It's a lottery, really.

I read an email a couple of days ago that impressed upon the troops the wisdom of not digging for souvenirs around found unexploded ordnance. My initial reaction was, "People are doing what?" Apparently, some Einsteins found a mortar or rocket lodged in the ground near the flightline and, instead of getting their distance, blocking the area off and calling EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal; motto: Initial success or total failure!) like they had good sense, they started digging around it for fragments to send home to mom. Someone stopped them before natural selection had the opportunity to kick in, apparently, but now we're all getting briefed to stay away from unexploded ordnance. (Isn't this obvious? Like...don't use your toaster in the bathtub obvious?)

After a morning like this one, the day can only get better, I'm thinking.

d

*The Predator is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (or UAV) that requires very little fuel and is guided video-game style from the ground. It's used for reconnaissance. One can stay in the air something like 24 hours straight. We use them 24/7 here to help us spot insurgent attacks.