What’s it like in Ramadi lately? The fighting continues, it’s getting hotter, and we ride the tides of time as we work through the final months of this experience. For the last few days, an inverse continent of thunderclouds has been hovering over us. And yesterday, beneath those clouds I experienced my first true sandstorm. I was standing outside talking to a couple of guys. It was windy and there was a strange brown glare all over. Then quite suddenly the wind picked up and we could feel the sand in the air. We immediately knew it was a sandstorm, and all of us put on goggles and walked out into it taking pictures. The forceful winds blew down antennae and camouflage netting. It blew the roof off of a huge tent. Vision was limited to a very short distance, but the whole thing lasted only a few minutes, and then big raindrops followed the wind that moved past us to another desert locale. It was a small natural phenomenon, but it was something different for a change. We were all smiling afterwards like people who just jumped into their cars dripping wet after getting caught in an unexpected rain storm.
We’re still transporting Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army to their training. The integration of Iraqi forces is still paramount. We’re still conducting our patrols. We’re still encountering IEDs. Soldiers continue to stand in guard towers day and night, making sure the enemy can’t infiltrate our base. But beneath all of the normal work, we’re starting to think of handling the battle off to a new unit. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. We’re not done yet. But it’s coming, and plans must be made to conduct a good mission changeover so that operations continue without a hiccup.
This morning there was no need for an alarm clock as a rocket attack did the trick. I was having a lucid dream in which I was standing in the shadow of a huge wall talking to my son. It was very hot. He was playing in the sun and I could tell he was sweating. I told him to come over into the shade but he didn’t want to. It seems like I was waiting for a ride. And that’s all I remember because a loud explosion brought me instantly awake. I walked out of my room to find out by a passing soldier that it was another rocket. "Oh. Another rocket," I yawned and went back inside for my toothbrush.
Now I’m working over in my office. Two attack helicopters just flew over my location like angry yellow jackets going to respond to a call for help from the hive. As I sit here I am surrounded by graphics and imagery of the world perhaps 20 miles around me. To my right is a 5x3 foot map. It shows me detailed satellite imagery of the city of Ramadi, with operational graphics printed over it. I can see the rooftops of individual homes and buildings. I can see paved streets and dirt roads, and I can use the military grid system overlaid on the map to plan communications assets. To my left is a large visual graphic that represents every computer, switch, router and hub in my network. These are the planning tools, and they are important. But it is the radios the soldiers have out there that save lives, not computers.
Here I sit surrounded by technology. Satellites took these pictures of the earth. Computers printed these graphics. I can provide soldiers with countless types of communication equipment and computer software to help them be more organized and efficient. I’m a camouflage-wearing, rifle-carrying electronics merchant in the information age. I’m an information technology manager working in my company’s overseas office in Babylon. So today, as you can tell, I am not outside the wire. I am right here in my office doing my best to cater to the soldier’s needs, refining plans to keep them safe by having dependable communications tools at their beck and call. The technology that runs our most advanced equipment, though more advanced now, was still derived, in its way, from the same types of minds that invented the metronome - the clock, the digital liquid crystal display, these mindless instruments of syncopation that taunt me out here. They slow down when I'm not looking, I swear it.
We are working as hard as ever, yet a new mood can be sensed permeating the air because we know that time has somehow gone from enemy to ally. It feels a lot different to have maybe two months left in Iraq than twelve. It’s nice, but it also reminds you to stay completely focused until the end. We’ve come so far. And we have changed in ways we don't even realize yet. The trick will be to transpose this personal phase of desert evolution - this vivid lesson in survival of the fittest, this chance to look at our lives from afar and appreciate it all the more - into something really useful and positive in our own lives as we migrate from this desert to the arid deserts of Utah. I'm feeling pretty good about our ability to do so. And for me personally it's a welcome challenge.
"Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process."
- Phillips Brooks
tags: technology ramadi iraqi police communication soldier babylon
links: digg this del.icio.us technorati reddit
![[Project Gutenberg]](http://www.gutenberg.org/ftp/images/PG_Button_104x40DEF64.gif)
Thank-you for your thoughts and perceptions as you move ever closer to the
time of redeployment. It is insightful to catch this glimpse into your duty
space and "see" that which surroundings you in your very unusual work
environment. Your company and your office are very different from mine!!