By Staff
Editor's note: In December 2006, we asked our readers to submit letters and e-mails from family members serving in Iraq in order to get an "on the ground" view of the conflict. The following letter is from 2nd Lt. Aaron Squiers, who is serving with the 1171st Army National Guard medical unit from Detroit. Squiers is a graduate of Dowagiac Union High School. He sent it to his family on Nov. 1, 2006, and it is presented here in his own words.
There have been a number of inquiries wanting to know what my daily life is like here in Iraq. I have no objection to writing about that subject, it's just that I tend to stick to the more thrilling and adventurous aspects of my life. It's hard to describe the mundane but I will do my best.
I start my day between 6:15 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. I don't wake up to an alarm thus accounting for the range of times for the start of my day. I shower in the mornings shortly after I arise. I must walk to a shower trailer that is located in my trailer park. The walk is only about 75 meters but it is over ground comprised of soil and sporadic gravel. When the ground is wet the dirt becomes a very sticky and bothersome mud. Upon exiting the shower, I throw on the shorts and t-shirt I wore to the shower and go about the business of shaving and performing all the other necessary morning rituals. I am never completely dry when I put on my shorts and t-shirt and I have to wear flip-flops, referred to as shower shoes, for sanitary reasons. Those are minor annoyances but annoyances nonetheless.
After I have finished with the first chore of the day I return to my living trailer and put on my uniform. Depending on the time, my level of hunger and the peer pressure from my roommate, I may go to breakfast. This is a walk of some four or five hundred meters but has become so routine that I have ceased to even care about the distance regardless of the weather.
On days that I have a significant amount of dirty laundry I will take it with me as I walk to breakfast. The drop-off point is near the chow hall making it an opportune time to accomplish the task. The government has a contract with a company to wash our laundry. All I have to do is drop it off, in true bureaucratic fashion fill out no less than three forms, and pick it up two or three days later. I appreciate having other people wash my laundry. My mother will attest to that statement. The only real hassle in that process is toting the sack of laundry the quarter mile to the drop off point.
After breakfast and any laundry stops that I might have to make, I walk to work. I usually check my email as the first task of the workday. After that I attend a meeting that seems to last for hours. It is actually far shorter than that but is just as painful. Once that meeting is complete I execute the tasks and projects assigned or discussed during the meeting. Sometimes this is new business; sometimes I work on existing projects and tasks.
I always eat lunch and often have to insist that others on the command staff take a break and join me. I eat anywhere between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Meals are a good time to relax a bit, particularly lunch as it breaks up the day nicely.
After lunch it's back to the grind. I continue working on projects, supervising operations, trouble shooting problems and, of course, replying to emails. I normally break for dinner between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. and finish for the day between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Before I leave the work area for the evening I will checkout with the commander or executive officer, who is my roommate, and the tactical operations center for our unit.
The tactical operations center, or TOC, is the hub of information for the unit. It contains radios and other communication devices. The walls are lined with maps and status boards. It is similar to the ones seen in movies, just not as impressive.
Most nights I talk on the phone for a while before I go to bed. I have a cell phone that people call or I'll call using a military line that gets routed into the U.S. civilian phone system. I find conversing over the phone a rather relaxing way to end the day. In those conversations I get to hear about everyday life in the "outside world." Hearing about elsewhere is surely appreciated.
The Internet service is slow here but I can check email and some Web sites. I get news from a variety of sources. The Internet is one source. I also read Stars and Strips newspaper, which is distributed here free of charge, and watch the Armed Forces Network News Channel.
The Armed Forces Network (AFN) provides programming from the networks back home. AFN shows sports, movies, prime time programming and news from NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and other networks. It is fed into our base via satellite and then further transmitted from a central place on base to more localized receives. Cables, just like the ones back home, run from the localized receivers into our television sets. The system doesn't work as well as we would like most of the time. There are many outages, some lasting for days. Other times the reception is poor causing the picture to be fuzzy. As you might expect, we watch fuzzy programming if that is all we can obtain.
On Halloween we had a evening party which lasted a few hours. We ate pizza and chips, drank sodas, and just relaxed. We have a horseshoe pit in our area and I played a game with three other soldiers. My partner and I held strong but lost the match in a closely contested competition.
It gets dark at about 6 p.m. this time of year. The horseshoe pit receives only modest light from our main building's outdoor fixtures. To compensate for the darkness we attached chemical glow sticks to the stakes contained in the pit. We used duck tape, also known as "100 Mile an Hour Tape", to secure the glow sticks. I guess you can chalk that up as another use for the versatile product.
Despite the relative normalcy, this is still a dangerous place. Three nights ago there was an attack on our base that was a little to close for comfort. Mortar rounds came within a couple of football fields of my location. The mortars, which are poorly aimed, fall indiscriminately.
I was in my trailer when the first round hit. Because of the abnormally loud noise I knew that it was probably close. I quickly exited my trailer and crouched outside between a pile of sandbags and a large concrete slab known as a t-wall. Given the circumstance it was the safest place I could be. One of the senior sergeants in my unit did likewise and we sparked-up a conversation during the attack.
This particular soldier is in his mid-fifties and served in Vietnam. He is not what most people would describe as excitable but he certainly didn't like the proximity of the mortars to our location. As we stood outdoors there were two impacts that made us both startle. The noise echoed shapely off the concrete walls and passed through my body like nothing I have ever felt before. I could not see the blasts from my vantage point but other members of my unit actually saw the flash upon detonation.
After one of the explosions I muttered an expletive. The sergeant remarked that the impact seemed close in an uneasy tone. I asked the sergeant if he ever had the feeling that someone was trying to kill him. He laughed, not hysterically, but in a manner that did help break the somber mood. War is certainly no time to lose your sense of humor. That fact is becoming more and more evident as the days pass.
The attack marked the first time I was actually frightened for my life since my arrival into Iraq. It was also the first time I was truly frightened because of a deliberate and malicious action. The fear was not paralyzing but it did bring about physiological changes, chiefly a noticeably increased heart rate. I felt a huge and immediate rush of adrenaline. It was far more intense than anything I experienced during my sporting endeavors.
It is surprising how fast things like that shift from the forefront of your mind. It really does you no good to dwell on the "what ifs" of life. Things eventually calmed down and we went back to business as usual. No one was injured during the attack and that's always a blessing.
My unit is a medical unit and we do not have responsibilities that require us to seek out and engage the enemy. This makes us less susceptible to danger but can also be very frustrating. The enemy lobes mortars and rockets into our backyard and we sit and take it. This is on an individual level. Other units go after the culprits and make them pay dearly for their undesirable activities. The units that hunt down the bad guys do an excellent job and we are grateful for their service. That's just the way things are and we accept our mandate.
>From the Front,
Aaron