Welcome to FOB Enormo

I’ve arrived…home sweet home for the next 12 months.

As the name suggests, FOB Enormo is a pretty big place. It is an old Iraqi Air Force base with tens of thousands soldiers and civilians living here on any given day. It is quite a mix here: Army, Navy, Air Force, a few Marines, US government civilians, US government contractors and “third country national” (TCN) contractors. There are very, very few Iraqis on the FOB and their access is tightly controlled. The TCN contractors are from a bewildering array of countries…mostly Asian and Middle Eastern. Many of the guards who protect places like the PX, the dining facilities and our work compound are from various African countries. They are very serious about their duties but still much friendlier overall than the rest of the TCNs. I’ll probably learn a little Swahili before this deployment is over. Right now, my vocabulary is limited to “hello” and “how are you.”

One of the most surreal aspects of being here is that you can’t go anywhere—ANYWHERE—without your weapon. You are not allowed in the dining hall without a weapon and the guards at the PX will give you a very hard time if you don’t have a weapon (though they are slightly more lenient than the dining hall guards). The only time I am not armed is when I’m in the shower, working out or sleeping…but the pistol is within arm’s reach when I’m sleeping or showering. I’m luckier than most since my assigned weapon is a 9mm pistol.

Unlike Kuwait, we actually have some trees on FOB Enormo. In addition to palms, I think we have a number of what appear to be cedar trees. I’m not a tree expert but I will eventually find a few minutes to research what they really are. The trees don’t really provide any shade but they do make the place a bit more scenic than the vast deserts of Kuwait. I have yet to see any grass. Everything underfoot is either dirt, gravel or pavement.

There is also a steady buzzing of cargo planes, fighter jets and helicopters. Jets and planes remind me of my younger days living on Air Force bases in the US. The helicopters tend to fly rather low over our work compound. I enjoyed the sound at first, until I realized why the helicopters were coming in so low: our work compound under the final flight path to the base hospital, so most of the helicopters I hear and see are Medevac aircraft bringing wounded soldiers into the hospital or launching to pick them up. The sound of those engines now pains me. Fortunately, the helicopters are touching down at a newly improved hospital staffed by skilled and dedicated military medical professionals.