We still don't grasp the value of translators

[Brandon Friedman]

Oh, I was trusted to pay them... with my own money.

Thanks to our dicked up priorities in April 2003, the powers-that-were ensured that BIAP had a Burger King and PX and that each BDE was able to dole out casual pay by the end of April ($200/month, max). Casual pay was to OIF I what CERP money is to operations today - except there was significantly less paperwork involved.

At first, I thought it was pretty stupid that we had the ability to draw casual pay (and even drive to the airport and stand in line for a Whopper) when we had no system to resupply us with such trivialities as AA batteries or potable water. But then I saw the brilliance of this. By drawing casual pay, I could buy my platoon's supplies on the local economy and do other things like pay interpreters. OIF I only cost me about $1400. It probably would have cost Uncle Sam 100 times that, due to the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. The only downside was that batteries that you buy in Iraq are garbage. They will power your NVDs for about 30 minutes. I think they contained mercury, too.

I often blamed the mercury in the batteries when thinks didn't make sense (which was pretty much everyday). For example, our Bradleys were rolling around with track pads worn down to the metal and we were cannibalizing vehicles due to a lack of parts because the parts flow from Kuwait was cut off on the assumption that the war was over. But we could get Whoppers and DVDs if we drove to BIAP. That was just too stupid to be believed. So I would always rationalize that "we can't be that stupid. I must simply be going crazy due to exposure to the mercury in these cheapass Hajj batteries." Same thing when we were ordered to send our Bradleys back to Kuwait in May. They were racing to turn the AO into a garrison wonderland, oblivious to our continuous drumbeat of intel from the locals that "bad people are gathering in Fallujah" and "Ali Baba says that he will kill me if I talk to you" and "please stop coming to my store - I'm being threatened." I thought, "boy, the intel guys can't possibly be this thick-skulled to ignore this avalanche of corroborated, multi-sourced intel. I must be going crazy. Maybe I should stop being so cheap and pony up the extra dough for the imitation Duracells."

Here's a horror story, Schmedlap: As contractors were ferrying in Burger King, etc. to the Green Zone in late summer 2003, my guys were wearing out their boots in northwest Iraq. As XO, I was working all the time trying to come up with replacements for nearly an entire infantry company. When my supply sergeant and I finally scored a delivery of several dozen boxes of desert boots, we were thrilled. Except when we opened them up for inspection, about a quarter of the boxes contained old, used pairs that had belonged to the slugs down at the BSB who'd swapped out the new ones for their old ones before sending them our way.

I can't remember exactly, but I think that was the day I decided the Army wasn't for me anymore. Thanks for helping me dredge up all these awesome memories.

[Schmedlap]

When my supply sergeant and I finally scored a delivery of several dozen boxes of desert boots, we were thrilled. Except when we opened them up for inspection, about a quarter of the boxes contained old, used pairs that had belonged to the slugs down at the BSB who'd swapped out the new ones for their old ones before sending them our way.

We went a month without potable water. We literally lived off of the land - accepting any water from locals that was offered to us, buying water and ice thanks to the casual pay advances, sometimes driving to BIAP to steal from Division (they had not only water, but freezers, gatorade, etc). We kept griping to battalion about it. Battalion pointed out that if the FSB didn't push it, then there was nothing to give us. One day we visited the FSB. And we found our water. They were using it to do their laundry, to make water balloons, to bathe, and to clean their HMMWVs. We were black on water for nearly a month and they were using bottled water to wash their vehicles. With most of us experiencing frequent diarrhea from tainted water that seemingly no amount of chlorine or iodine could purify, I can't fully explain how angry we were upon discovering this. We asserted ownership of a pallet of bottled water and began loading it into our vehicles. A few FSB personnel - shirts still wet from a water balloon fight - protested and some unpleasantries were exchanged. My NCOs, about ready to explode, literally drew down on them with locked and loaded M4s. I jumped in between them - honestly thinking that my NCOs were going to shoot them. It was ugly.

[Ken White]

as it should. You shouldn't have to do that and I have to wonder with the boots and the water, what the NCOs and Officers of the units responsible were doing -- obviously not watching what their troops were doing....

Happens in every war, though. My dad was a USN Supply officer in WW II, one day he was sitting in his Quonset on Guam when three Marines walked in with a requisition for something; a little Storekeeper 3d started giving them static and one of the Marines cranked back the bolt on his M1. Storekeeper; "Sir, he's threatening me!" Dad; "Probably ought to give him what he wants and in future avoid smarting off to armed Marines."

Not being an Officer and thus constrained, I've backed down an Ordnance Battalion XO in one war and a COSCOM 1LT and CSM in another with an implicit but not certainly not voiced threat of unseemly and inelegant firearms use in a rear area. So if it's happened in the current wars, it seems to me a permanent affliction. My solution to the problem is to eliminate those kinds of Commands. Note that both I mentioned are gone.

My plan is working. Now, for Sustainment Brigades...

[Brandon Friedman]

We went a month without potable water. We literally lived off of the land - accepting any water from locals that was offered to us, buying water and ice thanks to the casual pay advances, sometimes driving to BIAP to steal from Division (they had not only water, but freezers, gatorade, etc). We kept griping to battalion about it. Battalion pointed out that if the FSB didn't push it, then there was nothing to give us. One day we visited the FSB. And we found our water. They were using it to do their laundry, to make water balloons, to bathe, and to clean their HMMWVs. We were black on water for nearly a month and they were using bottled water to wash their vehicles. With most of us experiencing frequent diarrhea from tainted water that seemingly no amount of chlorine or iodine could purify, I can't fully explain how angry we were upon discovering this. We asserted ownership of a pallet of bottled water and began loading it into our vehicles. A few FSB personnel - shirts still wet from a water balloon fight - protested and some unpleasantries were exchanged. My NCOs, about ready to explode, literally drew down on them with locked and loaded M4s. I jumped in between them - honestly thinking that my NCOs were going to shoot them. It was ugly.

For he today who fought the FSB for supplies with me
Shall be my brother;

I have walked in your shoes, dude. My first platoon had to steal water from the Air Force in Jacobabad, Pakistan. When my battalion failed to secure cots for my company at Camp New Jersey, my second platoon had to tactically acquire unused cots from Camp Doha (during a planned raid) to take with us into Iraq. And, as XO, I distinctly remember restraining myself from buttstroking a 626 FSB captain when he told me that my company couldn't be re-supplied (with things like water, etc.) because his guys didn't "work on Saturdays." It never ended. Those are just a few examples that I'm sure you can match or beat. Good fun.