Our Tents, Camp Virginia, Kuwait

There are many of these tents, all used for personnel in transit. There are a different style of tents for the permanent personnel here, but hardly any hard structures. It's a good 15 minute walk from our tent to the chow hall, or anything else.

Hydrate or Die!

Bottled water is readily available, pretty much where ever you are you can see a pallet of water near-by.

By my rack, Camp Virgina, Kuwait

Nothing too fancy here. A place to sleep and put your stuff until you leave.

My Tent/Hooch, Camp Virginia Kuwait

It has air conditioning, keeps it bearable during the day. At night , you are on your own. No heat. It was around 50 degrees in there last night. With the sleeping bag, no problem.

Camp Virginia, Kuwait

Here is our seabags and packs, on arrival to Camp Virginia, Kuwait. We will stay here until our flight to TQ. We landed in Kuwait City, then bussed to here. Very scenic environment.

Souvenirs from Scotland

LT Kurt Giometti, my fellow nurse from Great Lakes, demonstrating a non-regulation haircut. We will both be at TQ (al-Taqqadum), doing the Enroute Care Nursing (care of critical patients in the helicopter)

Scotland Airport for 2 Hours

Not to different from other terminals, except I had to keep asking the people there to repeat themselves. "Are you sure you're speaking English?"

Armed and Dangerous

We could take our pistols and rifles onboard, but we couldn't take our Gerber Multi-pliers, flashlights, or knifes. (????)

Getting on the Plane

We filled in the plane from back to front, lowest ranking to highest. It is a Boeing 767, largest civilian plane I've ever been on, longest trip by far, also.

Cherry Point, Waiting for the Plane

It's almost 3AM, waiting for the plane to be ready for us.

Almost There...

Well, as I write this I am in Kuwait. We arrived yesterday morning at 0550 local time. Spent the day trying to catch up on sleep, yet not sleep too much, because I wanted to sleep at night. I am currently 9 hours ahead of Central time (it's 0920am now, and 1120pm in Wisconsin). I do not have any pictures ready yet, but will post some as soon as convenient.
The flight was as good as it could be, I had a window seat and no one sat next to me. I think we were in business class. It's times like these I'm glad I'm an Officer, when we boarded the plane, we went in in order of rank, filling out the back of the plane going forward. I was in at the 1/3 point of the plane from the front. We spent a grand total of 18 hours on the plane, including a 2 hour refueling of the plane in Scotland (Edinburgh?). We were able to get of the plane and stretch out, but all terminals look alike. Flying over the countryside, I could easily picture seeing the Wisconsin countryside, but this definitely looks older. On the plane, we were there long enough to get 4 consecutive meals. WAY too long to be sitting in one place. We flew into Kuwait city, then bussed about 2 hours away to an Army base where we sit until our plane comes to take us to our final destination. Likely leaving within the next 24 hours.
The base here is pretty nice, comparatively speaking. The USO has a great set up with TVs and video games, there is various fast food chains here (McDonalds, Subway, a doughnut place, etc.), and a 24/7 internet cafe. We are in tents, or some variation of them (pictures to come, I need to bust out my laptop to transfer pics from the camera to the laptop, then to a thumb drive to take to the computers in the internet cafe). The weather was in the mid 80's during the day, around 50 degrees last night, and it's already getting warm this morning. The food is pretty darn good, I actually had an omelet (not real eggs) and bacon, which was a huge suprise since I thought bacon and other pork products would be nonexistent while we were over here. I had a hot shower this morning (everything seems better after a hot shower). There are many countries represented here, South Korea, Bulgaria, and others I have not yet been able to identify.
Sunglasses are an absolute must, nothing but sand and us out here. The sand is like nothing I've seen before, more like the consistency of light brown talcum powder than the beach sand on Lake Michigan. I am not looking forward to what a heavy rainfall is going to do to it, quicksand comes to mind.
Well, that's enough for now. I'll get photo's up as soon as I can, it may be 4 or 5 days before I can get back on a computer. Once we get to TQ, we will be very busy doing turnover with the leaving crew. Once they are gone, we are truly on our own, so we want to soak up as much as possible before they go.

Not Quite There Yet...

Well, we just got the word that our flight was cancelled. Unsure when we'll go, but I'm pretty sure they haven't called off the war yet. We could leave at 0200 tomorrow, or Tuesday. No way to know until they tell us. Until then, we are all trying to find ways to entertain ourselves. Lots of video games. We really can't go anywhere, as you can not wear cami's off base, and we all packed our civilian clothes. I am hesitant to open one of my two seabags as they are a masterpiece of packing, the equivalent of 10 pounds of junk squeezed into a 5 pound bag. Most people had to use 3 seabags to get all their stuff in, I did it in 2. Small victories. I'll have more pictures as we go on from here, haven't really gotten in the habit yet.
I hope this picture isn't too offensive, but it (smirk) sums up a lot of different concepts.

Getting Closer...

I'm back at Camp Lejeune, the time at home was brief, but utterly priceless. It sounds as though we'll be leaving this weekend, and I will be out of communication up to 5 days. I'll spread the word on how I'm doing as soon as I can. I appreciate all emails, so feel free to say hi if you are so inclined. pmdeyoung@gmail.com

An Unexpected Trip Home

With training complete, and some time before we actually leave, I went home for a week. I hear the best way to acclimatize to the desert is to spend time in sub-zero Wisconsin. I saw enough snow to last me until next year.

The Helo Dunker Training, 2 Days of Fun

Here is a picture of the pool and most of the equipment we used. The Staff like to use the term "drown proofing" a lot, I'm not so fond of it myself after 2 days of this unique type of fun. The 2nd picture is that of us who survived the training, we only lost 4 of the 20 that started (no, they did not drown), which the staff said is an outstanding percentage to pass as a group.

Air Bottle Training

This was an exercise in how to use the air bottle, a mini-scuba tank that was good for around 5-6 breathes. What they do is you assume the position seen here, then they push your shoulders down so that you are upsided down. You then breath from the tank, pull the mouthpiece out, put it back in and clear it of water, then breathe again. Not bad in of itself, but you are not allowed to plug your nose during this, so the water goes straight to your sinuses and does a pretty good irrigation. 2 days later I'm still smelling chlorine.

We had to swim in full gear for a couple laps, then manually inflate our vests. Easier said then done. I turned on the little light on top of my helmet to make it easier for the rescue diver to find me on the bottom of the pool, cuz' that's where I thought I was headed.

WaterPark Squaredance

After inflating our vests, we get together to protect ourselves from sharks, or was it make us easier to be found by the sharks? The we all got in the raft. I think we exceeded maximum capacity.

Trying to Stay Warm

Even in warm water, after 5+ hours in the pool, you start to get cold.

The Grapple Hook

This was a simulation of trying to swim into a helicopter downwash, while trying to find the hook to attache to our suit and get lifted up by the winch. The tower with the winch had many hoses that sprayed water with enough force that if you were swimming directly into it, you would actually be going backwards in the water.

The Dunker

Although the pictures are out of order, this is what the dunker looks like with us in it going down. The 1st is me after getting out on our 1st of three trips down. (I actually made 4 trips as I had to repeat my second dunk- I became disoriented on my way out and swam into the cockpit instead of out the door. I had plenty of breath left, but the safety diver 'assisted' me out). Great America is unable to match this ride, and I'm paid to do it!

My Address

I can be reached at the following address while over there:

LT Peter M. DeYoung
SURGICAL COMPANY
2d Maint BN (-) (Rein)
Unit 73619
FPO AE 09509-3619