$650 million split how many ways?!?
Posted on 04/21/2003 4:25:31 AM PDT by KineticKitty
Messy camp costs troops calls to home
By Cox News Service
April 20, 2003
CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait - On the eve of Easter, Fort Hood's sons and daughters couldn't call home from this miserable desert outpost because the place has been declared too messy.
The perhaps aptly named "Mayor" Bosse closed the phone tent "until further notice" and created an uproar among thousands of 4th Infantry Division troops waiting here for convoys into Iraq.
Dubbed the mayor because he is in charge of administering the camp, Mayor Bosse is actually Lt. Col. Peter Bosse, a reserve officer from Minneapolis, Minn.
It's not as though this is a scenic site. There is no vegetation - only sand and rocks and tents and tanks and Humvees and soldiers. There are also very few trash cans. Litter consists mostly of empty plastic water bottles.
The trash piles are possible breeding grounds for rodents and fire hazards, Bosse said.
The phone tent opened only a couple of days ago. Lines for a call home are hours long but soldiers willingly wait to hear the voices of loved ones.
Bosse said when the camp is clean, the phone tent will "absolutely" re-open immediately.
"I suspect that will happen soon," said Bosse.
He once told me that when he wanted a straight answer, not a fitness report answer, he always had coffee with a warrant. He once tried to get me to apply for the warrant to 0-3 program but I convinced him I did not desire any demotions.
You know, it occurred to me after I left the thread this morning that if the Lt.Col. was not justified, there would be a Colonel or a General that would be all over his ass. There aparently wasn't. Those Colonels and Generals tend to listen their senior NCOs (i.e. First Shirts) on topics such as this. Furthermore the Lt.Col. may not have been in the direct chain of command of most of the troops, his job was to run the camp, not command the troops using it. If he bit the big one on this, I'm sure those CO's would have let him know, especially considering that he is just a "pissant reservist". I suspect the place was a pigstye and the senior line NCOs and Officers knew it, once they really looked at it, otherwise they'd have been all over his case. The phone lines to his office would have melted from the streams on invective sent his way by the CO's of those units using "his" camp.
There's another possibility too, If the troops were getting all down in the mouth about not getting into the war, and getting lax in garrison, sometimes it's usefull to given them someone to direct their frustations towards. The L/C may have drawn the short straw for that job. I've seen that little manuever pulled a few times. It's similar to the "Good cop/bad cop" routine.
YES, there are rats in that desert. I've been there with the 3rd ID. The rats are bad alone, but they also attract hungry sand vipers.
You forgot Oprah-ized housewives that have never even had a real job before, much less been deployed overseas with an Infantry Division.
$650 million split how many ways?!?
They have also affectionately and most appropriately named the camp, "Camp Snake Pit."
Before you flame me, look at my forum name. I made one phone call home at the Oakland Army base the day I got on the plane to Viet Nam, and made my second phone call home a year later when I got off a plane at Travis AFB.
Well said, Airborne, well said.
It's these same whining punks that would want every officer in the Brigade sent to Leavenworth if the very same unit in this article was ambushed and captured. They would scream to Heaven "how could the officers have allowed standards to become so lax that the soldiers wouldn't even clean up their trash!!! Now look what happened, another POW tragedy!!"
Sheesh, just like one of my sergeants jokingly told me when I was in 3-7 Infantry Battaltion, 3rd Infantry Division:
"Sir, we don't have any women in this battalion, but we SURE have plenty of bitches!"
I'll disagree with that. I would say most officers are respected. Except for the 110 lb. female battalion commander cheerleaders who want to be the battalion grandmother as opposed to the battalion commader.
You've GOT to be kidding, right? Comparing an Army Infantry Division to a typical slack-ass Air Force unit? Besides the pilots, combat controllers, and a few other jobs in the Air Force, every single time I ever went onto an Air Force base or was otherwise in contact with Air Force personnel, I always got the same feeling:
Civilians in uniform.
Very casual, slack, long hair, sloppy uniforms, etc etc. Every single AF person I ever met was like a cross between a California surfer dude and a punk high school suburban brat. Case in point: When I deployed to the exact same desert with the 3rd Infantry Division, we slept in our vehicles, the dirt, lived in filth, etc etc for weeks. We deployed out in the middle of that desert so fast, our heads were spinning.
The Air Force didn't even comtemplate putting their precious darlings anywhere near that dirty ol' desert until actual barracks type facilities (complete with running water, electricity, showers, etc) were fully constructed.
Comparing an Infantry Division in the Army to an Air Force unit is a bit of a stretch. The two aren't even in the same world, so to speak.
LOL! Which would explain their presumption that phone calls are a Constitutional right.
The rest are nice to haves.
But I have never gotten email or phones during any operation or deployment so maybe I just see it as chickenshit to complain about something so stupid.
Other than a few other comments by other FReepers, your post makes the most sense on this entire amazingly dumb thread. Couldn't have said it better. I was the Battalion Signal Officer in an Infantry unit in that very same desert. The "phone tents" are ABSOLUTELY a luxury item. I just can't believe how so many people on this thread are so damned upset because phone priveledges were taken away!
Phone privelidges? They are damned lucky to even HAVE a phone out there! The phone equipment isn't even Army equipment. It's AT&T and Kuwaiti government equipment.
When I was in that very same desert, we had phone tents. Till one day the Kuwaiti prince wanted his satellite stuff back, one of the satellite facilities in one of his palaces was broken.
So, we lost the phones. Permanently. And guess what, life went on. The soldiers in the battalion actually survived! As a matter of fact, they really didn't give a rat's ass about losing the phone all that much anyway.
I just can't believe how many people on this thread are in a complete tizzy about these troops not being able to use the phones for a 2 day period, possibly. I just wonder how many of them have even been in a "line unit" in the Army or a battalion commander (who has to make life and death decisions.)
I'm starting to think whoever started this rediculous thread just wanted to get people riled up, because a lot of the posts are just absurd.
And on that note, bye bye.
The USA produces something like 1 million unwanted cats per year. Could they be put to good use?
I've been in touch with him enough to know that as of this evening I can thank god he is doing better now, & I'm sure he would also want me to thank you for your kind words as well.
From the very start this thread was a personal attack on a Lt. Colonel for doing his duty, questioning his professional qualifications, his intelligence, second guessing his orders, assigning supposed motivations to his order, etc...
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