My contribution to the war effort ...

... Apparently is my blog ... no, seriously. I was teaching the new class of JCCS-1 guys this morning and received comments on my blog! Kind of shocked me, to tell the truth. Let's rewind...

I taught the JCCS-1 students early this morning. The class is normally held at our headquarters, but due to the size of the group, we moved to Al Faw Palace (the Coalition HQ - same place you get your picture in Saadam's throne). It was actually an enjoyable class, the students were eager (they have only been here for a few days, so they still enjoy that unbridled enthusiasm - always easier to teach folks who truly want to learn), and the facilities at the palace make the JCCS-1 classroom look like a trailer ... which it is. I have to admit, teaching in a quiet space with good accoustics and a 60 inch plasma screen display made the day easier.

My class usually runs about 45 minutes (more if they ask a lot of questions), today ran almost an hour. When we finished, we put the students on a break and I went into the hall to chat with some of them. One of the students, an ex-A-6 Intruder BN, callsign: Pearl, walked up to me and asked a few questions about life on Camp Victory. We chatted for a few minutes, and he stopped me saying, "By the way, great blog!" I was shocked that he knew who "The Landlocked Sailor's" secret identity was - he reminded me that my callsign is on the title slide of my class, and asked, "How many dudes named "Grease" are in Iraq?" ... Good point. He went on to say that the class agreed that one of the best sources of information for folks coming over here on IA's are the blogs! I guess I never thought of it that way, I thought of this venture as a way to share some of my life's daily experiences with family and friends back home. Then I thought about how many folks have visited T.L.S. during my time here (approaching 5,000 - many of those are repeat hits, but the sheer number of hits indicates a ton of new guests. Also, in the past few weeks I've fielded several E-mails from soon to be JCCS-1 folks looking for more info about the command - to those out there who are coming in the next few months, send me an E-mail, and I'll try to answer your questions). It felt nice to make the transition from sailor in the states to IA sailor a bit easier for some (in all honesty, it's not just me - we have a bunch of quality blogs by the JCCS-1 crew - The One Wire, Stimp in Iraq, Spook in the Box, and a bunch of others ... and now we have one more as I have linked Pearl's blog (Pearl in the Desert) to the page). As always, thanks for being part of our readership - tough days seem easier when you know you can share your thoughts with others ... even if you never know who those others are!

Well, as is the case with most of my posts, the day doesn't end there. I left work about 3:30 (1530 for you military folks) to run some errands before our big event this afternoon. One of our Marines is an ex-Georgia Bulldog football player who still keeps in touch with the coaches. He asked if we would do a "shout-out" for their upcoming game against Oklahoma State (A shout out is one of those 15-30 second military spots they play on the Jumbotron or on the TV broadcast - basically giving the team support from Iraq). Well our General has a daughter at UGA, so it became a command-wide event (I'm pretty happy about it, seeing as how my sister is a UGA alum and will be at the game to see it). If you go to the game or watch on TV, I'm sitting on the Humvee on the left, just to the left of the large, black pipe that sticks up from the front bumper. The shout-out was fun, but that's not the point of the story ...

As I left my trailer to head back to work for the shout-out, everything seemed normal. This all changed as I drove down the road and realized my power-steering and brakes went from normal to non-existent as I was approaching a corner. Well ... this is new ... hmmmm. For a split second, I considered abandoning the mighty war-humvee in mid-flight, since the corner overlooked a canal. I decided to ride it out (usually the first line of data in a mishap report - Mishap Aviator #1 decided to ride the plane into the mountain rather than ejecting at an earlier time). I was able to muscle the hummer around the corner and allowed it to slow to a more reasonable speed ... thus making steering even more difficult. After a few near disasters, I careened my broken truck back into the IAG parking lot (try taking a turn-circle without brakes or power-steering - all I can say is it's a good thing the roads weren't too crowded), and parked it in the gravel. After we finished the shout-out, I recruited my assistant and our command's resident humvee mechanic to take a look at my sick truck. Apparently, several hoses had torn themselves away from the power-steering pump (spewing fluid EVERYWHERE) and there was something wrong with the brakes ... oh, and the bolt that holds the left-front shock absorber was gone ... not broken, just gone. Our mechanic thought he could resurrect the beast, so we set off for the motor-pool for some parts and fluid. After an hour of work, we hadn't made much progress. Our mechanic filled me with as much fluid as he could and wished me luck in my drive to the motor-pool ... great.

I limped over to the motor-pool, with my assistant in tow, in his humvee. I truly expected to be shot down by the guys there, since this truck isn't theirs, but they suprised me by taking the truck in and performing open-heart surgery on the beast for the better part of 2.5 hours. As always, the contractors over here amaze me - they get a bad rap in the press, but most of them are really here to help. They reattached the hoses and explained to me that, in my model humvee, the power-steering pump also controls whether or not the brakes work (now I'm not a car guy, but that seems like a design flaw - I always thought the brake master cylinder was controlled by vacuum pressure from the motor - but then again, like I said, I'm not a car guy). We actually fixed the power-steering and brakes in about 20 minutes, the shock took the rest of the time. These guys spent basically their entire evening fixing my truck (they even fixed some things I didn't even think of, like the A/C filter - that was a mess).

So once again, I'm in debt to some folks who went out of their way to help a brother in need. They (our humvee mechanic, my assistant, and those great guys at the motor-pool) reminded me why the bad guys hate us: Everyone has a part, and everyone can make a difference. The difference in America is: people get to that decision point in their life, whether or not to help a brother in need, and time and time again, they step up to the plate. There's my lesson for the day: remember ... someday, that guy on the side of the road with the hood up might be you. Until tomorrow.

-Grease out.