Rugby In Iraq 1

Thin Mints and I walked in the night. It was slightly cold, the sky already dark even as early as we were to leave our CHUs. Earlier that week someone had picked up a flyer for an event, one we were interested in. It happened to be rugby, so we threw on our physical training uniform (PT) and headed out across the base to where the flyer told us to go: Killeen Field.

Killeen, coincidentally enough, is the town which Fort Hood resides in. From another perspective, Killeen exists because of Fort Hood. The middle of an empty stretch of highway smack in the center of Texas isn’t very providing, so it’s no wonder that a metropolis of chain restaurants, car dealerships, pawn shops and bars sprung up in the Fort Hood area. It just happened to name itself Killeen. And besides the military, there is no true industry there. No purpose for the town to exist in any sense.

Just like Killeen Field. It resembled the abandoned dirt nothing which kids in The Sandlot played in, except there was more dust. Watching a game of soccer occur there it was easy to lose the ball from the players, so must dust arose that I can only compare playing soccer there as tantamount to competitively chasing a rabbit in a dust storm. At night time the field was even worse, lighting which was pointed in the wrong direction illuminated a construction site adjacent to the dirt pit. Passing “FOB runners” – Dodge and Ford trucks owned specifically to drive meaninglessly across the base – would flash a brief sliver of light before driving further away and leaving the field in darkness.

So as Thin Mints and I arrived, albeit early, the pitch looked deserted. Abandoned. Destroyed. A few quick minutes of waiting and we decided that the best course of action was to turn on the backwards flood lights, which we didn’t know how to do. So, flashlight in hand, Thin Mints and I fiddled with the generator until we got it working. Hoping that the light would act as some sort of Bat Signal we left it running for a few more minutes, and then extinguished it by cutoff switch.

“Are you sure the flyer said Wednesdays?” Thin Mints question didn’t surprise me, I had expected at least one person to show up and seeing no one but ourselves was disappointing, if nothing else.
“Yeah, but who really knows anymore. Let’s just go to the gym to check it out. I think that’s where I saw it.”

Four days and numerous false leads later we finally found what we were looking for. Sort of.