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bodyKuwait2005
Me wearing a Starship Modeler cap at the entrance to Camp Buehring.
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-- Kuwait --
( 17 November 2005 - 12 March 2006 )
( 29 March 2008 - 23 April 2008 )
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2008 Update: Only minor changes have occurred on Camp Buehring over the past two years. So you can consider it to be the same as I described below from my first visit.
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Even though I traveled over a large area of Kuwait during my four months "in-country", I spent most of my time at Camp Buehring. I saw very little plant life while there, and the sand got into everything. However, the camp was built up for semi-permanent operations, which was more than I had imagined prior to arrival.
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Fast Food at Camp Buehring.
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A sandbag sofa.
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We were housed in 70-man tents made from a thick white vinyl material. We lived this way, sleeping on cots, for about 3 months, and then were moved into hard-stand buildings in 6-man rooms, with beds and mattresses. Two Dining Facilities were available, and each provided an excellent selection of meal choices, as well as a myriad of desserts. Lines were long when approximately 25,000 soldiers were on site. But life was a lot easier when that number dropped to about 6,000.
Fast Food restaurants helped to keep morale high. Subway, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Baskin Robbins were the well known eateries, but we also had pizza, hot dogs, and donuts.
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I traveled to the Udairi ranges frequently to transport breakfast and dinner meals to my unit. The average drive was about an hour from the camp. Training at the ranges consisted of small arms marksmanship, machine gun marksmanship, Bradley Crew qualification, crew drills, and convoy live-fire training.
Sometimes sand storms would get so bad, that we weren't allowed to drive. And, when driving across Kuwait, it was normal to see herds of camels roaming the desert with their Bedouin keepers always nearby. Flocks of sheep were also seen, yet less often.
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Our drinking water.
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March 12th, 2006, I drove north to Iraq. My crew consisted of my driver, SPC Larios (a mechanic), and my gunner, SPC Seawright (Infantry). We were the only ones from my unit to drive north and were assigned to a convoy with A Battery, 4-27 Field Artillery. My vehicle, a 2.5 ton Light Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV) was almost the last vehicle in a convoy of 49. We crossed the border into Iraq as the sun began to set.
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