When the 1st Cav departed the FOB it was a sad day indeed—we had gotten used to eating quite well at their chow hall. As mentioned, arrangements had been made ahead of time to provide food for us until a new army unit came in and set up a new chow hall. This was expected to take a couple of weeks, and in the meantime we had to eat from an Iraqi-catered buffet line set up in the AA Building. This was an interesting experience to say the least.
I recall the very first time I walked the buffet line and saw what appeared to be several different types of meat dishes. I asked the server, “What’s that?” and he responded, “Chicken,” in a very enthusiastic voice. As I continued down the line and pointed at the different meats, I got the same response every time. “Chicken.” I surmised that ‘chicken’ was the only word of English the server knew, and I’m not sure to this day what I was eating. I’m inclined to think that pigeon was more likely. I can’t recall ever seeing a chicken the whole time I was in Iraq, and kind of like the Chinese restaurant joke, I don’t recall seeing many pigeons around Camp Shield. But I never woke up in the middle of the night with the need to make a mad rush to the toilet, so I guess the food was okay. No one else ever complained about any adverse reactions either, and to be truthful the Iraqi catering company did a pretty fair job of providing us with decent meals. It was a relief for all of us, though, when we finally got a new army chow hall set up, and it turned out to be just as good as the previous one. Once again, the U.S. military knows how to put on a spread of food.