Welcome to Balad

Ramadan* is ending today.

* Rockets And Mortars All Day And Night.

They've been outdoing themselves lately. No casualties or injuries for a while (stuff like that makes it around camp like wildfire), but we spend a lot of time in our gear laying on the floor. Or...sitting at our computers typing blogs, as the case may be.

Tonight, we went over to the KICC* party. I think it was their VD celebration.*** They'd scored some massive steaks, corn on the cob, potato salad, chips and of course oceans of near beer. The steak was unlike shoe leather in every way. I'd forgotten steaks could be so tender.

* Kuwait-Iraq C4** Commercialization
** Command, Control, Communication and Computers
*** Veteran's Day...not Valentine's Day.

After dining, we were standing around talking when we heard a BOOM. Somebody said, "Car door." I don't know the sounds for that area very well, but I said it sounded percussive to me. There was another soon after, and closer. We donned our gear and waited for the siren.

You get to know the "sounds" whereever you spend the most time. You're very hypersensitive to BOOMs here, so after a while, you can differentiate between a slamming modular door, a slamming Chevy door, a slamming Nissan door, a front-end loader dropping something heavy, and a rocket landing. When you're in an unfamiliar area of post, though, you're nervous as a cat in a new house. Every little BOOM (and there are always plenty around--lots of heavy machinery combined with everyday noises) makes you start.

Waiting for the siren is also very common. All too often, I hear the explosion before I hear the siren. Sometimes, there's a delay of up to five minutes.

Every now and again, as you sit out another attack, listening (there isn't much else to do), someone will hear some explosions that sound just like the others and say, "Outgoing." I always ask how they can tell. They mutter something about how the explosions were spaced. Sometimes when they're talking, there will be another BOOM closer, and they'll say, "Or maybe not...."

Uh-huh. They're just trying to convince themselves that the enemy isn't absolutely bombarding us like it sounds like. But sometimes, that's exactly what's happening. So long as we're hearing the BOOMS, I figure, we're all right.

OK. I just got the All Clear and I'm tired (and have a craw full of steak). Time to turn in. Almost 10pm.

90 days down. 32 to go.

d