tag:dispatch.thirdway.org,2005:Typo Typo 2006-05-09T10:06:47-06:00 Lance Corporal Sean Barney, USMC urn:uuid:2e146631-298d-4c3a-b6c7-790aef47b85a 2006-04-06T14:32:00-06:00 2006-05-09T10:06:47-06:00 <p>(Note: This arrived at Third Way as a letter from Sean dated 3-26-06)</p> <p>Camp Victory, Kuwait</p> <p>We are at Camp Victory in Kuwait. We arrived in Kuwait City at 0300 after a twenty-hour flight that included layovers in Bangor, ME and Shannon, Ireland. The flight was pleasant. We were seen off at Twenty-nine Palms by a team of “Official Huggers” (mostly mothers and wives with their own family members deployed overseas). At Bangor, there was also a group of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201455_pf.html">greeters&#8212;mostly veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars</a>.</p> <p>In Bangor, we were allowed to make a free phone call, so I woke my wife up at 4:00 AM (Philly time) to say goodbye. Despite being post-call (she’s a first-year family medicine resident), she wasn’t even that mad.</p><p>The Marines were all in good spirits leaving Ireland, which was in large part due to the fact that we were allowed to order two beers per man in the tourist terminal. The mood was more somber when we arrived in Kuwait City. We were spirited onto buses with drapes over the windows and driven away with an armed police escort.</p> <p>We arrived in Camp Victory as the sun was rising. Camp Victory is basically a barren wasteland in the middle of the desert. It is a flat plot of land surrounded by large earthen berms. Inside is a complex of canvas and metal tents, along with a few trailers. It is not someplace I would wish to be stationed on a long terms basis. On thing I can say, though, is that the chow hall is excellent—far better than anything at Twenty-Nine Palms.</p> <p>Nobody knows how long we will be here, whether a day, two, or three. Mostly, we have been resting up and getting accustomed to the climate. It is about ninety degrees here right now during the middle of the day, which is not too bad. We know that it is only going to get hotter though in the coming weeks and months. We are all drinking a lot of water, knowing well that the heat will only take its full toll when we are patrolling in full combat gear.</p> <p>For now we wait. Some admit to feeling pangs of nervousness, but mostly we all feel blank, not knowing exactly what we should feel. Perhaps that’s because few of us know exactly what we are in for over the coming days, weeks, and months. On one thing we generally agree. It’s time to get on with it. The sooner we get started, the sooner we get it over with, and the sooner we get back where we all want to be—home.</p>