- This from my 'adopted nephew' Capt Brian Wheeler who
is the only JAG in Baghdad.
-
- Brian's recommendations for any of you who are planning
to go to Iraq in the near future and wish to plan for the trip.
- For six months before you depart from the states ....
-
- Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find. Go
heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop
in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them,
and in the loudest voice possible yell that every Crip and Blood within
hearing distance is a PANSY.
-
- Every time there is a thunderstorm, sit in a wobbly rocking
chair and dump dirt on your head. Wait for the coldest/hottest day of the
year and announce to your friends that there will be no heat/air conditioning
that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/air conditioner.
Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/hot. Put lubrication
oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "High"
for that tactical generator smell.
-
- Sleep on a cot in the garage after you replace the garage
door with a curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have a good friend
whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry,
wrong cot." Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut and
jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker. Set your alarm clock to go off at
random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed, strip
stark naked , slip into flip flops and get to the shower as fast as you
can by running outside into the backyard. Turn on the garden hose and pretend
it is hot water.
-
- Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the
semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner
of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without
ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings
and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like.
Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week. Invite at least
185 other people you've never met before and all of whom have their own
hygience habits to come and visit you for the six-month period. Exchange
clothes with them without washing the clothes.
-
- Renovate your bathroom by hanging a green plastic sheet
down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest
level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning
the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three
sheets of toilet paper on the roll. Or for the best effect, remove it
altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using
your bathroom and use a neighbor's. For full effect as to what it will
be like in Iraq, choose a neighbor at least a quarter of a mile away.
-
- Have the paperboy give you a haircut with garden shears.
Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper
noise level. Spread gravel over all of your lawn and driveway. Drill a
couple of hundred holes in the walls and roof of your home for proper ambience.
Sandbag the floor of your car in the remote event you run into a land
mine in your neighborhood.
-
- Raise the thresholds of your front door and lower the
sills of your back door so that you trip when you enter your house from
the front, and bang your head when you leave it in the rear.
-
- Stop drinking any alcohol at all and drink your water,
pop and milk warm. When you want some gum, find the exact stick and flavor
on the internet, print out the web page, type up a Supply Form 10-941 in
triplicate and staple the web page to the original. Submit the paperwork
to your neighbor for processing. In 60-90 days, you should receive one
stick of gum, but possibly not in the flavor you requested.
-
- Make up your menu a week ahead of time without looking
in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in
an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal for
the entire six months. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to
sit for five or six hours before drinking. Eat one M&M per day and
pretend it is to prevent malaria.
-
- Announce to your neighbors that the dog is a vector for
disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's
back yard, cover it in gasoline and set it on fire. Laugh at your neighbor
when he curses you because of the smell of burning flesh.
-
- Don't watch TV except in the middle of the night and
only watch VCRs, but only after you ask your neighbors to vote on the one
that should be shown. At the last minute, plug in a different one.
-
- Buy a trash compactor. Store up all garbage and use
the compactor once a week. Store up the compacted garbage in the far side
of your bathtub. Once a week, take every major appliance apart and put
it back together again. Pretend that you repaired it.
-
- Have your mail carrier announce to you that you have
mail. Drop what you are doing and run to the front door. Then have him
say, "Oh sorry ... it is for your neighbor." Have a flourescent
lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read
books. Take a flashlight with you to bed and read your last letter of
90-days ago inside your sleeping bag.
-
- Fire off 50 cherry bombs and a $500 Chinese rocket star
cluster in your backyard at
- 3 AM in the morning. When startled neighbors appear,
tell them all is well. You are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic
sheeting will make an acceptable substitute for windows. Do this every
night.
-
- Dig a survivability position and build in overhead cover
in your backyard. Have your neighbor complain that the 4X4s are not 8
inches on plum center and rebuild the entire position. Do this every day.
-
- Limit yourself to 10 minute morale phone calls once a
month. Enforce this by disconnecting your phone at the 10 minute limit
even if you are in the middle of a sentence.
-
- Have a friend who happens to work at a local television
station interview you. Tell him that its a drag but you are getting the
neighborhood under control and are gradually eradicating the Crips and
Bloods. Point out that the markets are open, more electricity is being
generated now than six months ago before the war began. State that water
is being purified, there are more trained police now on patrol, and that
the streets are cleaned daily. Have him prepare the tape and edit it.
Look at it on your VCR. See that he reported that the Crips and Bloods
are kicking your ass. Do this every day.
-
- Well ... at least he is still keeping his sense of humor.
-
- In case any of you wish to send Brian a greeting card,
his address is:
-
- CPT Brian Wheeler
- OCPA-USACE-IPC APO AE 09335
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