Indirect Fire...

Well, i have once again let a good chunk of time slip by without posing on the blog. The days all seem to be running together and I lose track of time. It's kind of hard to explain. With my job here, there are no weekends, no days off, no holidays. In a normal work week, you always know what day it is because you are always counting down to the weekend or your next day off. So, you know when it's Wednesday and you are half way through the week. You know when it's Thursday because you say to yourself, tomorrow's Friday! And of course there is the dreaded Monday. Well, imagine a Monday morning, I know it's no the most popular of thoughts. You're driving to work, sipping on your coffee thinking wow, Friday seems so far away. And now imagine that Friday is not just 5 days away, but 90 or 100 days away. Since you really have no "Friday" to look forward to here, all the days sort of have a Monday feel to them and you start to lose track of them after a while. Which can be a good thing if you want the time to go by fast.

Anyway, Camp Victory has been taking a lot of rocket attacks lately. These are where someone out in Baghdad gets a hold of a 120mm Rocket and puts in on a home made rail, rigs up a fuse, points it in the general direction of camp victory and lights it up. The rockets have quite a range. They can be launched from 10 or so miles away. They probably haven't been in the news at all back in the states because it's kind of a regular thing over here. The military also likes to give these incidents a name that sort of paints a less dangerous picture of these events. They are called "Indirect Fire" events. When I first heard that term, I thought that doesn't sound too bad. Gunfire from a distance maybe. I didn't realize indirect fire encompassed things like 90 pound sub-sonic projectiles being hurtled from downtown towards the base. And to add to it, the base has a system that can pick up the incoming rockets and sound the sirens automatically. Of course, by the time the sirens go off, the rockets already on its way and you usually have about 10 or so seconds to decide what you're going to do and hope that the thing isn't about to occupy the same piece of ground that you are currently standing on. Luckily, there are blast walls and bunkers everywhere so all you have to do is duck into one of those.

These things don't happen all the time, maybe about once a week or so. Just something that you have to get used to.

That's about it for now. 3 Months till Friday!


G