We departed the relative safety of the Green Zone, through what was called the Assassins Gate, and out into Baghdad proper. After a trip through the city streets, across the Tigris River, and through a couple of treacherous roundabouts (which were notorious for ambushes), we finally arrived at the Baghdad Police Academy without incident, though it had been a long time since I’d said so many prayers at one time, probably not since the last time I attended confession. I had saved up a lot of sins to atone for—believe me, I had a lot to answer for. Fortunately, my heathen ways had not been held against me during my ride to the academy, and no IEDs or ambushes took place. The rest of our group would follow over the next two days until we were all back together once more.
As we approached the academy entrance, you could see the blast walls, concertina wire, guard towers, and sandbags that were ever-present around U.S. and coalition compounds throughout Iraq. Off in the distance was a tall, odd-shaped building, which we soon learned was the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior headquarters building. Basically, it was shaped like a tall shoe box with a lid on the top, maybe 25 stories tall.
Since the Ministry of the Interior oversaw the Iraqi police force, it was a frequent target of mortar and rocket attacks, many of which flew right over the Baghdad Police Academy. Some didn’t quite make it to the ministry and impacted within the academy compound instead. Or were they actually aimed at us? You never could tell really, because most of the ‘mortars’ used by the insurgents were mortars in name only—makeshift, homemade devices, which you could never really aim or tell for sure where your round was going to go.
Car bombings, rocket attacks, and small-arms fire were also fairly regular occurrences in and around the MOI Building, with the Baghdad Police Academy also a popular target for the insurgents, since we embodied social structure, law and order—all the things the insurgency was trying to undo.
During my trip to the academy, the only shot fired was the warning shot fired by our escort, but guns were at the ready throughout the ride just in case. We drove through the serpentine barriers at the entrance to the academy. The barriers formed a narrow lane that required you to drive back and forth, left and right, and at a slow speed. They were designed to give the armed guards plenty of time to react and shoot if you looked like you might be a suicide bomber barreling towards them. We came to a guard shack, where we stopped in order to be searched by security guards, as had been the case at the entrance to the Adnan Palace, and in fact at all entrances into the Green Zone. They ‘mirrored’ underneath the vehicles, and the driver had to pop the hood so they could look into and thoroughly inspect the engine compartment before we were allowed to proceed. We then pulled into a parking lot in front of a two-story building, which we later found was the main administrative building for the academy, called the ‘AA building’ because of the large letters ‘AA’ painted on it, likely standing for ‘Academy Administration’, although this was never made clear.
As we opened the doors to our SUVs and began to get unloaded, an American woman approached us and introduced herself as Carly. She had apparently been told of our arrival and was instructed to be our official welcoming committee. We were directed by Carly to get back into our vehicles and follow her as she led us through another small checkpoint and into another part of the compound, where we were to be billeted.
There were numerous military vehicles parked around in neat rows, and we stopped by a double-sized trailer-type building surrounded by the usual large concrete blast walls. The trailer was where we would be living for the foreseeable future. It was affectionately called the ‘Tin Hut’, since that’s pretty much what it was made out of. Maybe ‘Aluminum Hut’ might have been more fitting, since the walls were pretty thin. It was also sometimes known as the ‘hootch’.
The Tin Hut had just been vacated by the group of instructors who had preceded us to the academy, Carly among them. They had moved into a newly finished barracks nearby, constructed of concrete blocks covered in plaster (sand-colored naturally). The new barracks provided for single occupancy, unlike the Tin Hut, in which every room was home to two occupants. The new barracks also had better bath and shower facilities than we would have. Nearby, there were two other similar barracks under construction, but we were given no time-frame for when they would be finished. We unloaded again from our vehicles and approached the Tin Hut to lay claim to our rooms.
There was an older barracks area we called the ‘Blue Lagoon’, which was also was in the same part of the compound. Some of the very first instructors to come out to Baghdad were billeted there, and they also had single-occupancy rooms. The buildings were older and not in great shape, but having a room to yourself definitely made up for it.
Since the Tin Hut was surrounded by high concrete blast walls, you had to enter through an opening in the walls, then turn to your right after a few steps and basically backtrack until you reached the entrance. There were 16 rooms, eight on each side of a central, very wide space that ran the length of the trailer. Each room was not much larger than a good-sized walk-in closet. Two people were assigned to each room, which contained a couple of beds, two wall lockers, a TV, fridge, and a desk. I drew Ted as my roommate and we selected a room right next to one of the two bathroom facilities in the trailer, which were located across from each other mid-way down.
I thought the convenience of the bathrooms was a good idea, but I found out later that we had made a mistake. Water had a tendency to leak in under the wall separating our room from the bathroom and showers. ‘Leak’ is probably not an accurate word. ‘Pour would be more appropriate. We were also subject to the noise emanating through the thin metal walls on both sides of us—the noise from those singing in the shower, as well as the more personal sounds emanating from someone using the toilet. As with everyone else except those on the ends of the hut, we also had noise coming from the room on the other side of ours.
The Tin Hut quickly filled up with our group, each of them pairing up and taking one of the rooms. A couple of the rooms were already occupied by some instructors who were getting ready to leave the country and had therefore not moved into the new barracks. The bottom line is that we had more than 30 people living in a space designed for about 16. And that is being generous. Packed in like sardines was an understatement.
As soon as you walked into our room, Ted’s bed was to your left running half the length of the room, then came the walk lockers separating Ted’s part of the room from mine. My bed was up against the far exterior wall and set cross-ways in the back of the room.
Roommates Mitch and Dudley (‘the Pillsbury Dough Boy’) had the room on the other side of the showers. Theirs was not a marriage made in heaven. Mitch was a former police officer from Texas and Dudley had apparently at one point been a small-town police officer for a few years in Colorado. Dudley had gone on to be a school teacher for much longer in his career. When you looked at Dudley, ‘school teacher’ is what came to mind. Either that or maybe ‘florist’, but ‘police officer’ was the last thing you would think of. Actually, Dudley resembled the Pillsbury Dough Boy far more than he did a school teacher. A Texas cop and the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the duo were destined for hard times.
There were two females living in the Tin Hut—Ruby, who would share a room with her husband Stan, and a holdover named Krista. The ladies laid claim to one of the bathroom/showers midway down the trailer, across from the one shared by the rest of us males. The remaining couple dozen of us men had to share three showers and three toilets, while the two women had three toilets and three showers between them. Something didn’t quite seem fair, but these were the conditions we were faced with so we made the best of it.
At one point I tried to convince the gals to allow us to share their bathroom, we could put a sign on the door letting anyone know there was a male inside, and vice versa for females. They didn’t go for it. In fact that would be another understatement, they both vehemently refused. I guess they didn’t want a bunch of guys using their toilets and forgetting to lift the seat up, or return it to its original position after finishing. I can’t really say I blamed them, if you’ve seen a men’s bathroom before.
After dropping off our gear, we stepped back outside and were met by a guy named Arnie, a friend of Carly’s who had also come over to welcome us. At first, Arnie seemed like a decent sort of fellow, but we subsequently found out that he represented the epitome of the term ‘brown-noser’. Arnie was all about Arnie—he was great at currying favor with whomever he thought might benefit him.
Arnie, his friend Carly, and another gal named Katherine (and another named LaDonna who was back home in the States on leave when we arrived), would turn out to be a nightmare for me personally, and a pain in the ass for all of us. All four were a perfect example of how desperate the government was to get anyone to go to Iraq and teach Iraqi police cadets. None of the four had served as police officers for any length of time, so their qualifications to teach cadets were in serious question. On top of that, none of them had the right temperament to be working and living in a war zone, where people were fighting and dying daily, and where they might be called upon to watch your back or fight alongside you in a jam. Not a comforting thought.
Arnie’s biggest complaint centered on the lack of toilet paper in the ‘hootch’, and that he had to have family mail him rolls from back home. Over time, and after getting to know these individuals and witnessing some of their really juvenile antics, I could not understand how someone could act so immaturely in the middle of a war zone. It was certainly not the place for people to act like little kids. Watching them would have been amusing if it wasn’t such a dangerous environment, where lives were at stake. They played cliquish little games that you would have thought had been left behind in high school years earlier. They were definitely an unwanted annoyance, but one that could be navigated through once you knew what they were.
To his credit, Arnie volunteered to give us the nickel tour of the FOB, showing us the military chow hall, laundry, dispensary, and the very small PX run by the 1st Cavalry Division troops assigned to the base. The PX consisted of one small room inside a small building, and had a few electronic items, coffee, some canned goods, chips, candy bars, and prepackaged small food items. And microwave popcorn! It was pretty meager pickings really, but at least it was something. It was not even close to the inventory of the PX back in the Green Zone. The soldier responsible for running it had troops pick up items for him during trips to the Green Zone or to Camp Cuervo, which was several miles away. He would then stock his little PX with whatever they had been able to gather up.
FOB Shield, as it was called, was broken up into two halves. One half housed troops from the 1st Cavalry Division, while the other half included the billeting area for the ICITAP instructors. The Baghdad Police Academy Headquarters in the ‘AA’ building and the actual academy training areas (including the classrooms, firearms range, and cadet billeting area) were separated from us by high T-walls and manned guard towers.
Leaving the academy side of the FOB where we lived, and entering the 1st Cavalry Division side, one had to go through another checkpoint staffed by 1st Cav soldiers. There were ‘gun-clearing barrels’ located at the checkpoint, and before you could proceed into the 1st Cav side you had to clear your weapons. A clearing barrel was nothing more than a 50-gallon metal drum cut in half and filled with sand or dirt. You would hold your weapon over the barrel, muzzle pointed at the dirt, and eject any ammunition that was loaded into the chamber. Even if you didn’t have any ammunition loaded you still had to rack the weapon’s action back, so that the checkpoint guard could see that your weapon was clear and unloaded. This was not something cops were very fond of, since as police officers in the U.S. it could have been suicide to walk around with an unloaded weapon. You simply didn’t have time to load a magazine into your 9mm, rack in a round, and then engage a bad guy in an emergency. He would have been able to empty his gun into you before you were able to even withdraw your magazine from its pouch on your gun belt.
Old habits die hard, especially for cops, and we complained to the military about this requirement, but to no avail. We all went through the routine of unholstering our guns and clearing them, then proceeding through the checkpoint and into the 1st Cav area. Once inside, when no one was watching, most of us would then immediately reload at least one round into the chamber of our 9mm. The army guys were none the wiser and it at least gave us a sense of comfort, knowing we’d be able to get one round off in an emergency. The 1st Cavalry unit’s First Sergeant used to wander around the FOB and if he saw a weapon with the magazine inserted, he’d call you out on it and make you remove it and go to the nearest clearing barrel. So we’d put the magazine with the rest of the rounds into its pouch on our belt and manage with just the single round in the chamber. The First Sergeant wasn’t really fond of us anyway. I think there was a little jealousy on his part that we were all making a lot of money, while he was only getting his army pay, but that wasn’t our fault. A great many of us were veterans and had done our time years earlier, making a hell of a lot less than soldiers did in 2004.
The 1st Cav side of FOB Shield was a pretty large area. I’m not certain of the acreage but the best description I can provide is that it was the size of a dozen football fields at least, though not all of it had structures on it or was anything more than vacant areas. Way off in the distance you could see a fairly good-sized and oddly shaped structure. It resembled a gymnasium or something like that from a distance. We found out later that it was the Olympic swimming and diving facility that Saddam had constructed for his failed attempt to attract the Olympic Games to Baghdad some years before. To the best of my knowledge, it was abandoned and unused—just a large, empty monument to Saddam’s visions of grandeur.
There were quite a few other buildings being used by the 1st Cav, some to billet troops and others housing various logistics and admin offices. They had a small MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) facility, where soldiers could make phone calls home and relax a little after duty. There was a collection of board games, decks of cards, a TV and some DVD movies, but not a whole lot else. It was pretty spartan in comparison to what was offered at MWRs on the larger bases in Iraq, but it provided a diversion and helped break the monotony of life in Baghdad for the GIs. I visited it once just to check it out and never returned.
There was also a small local vendor area, where Iraqis who had been vetted could enter FOB Shield and offer trinkets, crafts, and other souvenirs to anyone interested. Considering the high unemployment rate in Baghdad, and the American goal of winning hearts and minds, it was decided on as official U.S. government policy to try to accommodate these small vendors, giving them a place to sell their wares and make a few bucks to provide for their families. Most likely they were serving two masters, selling crap to the soldiers and also providing intelligence to the insurgency.
The 1st Cav chow hall, or DFAC (Dining Facility), was a fairly large dining area and laid out a pretty good spread of food for each meal. You certainly could not complain about the food we had, at least until the 1st Cav packed up, moved out, and took their chow hall with them. When that happened, the academy made preparations ahead of time to have an Iraqi catering company come in and feed us temporarily until a new military chow hall could be set up.
The tour of the FOB didn’t take long and once it was over, Arnie offered to take us down to the academy classroom area, which I declined to visit. It was a long walk and I didn’t feel like trudging down there only to have to walk back. After 10 minutes with Arnie it had become clear to me that he suffered from his own delusions of grandeur anyway, and he enjoyed very much hearing himself talk about his vast, extensive experience in Iraq. Arnie had gotten there one month before us so his experience wasn’t really that vast.
As for his police experience, we found out that Arnie had in fact served as an officer for a few years somewhere back in the States, but he had left law enforcement for a job with Lowes or Home Depot, checking receipts as you leave the store—a much more challenging career. Like many others, when the lure of big money appeared he jumped at the chance of coming to Iraq to cash in. I can’t really blame him for that, that’s pretty much why we were all there, at least initially. With Carly, Katherine, and LaDonna, he had found kindred souls with whom he could commune and gossip. He had found his little clique of like-minded individuals.
After separating from Arnie and the others, I returned to the little PX where I had seen a small microwave oven for sale. It was the only one there so I immediately purchased it for $40. It was a wise decision, but it had a downside as well. My microwave quickly became a ‘community microwave’, with people stopping by my room to cook popcorn, soups, and anything else that would fit inside of it. I didn’t really mind though, I figured we were all in this together so I might as well pitch in where I could. If my microwave was more popular than I was, that was fine with me, but for that reason alone I became a very popular guy in the Tin Hut. The chow hall provided some excellent meals, but nothing made you forget about the war more than a hot bag of microwave popcorn. Especially after the chow hall would close down and stop serving meals for the night. If those evening munchies hit you, my microwave and a packet of popcorn was the perfect answer.
With the tour and my shopping spree at the PX over, I went back to my room and started to unpack my gear and try to get settled in. Unfortunately for me, Ted took up way more room than I did with his numerous duffle bags of tactical crap. I crammed my stuff into one corner of the room, and basically gave ‘Tackleberry’ two thirds of the space for his stuff. It still wasn’t enough. For the next three nights I got very little sleep, as Ted stayed up into the wee hours of the morning unpacking, re-packing, and then unpacking all of his duffle bags. He couldn’t seem to get his stuff to fit into the space available—not surprising considering he had even packed a small electric fan inside one of his duffle bags, which he was able to mount on the wall of the room. I kept waiting for the kitchen sink to appear out of one of his bags.
Finally, I said something to Ted about his nocturnal activities and asked if he could get his gear unpacked and stowed away or at least do it during the daytime so as not to keep me awake all night. Ted apologized and finally got settled in, though he continued to rummage through his duffle bags constantly, pulling more surprises out on a regular basis.
One thing about Ted which I always found humorous was his tendency to be super-polite. Ted was so formal and courteous that it made you uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with being courteous, but when someone apologizes for something when you were the culprit, it makes you wonder. But Ted was living a dream—he was so happy to be where he was in Iraq. He dressed every day in all of his tactical gear, when the rest of us rarely wore our body armor or carried our M-4s. Ted had never served in the military, so now he was getting the chance to play ‘army’ for real. He immediately volunteered to be a firearms instructor and teach the cadets how to shoot properly. In fairness, by all indications Ted was a very good shot and he turned out to be a very patient and good firearms instructor for the cadets.
And right away Ted began to learn Arabic. This was admirable, but it sometimes caused consternation for the rest of us when he’d try out his language skills and talk to us in Arabic. We’d have to bust his chops and tell him to switch back to English. I used to say, “I don’t speak Arabic, don’t want to learn to speak Arabic, and if you want to talk to me then speak English instead of babbling to me in Arabic all the time.” It was my version of the ‘ugly American’ I guess. I was never really good with foreign languages and didn’t see the need to learn Arabic since we had very good Iraqi translators assigned to us anyway.
The next day came and we were ushered into a conference room in the AA building for a series of briefings. We were welcomed by a Scottish policeman named Hitchins, who was the academy’s assistant director. The director, Malcolm (another Scotsman), was away on a visit home. Hitchins seemed to be a decent and friendly enough guy. It was also during these briefings that we met for the first time the very forgettable ‘Halleluiah Mack’. Halleluiah Mack had been at the academy for about a month more than us. His law-enforcement career was limited to serving as an ‘investigator’ in a corrections department back in the States. Basically, he investigated crimes that were committed inside of a prison. Not a typical patrol officer working the streets and responding to calls for service. Mack loved to use the phrase ‘Slap leather’ whenever talking shop. Not many corrections officers back in the States get into running gun battles where they have to ‘slap leather’, but Mack certainly liked to use the phrase.
Mack had either been selected, or more likely volunteered, to give one of the briefings we were to hear that morning. He discussed some of the challenges of teaching the Iraqi cadets. His experience was limited, but to hear him talk you would have thought he’d been there for years.
“These Iraqis, they’re all thieves and liars and can’t be trusted” he said during his monologue. “They’ll steal anything if you turn your back on them. They’re dirty and filthy too.”
In the room with us were a number of Iraqi translators standing off to the side. They worked at the academy, translating for the American instructors and administrators. I found it rather embarrassing and insulting the way Mack went on and on about how the Iraqi cadets were dirty, thieving, lying, cheating people, and you had to watch them like a hawk. How he gained so much experience and knowledge in just one month, and why he’d been picked to participate in the briefing, I’m not sure, but my guess is he was also a brown-noser like Arnie, and had weaseled his way into giving a briefing by currying favor.
Were I not so new and unsure of my footing I would have gotten up and walked out of the room right then and there. I really took umbrage at the comments Mack was making, particularly with Iraqis standing right there in the room with us. It was insulting and as far as I was concerned Mack was much more the epitome of the ‘ugly American’ than I ever was for not wanting to learn Arabic. At least I didn’t bad mouth and insult the Iraqis with them standing right there in the room with us.
What was truly ironic, was that at the end of his briefing Mack shared with us that he was a Christian and he invited us all to attend religious services with him, and also a Wednesday night bible study that he hosted. Apparently, he served as something of an ‘elder’ with a church group on the FOB. So after spending an hour insulting his fellow man, he then tells us what a good Christian he is and invites us to church. I consider myself a Christian as well, though some may call me a heathen since I haven’t attended a formal church service church in a long time—it’s that lightning bolt thing, it scares me—but in my earlier years, while regularly attending church, I do not recall ever hearing that it was the Christian thing to do to insult and demean other people. We all agreed that Halleluiah Mack was a real piece of work and someone to keep your distance from.
After our briefing with Mack it was back to the ‘hootch’ with nothing to do. The only difference from our routine at the Adnan Palace was our new location. The routine didn’t vary much for the next several days, but one interesting aspect of living in the Tin Hut was the daily cleaning ritual performed by some local Iraqis who worked in the compound. They would come into the main central corridor of the Tin Hut in order to clean the floor, which was warped so badly it moved when you walked across it. Tiles were also missing and many others were loose and just laying on top of the floor, not really glued down or attached in any way. The cleaning crew would come in with buckets of water—who knew where it came from, or what diseases it might carry—and they would just throw the water out across the floor. Buckets and buckets of soapy water. They’d then get busy with their mops and squeegees, moving the water around and pushing it through the door onto the ground outside. Some of the water escaped through holes in the floor no doubt. This was probably why the floor was so warped in the first place—it had become waterlogged after repeated soakings by the cleaning crew. Every day it was the same routine. They’d come in, throw several buckets of soapy water on the floor, mop it up and then leave. The floor was warped and weakened by the constant dampness, and we were never sure that we wouldn’t fall right through one day as we walked across it.
Finally, after several days of doing nothing, we were advised that a new class would be starting and the next day we were told to report to a large gymnasium near the rear gate of the academy side of the compound, off Palestine Street. Palestine Street ran right into the heart of Sadr City, which was basically a ghetto and a hotbed of insurgent activity. That evening, while sitting outside the Tin Hut, we chatted amongst ourselves about what to expect the next day. Some of us were apprehensive, others relaxed and unconcerned, but we were all anxious to finally have something to do and get started. You can only sit around and do nothing for so long before you start to get a little agitated, and it also sets up the opportunity for conflicts to develop.
While our group got along really well for the most part, those that had preceded us and were already at the Academy when we arrived were less than friendly overall. It was a pretty cliquish environment. We all basically kept to ourselves within our little groups and didn’t intermingle much.