"D" is for "Deadly"

Ft Lewis, WA

Our Seargant yelled,"Now you know how to perform a vehicle inspection - Hooah?!" I instinctively uttered a mini-hooah under my breath.  Been here nearly a month so it's starting to get Pavlovian.

"Hooah" in Army-speak means many things, but in this case it meant, "do you concur?" or something similar.  As I stood at the vehicle inspection point in the mock-FOB (forward operating base) listening to the Seargent I wondered to  myself, I wonder if the Spartans or the Roman Legionnaires had a Hooah analog?

Pay attention to this, I redirected myself.  This is important.  The IED is the hallmark weapon and assault tactic of the wars we are now in, and the resulting traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the hallmark injury - although the IED can mess you up in many ways.  I have cared for far too many IED victims during my training at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital.  Pay attention.

Yesterday we spent an entire day learning various body and vehicular search techniques.  Learned it in the class room and performed searches on each other.  The thought of a surgeon or nurse doing these various pat-down maneuvers in our FOBs was a little unsettling - puzzling? - but we got the idea: security is everyone's job.  Unfortunately, last year around this time I learned of a tragedy that occurred to a wife of one of the physicians in my intern class.  She was a nurse doing her deployment on an Afghani FOB, was out running one day when she was gunned down by an insurgent who had snuck onto base by wearing an Afghani Army uniform.  One of her nurse colleagues running with her died as well before the insurgent could be subdued.  Horrible story, too close to home.  You must always be on the lookout, always part of the security "team."

We learned of the various ways the security forces keep track of the various contractors who work on the FOBs.  One way is via a special camera the military developed which takes retinal photos and has face recognition software as well.  Through this technology each individual is categorized and put into a database.  A ne'er-do-well can't try to sneak his way onto another FOB - he's in the database.  We used the uber-cameras on each other.  One of the wise-guys in my group classified me as a "male impersonator" (see photo).

We also got intelligence briefings on the latest IED tactics as well as ways to defeat the IED.  Although this is classified information you can imagine that the enemy has become quite proficient at making very deadly hidden bombs that are exceedingly difficult to locate and defeat.  But we are getting better too.

Today we were at the mock FOB - very realistic by the way - performing vehicle searches, going to the IED "petting zoo," and searching portions of the FOB for signs of IEDs.  If you stepped on one or tripped it, a piercing siren went off.  The day was capped off with a visit to a mock bomb factory manned by heavily accented men in traditional local garb and headdress.  Kudos to the Army guys who put in a good acting effort to make it seem real.  By the end I was tired of the sirens going off, as well as a loud firecracker which again, got the point across.  Wish we had had hearing protection for that one though.

This evening we had a poorly-coordinated gear issue - our third since I reported to Norfolk nearly a month ago.  It took about 4 hours to get our third seabag and another ruck sack full of new gear - the stuff we are really heading downrange with.  We received a new $500 helmet, a $1000 cold weather "kit" complete with Underarmor fleece type underwear and multiple fleecy layers designed to keep you warm to 60 degrees below zero (silly since it will be warming up just as we get there, and hitting triple digits within a month probably), a "sleeping system" (a sleeping bag, puh-leeze!), a sweet leatherman device, and so on.  Probably $4000 at least, total.

Apparently the stuff we got issued when we first got here came out of different pot of money, the training pot of money.  We turn most of that stuff in, evidently, next week. This makes no sense to me.  As a taxpayer I am appalled.