Out Of Trim
8th Mar 2003, 21:44
SWOOSH! - From the Washington Post -
By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A14
CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait, March 7 -- Winds approaching 60 mph swooshed down on Camp Victory today, blowing down tents and leaving many soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division out in the open, clutching their cots and sleeping bags. Some strapped on goggles. Others swaddled their faces against the abrasive, wind-driven sand.
The winds kicked up swells so large at Kuwait City's port that the first of five cargo ships carrying attack helicopters and other equipment for the 101st was unable to berth as planned at 4 a.m. The 72 aircraft -- among more than 250 division helicopters considered indispensable in any attack on Iraq -- and 1,900 vehicles on the USNS Dahl remained in the hold, with unloading rescheduled to Saturday.
In all, 17 large troop tents collapsed during the night when the winds descended on this camp 30 miles west of Kuwait City. Some of the flapping structures were blown out of sight. Others were held down by soldiers tugging at the guy ropes. Troops left without shelter -- some of them bootless, rousted from sleep -- sought refuge in a shower trailer.
"We've been battling this since 11 o'clock last night," Maj. Ken Curtis, a communications officer in the 101st, said at midday. "It was just amazing. I could fall forward into the wind and it would support me."
The storm was a reminder of the harsh conditions complicating preparations for war, particularly those involving aircraft. The Army intends to base more than 160 AH-64 Apache gunships north of here in what one senior officer called "the largest gathering of attack helicopters in the history of the U.S. Army." But simply returning to earth can be death-defying when a 12-knot breeze kicks up enough dust to cut visibility to half a mile. During a sandstorm last month, a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in a fireball, killing all four crewmen.
"Landing in this stuff is hard," said Brig. Gen. Edward J. Sinclair, an Apache pilot who serves as assistant division commander of the 101st. "You don't see the ground. It's a whiteout, with the dust kicking up."
Warrant Officer Keith Murphy, a Blackhawk pilot, added, "When visibility is this low. . . the best place to be is on the ground."
Between gusts, the work of converting the Kuwaiti desert into an armed camp continued. The Army is building military Levittowns -- called New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- with endless rows of Pakistani-made sleeping tents and crude facilities for dining, washing and training. A single helicopter base in the north is soon expected to shelter 11,000 troops. A few miles from Camp Victory, at another helicopter base called Thunder Road, engineers are grading the desert to spread a thick coat of "gorilla snot," an asphalt-like substance that cures to form an instant landing field.
The tasks are monumental and the time seemingly short: feeding and watering an army, hauling in thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel needed for combat, figuring out how to maintain high-tech equipment. The aviation maintenance battalion in the 101st alone carries 12,000 types of spare parts.
"As an infantryman I used to be no more interested in logistics than what I could stuff in a rucksack," said Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the 101st commander. "Now I know that while tactics aren't easy, they're relatively simple when compared to logistics."
Even the simple can be difficult. Until the Dahl and other cargo ships unload, the 1,500-strong 159th Aviation Brigade functions with two rental vehicles, according to Col. William H. Forrester, the unit commander. At Udoiri air base farther north, an electrical fire in five connected mess tents burned the complex to the ground in three minutes last week, moving the Army to requisition 3,500 fire extinguishers. Many soldiers who had been temporarily housed at Udoiri moved to Camp Victory, only to have the mess tent blow down. Even before the storm, mess hall chairs purchased locally collapsed under hefty U.S. soldiers with such regularity that they had to be double-stacked, according to Sgt. Leslie Sanchez, the camp "mayor."
Inevitable snafus -- "alligators inside the boat," as one colonel calls them -- have made the hard harder. The 101st, for example, recently realized that although the division's huge, high-tech field headquarters tent is on the Dahl, critical computer servers are aboard the third ship in the convoy, which is still several steaming days away. Replacements have been borrowed or begged.
"I'm one of those guys who believes that more is better," said Col. Thomas J. Schoenbeck, chief of staff for the 101st. "This situation is so much different than Desert Storm, when we were just trying to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Now, if war happens, we're going to be trying to change the regime in Baghdad."
Another commodity hard to come by is sleep. Lt. Col. Rick Gibbs, the division operations officer, estimated that he is averaging three hours a night. As for Lt. Col. Joe Dunaway, commander of that aviation maintenance battalion: "I don't count anymore."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
:eek: :eek:
By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A14
CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait, March 7 -- Winds approaching 60 mph swooshed down on Camp Victory today, blowing down tents and leaving many soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division out in the open, clutching their cots and sleeping bags. Some strapped on goggles. Others swaddled their faces against the abrasive, wind-driven sand.
The winds kicked up swells so large at Kuwait City's port that the first of five cargo ships carrying attack helicopters and other equipment for the 101st was unable to berth as planned at 4 a.m. The 72 aircraft -- among more than 250 division helicopters considered indispensable in any attack on Iraq -- and 1,900 vehicles on the USNS Dahl remained in the hold, with unloading rescheduled to Saturday.
In all, 17 large troop tents collapsed during the night when the winds descended on this camp 30 miles west of Kuwait City. Some of the flapping structures were blown out of sight. Others were held down by soldiers tugging at the guy ropes. Troops left without shelter -- some of them bootless, rousted from sleep -- sought refuge in a shower trailer.
"We've been battling this since 11 o'clock last night," Maj. Ken Curtis, a communications officer in the 101st, said at midday. "It was just amazing. I could fall forward into the wind and it would support me."
The storm was a reminder of the harsh conditions complicating preparations for war, particularly those involving aircraft. The Army intends to base more than 160 AH-64 Apache gunships north of here in what one senior officer called "the largest gathering of attack helicopters in the history of the U.S. Army." But simply returning to earth can be death-defying when a 12-knot breeze kicks up enough dust to cut visibility to half a mile. During a sandstorm last month, a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in a fireball, killing all four crewmen.
"Landing in this stuff is hard," said Brig. Gen. Edward J. Sinclair, an Apache pilot who serves as assistant division commander of the 101st. "You don't see the ground. It's a whiteout, with the dust kicking up."
Warrant Officer Keith Murphy, a Blackhawk pilot, added, "When visibility is this low. . . the best place to be is on the ground."
Between gusts, the work of converting the Kuwaiti desert into an armed camp continued. The Army is building military Levittowns -- called New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- with endless rows of Pakistani-made sleeping tents and crude facilities for dining, washing and training. A single helicopter base in the north is soon expected to shelter 11,000 troops. A few miles from Camp Victory, at another helicopter base called Thunder Road, engineers are grading the desert to spread a thick coat of "gorilla snot," an asphalt-like substance that cures to form an instant landing field.
The tasks are monumental and the time seemingly short: feeding and watering an army, hauling in thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel needed for combat, figuring out how to maintain high-tech equipment. The aviation maintenance battalion in the 101st alone carries 12,000 types of spare parts.
"As an infantryman I used to be no more interested in logistics than what I could stuff in a rucksack," said Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the 101st commander. "Now I know that while tactics aren't easy, they're relatively simple when compared to logistics."
Even the simple can be difficult. Until the Dahl and other cargo ships unload, the 1,500-strong 159th Aviation Brigade functions with two rental vehicles, according to Col. William H. Forrester, the unit commander. At Udoiri air base farther north, an electrical fire in five connected mess tents burned the complex to the ground in three minutes last week, moving the Army to requisition 3,500 fire extinguishers. Many soldiers who had been temporarily housed at Udoiri moved to Camp Victory, only to have the mess tent blow down. Even before the storm, mess hall chairs purchased locally collapsed under hefty U.S. soldiers with such regularity that they had to be double-stacked, according to Sgt. Leslie Sanchez, the camp "mayor."
Inevitable snafus -- "alligators inside the boat," as one colonel calls them -- have made the hard harder. The 101st, for example, recently realized that although the division's huge, high-tech field headquarters tent is on the Dahl, critical computer servers are aboard the third ship in the convoy, which is still several steaming days away. Replacements have been borrowed or begged.
"I'm one of those guys who believes that more is better," said Col. Thomas J. Schoenbeck, chief of staff for the 101st. "This situation is so much different than Desert Storm, when we were just trying to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Now, if war happens, we're going to be trying to change the regime in Baghdad."
Another commodity hard to come by is sleep. Lt. Col. Rick Gibbs, the division operations officer, estimated that he is averaging three hours a night. As for Lt. Col. Joe Dunaway, commander of that aviation maintenance battalion: "I don't count anymore."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
:eek: :eek: