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from:
http://www2.arkansasonline.com/blogs/notes-from-a-war/2007/jun/12/godspeed-seabees/
Notes from a War
Godspeed Seabees! June 12, 2007
Posted June 12, 2007
The wind is blowing strong this morning, tossing the antennas to and fro on the Seabees’ headquarters building. I’m sitting on the front porch of the chapel in the heart of Seabee acres here at Al Asad.
Fortunately, the powdery dirt these Seabees call “Moon dust” is not yet filling the air. It’s cool, a nice morning to drink coffee on a porch.
The flagpole in front of me is barren, no flags are allowed to be flown here. The pole, itself, looks like a mast of sorts. It’s a Navy flag pole with several lines for running the American flag and various signal flags for messaging.
In the Chapel behind me, the church pennant hangs over the wooden alter. It is a large white, triangular flag donned with a blue cross that is made to fly above a ship during church services.
“We can’t fly religious symbols here, so I brought it to decorate the chapel,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Jim Staggs of Heber Springs.
Cussing and card playing is prohibited when the pennant flies over a ship. I don’t think that rule applies here. If it does, I'm pretty sure I broke it on Sunday ... sorry Chaps, I don't know what the hell I was thinking.
Camp is abuzz, if you’ll pardon the pun. Pile Driver is preparing to head back to Camp Fallujah, another day another convoy.
Everywhere I look, Seabees are working. Some are in hard hats, others carry clipboards, one is fixing something on a truck with his beloved roll of 100 mph duct tape.
Life is never slow here. A Seabee told me on the bus to chow the other night that a happy Seabee is a Seabee with a hammer in his hand. After a week with these folks, I know that to be true.
We’re just getting into the Seabee swing and it’s already time to leave. It seems too soon to say goodbye to these men and women we’ve just now come to know.
These Seabees have welcomed us into their ranks, welcomed us into their trucks and let us borrow their hard hats. They’ve shared their stories, coffee, snacks and many laughs without hesitation.
They’ve been amazingly understanding as I looked at their ranks with the anchors and stripes in confusion and said things like, “You’re a what?”
Cmdr. Craig Scharton grabbed the black oak leaf cluster on his collar as we headed for dinner last night, looked at me and said, “Commander.”
Oops!
I second guessed myself a few days ago and changed his rank at the last minute in a story. A black oak leaf cluster in the Army, Marines and Air Force is a lieutenant colonel. In the Navy, however, it’s a commander. A lieutenant commander is a rank below that.
Ugh. I worked so hard to learn the enlisted ranks and then I mess up the Skipper’s rank! (Note to all you non-Navy types. Skipper is a battalion commander.)
Scharton laughed as I cringed.
An amazingly well-read man, the Skipper is quick to quip and fast to laugh. He’s got the easy attitude and personality that is common among the Bees. Get it done, have some fun and move on to the next project.
When we first met him, the Skipper told us about the day he explained what a Seabee was to his then-future wife.
“A construction worker AND a sailor?” she said with proper sarcasm. “Every mother’s dream!” He laughs every time he tells that story.
We’ve enjoyed chewing the dirt of Anbar Province with the Bees. I wish we could stay longer.
There’s always something to do around here.
We’ll catch a C-130 bound for Balad this afternoon, we’re moving to Arkansas’ 77th Aviation Brigade next — they fly Black Hawk helicopters. And with any luck, it will be a Little Rock Air Base crew that flies us there.
It amazes me how many people are here from Arkansas. It’s a small state in a small world.
We said goodbye to the Skipper a bit ago.
He smiled, shared a joke, and in the tradition of the Navy, wished us well, hollering "Godspeed,” as the door closed behind us.
Godspeed, Seabees. Godspeed.
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A Mighty Bee and a Cup of Joe June 11, 2007
Posted June 12, 2007
There is a mighty, mighty Seabee in the tire shop here at the 28th headquarters at al Asad.
Her name is Petty Officer 3rd Class Jacalynne Coronado of San Antonio, Texas. She weighs maybe 95 pounds soaking wet with her boots on.
Seriously.
I just saw her pick up a can of WD-40 that is bigger than her bicep. It's not a Seabee-sized can, either.
Chief Petty Officer Rob Turner of Springfield, Mo., pointed out that her body armor weighs half her body weight.“If I had to carry around half my body weight, I’d be carrying around a Volkswagen,” he said.
Coronodo mounts massive tires onto massive rims and puts them on big trucks.
Yes, I mean massive. Like 585-pound tires.
“And we expect her to work just like us and she does,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Sean Armstrong of New Caney, Texas.
Today she is training a couple of Marines on how to mount tires onto rims.
“I love their expressions,” she came over and said. “Like they’re thinking, ‘You’re going to teach me?’”
Just then one of the convoy vehicles pulled up needing to replace a couple of badly worn tires. She grabbed a block to put in front of one of the other wheels — a safety regulation — and as she picked it up, one of the Seabees in the truck jumped up and offered to help her with the big block.
She went on with her work, covered head to toe in smears of grease and tire marks.
Coronodo went back to the big truck tire she had been working on before, stood on top of it and hammered away at the lug nuts with an impact wrench. A few minutes later she was prying the tire off the wheel all by herself.
“You know,” Armstrong said while she worked, “She can fit right inside one of those tires.”
I know what you’re thinking. No, the boys didn’t put her in there. She tried it herself, just to see if she could. Yep, it’s true.
“We’re blessed with a lot of good mechanics,” Turner said as he watched one of Alpha Company’s other mechanics take a cutting torch to an old cement mixer trailer.
In another day, that old trailer will be cut into pieces, welded back together and begin its new life as a trailer for a Bobcat.
“This is what Seabees do. They take something that is nothing and make it useful.”
Sign it's time to go?
On another note, I think it may be time to leave al Asad.
The workers at the Green Bean coffee shop here know me now.
“Welcome back Misses!” they holler in their Indian accents when they see me in line. “Medium coffee?”
The line here stretches out the door sometimes with people ordering mocha frapachinos and fruit smoothies and cookies and, well, you name the coffee drink and they’ll whip it up.
Me? I drink plain old Joe.
I think I may be the only one who buys plain coffee at the Bean.
Staton said that it is clear that these two guys who man the counter day in and day out are, “Coffee savants,” remembering everyone’s order.
Really?
I thought they just thought I was nice.
“Yeah,” Staton said in his usual deadpan. “They love you like a stripper loves a $20 bill.”
Then he pointed out just how much coffee I consume on any given day.
Oh.
Overheard
Here’s an overheard comment from the area near the Green Bean:After seeing a story in Stars and Stripes about desertion, someone said, “It’s tough to desert when you’re deployed. It’s hard to get a ride home.”
So true, so true.
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The Arkansas Mafia June 10, 2007
Posted June 12, 2007
They are known as the Arkansas Mafia.
These men of Detachment 1, Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 28 — based at Camp Pike in North Little Rock — dominate the battalion’s noncommissioned officer ranks.
There is an Arkie holding a leadership position as a chief petty officer or above in every company of this battalion. Why? No one seems to know why the Arkansas detachment has more senior leadership.
Ask these men, however, and they’ll tell you they’re leaders because they’re from Arkansas. Yes, they’re full of character, every one. You can always find a smile and a chuckle with this group.
And they’re rarely alone.
If one Arkansas chief petty officer is walking across camp, he will at some point be joined by another.
This is how they got the nickname from some of their non-Arkansas counterparts. They migrate together. There are about 30 Arkansans in the 28th. More than six of those are chiefs. They have their own coin and their own jokes.
These guys have known each other for years. They pick on one another like brothers and band together when needed. They take a joshing and give one back just as good.
It is, indeed, the Arkansas Mafia.
“If you want No. 1, come to Detachment 1,” boasted Senior Chief Petty Officer Gordon Borst of Searcy with a smile.
Chief Petty Officer Eddie Lewis of Texarkana is quick to point out which side of the state line he lives on: “The right side!”
You know they just do this to bug the nonbelievers, as they call them.
Lewis asked some of his Bees where they were from as he walked through the yard today, and got answers like Oklahoma and Texas.
“I’m sorry,” he’d say and laugh. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?” They answer with a hearty laugh.
Then Lewis saw a couple of birds sitting on top of one of the modular buildings his company builds, with twigs in their beaks.
At first, he got a little irritated about where they may be building a nest. Then the Seabee — the Navy’s construction team — gave it a second thought.
“Hey, at least they’re builders,” he said “You’ve got to like that.”
This crowd is a kick, I tell you.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Rick Warren of Hot Springs is not a big smiler, but is as nice as can be.
I caught him with an almost grin today as Staton was taking a group shot of the Mafia. His fellow Mafia members joke that Warren doesn’t speak, he grunts. I have proof that he speaks.
The first time I met him, he was slow to chat. Well, chat is such a strong word. Then I mentioned the Mafia and he immediately grinned.
“You heard of that, huh?” he said.
“We all moved up in the ranks together,” Warren said of his Mafia buddies. “And here we are. There used to be even more of us.”
Now, they have adopted us. Staton and I were given the coveted Arkansas Mafia coin today — an old military tradition. Yep, there are photos to prove it.
We’re not Bees, but we’re family now!
Senior Chief Petty Officer Andy Gray is hilarious. He runs the Seabee convoy team but says the best part is being out on the road with his guys.
He told his Bees at a mission this morning in Fallujah, “We’ve got a cold front coming in, it’s only going to hit 109 degrees today. Bring your jackets.” Then he pointed out to Staton and myself.
“They’re from Arkansas,” he said to groans and cheers. “Hey, hey! Who else has a reporter from their state over here?”
That was a little embarrassing. But that was pure Arkansas Mafia talk. I knew right then that we were part of the Mafia.
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The Heaven and Hell Oasis June 9, 2007
Posted June 12, 2007
They call it the Heaven and Hell Oasis.
It’s a porch behind the chaplain’s and the Gunnery Sergeant’s office here at Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 28 headquarters at al Asad.
Chaplain Blake Lasater of Bella Vista jokes that after the Gunny gives you hell, as gunny’s are known to do, you can go next door to his office and find the path to heaven. The laughter is thrown in for free.
The Gunny is the Marine advisor to the 28th. It’s not an easy job being the Marine among Bees. He trains them on weaponry and fighting.
During a weapons class one day here, he was asked about grenades. He told the Bees to hold on and ran out the door, returning moments later fully loaded down with grenades dangling from his vest.
“No one else seemed to wonder why he had so many grenades so handy,” Chaps said. “What else is in his office back there?”
And the Bees, in turn, make Gunny a little grumpy. Well, all gunnys are kinda grumpy. It’s the gunny way.
And Chaps is funny, like most Chaps are. It’s the chaplain way.
And the two sides meet in this oasis built under camouflage netting. There’s a porch swing, a couple benches and duck decoys.
Yeah, the ducks were a gift. Someone packed up their old decoys and shipped them to a bunch of Seabees in Iraq. I haven't seen an Iraqi duck yet, but if one flies over I'm sure it'll fall for the decoys.
There are boxes of plants, vegetables and flowers trying to grow in the desert sand. The Bees had them sent from home.
Over on a bench is a box of little cilantro seedlings. The Texas contingent had the seeds shipped in so they could make salsa to help smooth the rough days.
Moonflowers, sunflowers, cucumber vines climbing strings up hesco barriers. It’s a little piece of home. The battle here is to keep them watered. These box gardens are thirsty.
They’re waiting on one of the electricians to so some rewiring and a string of pink flamingo lights will brighten the dark oasis nights. I’m not sure how the Gunny feels about the pink lights, but I’m sure it will be fine.
“We have to do something to stave off the lunacy,” Chaps said.
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Chaps and Company June 6, 2007
Posted June 7, 2007
We were greeted at the Pax Terminal last night here at Al Asad by Chaplain Blake Lasater of Bella Vista. He is a funny, funny, funny man of God ... a Methodist, to be precise.
He came walking across the gravel in his Navy workout clothes, a smile on his face. He's been our Seabee Ambassador since we arrived here to cover Navy Reservists with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 28.
I’ve been giving him grief today about how a chaplain is supposed to be a source of comfort, yet he keeps trying to scare the beans out of me.
For the record, it's not working.
Last night, after he dropped us off at our trailers, he turned around and shouted a final thought for the night.
“Hey, keep the key in the lock ‘cause if something happens you don’t want to fumble around for it. These things go up like a torch.” Thanks for the comforting thought just before bed, Chaps.
Then, while we were taking a walk, he told us to look out for poisonous snakes, “cause they like this time of day,” and camel spiders, and mines...What? He just smiled, and shrugged.
He’s got a knack for trouble, I have to say. The Ugandan guards here on base have his number.
Chaplain Blake Lasater at the oasis where Abraham and Sara stopped on journey across the desert in western Iraq.
He insists on driving himself everywhere, which is not typical chaplain behavior. Usually a chaplain would be driven by his assistant — the Religious Programs specialist. Yep, he's a wildman.
Chaps as they call him has been yelled at by the Ugandans at a check point, he got a note from military police on his windshield for illegal parking at an oasis believed to have been visited by Abraham on his spiritual journey to Harat from his home in Ur, Iraq. (Yes, that Abraham, the one who offered his son in sacrifice to God in the Old Testament, the Torah and the Koran.) There will be more on this oasis in a bit, stand by.
I do wonder if there was a traffic problem at the oasis back then, though. Probably.
Anyway, today Chaps got a snappy note from the Fire Department for parking in front of their truck at the chow hall. It should be noted that he did not block them in. The chaplain did say as he parked there, however, that he wondered if it was a good idea. There were six of us squished into the little pickup truck at the time.
The note scrawled on the back of a fire inspection form cleared up any questions. “I hope it’s not your house on fire!”
Yikes!
His assistant — religious programs specialist — Petty Officer 1st Class Jim Staggs of Heber Springs, smiles his broad white smile and chuckles from the back seat as Chaps cruises along. The two of them are very entertaining, I have to say.
And they're good friends.
Staggs is story in himself. He didn’t have to come here.
“I hit 24 years in August,” he said of his Navy career. “I’m an old guy. I was in Boot Camp when Saigon fell. My drill instructor brought us in and said, ‘Watch this, men. This is history. Let’s pray it never happens again.’”
He was headed toward retirement, and volunteered to deploy with Chaps when he heard Lasater’s original assistant was not going to deploy.
“I guess I came back because he needed somebody. I knew him. You don’t let friends go alone, even to a bad place.”
And so here he is.
When they get home, Staggs will say goodbye to the Navy for good. “I’ve got sons involved now, so it’s time I stay home,” he said. A father of five, his three sons are all on the military path.
He and Chaps make quite a team, they are equally laid back even when the door to the office never seems to stop swinging. Cussing? Doesn't phase them in the least. (I have to say that's a good trait in a Navy Chaplain.)
Chaps is the kind of chaplain that everyone seems to cuss around. It may be a Navy thing, or it may just be Chaps’ easygoing manner.
Seabees are just that way, relaxed yet focused.
The Seabees of NMCB 28 are a laughing bunch of folks. We’ve had a lot of fun with them today.
Of course, who wouldn’t like a person who can fix or build anything and has a big, machine-gun, wrench and hammer packing, angry bee as a mascot.
Seabee is a nickname for the unit’s initials — Construction Battalion. You can just call them The Bees, if you want.
Now, about this oasis.
Al Asad is in a Wadi, a dry river bed carved into the desert. If you walk in the desert, up on the ridge, you don’t even notice this valley until you’re up on it. It dives deep into the old river bed and climbs up the other side several miles away.
And in one little corner of base is a clutch of Palm trees and lush grass surrounding a spring-fed pond. A pond!
I'd always heard of oasis's, saw them in movies. But I never really realized until today that they are, indeed, a patch of salvation in a vast desert of nothingness. There are trees and reeds, grasses and flowers.
There was a turtle cruising around in the water. And fish. And a frog.
Did I mention this is a desert? It’s a desert of dirt and rock and not much else.
And there in front of me was a turtle floating in a pond. Step a half mile away from it, however, and there's nothing but dirt.
Crazy.
Oasis’s are not uncommon in the desert. Ancient trade routes are still used today that lead from oasis to oasis. The legend of Abraham is tied to the Al Asad oasis because an Iraqi Army major told the story to U.S. forces that took over the base in 2004.
“How do they know?” asked a photographer known to some as Bob. “Did Abraham and Sarah carve their names in a palm tree?”
Chaps uses the word “could” when telling the story of the oasis believed to have been visited by Abraham. It is a logical possability, he said.
He has performed baptisms and church services here. It’s one of his favorite places.
No one really knows its full history, but its recent history is relatively tortured. Saddam Hussein evicted an entire village from the oasis when he build the airbase here in the 1980s. It has been neglected ever since, littered with trash from a nearby Iraqi Army camp.
Every year or so one of the U.S. units on camp clean up the area.
With the current demand for water, however, the oasis’ spring has been hit hard. The Iraqi Army camp drilled a well for water recently and the small pond immediately dropped several feet. It's beginning to recover, though.
Another well is being drilled into the same aquifer on the U.S. side of base. No one knows the impact it will have. Water is precious in the desert, as it always has been. And the oasis is still helping support life for those who live here, through the aquifer that feeds it and the legend that keeps it alive.
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Seabees, Marines and Hertz car rentals June 5, 2007
Posted June 7, 2007
Was that a Hertz Rental sign I just saw?
It’s been a day.
Staton and I left Camp Anaconda today to head west to Anbar Province for a week or so. We’re on the hunt for Navy Seabees.
Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 28 is deployed to Anbar where its Seabees are building up a storm. And yes, that includes a mess of Arkansas sailors from the Naval Reserve Center at Camp Pike in North Little Rock.
Getting there was an adventure, of course.
Have I mentioned lately that nothing is easy over here?
I spent most of the night trying to figure out what flight we were on, a lieutenant in Fallujah was adamant that he had booked us a flight. He just couldn’t tell us when we were flying. He didn’t know.
I started what I like to call a telephone circus. I had two phones that I juggled back and forth, tossing queries out to every Pax terminal in this country. Captains and sergeants were also making calls on our behalf.
My conversations went something like this:
“Do you have us on a manifest?”
“We can’t tell you without a flight number,” said nameless voice after nameless voice.
“Oh, come on. Please? We’re desperate.”
“We don’t even have a flight to Al Asad listed,” the various nameless voices said.
So we took things into our own hands.
I e-mailed the Seabees and told them to stand by, we were going to try to bum a ride over to them.
Staton and I packed up our backpacks and headed to the Pax Terminal. One nameless voice from one of the hundreds of phone calls I made sometime after 2 a.m. tipped me that a C-130 was headed west this afternoon.
We went to a ramshackle counter in a plywood building — the Pax Terminal.
The woman pointed us to another plywood shack. A nice man looked at every document we had, stamped something and handed us a slip stating we were clear to bum a ride.
We were immediately sent to a tent. That’s actually a good sign in military travel. It means there’s hope.
At that point, we were just two tents, two buses, one plane, one more plywood building and a poetry filled port-a-john away from our destination.
We walked into the tent and found pitch black darkness.
I ran into a pole.
Then I cussed very loudly.
I almost sat on one poor guy, not on purpose, of course. I couldn’t see a thing.
Finally, I heaved my body armor and two bags onto a wooden bench, shoved them out of my way and plopped down.
I lost my press ID in the process — the little piece of plastic issued by the military that allows me to eat in the chow halls and shop in the PX — basically, it is my identity.
I grabbed at Staton one bench over and said, “Hey, give me your flashlight!”
The man, who was definitely not Staton, started fumbling around for a flashlight for me, the crazy girl sitting across the aisle from him.
Staton stepped in and apologized on my very panicked behalf shining a light on my press badge on the tent floor.
That’s when I noticed the gratuitous killing spree playing on the TV. It was a horrible horror flick involving people who stab and then eat one another for dinner.
Ick.
I’ve never been one to watch scary movies. And in this real live war, I figured we’d all seen enough of that sort of thing.
But apparently not.
It would play a second time through before we moved to tent two.
I was wearing ear plugs by that time, my only line of defense against the various gross noises from the movie. I was set up pretty good once someone allowed the lights to be turned on. I had my earplugs in, a book clutched in my hands and a luke warm Mirinda orange soda propped up in my helmet just a short reach away.
“This is just a horrible movie,” I told Staton every few minutes.
He just laughed.
The next tent had no TV. And it was filled with cots, not chairs.
That’s not a good sign, I thought.
Two hours, a bag of M&Ms, a bit of small talk and a nap later we had another roll call.
Onto the bus and then onto the very hot E model C-130 cargo plane. E models are not known for their air conditioning.
The crew, out of Pope Air Force Base, N.C., looked miserable. And very sweaty.
They were at the tail end of 12 hours in that boiling tin can.
It was a short hop for us, we landed by about 8 p.m.
Gravel. Marines. The brown plantless desert.
Yep, this is Al Asad.
The port-a-johns were covered in camouflage netting on the outside and, ah, colorful poetry on the inside.
My favorite started this way, “Here I sit broken hearted...” The next line contained various words, including “farted.” Then it got kinda crude.
I moved outside to the gravel parking lot and joined Staton, who pointed out the Hertz Rental sign.
Seriously.
They rent vehicles here.
Here, in this vast desert outpost where dust storms blow way more often than rain falls. The dirt grows rocks and more dirt here. That’s it.
But you can rent a car.
And according to all the Hertz stickers I see, they’re making a killing. I’m assuming the defense contracting corps is their customer.
I was slow to notice the sign. You see, I was totally distracted by another sign posted near two marines standing guard at a gate.
In yellow letters on a red piece of plywood were these words: A Marine on Duty has no Friends.
I decided it would be best if I quit staring at them.
A weary looking defense contractor wandered up, plopped down his bags and asked if we’d watch them. Sure.
Two more contractors showed up, each with large black boxes of stuff that they piled up. They’d been trying to get out of Al Asad for six days.
Six days!
The dust storms keep grounding their flights. They’ve been living in the Pax Terminal.
Staton looked at me with a face I’ve come to know. His slight frown and squinting eyes shouted, “What the hell have you gotten us into now!”
I smiled.
“Good times!” I said.
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