I’ll explain the title in a bit… One of my mental quirks, to which at least one prior and one current girlfriend / wife can attest to, is this thing I have with dates / times. For example, two months to the minute I received the call for duty, I was sitting on the tarmac taking off for the first stop in my deployment and I was looking at my watch reflecting on that. Well, exactly a month later, at 12:04 pm EST (7:04pm out here) on 29 Apr, I was having dinner with a Navy admiral, his aide, and the guy I am relieving in the chow ‘hall’ of an Iraqi oil platform, inside Iraqi territorial waters (and within viewing range of Iranian forces), getting ready for a ceremony to turn the defense of the platform over to the Iraqi Navy. My, how much life has changed in three months…
Photo - Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT) – aka ‘Waterworld’ – the oil platform and my home for a night
KAAOT, the north oil platform, is over a half mile long structure that in pretty poor condition – has been involved in both wars plus the Iran-Iraq war, and Iraq has no OSHA! However, 2/3 of the Iraqi economy flows through this and another nearby oil terminal. They also happen to be close to Iranian territory… see below.
Photo - Iraqi sailors practicing. If you look carefully, you can see an Iranian observation tower in the water – between the bayonet of the AK47 and the red beret – on the horizon
The ceremony, led by the Iraqis, went off almost without a hitch. There were press there with TV cameras (no US…) and I think I was caught on camera, but you can only see that in Iraq. It was one of those small, but important things that help Iraq transition, and they were justifiably proud. Odds are you will not see this in the US press. But, you can Google ‘iraq oil platforms’ to get an idea of how critical they are.
I interacted with Iraqi sailors quite a bit – a lot of picture taking, even swapped memory cards with one for a moment to transfer some pics. My few words of Arabic helped a bit – but need to practice. Of course, they were walking around with loaded AK47s, which took some getting used to.
New friends. I had found some pins so the gent on the right could attach his flag to his uniform. Very proud, very nice – but he would not let me pick up his AK47.
Photo - Post ceremony celebration – cake, ice cream, and the ubiquitous bottled water.
Bottom pic shows a bit of the travel aspect… getting to the Northern Arabian Gulf from Bahrain is a bit more complex than driving to work. It involved a Navy helicopter (sort of cool riding at 500 feet over the Gulf, passing lots of tankers and fishing dhows, with new Green Day blasting on the iPod), a refuel stop in Kuwait, and then another helo ride to a Royal Navy ship, followed by a transfer to a small patrol boat (crewed by mobilized Navy reservists from the west coast) to the platform.
Photo - On the small boat, heading into RFA Cardigan Bay for the transfer to the helo (on the back of the deck) for flight home
There is also a link at the NAVCENT website which also has pics on the ‘photos’ link – most of me (but not my head) is in one of the pics.
Today, I day-tripped up to Basra , Iraq – for a meeting. My first time setting foot on Iraqi soil, and a return to body armor and the friendly 9mm pistol. An interesting trip – my first biz trip where part of the pre-travel briefing included instructions on what to do in case of a mortar or rocket attack.
However, the biggest danger to me, it seems, is not rockets or IEDs – it is CBDs – Crazy Bahraini Drivers. I walk over a mile to get to work and have to cross three major intersections. I guarantee you there is no sign that says ‘yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk’ here – as if there were crosswalks.
No comments:
Post a Comment