Kuwait, Day I-don't-know

The past few days have been a blur of countries and flights, SP times and squad meetings. We left Camp Atterbury on a day that I seriously cannot remember. I think it was a Friday, but I could be wrong. We took what is called a MAC Flight to South Carolina. I am not exactly sure what ‘MAC’ stands for, but I think it’s Military And Civilian (or something to that effect). It’s a civilian plane, with civilian staff, that flies the military around the world. The company, “Ryan”, must have hooked us up or something because we had the whole 300 passenger plane to ourselves for the first leg of the flight. We picked up about 120 Navy sailors on their way to Kuwait also. That left a lot of seats open still, and I enjoyed 3 seats in the middle of the plane, or ‘the couch’ as I refer to it. I slept quite a bit on the couch for our journey here. South Carolina jumped up to the top of my list of states I love.
We sat on the tarmac for a good hour before getting off the plane to the biggest welcoming party I have ever seen. Swarmed by about 30 veterans, we ate plate loads of food and listened to endless stories of gore, war, and glory. It sucks that we got a better welcoming/send-off from people in a state that none of us have any ties to than in the damn state we grew up in. I think it's bullshit, or as my favorite Marine veteran Charlie now says, "Pelosi". Charlie was in 'Nam since the beginning, and I'm not afraid to say that it really f***ed him up. As The Jap, Moon, and I sat at a table stuffing our faces with pizza, Charlie broke the dinner silence with this statement: "Around these parts gents, we don't say 'bullshit', we say 'Pelosi'!!!". He went on to say some more anti-this and anti-that stuff, and it was great entertainment for about half and hour. I could tell it was good for him to get it off his chest.
From SC, we went to Gandar Canada. It was in the low 30’s outside on the tarmac, and it was a very surprising change from the hot and humid SC weather. We were supposed to fuel and move out within an hour to Iceland, but it turned out they were having 50mph winds where we were supposed to land. We got rerouted straight to Leipzig, Germany. Another refuel there took a couple hours, and I got the chance to enjoy some fine German airport cuisine (joking). From Leipzig, we went straight on down to Kuwait City.
I, being the dimwit that I am sometimes, volunteered for the baggage detail, and had to help unload the 600+ bags we had in the belly of the plane. Each person in my unit had about 3 bags, and the sailors had 4 each. Do the math whichever way you want, with a few extra bags and boxes in there, and it added up to a couple of sweaty hours of work at 0200 hours. It had been about 48 hours since we left rainy Atterbury, and all of it with stinky socks, crappy airplane sandwiches, and bad gas from the combo of some authentic German brats and a ton of candy. I was tired and just wanted somewhere to rack out, but it never came. When we unloaded the bags, nobody thought to separate them. The Navy Officers, having a larger number of sailors than our puny 46 soldiers, said we would have to wait for our bags a few days while they got to their camp on the other side of Kuwait. Our Commander blew a gasket, and I’ve never seen an O-6 take shit from an O-3 before but it was great. The guy was so wrapped up in himself that he thought we would wait a couple of days to have our bags bussed to us. It was bullshit, and our Commander called him on it. So we got another truck, and went through every damn bag again to sort ‘em out. Of course, there were a few people with common last names and even the same first initials, so there were some problems. I sat back enjoying my first bottle of Kuwaiti Spring Water while everyone else sorted through the bags, and my Commander granted me a pass on this one rightfully so. The only bags I was going to touch more than once were my own. Luckily there are only a few of us in my family clan, so my bags weren’t mixed up. All in all it got sorted out, and only one person lost a bag (which was sorted out later and returned).
We are only supposed to have a few more days here, but I honestly can’t tell you how long we have been here. I called my dad the second night, so and I think that was on a Sunday. Our whole purpose of coming into Kuwait is to acclimatize ourselves to the weather and Arabic life in general. I’ve been having to speak a lot more Arabic and it really makes me hate it even more. Everything smells like a taxi cab with a middle-eastern driver, even the port-o-johns stink of it. It’s freaking hot out at all hours of the day. It cools down to a brisk mid 80 temp at night, but its back up to triple digits before 0800hours the next morning. Our tent is air conditioned, and we just got a plywood floor too. The internet café costs an arm and a testicle, but it’s relatively fast for being run out of a hodji hut. There are quite a few people on this base, and the PX, phones, and chow halls are pretty packed. The food isn’t too bad, but I’m already getting tired of it. Hopefully we punch through all the training quickly and get the hell up north to where the ‘war’ is.

-Mad Mac