Life at Kirkuk Regional Air Base (KRAB)
It is getting hot everyday! Right now it is 114 degrees and we are in the middle of a sand storm!
In my last blog I had just arrived in Kirkuk via a really fun Blackhawk ride.
The KRAB is an old bombed out Iraqi Air Base right in the city of Kirkuk; like Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs and also like Peterson this air base shared the runways with the commercial airport. Of course that airport has not yet been re-opened to commercial traffic. This base is a shared Iraqi, US Army, US Air Force and the required three or four other coalition force soldiers from other countries (no there are more than that but not too many) so we can call this a coalition force effort.
There are relics of old Iraqi Migs and artillery pieces all over base that were badly damaged during the war with Iran, the Gulf War and the most recent war in the first couple of years. There are lots of bombed out bunkers and building and you can tell it has really taken a beating over the last couple of decades. Kirkuk is in the north, up in the Kurdish part of Iraq, and is only about 65 miles for the Iranian border and not to much further to the border with Turkey.
After arriving I moved into a building called a Mod (for modules).
My Mod
One of 16 such building, each having 16 rooms and each room can accommodate up to 12 people which if full would be a lot like summer camp but the kids are a lot bigger and older- 192 of them. Luckily they only put 4 guys (or women) in a room. Of course women have their own Mods. The buildings are surrounded by T-walls and bunkers for safety reason.
My bedroom
Theses T-walls are 10 to 15 feet high and made of solid concrete. All building are surrounded by these T-walls so everything looks the same making learning your way around the base I real challenge at first. It is desert, so pretty dry, brown and these walls do not improved the landscape at all.
This is just one form of housing that ranges from these Mods, four to a room, to individual little Conex box type structures where people have a private room with a shared bath to air conditioned tents, like the once I described and stayed in Kuwait on the way over here, which the army enlisted soldiers live in.
We all eat in a huge building called a DFAC (Dining Facility) which feeds all 5,000 of us (soon to be 8,000) four times a day; they also have a midnight meal). The food is not bad but after you eat it for awhile it ends up like eating at combination of an "all y0u can eat Golden Corral, Souper Salad and Jason's Deli" everyday, three times a day. They do have Magnum ice cream bars and Basken-n-Robbin ice cream however. It would be incredibly easy in gain a lot of weight here which I have not (I have lost much ether, however). I try to walk everywhere I go. Even with it getting hotter now (and we still have another month that will just keep getting hotter) I am still walking most places I go.
There are other perks as well. We (the military member and the contractor) do not have to wash our own clothes, for example. We have two options to get our laundry done for us. For shorts, t-shirts, socks, underwear and the like you just throw them in a washable laundry back with not more than 20 items in a bag and take them to the laundry. They wash and dry the bag without taking your clothes out with other people's laundry bags. Then they remove, fold and put them back on the bag. This service takes 72 hours. The other option is the uniform laundry (a dry cleaners type laundry). They only do uniforms but they wash and pressed them within 24 hours. I'm not so excited about them getting communally wash all together but I haven't been so "unexcited" that I wash, dry, fold and iron my own clothes which is the third option. These laundry services are all free to us. Not a bad deal.
There is a PX/BX where you can buy the necessities and few other things as well, but it is no Wal-Mart. There is a Burger King, a Taco Bill, a Pizza Hut and Green Bean Coffee Shop also. I have alone been to the Green Bean Coffee Shop and only once when my boss was buying. You guys know how cheap I am. There are other shops in this big circle called the Wagon Wheel also. There is an alteration/tailor shop, a barber shop, a beauty shop, a Oriental rug shop (the rugs are from Turkey mostly) , a shop where you can buy cars and Harley Davidson motor cycles (I guess for delivery once you get home), several souvenir shops, and a photo processing and supplies shop.
Next blog I will tell you more about the mission I am here to support.
Young Iraqi Air Force Lieutenants learning how to fly
In my last blog I had just arrived in Kirkuk via a really fun Blackhawk ride.
The KRAB is an old bombed out Iraqi Air Base right in the city of Kirkuk; like Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs and also like Peterson this air base shared the runways with the commercial airport. Of course that airport has not yet been re-opened to commercial traffic. This base is a shared Iraqi, US Army, US Air Force and the required three or four other coalition force soldiers from other countries (no there are more than that but not too many) so we can call this a coalition force effort.
There are relics of old Iraqi Migs and artillery pieces all over base that were badly damaged during the war with Iran, the Gulf War and the most recent war in the first couple of years. There are lots of bombed out bunkers and building and you can tell it has really taken a beating over the last couple of decades. Kirkuk is in the north, up in the Kurdish part of Iraq, and is only about 65 miles for the Iranian border and not to much further to the border with Turkey.After arriving I moved into a building called a Mod (for modules).
My Mod
One of 16 such building, each having 16 rooms and each room can accommodate up to 12 people which if full would be a lot like summer camp but the kids are a lot bigger and older- 192 of them. Luckily they only put 4 guys (or women) in a room. Of course women have their own Mods. The buildings are surrounded by T-walls and bunkers for safety reason.
My bedroom
Theses T-walls are 10 to 15 feet high and made of solid concrete. All building are surrounded by these T-walls so everything looks the same making learning your way around the base I real challenge at first. It is desert, so pretty dry, brown and these walls do not improved the landscape at all.
This is just one form of housing that ranges from these Mods, four to a room, to individual little Conex box type structures where people have a private room with a shared bath to air conditioned tents, like the once I described and stayed in Kuwait on the way over here, which the army enlisted soldiers live in.
We all eat in a huge building called a DFAC (Dining Facility) which feeds all 5,000 of us (soon to be 8,000) four times a day; they also have a midnight meal). The food is not bad but after you eat it for awhile it ends up like eating at combination of an "all y0u can eat Golden Corral, Souper Salad and Jason's Deli" everyday, three times a day. They do have Magnum ice cream bars and Basken-n-Robbin ice cream however. It would be incredibly easy in gain a lot of weight here which I have not (I have lost much ether, however). I try to walk everywhere I go. Even with it getting hotter now (and we still have another month that will just keep getting hotter) I am still walking most places I go.
There are other perks as well. We (the military member and the contractor) do not have to wash our own clothes, for example. We have two options to get our laundry done for us. For shorts, t-shirts, socks, underwear and the like you just throw them in a washable laundry back with not more than 20 items in a bag and take them to the laundry. They wash and dry the bag without taking your clothes out with other people's laundry bags. Then they remove, fold and put them back on the bag. This service takes 72 hours. The other option is the uniform laundry (a dry cleaners type laundry). They only do uniforms but they wash and pressed them within 24 hours. I'm not so excited about them getting communally wash all together but I haven't been so "unexcited" that I wash, dry, fold and iron my own clothes which is the third option. These laundry services are all free to us. Not a bad deal.
There is a PX/BX where you can buy the necessities and few other things as well, but it is no Wal-Mart. There is a Burger King, a Taco Bill, a Pizza Hut and Green Bean Coffee Shop also. I have alone been to the Green Bean Coffee Shop and only once when my boss was buying. You guys know how cheap I am. There are other shops in this big circle called the Wagon Wheel also. There is an alteration/tailor shop, a barber shop, a beauty shop, a Oriental rug shop (the rugs are from Turkey mostly) , a shop where you can buy cars and Harley Davidson motor cycles (I guess for delivery once you get home), several souvenir shops, and a photo processing and supplies shop.
Next blog I will tell you more about the mission I am here to support.
Young Iraqi Air Force Lieutenants learning how to fly