The theme continues as there has not been much going on here lately. Aside from the occassional earthquake and rocket attacks things have been pretty chill. The clock continues to tick and the days are slowly passing by, although at times it seems painfully slow. But August is less than 24 hours away and that means I am one month closer to going home.
Nothing much going on last few days over here in Iraq. We are into the dog days of summer over with noon time temps hitting the 115-120 degree range in the sun. Even at night, the temps stay in the high 80's to low 90's. Most of us try to find a cool place to hide out and avoid the heat when we are not seeing patients. Things are quiet on the battelfield as well. Our troops are still not doing any patrols out in the city and from what I hear the Iraqi Army is doing a fairly good job at maintaining the peace. Hopefully it will stay the way until September. As of right now I am scheduled to fly back to the states on Saturday September 5th ... 43 more days and counting!!!
A little over a week ago I received six packages in the mail and after looking at the return address I realized I had no idea who the person was. Inside the boxes were cigars ... lots of cigars ... probably around 200 cigars or so. After making a few phone calls I finally found out that the person who sent the cigars was a friend of a friend of a friend, who had found out that me and the boys like to enjoy a cigar from time to time over here in Iraq. Well, it turns out this person spread the word to a few of his buddies who then proceeded to send him cigars. He then compiled them and sent them all to me. The cigars came from people all across the U.S. and even Canada.
I was laying in bed last night around 23:30 trying to fall asleep. Suddenly, everything in my room started shaking. No explosion, no boom, no warning sirens. It felt like someone had picked up my room and was shaking it back and forth. This lasted about 15-20 seconds and then it stopped, and everything was quiet again. I bolted out of my room, heading for the bunkers, as was everyone else in our living area. But after 15 minutes of quiet and a quick Google search we found out an earthquake was the culprit. It hit about 35 miles south of Mosul and measured 5.2 on the Richter Scale. That was my first earthquake experience and hopefully my last ... not a good time. Rockets one night, earthquakes the next night ... I really think it's time to get back to San Antonio where the biggest dangers are 48oz margheritas and extremely large mosquitoes!
Things have been unusually quiet around here lately. That trend was broken last night as I was laying in my bed half asleep. I thought I heard a explosion and jumped out of bed, not sure if it was part of a dream or had really happened. Then came another boom, this time a little bit closer. And then the sirens went off alerting everyone that we had incoming rockets into our compound. Now they had my full attention. And as we all stumbled out of our quarters and into the bunkers the explosions continued, each one sounding closer and closer. I spent a good 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours running back and forth between the bunkers and the ER last night. When it was all said and done a total of 10 rockets had been launched into the compound. Thankfully no one was seriously injured. Some buildings and equipment were damaged but that was the worst of it. So we all made our way back to our beds and attempted to get some sleep. It's no so easy though when you are wondering when the next rocket attack might come and whether or not the ceiling above your head is strong enough to protect you from a direct hit. Man, I can't wait to be back home in my own bed ... only 50 more days, but who's counting right??
All remains quiet here in Mosul, at least for the coalition forces. A couple of large explosions occurred this morning targeting the Iraqi police but none of our soldiers were in the area and no casualties were brought to us for treatment. Both good things as the status quo continues.
Yesterday, I was just minding my own business, doing some reading in my CHU when I get a page saying that the hospital commander is looking for me. Great I thought ... this can't be good. So I made my way over to the ER to find out what was going on. The nurse on shift told me the commander had called twice looking for me and wanted me up at the TOC (Tactical Operations Center ... a.k.a. our unit headquarters) ASAP. "Sweet" I said sarcastically knowing inside that this couldn't be good. So I made my way over to the TOC while at the same time trying to figure out what I could have possibly done to warrant this attention. Maybe a patient filed a complaint, or maybe one of the staff in the ER screwed up, or maybe they decided to let me go home early since I have been doing such an outstanding job (yeah right like that would ever happen).
While war still rages just a half mile away in the city of Mosul, things have been very quiet for us since the June 3oth deadline mandating all U.S. forces pull out of Iraqi cities. We haven't had seen any traumatic war-related injuries to U.S. or coalition soldiers in over 2 weeks. However, the killing continues for the Iraqis. Yesterday two suicide bombings in Mosul killed over 30 people and injured more than 60. None of the injured were brought to us for treatment per the new Iraqi Security Agreement.
I took some time off this morning to go to the range. We have gotten to know the special forces guys pretty well and today they took us out to fire some of their weapons. It was an awesome time. I got to shoot a lot of weapons that I will probably never see again, including an AK-47 and a high powered sniper rifle. It was a great experience despite being out in the sun in full body armor as the thermometer read 118 degrees at 11am this morning.
