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August 31, 2004
My Camp
Thought I'd tell you a little about the camp I live in. Cooke was originally a very small one, personnel-wise. With a lot of land devoted to captured/turned-in equipment & munitions. Not any more. It's rapidly expanding & will be the largest military installation in the IZ by the end of the year.
All the soldiers live in 40' mobile-home style cabins. Usually 2 people to a room, 3 rooms to a cabin. Communal bathrooms, 1 per 20 cabins or so. I got lucky. My cabin only has 2 rooms, and it's just 1 to a room. Can't complain about that. It doesn't matter, my company is building a cabin & shipping it up here for me. That will have a kitchenette & personal bathroom in it.
Right now, all the roads are graded gravel. No hard-surface roads at all. So, there's little difference between the roads and the vacant lots. So, we all drive where we want.
Oh, and there's a huge, very active airfield. I live about 500 meters from it, so the choppers fly over me all the time. They're harder to hit at night, so they fly more often then.
Every so often the ordinance disposal guys will do a controlled burn or explosive ordinance disposal (explosion). So, it's not uncommon to hear/see a concussion & column of black smoke.
Every so often one of the natives gets frisky & launches a rocket or mortar at the post. Unfortunately for them, the artillery battalion has several counter-battery ballistic radar up and spinning constantly. The US Army is VERY good at counterfire. One incoming mortar=one outgoing 155mm artillery shell. That kind of response tends to reduce the inclination of the locals to mess with the US forces here.
All in all, I feel very safe & more than a little pampered here. What with all the amenities on post, I can't complain at all.
More adventures to follow. Hopefully.
Posted by at August 31, 2004 09:10 PM