On the 22^nd I was going to write about how my wonderful girlfriend had sent me six packages. In them were things like a wireless mouse I had bought and had had it shipped home, Starbucks coffee, a super cool hoodie (great for those chilly desert nights), as well as a collapsible steel baton I had bought and had shipped to the house. Kelley has been sending me lots of stuff, lots of comfort items. She takes good care of me!

I say I was going to write about it, because shortly after opening and going through all those boxes I received a call on my cell phone:

"SGT Rhodes, I need you down at E7 pod, right away", SFC Brown said, sounding just a little panicked. (We have labeled different areas around post with alpha-numeric titles. In this case, they needed me at the 7^th living area - called a pod - on the east side of post.) It's a good thing that Kelley had sent that baton when she did, because I found myself quickly putting it to heavy use.

A little background . . . We have been recruiting a lot of Iraqis for the army through our post. This month alone we've probably seen well over 20,000 come to our post wanting to join up, and we've probably taken over 10,000 of those as recruits. This particular day we had just brought in 1,300 new people who were going to be shipped off to Kirkush for training, but were staying here for a week before shipping out. They needed me to come down and help watch this group of recruits for the week they were to be here at An Numaniyah.

When myself and the four other guys (Thomas, Griffith, Jones, & Brown) who had been asked to come down to run the camp arrived, it was chaos. Absolute chaos. The two Americans who were there were completely overwhelmed. Iraqis everywhere! I think it was a combination of the situation had both gotten out of control and had been allowed to get out of control, if you know what I mean. The new soldiers were wandering all over the place doing whatever the hell they wanted. There was no structure or order to the place. The Iraqi military police who were "helping" to run the pod were all running around whopping people with sticks in an effort to control the crowd. However, the MPs are little more than regular Iraqi civilians who were brought in off the street and declared to be military police by the Iraqi base commander. In a lot of ways they were just as green and out of control as the recruits! "This is going to be a fun week", I thought to myself.

First thing we did was get everyone into a formation; stop the chaos and the disorder and get the whole process of crowd control started over. One of the things I have since learned is that Iraqis are a fairly docile people and will do what you tell them (sort of), but they are prone to a mob mentality. If a couple people start doing something, everyone follows. If a few people see food and rush to it to be first in line for chow, you will have a sea of humanity running towards the chow line. But if you keep them still and in a controlled environment - maintaining tight control during movements and ensuring they move in an orderly manner - you can keep control of the situation fairly easily. We pulled everyone out of the two warehouses they were staying in and milling around, rounded up all the people wandering all over the place, and got them into formation and sitting down. It reminded me a bit of herding chickens. Once we got them in a group, sitting down and roosted, everything calmed down.

Getting to that point was a little tough. Another truism about Iraqis is that they will do what you tell them as long as you are watching them, but the second you turn your back they go back to what they want to do. We would yell and holler to get their attention, trying to direct them to the field between the two warehouses to get them into formation, but they would only head that direction as long as you directly pursued them in that direction. I would come around the corner of the warehouse and find 20 or 30 of them all just sitting there, ignoring everything going on around them.

This is where the baton came in very handy, as well as a good strong military voice. We call it the "command voice" in the Army. It's a tone and volume that says clearly "I am in command and you will do what I tell you". Let me tell you, I used it a lot!

I never had to hit anyone with the baton; all I would do is flick my wrist and extend the baton. As soon as they saw the baton they would move with a quickness!! I found out later in the week from one of the interpreters that the recruits thought the baton was an electric prod. Of course, I did nothing to dispel this idea. If it gets them moving and doing what I want, all the better.

Displaying the baton prominently was a technique I would use frequently throughout the week. Find someone not doing what they were supposed to be doing, holler to get their attention, pop open the baton, and away they went willingly to where they were supposed to be, be it a formation or picking up garbage.

That first night was spent getting things in order and cleaning up the mess left from the Americans who where there before our team arrived. We were there until 10:30 that night feeding, organizing, getting them into the buildings and in bed, as well as making sure everyone had blankets as it was cold that night and there was little heat in the warehouses.

Those damned blankets turned out to be a constant thorn in our side. The recruits would steal other people's blankets when they were out of the buildings, so you had some people with 3 or 4 blankets, and some with none. The first 3 days this was an issue, until we finally fixed their wagon. After lunch nothing was scheduled so we rounded every last person up and locked them down in the warehouses. We emptied the entire eastern warehouse out and into a formation, each person with one blanket. While they sat outside in formation holding their blanket, myself and about 10 MPs went through the building and collected all the left over blankets. They were hidden under beds, under mattresses, on top of mattresses. You should have seen the pile of blankets we recovered. I then took my 'terp with me and gave the Iraqis a talk/lecture/scolding about the fairness of some people having 3 blankets and some having none. We then did the same with the west warehouse with the same result - a huge pile of extra blankets recovered. The Iraqis seemed to respond to the combination of knowing we weren't going to let them get away with this shit and being shamed verbally about stealing blankets from each other. I found that the Iraqis were very responsive to being lectured about fairness and treating each other with equity. We had no more problems with blankets after that.

The rest of the week was more of the same: feeding people, putting out fires (figuratively, thank god) as they came up, and trying to get the recruits to act like soldiers, not desperate civilians. Our lives revolved around feeding soldiers and moving them to processing for the rest of the week. We arrived on site at 6 am with our interpreters (more about the 'terps a little later.) We would spend the next hour waking the recruits up and getting them outside into formation. Breakfast would be brought to the site by the MPs around 7 am and served on site out of insulated food containers. It consisted of some sort of noodle looking gruel, an egg, a couple pieces of fresh bread, milk and chai tea. We usually finished cleaning up from breakfast around 8:30 and lunch arrived at noon, again served on site. By the time we were cleaned up from lunch it was around 2 pm, and dinner came around 4:30. By the time we cleaned up from dinner it was dark (6:30 pm) so we put everyone back in the warehouses for bed. By the time we got everyone inside and settled, it was usually 8:00.

In between meals we would move groups of soldiers to various buildings for processing while trying to maintain some sense of order and crowd control. Occasionally if there was free time we would give them soccer balls and let them play soccer (you should see 700 Iraqis chasing 3 soccer balls around a yard. It's comical.) Most of the time if there was downtime we simply put them all back into the warehouses in the interest of crowd control and getting a little rest for ourselves. The Iraqis didn't mind because they like to nap after lunch anyway.

As the week went on we found it became easier and easier to manage the recruits and move the day along in an orderly manner. By the 3rd day out there we had everything running smoothly. This was due both to us getting better at running the camp as we gained experience, as well as to the soldiers settling into a routine and discovering that this particular group of Americans were running things - not them.

I found the Iraqi recruits to be very much like American recruits. They acted the same, asked the same stupid questions over and over again, tried to avoid work just like American recruits. We four Americans came to see ourselves almost like drill sergeants managing and training new soldiers. When we were able we talked with them through our 'terps and told them about our families or about what was coming up that day. If they were defiant or disobedient we would take 2 or 3 guilty soldiers and make them do pushups (until their arms fell off) up in front of the formation in front of everybody to send a message, which we found to be highly effective in discouraging future defiance.

When some of them didn't want to pick up trash after meals we would get them into a formation and lecture them about picking up their garbage. And let me tell you, the place was a disaster after meals. Something in the Iraqi culture has failed to develop any sense of guilt in the Iraqi mind over littering. They drop everything right where they sit, and they look at you like you have two heads when you expect them to pick it up. It's one of the first things you notice about the country when you arrive here - the sheer volume of litter.

There was another theme that ran throughout the week which I can only attribute to a basic cultural difference as well. The Iraqi recruits shit everywhere. I literally mean everywhere. When they felt the need to go "drop the kids off at the pool", they would not go to the port-a-potties we had set up on site. They would just squat where they were and shit, then clean their asses with the bottled water we supplied for drinking (and of course dropped the empty bottle right there on the ground). From the looks of it some of them were eating pretty well too, if you catch my meaning.

It got to the point that it was just disgusting. In some areas you had to actively watch where you were walking for fear of stepping on a land mine. The worst areas, believe it or not, were right along the outer walls of the warehouses where the soldiers were living. They didn't want to walk all the way to the toilets at night, so they would piss and shit right along the edge of the building. I could stand at one end of the building and look along the wall and just see piles of turds scattered the whole length of the warehouse. I don't think I will ever forget the sight or the smell. Shit and water bottles were scattered all over the pod.

After a day of this it became clear this was becoming a field hygiene issue. Not only were they shitting all over place, even shitting near their living area, some of them were sitting amongst their steaming monuments to adequate dietary fiber during meal times and eating their food! That day I sat them down in a formation and lectured them for what must have been a half hour about shitting where they live. At one point I said "If you want to go out away from the building and piss along the fence line, that's one thing. But why would you shit right next to where you live? You deserve to have a better place to live than that!" It was an effort to both educate them about the fact that what they were doing was unhealthy and unhygenic, and to shame them into not using the wall of the warehouses as toilets at night when we weren't there to stop them.

We never did completely stop the practice, but we at least put a dent into it. That evening (after the lecture on field hygiene) as we were wrapping up and getting them in the buildings for bed, Griffith called me on the radio and said, "Hey, I don't think your talk did any good. They're all out along the fence line taking a shit". To which I responded "Well, it did some good. At least they're not shitting right next to the building anymore." Sometimes you have to take whatever victories you can get. We just figured we weren't going to reverse decades of personal hygiene habits in the week they were here, so it was better to just try to keep it to a minimum and keep it from getting out of control.


Our interpreters were invaluable during this whole week. We had two who were with us the entire week - Bell and Blue - and several who helped out here and there as needed (I think they adopt nicknames because the Americans have trouble pronouncing their Arabic names). There is no way this operation would have run as smoothly as it did - once it was brought under control - if it weren't for them. They did a fantastic job of sticking with us through very long and tiring days, chasing recruits all over the place and translating all our hollering, lecturing, joking and chatting with the jundis (Arabic for soldiers). They were like our shadows, dutifully following us around as we stalked from one end of the pod to the other making sure jundis were where they were supposed to be. I noticed after a few days they even began to think like we do, giving answers to jundi's questions without even having to translate for us. They knew what the answers were going to be and simply cut out the middle man. I was really very proud of them.

I also learned a lot of Arabic from them this week! Sometimes it was just easier for me to yell in Arabic than it was to ask the 'terp to speak for me, so I memorized certain phrases that I tended to use a lot. A few I came to know well:

• Lima Zibala - pick up the garbage. After about 10 minutes of telling people to "lima zibala" and finding them sitting on their ass as soon as I was out of sight, it became "LIMA F***ING ZIBALA!!" as I took out my baton to get them to move. I said this over and over and over and over again, loudly and forcefully. It came to be a joke between myself and the jundis after a while. Whenever they would see me coming the first thing they would say was "Lima zibala!", make the thumbs up sign, and give a big (smartass) smile.


• Tab joya il binaya - get in the building. Self explanatory.


• Ishta - go, or go away. Very useful when the same jundi comes up and for the tenth time that day asks he if he can go to the PX. It was "No" yesterday, it was "No" this morning, it's still "No" now. Ishta. ISHTA!! (you have to repeat yourself often, because they never do what they're told the first time.)


• Imshi - Walk. Useful for when someone starts running. One person starts running, then 10 people start running, next thing you know you have 1500 Iraqis rushing toward you. They were like a herd of gazelles who get spooked. One gazelle gets scared and takes off running and the rest start running just because.


• Atla - outside, as in "Get outside". I used this in the mornings quite a bit trying to get them out into formation for breakfast.


• Sabbah Ach'er - Good morning


• Tisbah Ach'er - The english equivalent is "Good Night". The literal meaning is a wish for a good morning when you wake up. Notice the similarity between "Sabbah" - morning - and "Tisbah".


• Harraq - "Quickly!" The recruits seemed to have no in between speed. They either wanted to rush places as a crazed mob, or they dragged ass everywhere!! I used this one a lot when I moved them in a file from place to place. They just want to stroll around as long as they don't think they're missing out on anything. But when you have 1,500 people to move from point A to point B, you need them to move with a sense of urgency.


• Ejless - Sit down. If you could get them sat down in formation, everything was right with the world.


• Tashkil - Formation. As in "Get your ass in formation!" Plus a couple other four letter words in there for emphasis. But they were in English, so I don't think I hurt anyone's feelings *lol* I'm pretty sure they understood my intentions from my tone.


• Tali mod - Formation. But more in the sense of a formation for the purpose of putting out information to the group, rather than a formation just to get everyone organized.


• La - No


• Ma Salama - good bye

Of course the spelling is probably horrendous. It's more of a phonetic spelling than anything.

On the fourth day we finally shipped out 700 of them to Kirkush, and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, half the jundis to take care of! Then we found out they were bringing in an additional 700 to fill in behind them. The next morning, 600 left and 250 newbies came in. It went on like this all week; ship some out, get more in.

Managing the new soldiers became easier as the week went on as well. Once we had established the routine and the ground rules with the initial group, we simply told them we expected them to act like soldiers and show the new group how things worked. At one point I even asked if anyone from the group was a sergeant in the old Iraqi Army. A number of hands went up, and I picked one at random and brought him over to the side away from the formation. His name was Karim. I explained to Karim that I was putting him in charge of this group. I gave him instructions and let him run the group. Simple as that. I just sat back and made sure nothing got out of hand.

It was so neat to see how the recruits developed, even in the short time we had them. It was so satisfying to see them moving from civilians just doing whatever the hell seemed comfortable at the time to the beginnings of a cohesive group with it's own Iraqi leadership. They knew what needed to be done and did it (for the most part. They never did get the concept of picking up their trash without much yelling and cajoling from the Americans). Karim especially was fantastic! The MPs also moved from next to useless on the first day to a fairly dependable group for the rest of the week. It was too simple. We showed up with a plan for the day and got it started. We showed the Iraqis what to do and how to do it, then stepped back and let them do it. We only stepped in if things began to get out of hand or plans changed. We only followed up to make sure it was being done correctly. Otherwise, the Iraqis ran the pod. Looking back it was really neat to see the way the jundis and the MPs really came to form the beginnings of a true military unit.

This morning, we finally put the last of them on the bus and sent them off to Kirkush. I can't say I'll really miss them because it was a long week with long days. I would hate to count how many miles I walked just moving from one end of the site to the other making sure everything was running smoothly and people were where they were supposed to be. While I would say most of the jundis were good folks, every group has it's trouble children and they take up an inordinate amount of your time. My legs are killing me, I'm hoarse from yelling at jundis to get them to move, I have a cold from being around all these people, and I'm generally worn out from actively managing 3000 people in a week, 14 hours a day. But I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it. I learned a lot about Iraqis, about who they are and what they're like. I found them to be remarkably familiar. They litter and they shit everywhere, but otherwise they are identical to American recruits just entering the Army. The same concerns, the same worries, the same motivations, the same stupid questions all the time. They even laughed at my jokes *lol*

So, all in all a positive experience. I hear we may be doing it again next month. It should be much easier this next time because we know what we're doing. I just need to learn how to yell so I don't lose my voice after the first hour. And maybe buy a couple pooper scoopers.

Well, not much to tell you all. This is one of the bad things (but good at the same time) of being in communications in the army. You tend to work really hard at the beginning getting your equipment set up and communications going, but once it's working there's not a whole lot to do unless something breaks. But if you're doing your job with maintanance and such, things shouldn't break. So you end up babysitting the equipment and passing the time.

It's starting to warm up some as the weather has been in the 70's the last couple days. As much as I've been complaining about being cold, I'm not particularly looking foward to the summer heat either. THAT should be an experience.

What a Valentines day! We had several thousand more Iraqis show up to join the army. We were prepared this time, however, since this was the day we told everyone to come back who had not been able to make it in on the 2^nd.

The plan this time was to move them all to the airfield a couple miles down the road. This way we keep all these people off the post until we can get them organized and exert some level of positive control over them. This also moved any danger from terrorist attacks away from the post proper and out onto the deserted airfield.

Out on the airfield we established various checkpoints where they were given a cursory physical, filled out paperwork, etc etc. This was a winnowing process for weeding out people who clearly were not fit to join the army, whether it be because of age, physical status, or some other reason. Eventually when they made it to the end of the airfield they were organized into groups and trucked into the post. Once on post we put them into temporary housing units (read: warehouses with mattresses) until transportation arrives to take them to their permanent training bases.

At the crack of dawn they began showing up. We must have had an easy thousand people at dawn and it just kept growing! It's hard to estimate how many we had show up, but we ended up taking about 4,000 people. So, you figure we turned away a few because they were ineligible, kicked a few out for poor behavior, then turned away a lot of people because we just ran out of daylight. If I had to guess I would say that about 7,000 people or so people showed up.

Again, the biggest issue we had was with crowd control. There were no bombs (although we were sure there would be because we announced this ahead of time). There were several injuries, mostly related to either crowd/riot control, or from being injured by other people wanting to join up. They were pushing, hitting, shoving each other - all just to get to the front of the line so they could get in the army.

The scene makes one appreciate the lack of opportunity for the Iraqis in terms of jobs or economic welfare. They were fighting hard to get in. Even after we shut the recruiting down towards dusk we had to spend about an hour trying to chase people away. One unfortunate (or stupid, depending on how you look at it) individual who did not make it through by the end of the day ended up sprinting across the desert towards the area where we had the new recruits organized and waiting for the trucks to come take them to the post. Not knowing what his intentions were - does he just want to get in really badly? Is he a suicide bomber making one last mad dash to kill as many people as possible? - we chased him down and forcefully subdued him. Turned out he was just stupid and thought he could run in with the other group and we wouldn't notice. I imagine he was plenty sore the next morning though.

So now we get to house, feed, and control all these thousands of people until their training bases show up to get them. Now the fun begins in earnest! Plus, we're doing it again on the 23^rd since we turned so many people away. The army needs people and we seem to have them here in this area. In spades!

An entire blog devoted to bitching about her flat mate.

Oh yeah, that's pure marriage material there. Does any man who reads that blog think she will be pleased with anything he does?

I found out today that one of the pics I took of all the incoming recruits (see my blog post for February 2^nd) has been making the rounds in Iraq. Evidently my commander (LTC Harvey) emailed the pics to his boss, who then emailed them to other folks, and eventually the "little picture that could" made it all the way up to the Secretary of Defense. That's Donald Rumsfeld!

LTC Harvey told me Rumsfeld used it in a briefing on the 3^rd illustrating the effect that the election has had in Iraq. You can see the picture here. You can see the video of the briefing here and read a transcript of the briefing here. The link for the video will take you to The Pentagon Channel website, where you will be able to click on the link titled "Pentagon Briefing" dated 03 Feb 2005. A window will then pop up and will play a video stream. The video clip is approximately 30 minutes long with the picture showing up about half way through (the 3rd picture shown).

It's nice to know your work isn't going un-noticed!

Man, I had a scary experience today! I went out running by myself around post today and . . .

MY IPOD FROZE!!

I couldn't believe that yet another bit of personal electronic gear had fallen prey to the electronic graveyard that is Iraq. Luckily, with a little help from Yahoo I found this site. After a little reading I learned how to hard boot the iPod and it started up normally.

Evidently freezing or locking up is a fairly common event with iPods (who knew?). My little white friend is running smoothly as we speak though. All's well that ends well.

The elections seem to have churned up a whole lot of patriotic fervor in Numaniyah! Tuesday, the first day the roads were open for travel in Iraq, 4,000 Iraqis (that's a four with three zeros following it) turned up at the front gate of our training base wanting to join the Iraqi army.

They arrived seemingly out of no where with no warning or prior announcement. The rumor mill says one of the current Iraqi officers called a cousin and invited him to join up. The cousin then called a nephew, who then called a brother-in-law, who then called his neighbor twice removed . . . next thing we know we've got 4,000 people knocking on our front door wanting to join the army!

It was an adventure trying to manage them all while maintaining security, but what an exciting opportunity! You could feel the energy in these guys ( pic 1 / pic 2 ). One of the Americans captured the spirit of the day perfectly when he said "This is what it's like watching a nation being born".

As they waited to fill out their paperwork we would ask the throngs of people through an interpreter, "Who wants to fight for their country?" and hands would shoot up into the air. Normally Iraqi recruits can be a bit restless and are not willing to wait their turn ( pic 1 / pic 2 ), but these guys stood in line for hours waiting for their opportunity to be processed. ( pic 1 / pic 2 / pic 3 )

Eventually we realized there was no way we could take them all, especially with no prior warning of their arrival. We just couldn't absorb 4,000 new recruits in one day without being prepared. We ended up calling Baghdad, finding out which training bases in Iraq could take soldiers, giving the wanna-be soldiers a form stating they wanted to join the army, told them "Go to such-and-such base", loaded them up on trucks and sent them on their way out the front gate with a wave and a smile. Once they were brought back out to the main road it was up to them to find their way to their assigned post because we simply did not have the resources to transport them all. It will be interesting to see how many actually make the effort to travel on their own to their assigned post.

You would think that being in a small, rural area that would be the end of it. What happened today? We had another 2,000 arrive at the gate. (By the time I arrived to take these pics most of them had already been sent home: pic 1 / pic 2 / pic 3 / pic 4 ).

We were at least a little bit prepared for their arrival today after yesterday's event. We still couldn't take them all in, so after giving them all their forms and a loaf of bread as a parting gift, we told them to come back on the 14th. The idea is that hopefully by then we will be able to coordinate with other bases and make arrangements to transport these people to the various training posts around Iraq.

Man, 6,000 new recruits in two days! That is HUGE! Maybe, just maybe, this election is actually having an effect. Leading up to Sunday's election, the pragmatist in me said the election really wouldn't make much of a difference, at least not right away. Even today some small voice is saying this is just a honeymoon effect. But when you see the way people acted when they had a chance to vote - dancing and singing and smiling. When you saw the disappointment of people who wanted to vote but couldn't. When you see all the workers on post walking around with ink stained fingers. This is something the Iraqi people really seem to believe in.

I know Americans love to be cynical; that it's not cool to be an idealist or to be hopeful these days. But I'm beginning to think President Bush had it right in his inaugural address when he said,

"Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

In just this short time this election has had a tangible effect on the spirits of the Iraqis that I've interacted with. It's really something that gives me pause; it's something inspiring. I wish you all could have been here to see it.