E-mails from Iraq: A Tucson marine writes home
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Sgt. Kim Bahti was born in Vietnam and raised in Tucson.
Growing up in Tucson, Marine Sgt. Kim H. Bahti learned plenty about life in the desert.
But now she finds herself in another desert - a harsher desert - thousands of miles from home. Bahti, 31, is serving in Iraq with a military police unit based in Pittsburgh.
Her assignment is to help train Iraqi police officers - a dangerous task because such officers are frequent targets of attacks by insurgents. More than 700 have been killed in the past year, the Interior Ministry reports.
Bahti was born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an Army sergeant father. She was adopted when she was 20 months old by Mark Bahti of Tucson and Kekku Lehtonen. Lehtonen now lives in Olney, Md., and is married to David Lovinger.
Kim Bahti attended Sam Hughes Elementary School, Carrillo Intermediate School and Tucson High before graduating from high school in Maryland in 1991. She returned to Tucson and earned a political science degree at the University of Arizona in 1996, then moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and modeling.
"That didn't work out as planned and I decided I needed to change my life," Bahti wrote in a recent e-mail from Iraq. "I wanted to join the military and I wanted a challenge, so I opted for the finest: the Marines."
She graduated from boot camp on Aug. 13, 1999, and served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, with stints at Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and Newport, R.I. Her last tour of duty was as a legal instructor at the Naval Justice School in Newport.
After leaving active service in January, Bahti joined the Marine reserves and volunteered in April for deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
"I knew Marines were being extended and I thought that I could let some Marine come home and be with his family if I volunteered," she wrote. "So that's what I did, because this is what Marines do."
Starting today, Bahti will write weekly dispatches for the Star. Future installments will run Sunday, starting Sept. 26, in the Tucson/Region section.
8-19-2004
The time has finally come.
We are shipping out Saturday morning for our deployment of seven months.
I cannot divulge our exact schedule because of security concerns, but I should be at my permanent base sometime next week. I didn't really feel scared, but now I feel a little jittery.
There's something about having to travel 7,000 miles in your flak jacket and Kevlar and having your weapon on alert when you de-board the plane.
We have been given three MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for our journey over there, so that tells you how long it's going to take. The only thing that keeps me going and excited is my Marines and the camaraderie we have formed.
I'm not one to shed a lot of tears, but it gets me all misty-eyed just thinking about losing one of them. This is a good group of people and I'm proud to serve beside them.
8-29-2004
Well, I made it here safely.
We flew from California to Frankfurt on a commercial airline. I flew business class.
At least I got something out of this.
Then we flew to Kuwait and spent the night at an Army base.
Kuwait was nice. It's a huge tent city in the middle of the desert. The chow hall was awesome and you wouldn't believe that they had Baskin-Robbins, Hardee's and a Pizza Hut tent there. What can I say, it's an Army base. … We know we won't have it that good at our base.
The next day we flew to Iraq on a C-130. No business class there! That was the most miserable flight of my life.
The desert heat seeped into the hold in no time - I have never sweated so much in my life - not even during Crucible (a 56-hour final combat test Marines must pass if they are to graduate from boot camp).
We were packed in the back like sardines and knee-to-knee for the two-hour flight. I finally passed out because I was so hot. I was only awakened when the plane was doing nose dives and some other wild stuff.
I seriously thought we were going to die. No, we were only taking incoming fire. I would have liked to have thought it was just bad turbulence.
So here I am at base for my tour of duty. I can't give you the name but I can tell you it's where it's hot. Hotter then hell on a bad day. Hotter than Yuma and Gila Bend mixed together and sprinkled with a little Phoenix.
There's sand, sand and, oh yeah: more sand. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the fact that I'm in a can (metal pre-fabricated barracks), have a rack (bunk) with a mattress, and I have my own AC!
We also have running water for showers and I just found out that we actually have real toilets now, which means no more porta-johns at 2 in the afternoon for me. It's not that bad and it's not what they show you on the news.
The chow hall is decent except you can't get anything cold to drink. That's all I'm concerned about. I can do seven months here easy.
We received our mission today: We're going to be training the new Iraqi police force. This means we are going to be in some danger areas when we have to travel to the cities. That's the only thing that concerns me because when they know we're coming they start laying IEDs, improvised explosive devices.
You have to watch for them everywhere. Nowhere is safe. But we've trained for that kind of thing - it's still scary, though.
I'm doing well. And I miss the life back home. I miss oysters, sushi, Thai food and coffee.
And I'm out.
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