Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/13/2003 3:27:01 PM PST by MadIvan
THEY call it Iraq’s El Niño. Every April, as atmospheric pressure above the Middle East forces hot air downwards, the Iraqis brace themselves for what is formally known as the “southern wind change”.
That name does little justice to the raging, screaming gale that is beginning to assault US Marines stationed at temporary bases on the Iraqi border. This year, Iraq’s El Niño has come early.
The gales do little to improve the conditions of the Marines stationed here at Camp Grizzly, named after the 5th Regiment’s radio codename. Dust and sand get everywhere, making it impossible to go outside without ski-goggles and “gators” — neck scarves that can be used to cover the mouth and nose.
Even with such protection, grains of sand still find their way into the Marines’ lungs; the men cough up the resulting brown-green gunk at any opportunity. Several have written to their wives, asking them to send painters’ facemasks.
Even veterans of the last Gulf War are relatively new to this: the 1991 conflict was fought before Iraq’s spring sandstorm season began. As the UN agonises over the Iraq emergency, the gales grow more ferocious. Conditions will not get better until June.
Even going to the lavatory is an ordeal: last night about ten Marines formed a human chain to make sure none of them was lost in the storm as they walked the 100 yards to the portable lavatory. When they returned, everything in the tent was covered with yellow-brown dust. As a result, the men have started wrapping all their personal posessions in thick plastic sheeting.
The Marines want nothing more than to abandon their rows of yellow-brown hooches — otherwise known as tents — and get to the line of departure from where the Iraqi invasion will begin. “I would rather go now and just do it,” says Lance Corporal Adam Tryson, a member of the 2nd Battalion 11th Marines Division artillery unit.
Like all the Marines here at Camp Grizzly, about 30 miles north of the Iraqi border, the lance corporal eats MREs (“meals, ready-to-eat”) out of a brown sealed envelope, uses a filthy chemical lavatory and showers only once every four days. The sandstorms only make life harder: when the men wake in their sleeping bags, they are caked in sand.
“You can ask any Marine whether they would like to go now and they would say yes,” says the lance corporal confidently, wiping his oily hands on his desert uniform. Last night’s sandstorm, he says, was one of the worst so far. “I was sleeping at one end of the hooch and I couldn’t see the other end of it,” he says.
Each hooch is about the size of two squash courts. They are modelled on the tents used by the Beduin nomads, who still roam the deserts of Iraq. The winds still sometimes get the better of them. Last night the gales managed to rip a hole in the side of the mess hooch. The result was no cooked breakfast: the Marines made do with muffins and fruit instead of eggs and potatoes.
The Marines’ meteorological experts are reluctant to discuss how the weather will affect military performance. They say that the weather does not affect communications but agree that the gales can have an impact on other operations. “It does affect artillery — if we’re in the southern part of Iraq and we’re firing north, it carries it farther,” Sergeant Jesse Scott says, adding that that can cause the rounds to miss targets. The guns can be reset to take strong winds into account. One advantage of the winds is that they make it much harder to use chemical or biological weapons.
“A round goes 5,000 metres (16,400ft) up into the sky, above the sand storm,” Sergeant Scott says. “But the ground force, it’ll definitely impact that.” As the forces move into Iraq the storms should become less intense, mainly because of the rockier terrain.
Lance Corporal Tryson agrees that setting up the artillery division’s mobile command operation centre can be more difficult in a sandstorm, but it can still be done “pretty quickly”. After all, the Marines train in California’s Mojave Desert, where conditions can be similar. Asked if the wind could stop the Marines in their tracks, he is adamant. “Oh no,” he says. “We don’t stop for anything, Sir.”
The sandstorm left ten Royal Navy helicopter crew members stranded in the Kuwait desert overnight and grounded most of the force’s fleet for 12 hours. Flying blind, the two-man crews at the controls of five Sea Kings from HMS Ocean had to land where they were, with one going down beside a motorway.
The stranded pilots from 845 Naval Air Squadron based at Yeovilton, Somerset, slept in hammocks in the back of their helicopters. They were on a night-flying exercise with night goggles.
The storm was so strong that it left a fine coat of sand over the decks of Royal Navy warships in the Gulf.
A Sea King pilot said: “The storm whipped up from nothing in three minutes and there was nothing they could do. I’ve never seen the flight deck in such a bad state.”
The crew of HMS Ocean took hours to clear their fleet of 22 helicopters of sand and return the 22,000-tonne helicopter carrier’s flightdeck to its normal grey colour.
A helicopter pilot from HMS Ark Royal made an emergency landing on a US warship during the storm because he couldn’t reach his own ship.
Regards, Ivan
People think it takes guts to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Perhaps that is the case in the civilian world. The US Army has years, and years, and years of experience in "motivating" soldiers.
Take 62 troopers, (on a one way trip) load them into a loud, cramped, un-airconditioned aircraft. Have them hook up one hour before you actually intend to drop them, and shake the plane around, so the delicate aroma of stomach contents can waft through the air. Make sure their 'chute harnesses don't fit right, so their lower backs feel like they're going to explode in a mist of burst discs & shredded muscle.
Scared? Hell, they'll be ready to jump without a chute, just to get out of the damn plane.
A sneaky little voice says this waiting and waiting and waiting is a technique to "motivate" the troops...*grin*
bless 'em all.
Well I suppose that's something. And the wind and sand is blowing at the Iraqi's too.
Prairie
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