Letters from Iraq

chu's and camel spiders

Following is a letter actually written by Vance. LOL! But he didn't send it to me. Oh well. Anyway since I have sent you letters written by others I thought you might enjoy one written by him, getting his perspective. This letter came from the office of Boddie Noell (Hardee's, Texas Steakhouse). My older sister, Paula Marie, is an employee there and they send out care packages from time to time to our deployed soldiers. This is part of his thanks to them and just a little information as he sees it.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers on his and our behalf.

Robyn

Subject: Letter from SSGT. Bowden, Timothy 06/29/2004

It is time to send another package to our troops. We have adequate shipping funds at this time, but the boxes could use a few more items before shipment. I would like to ship the package on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I usually send a letter with each shipment telling them about what is going on around "home." I received a letter from SSGT. Bowden, Timothy (Paula Wright's Brother-in-Law) today. The letter is as follows:

Thank you so much again for supporting us in what we do. We have relocated to a new fob (forward operating base). My first reaction on driving into the base was something along the lines of "you've got to be kidding me." We are on an Iraqi airfield (currently not in use of course). All of the building here (and there are not very many) are bunkers. The buildings we live and work in are dome type or half circle, whichever you would call it, and have somewhere between 1 and 2 feet of concrete. Inside the living area are chu's (which I think stands for conex housing unit) which are roughly 8 x 20 feet, and we are living 4 men to a chu. It's tight, but the chu's are air conditioned which is a blessing. The temperatures here are hitting somewhere around 115 for the highs right now. We are farther north than we were so I think we will be spared a little bit of heat (instead of 130 to 140 we'll probably see 120 to 130, some big improvement don't you think (LOL). There is actually some vegetation here, but it is mostly brownish weed type stuff, not much greenery to be seen. What we are seeing are camel spiders, and let me tell you, they are ugly little suckers. The other big highlight of this fob is that there are no portajohns, so we have been initiated into the club of burning the, how shall we say, human waste barrels. It's an experience I would just as soon have missed.
It's funny you talk about the treehouse turning into a clubhouse. I can remember when I was small my older brother built a treehouse. It wouldn't really be considered a treehouse though, more along the lines of a rickety platform nailed up between some branches with steps nailed straight to the tree. I've thought of building a treehouse for my kids on a big oak tree we have back in the woods from my house, but quite honestly, it scares me to death thinking about them falling out. Funny how becoming a parent makes you forget the invincibility of being a kid. My kids have finished school so now I have a first and second grader. My wife certainly has her hands full at home.
Some of the guys here have procured a crock pot and had some dry beans and rice and such sent over, so once in a while we have a royal feast. It's as close as we get to home cooking. Our actual cooks do a good job, but often they don't have the best of quality to start with, but all in all they do a good job. Our only drawback is we get 2 hot meals a day and an MRE for lunch. I don't mean that in a complaining way though.
I'm finally starting to get over breaking my right little finger. I slammed it in a tailgate and crushed the tip and split it open (seven stitches). Soon the fingernail will come off and I think it will finally start to get better after that. Still hurts from time to time. I have quit wearing the splint finally but I can really tell if I hit my finger on something.
Rumor and supposition floats around here greatly about how long we will be in country. I tell my guys to be prepared to stay a full 365 days, and anything better than that is just icing on the cake. I try to tell my guys not to get settled that we are going home early, cause they may be disappointed. Hopefully though, we won't spend the full year here. Everyone is ready to go home back to good old North Carolina. I'm looking forward to seeing some good down home greenery instead of almost everything being brown.
We spend most of our days working on broken down vehicles and in the evening retire to our chu's to be in the air conditioning and usually watch a dvd of some sort. The store on our base is run by local Iraqi's and they sell dvd's. It's quite obvious most of them are bootleg copies cause there are usually spots in the movie where you can see people's heads as they get up during the movie and get in the way of the camera.

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