Mission: Unknown

Sunday, traditionally the day off…
Thin Mints and I load up with Mr. Pringles and eventually Worthless to run out on a new kind of mission. Drive our MRAP over to the Lightning area where we meet up with their minimalist (and rather disgruntled) force, who often comment on their hatred of our stupid missions. We share that trait, so there is no love lost. The mission commander informs me that due to the nature of our task, I’ll be riding in the HMMWV with him. I sigh, and realize that the MP3 player I brought with me won’t be getting any use now.

Once in the HMMWV I enjoy the crisp blow of the air conditioner against my left side, until we smash over a curb and the cooler throws ice water onto my leg. It feels good at first, but then with the AC blowing non-stop at me it starts to get cold and miserable. This is a vast difference from my right side which is baking in heat from the million degree temperature outside. Our mission is to map out the local area, street by street, with our GPS device.

Even though an insane number of objections were raised on this front, most of them dealing with the idea that we don’t need to be present for this type of mission, we are still hand carrying the GPS. All over the streets of Mosul.

It was Thin Mints who said a few days prior that had he never come to Iraq he wouldn’t have believed it was possible for people to live like this. Dilapidated housing units crammed next to one another, rivers of piss and shit running parallel to every street, road blocks formed out of dirt piles and torched car shells. Every story and tale someone can tell you about this place wouldn’t make sense unless you saw it. The hole in the floor bathroom for a family? I couldn’t get the picture right until I realized I was standing in one. The people sleeping outside or on rooftops because it’s too hot to sleep indoors? It happens, like camping out but always. Air conditioning is something I’ll never take for granted again. This place resembles more of a cinematic glance into the apocalypse than a society. Heat so prevalent walking a quarter mile leaves you dripping in sweat and drenched in your own delirium. Often I wonder if I’m going mad here, is the heat finally “getting to me” the way you hear about. My skin feels replaced with some clever sieve, always leaking and I can’t do anything to stop it but go lethargic.

A few hours after touring one of the better areas of Mosul we were finished with our GPS collection. Congrats, now we had a good idea of where the streets were.

The day following we were told that when being given the GPS devices, we didn’t properly change over the location code from the Atlantic Ocean to Iraq. Oh, haha! Foolish us, we guessed that maybe if you’re giving equipment to people serving in the Middle East then you might calibrate it to that location, not the fucking ocean. So on Tuesday we went out again, with the same people, to the same place…The only thing that changed was Blue and Jibba Jabba accompanied me, and I was able to pawn off the HMMWV detail to Jibba Jabba. She was of course enraged and furious, but that’s who she is. Blue and I meanwhile sat in the back of the MRAP and listened to music, and at one point even had ice cream because someone got bored during the mission and stopped by a local stand for some ice cream. I read the label, it said “Send-Wish Ice Cream” and was produced in Moldova. I happily ate my former Soviet block snack, and took a nap.