Posted on 04/18/2003 12:22:55 PM PDT by Bayou City
Latrine duty: a real waste
By DANI DODGE
Scripps Howard News Service
April 18, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Someone has to do it.
Thursday, builder construction man Adam Helschein, 25, and steelworker 3rd class Olivo Guerrero, 19, got the task: Burning the waste - human waste.
"The first time," said Helschein, of Las Vegas, "I almost threw up."
Getting rid of human waste in the war zone is probably one of the most unglamorous jobs the Seabees do. John Wayne sure wasn't given the mission in the movie "The Fighting Seabees."
The Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 have been moving so much this war, that often the only bathroom they had was the hole they dug in the sand. But once they set up camp, one of the first jobs passed out is building what the battalion's chaplain delicately calls the "burnouts," but what everyone else including chiefs and officers call the "s--ters."
Much of Battalion 4 is in Baghdad building their third bridge of the war. Some have been in their current camp, a former Iraqi Republican Guard training facility, for a week. It's the longest they have stayed anywhere since the war started, plenty of time to not only build men's and women's bathrooms, but also to scrawl graffiti in them.
Typically, the facilities are boxes about the size of a normal bathroom. The bottom three feet are plywood, while the top is a see-through screen.
Inside is a plywood bench with four holes in it. Under the holes, are oil drums that have been cut in half.
Helschein and Guerrero opened small doors on the back of the plywood box and slide the drums out.
They took two barrels from the women's restroom, two from the men's, even though someone was busy in the stall. Two other Seabees joined the crew.
Then they drug the barrels downwind of the camp. Helschein poured diesel in the barrels and threw a match in the first. It sizzled and died. He lit a small piece of paper from the ground and tossed it in. It sputtered and went out. He lit cardboard from an MRE box and threw it in. Nothing.
Helschein stuck a hand into the barrel and ignited the edge of the cardboard still a quarter inch above the muck. It caught. Flames danced in the wind.
Builder construction man Scott Hampton, 20, of Camarillo, Calif., grabbed a stick and stirred the first tub, then carried the burning 2-by-4 to the next barrel. He lit that and stirred, then moves to the next and next.
The stirring helps insure the wastes are mixed well with the fuel, Helschein explains. Seabees aren't supposed to urinate in the barrels - it inhibits the burning off of the solids, he said.
The pungent odor of fuel and feces drifted over them.
"You know you've been here too long when the smell of burning s-- smells like barbecue," Helschein said before pulling a single serving bowl of Fruit Loops from his pocket.
He ate the cereal while watching the flames.
"This might be important, but it's not the job of everyone's dreams," he said.
While the barrels burned, Seabees occasionally stirred them and added more fuel. An hour or so later, the excrement was down to a brown sludge at the bottom. The men dragged the barrels to the camp's garbage hole and tipped them over.
Helschein carried the barrel back to its hole on his shoulder. Guerrero dragged his.
Then, Guerrero summoned the next four to finish the other barrels. He wrote their names on his hand "so they wont' skate." One is "Tiamzon."
Jason Tiamzon, 22, of Vallejo, Calif. kicked the dirt when he heard his assignment. He put a Mandy Moore disc on his compact disc player, stuck the ear buds in his ears and set about his task. As he pulled the drawer open, flies poured out.
"I know someone has to do this," he moaned, "but it's the worst duty ever."
I re-watched "Blackhawk Down" yesterday and was impressed by the seasoned Army Ranger commander character who didn't even flinch while striding through a hail of enemy fire.
Similar, Helschein is one soldier who's "been there, done that." <|:)~
"Never be good at a sh-- job, or it's yours for good"
Words to live by.
They might be able to find some WMD's there.
One of my summer jobs included a Waste Treatment Plant for a motel. Every morning at 7, I would go down to the plant, pull the rubbers from the grate and put them in a bucket, turn off the scrapers(esentially a large slow blender) and scrape the Clinton off the sides of the tanks, reverse the blowers to clean them out and restart the scrapers.
The worst job was carrying the condom bucket up to the dumpster and emptying it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.