Day 10 - Sand Sand Everywhere

After spending the last two and a half days at the Udari Range. We have now officially completed training and are per the Navy's rules ready to move forward into Iraq. The Udari range is a group of tents (five or six) in the middle of the desert. The training is unique in its own sense. The first two days occur at the shoting range and unlike any other shooting ranges we have previously worked on in training it follows Middle Eastern safety standards, which happen to be non existent.

We lined up as a group and did turns and shoots, walks and shoots, runs and shoots and my favorite run, turn and shoot. All of which is dangerous. Bottom line the range is run by a bunch of crazy retired special forces guys. These people were in the special forces thus inherently a little crazy plus the fact that they are retired and no longer in the military but happen to be hanging out in the middle of the Kuwait desert doesn't solidify your belief in the questionable psychological state of these people. Let me explain something that happened at the range. This occurred during the simple shoot part of the range. He would yell a command and we would repeat it and do the action. So when he yelled, "Up!" We raised our weapon up and we would fire two shots. We were standing 25 yards from the target and he was yelling, Up! while walking behind us. He then stepped in front of me and yelled, "Up!"

I gave him a look and said, "Huuup?" which is a combination of Huh and what.

He looked at me and again said, "Up!"

I looked at him and responded, "Up!???!"

He said, "Up!"

So I yelled, "Up!" and thought man this is going to look bad during the mishap investigation and fired my weapon over his shoulder at the target. Now when I say over his shoulder I don't mean I stuck my weapon over his shoulder and fired. I mean the bullet left my weapon at 3000 ft/sec and traveled over his right shoulder and into the target.

After I fired the two shots he states, "During combat you will have to shoot over your own men to hit the enemy." And all I could think about was yeah and during combat we sometimes we accidentally shoot our own men while trying to shoot the enemy (Pat Tilman).

The rest of time was spent doing convoy training and dealing with the ongoing sandstorm.

There is nothing to describe the pain of a Middle Eastern sandstorm. First let me describe the sand here, the sand is so bad that they import more sand. The sand that is indigenous to the area can not be used in concrete. It is closer to a coarse dust than it is to sand and the wind picks up and blows this dust everywhere. It comes at you from every direction and kills visibility.

Bottom line we came back about two hours ago and I immediately took a 15 minute shower and I just took another 15 minute shower and I still haven't gotten the majority of the sand off my body.

One last note before I sign off I would like to give a shout out to the editors of Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper for deployed troops. The headline was a story all about how the Iraqi police have finally come together to form a cohesive unit, which can stand up to the insurgency and free the country of Iraq from oppression. Immediately below the story is a piece from AP headline, "Despite US commanders urging 150 Iraqi Police officer deserted there key post in Sadr City and handed over to a Anti-government militia.