Life on the FOB

Life on the FOB is not easy. Everything you do, just everyday life things like brushing your teeth requires planning and is inconvenient. One of these pics shows several of us lined up at an outdoor sink at 5 AM brushing our teeth in canteen water and shaving in cold water with foggy steel mirrors. The water has a big sign by each spigot that says "Not Potable" so you have to be careful not to drink any during the process. My new friend Jim from Tennessee says if puts it in his canteen he can make it be potable though.... no he didn't really say that. When we do get a hot meal we stand up to eat it, but it sure is nice to have a hot meal and honestly if I got to sit down, I think it would be a real challenge to talk myself into getting back up again. We are all pretty tired.

The reason they keep us on the FOB is to get us used to living in tough conditions in addition to the fact that this is where all of the training we need to complete is done, like shooting land navigation, convoy operations etc. It's a logistical nightmare to move all 285 of us anywhere, so keeping us near the training makes good sense.

The funny thing is that, as hard as it is, you actually start to get very good at living here and grow close to the 30 guys you share a tent with and have a lot of good laughs along the way. There are many women here too in all sorts of medical professions. We all live and work together. Age, sex, race is not a factor in the expectations that are placed upon us to complete the mission. These are all really good people who represent less than 2% of the population that even qualify to be soldiers, who volunteered to be here so they could apply their skills to send soldiers back home to their families as healthy as they can. I heard an interesting statistic here. A soldier found alive from a battle injury, has a 97% chance of surviving his injuries once the medics get their hands on him and send him to us at the CSH (Combat Support Hospital). We have air superiority and we can move our people to the best care available in the world in a very short time. Yes we are all Doctors, Nurses, Dentists, Optometrists, PAs, etc., but it has been made very clear to everyone of us that we are soldiers first and foremost so we all train on core soldiering skills. None of the soldiering is new to me coming from my prior service background, but some of these folks are getting a real eyeopener here, but rise to the occasion never the less. I am proud to be here with them and plan to help them acclimate all that I can.