Notes from the Field: Part 1

Well the desert collect has pretty much wrapped up. All that’s left is for me to pack up my things, hang out with the Vegas family for a few days, and then go home to see my pregnant WIFE who I miss so much.

I’ve been writing to Jessie a lot, so allow me to blog by posting some choice quotes from my correspondence with her:

Day 2: “The training for the downrange stuff was mostly boring.  'Here's what you have to do.  Don't play with animals.  Don't touch anything that could even potentially explode.' But there was one point where they actually showed full on video of graphic explosive damage.  Potentially not from here, but GRUESOME.  Hand blown apart.  Messed up face.  Leg in tatters.  They ended with a 6-second shot of a dude *getting his leg amputated*.  Doctor cutting it and everything.  I couldn't even watch.  Snuff film kinda stuff. ”

Day 4: “I’ve been sitting in the car for two hours and we just got a radio call from Ed to remind us to switch hard drives at 10:00. Most excitement we’ve had all day.”

Day 7: “So we’re hanging out in what I’ve dubbed ‘fake Iraq.’  It’s pretty cool, I can show you pictures when I get back.  (This whole thing is unclassified, except for one little uninteresting bit).  Out in ‘the box’ which is the range where they send people out to train for shooting tanks and mortars and other, less interesting things like troop movements and supply stuff, I’m sure.  It’s a pretty big place out here.  Lots of room for different things to be going on at the same time, it’s miles on a side, at least, I’m sure.  Just a big empty space for army training things. 

We’re currently sitting in an SUV at Mediana Jabal which is, and no kidding, a fake Iraqi city. It’s mostly made out of shipping containers, but they’ve done a really impressive job of dressing the whole thing up.  They’ve got fake walls on all the boxes with fake bricks.  Fake two-story buildings with fake crenelations, and a big, pretty, fake mosque in the middle of the town.  There’s a bunch of fake power/phone lines all over the city, all haphazardly.  They even have fake fruit stands and storefronts, like a fake internet cafe and a fake hospital.  The fake fruit is really weird, because it’s all plaster and paint. 

And even better, and I don’t know if it’s for us, or for something else, (I’m guessing someone else) but there’s fake people out there today!  Bunch of army dudes in their fatigues (not fake, it’s real army guys) and dudes and dudettes in fake (?) garb, walking around and doing role-playing stuff.  I’m not sure if they’re doing specific scenarios or what, but there’s a lot of dudes out there.  Mostly Iraqi-looking.  Probably a really good training scenario.  I even saw, no lying, *goats*.  Real ones, being led down the street by some army dudes. Not even sure where those guys come from. ”

“Ooh.  Fake explosion, I think.  Either that or somebody just dropped something really heavy.  Ooh, now gunfire.  Pretty far away, though.  I feel safe.  There’s a whole bunch of people around here, too.  Either it’s real and far away for a different exercise or, and I suspect this one is correct just due to the radio chatter, it’s a fake-ish explosion for whatever training stuff they’re doing over there.  We have a special range radio they can use to communicate with us and I’m monitoring it closely.  If it was a real problem, we’d hear about it, so no need to worry.  We’re safe.  And I’m not getting out of the car anytime soon.”

Day 8: “...while we were setting up and collecting they were doing some pretty serious training.  I didn’t see most of it (definitely trying to stay out of the way) but I definitely heard the explosions, and I was outside the car walking around when one of them went off.  Loud!  And then they had Ambulances drive up.  That’s all I know, cause that’s all I could hear. 

I overheard some other people talking, though.  Evidently it was some sort of IED training, or at least part of it was, and they had a stunt guy pretend to have his leg blown off.  Sounded pretty dramatic. ”

More in a second,

-N