Welcome to Balad

Alternate and ultimately rejected title: "Sing a song of sandbags."

As you can see from a couple of previous shots, we use copious amounts of sandbags for fortification against flying bits of metal. Most of the sand walls were built by the Army before us pampered Air Force folk moved in. We like to think we're above such menial labor.

Speaking of the Army, we have two different types of sandbag available: the green ones and the pink ones. Here's a typical view of the pink sandbags:

Note it isn't so much a pile of sandbags as it is a pile of dirt with pink shreds hanging out. We observed the pink ones didn't appear to have the endurance of the green ones. It was only much later that I learned the reason why: because they are environmentally-friendly temporary dam bags. They are designed to be biodegradable in sunlight. Some genius in the Army ordered these in order to construct semi-permanent fortifications in Iraq.

HAhahahahaha. Snort.

So this last Wednesday, I learned in the morning staff meeting that our office would be moving soon. "Soon," in the stateside military, can mean anything from 3 months to a year (or more). "Soon" here means, well, soon--a few days. We'd be moving from our office in the well-fortified (through several inches of construction concrete) building to the modulars finance just vacated. The new digs are right out the side door of the comm squadron building, and I'd seen them and been in them several times. They were completely unfortified. In a mortar attack, unfortified modulars are no better than unfortified tents, or just standing there in the open, for that matter.

Acting instinctively and with no concern for my own coolness, I raised this concern immediately. My commander confirmed it was a good idea, so that morning, I began trying to find the man who controlled the sandbags.

Let me pause here to give you some idea of what Iraqi "sand" is. Here's a pic taken of my feet as we were walking back from chow. Once you get past the fact that the foreshortening effect makes me look well fed indeed, note the poofs of powder that rise as I walk.

This is not, in fact, sand. It is very fine river silt, or as we'd say back home, dirt. But it's powdered dirt. This is not unlike living in a giant bag of flour. The powder is inescapable. It clings to everything, on all surfaces, and everything smells and tastes of dirt. There's a constant haze in the air that is suspended dirt. So technically, I was looking for dirtbags.

I was amazed the finance folk who'd inhabited these modulars had been content to stay here without any sort of protection. I thought AF folk were supposed to be bright.

Here's the "before" pic, with all the protection of an egg shell:

I talked to people and bugged people and made copious phone calls and when no one returned my calls, went to CE (civil engineering) repeatedly until I made personal contact with the man who controls the dirtbags. I tried to get some huge concrete barriers, which not only afford better protection, but are much easier to install (just get someone with the concrete block mover and point where you want them), but predictably, they were fresh out.

So after bugging a couple more people repeatedly through the afternoon, I finally got one pallet of 87 sandbags (I counted them) delivered, which I unloaded and piled myself in about 20 minutes. The next day, I managed to get them to take me seriously, and got 3 pallets (of about 200 apiece) delivered, which my entire shop pitched in and helped pile. Here's the "after" pic:

Lovely, isn't it?

Yeah. We thought so...until we went to Helinka's birthday party that evening. Helinka has been a civilian with the Army for a long time, she'd "deployed" a few times, she knows people and she knows stuff. She's a good person to know and it is wise to heed her.

We mentioned our sandbagging work earlier that day, and she said, "I hope you didn't put them right against the wall."

Hm? She said, "There are a couple of reasons you need some distance between the sandbags and the wall. The first is blast compression. The second is sand fleas. They live in the bags, and when it gets cold and wet, they want something dry and warm. If they're right against your wall, they'll be living with you. Just a few inches difference will keep this from happening."

Jeff and I looked at one another. Jeff said, "We're going to be in such good shape."

Note: maybe the Army isn't so dumb after all.

So the next morning, we and our two he-man enlisted troops restacked bags. Here's "after after":

And we're still stacking. Meanwhile, we're already occupying the new offices: four days after initial notification.

d