A friend of my mom's who she works with is in the National Guard. His unit was deployed to New Oreleans about 3 weeks ago. He's a Physician Assistant, and is in a medical unit that is probably also going to Iraq in the spring. He sent this e-mail to her, and said to foreward it to anyone. And he's quite the writer.
It's pretty heavy.
......................................................................................
Hey everybody,
Some military SUV with a satellite dish just drove up and now we suddenly have internet access! Wanted to drop you all a line and let
you know I'm alive. We've been working on getting this small community hospital up and running and we're about 2 days away from success. Pretty amazing when you think we're sitting in the middle of the most wretched, burned out, poverty ridden section of this town; The 8th ward of Orleans Parrish. We've got a 30 KW generator scabbed directly into the mains of the hospital and tonight should prove to be an impressive sight with our building as the only
structure with power for miles around. Charlie Med Rocks! When we first took over the place, the water was lapping at the top of the loading dock. The parking lot was under 3 feet of water with cars sporting smashed windows. The lot next to the hospital was an impromptu repository for squad cars of the fleeing New Orleans Police. Rows of looted and vandalized cop cars were emblematic of the almost complete collapse of order here. The scene inside the hospital looked like a miniature version of the Superdome. Room after room of rotting food, overflowing toilets, clothes strewn about, personal belongings abandoned. One of the rooms was used as the hospital garbage dump. Bags of rotting, foul smelling trash and medical waste, writhing with maggots. I have to confess I wimped out and used my gas mask to clear that room which was packed wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The bottom floor had a clearly demarcated waterline that ran the length of the walls about 18 inches high. The floors still had about a 1/2 inch of stinking swamp water and silt everywhere. The kitchen refrigerators were packed with, well, you get the picture. Yes, my life is just one glamor mission after another. High speed military garbage man.
I don't know where to begin to describe the surreal, post
apocalyptic landscape I'm living in. Block after block of destroyed hovels, city buses smashed and abandoned in the middle of the street where they ran out of gas, looted shops, power lines strewn everywhere like spaghetti, mountains of rotting, festering garbage with it's accompanying stench. Ah yes the stench. A hot, steaming combo of swamp, garbage and death. Oh did I mention the packs of starving dogs and cats scurrying around the streets? A pathetic situation only surpassed by the desperate barking of the untold number of dogs trapped and abandoned in countless houses by their owners who've been forcibly evacuated over the past week. Graffiti scrawled on the front of houses run the gamut from "HELP HELP!" to "F*** YOU BUSH" to the creepy cold blooded nomenclature of the military doing their house to house searches and spray painting the number of bodies found inside. I now have an intimate, first hand knowledge of the life cycle of the common house fly and mosquito. We
are all being slowly drained of blood by the newly hatched legions of mosquitos which arrive in clouds each dawn and dusk (Which I'm experiencing as I write). The heat and humidity cause the welts to swell and itch even more than usual. Street traffic here is an endless parade of every military, police, border patrol, park ranger, fire department, etc, etc, etc vehicle known to man. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. the air above is a mirror of the streets. Blackhawks, Sea Stallions, old Hueys, Kiawas, Chinooks, news media copters, endless C-130's, C-5's, Orions, crisscrossing the sky day and night. Our base of operations is an abandoned nunnery. We sleep under the breezeways on cots that some of the soldiers have fitted with chunks of screen door fabric as tents over them while they sleep. Days are in the 90's with corresponding humidity. Nights are clammy and damp. Rumors, myths and legends are the rule of the day. From the alligator attack stories to endless variations of dead bodies found in every place you can imagine (they're always 300 or 500 pounds for some reason. guess it sounds better that way. Oh, and never tell the story without the adjective "bloated") to the roving gangs with automatic weapons. One must always emphasize "automatic weapons" lest it not be scary or titilating enough. I mean really, nothing frightening about roving gangs with just single shot weapons! Whenever a reporter comes by the hospital looking for a possible story, the first words out of their mouths are "Find any dead bodies?". When I inform them that sadly, no there were no dead bodies of any size, it's like I'm not being very helpful. I mean, how many dead bodies do these gouls need? It seems there's plenty to go around.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are the scrumptous MRE's most days. My favorites are the "beef" teriyaki and the veggie burger with BBQ sauce on whole wheat "snack" bread. Honorable mention goes of course to that perenial favorite of soldiers from Bagdad to Baton Rouge, Chili Mac. YUM, YUM! I got my first shower last night since leaving Oregon last week. I was told by my soldiers that they were taking me whether I wanted to go or not. I guess I was causing a bit of a stink, pun intended. We went to the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima and got a shower on board. The positive effects of which last approximately 5 minutes, before the ubiquitous drenching sweating starts all over again. The ship is docked along Canal Street next to
a Carnival Cruise lines ship that is housing relief workers.
Downtown is a bizarre sea of military and media feeding off of each other in a weird symbiosis. All of this taking place under the garish neon of the Hard Rock Cafe and Harrah's casino. Kind of like Las Vegas meets Saigon 1967. 3 minutes after leaving the downtown core in our commandeered city bus (an odd sight in and of itself), the
lights of the Hyatt and Hilton hotels fade out and give way to the most eerie pitch blackness I've ever experienced inside a major city. Back to No Man's Land and home sweet home.
Most days my fellow officers and I just try to stay under the radar of the higher ups in the battalion and brigade lest we become caught under the micromanagement microscope. When this occurs, all productivity ceases and the only things generated are reports and memos. Paralysis through analysis. Our next stealth project is to go in and take over a veteranary clinic, get that up and running so we can help save some of the animals I've mentioned. Like our
hospital project, the higher ups will surely embrace it as their own idea when they see the attention and positive response from the community. Until then it will probably remain a "bad idea". You should have seen how they changed their tune when Newsweek, the New York Times and a bunch of the local Oregon TV stations all did stories on the hospital. Whatever works. I have to say how proud I am of the soldiers of our battalion. I had 50 of them a day volunteering to come down and slog through that crap in those conditions with nothing more than flashlights to work by. They worked their butts off.
Well, it's late and I must be off for my nightly blood donation and dose of West Nile Virus. One last bizarre thing. As I write this, somewhere way off in the distance I can just faintly hear someone playing the old jazz standard Take 5 by Dave Brubeck. Go figure. Take care, have the coldest, hoppiest beer you can lay your hands on for me, and I'll see you all whenever. One rumor is another 2 weeks, and the other is 3 more months. As with everything, the truth, I'm sure, lies somewhere in between.
See Ya!
(Captain) Ron
It's pretty heavy.
......................................................................................
Hey everybody,
Some military SUV with a satellite dish just drove up and now we suddenly have internet access! Wanted to drop you all a line and let
you know I'm alive. We've been working on getting this small community hospital up and running and we're about 2 days away from success. Pretty amazing when you think we're sitting in the middle of the most wretched, burned out, poverty ridden section of this town; The 8th ward of Orleans Parrish. We've got a 30 KW generator scabbed directly into the mains of the hospital and tonight should prove to be an impressive sight with our building as the only
structure with power for miles around. Charlie Med Rocks! When we first took over the place, the water was lapping at the top of the loading dock. The parking lot was under 3 feet of water with cars sporting smashed windows. The lot next to the hospital was an impromptu repository for squad cars of the fleeing New Orleans Police. Rows of looted and vandalized cop cars were emblematic of the almost complete collapse of order here. The scene inside the hospital looked like a miniature version of the Superdome. Room after room of rotting food, overflowing toilets, clothes strewn about, personal belongings abandoned. One of the rooms was used as the hospital garbage dump. Bags of rotting, foul smelling trash and medical waste, writhing with maggots. I have to confess I wimped out and used my gas mask to clear that room which was packed wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The bottom floor had a clearly demarcated waterline that ran the length of the walls about 18 inches high. The floors still had about a 1/2 inch of stinking swamp water and silt everywhere. The kitchen refrigerators were packed with, well, you get the picture. Yes, my life is just one glamor mission after another. High speed military garbage man.
I don't know where to begin to describe the surreal, post
apocalyptic landscape I'm living in. Block after block of destroyed hovels, city buses smashed and abandoned in the middle of the street where they ran out of gas, looted shops, power lines strewn everywhere like spaghetti, mountains of rotting, festering garbage with it's accompanying stench. Ah yes the stench. A hot, steaming combo of swamp, garbage and death. Oh did I mention the packs of starving dogs and cats scurrying around the streets? A pathetic situation only surpassed by the desperate barking of the untold number of dogs trapped and abandoned in countless houses by their owners who've been forcibly evacuated over the past week. Graffiti scrawled on the front of houses run the gamut from "HELP HELP!" to "F*** YOU BUSH" to the creepy cold blooded nomenclature of the military doing their house to house searches and spray painting the number of bodies found inside. I now have an intimate, first hand knowledge of the life cycle of the common house fly and mosquito. We
are all being slowly drained of blood by the newly hatched legions of mosquitos which arrive in clouds each dawn and dusk (Which I'm experiencing as I write). The heat and humidity cause the welts to swell and itch even more than usual. Street traffic here is an endless parade of every military, police, border patrol, park ranger, fire department, etc, etc, etc vehicle known to man. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. the air above is a mirror of the streets. Blackhawks, Sea Stallions, old Hueys, Kiawas, Chinooks, news media copters, endless C-130's, C-5's, Orions, crisscrossing the sky day and night. Our base of operations is an abandoned nunnery. We sleep under the breezeways on cots that some of the soldiers have fitted with chunks of screen door fabric as tents over them while they sleep. Days are in the 90's with corresponding humidity. Nights are clammy and damp. Rumors, myths and legends are the rule of the day. From the alligator attack stories to endless variations of dead bodies found in every place you can imagine (they're always 300 or 500 pounds for some reason. guess it sounds better that way. Oh, and never tell the story without the adjective "bloated") to the roving gangs with automatic weapons. One must always emphasize "automatic weapons" lest it not be scary or titilating enough. I mean really, nothing frightening about roving gangs with just single shot weapons! Whenever a reporter comes by the hospital looking for a possible story, the first words out of their mouths are "Find any dead bodies?". When I inform them that sadly, no there were no dead bodies of any size, it's like I'm not being very helpful. I mean, how many dead bodies do these gouls need? It seems there's plenty to go around.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are the scrumptous MRE's most days. My favorites are the "beef" teriyaki and the veggie burger with BBQ sauce on whole wheat "snack" bread. Honorable mention goes of course to that perenial favorite of soldiers from Bagdad to Baton Rouge, Chili Mac. YUM, YUM! I got my first shower last night since leaving Oregon last week. I was told by my soldiers that they were taking me whether I wanted to go or not. I guess I was causing a bit of a stink, pun intended. We went to the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima and got a shower on board. The positive effects of which last approximately 5 minutes, before the ubiquitous drenching sweating starts all over again. The ship is docked along Canal Street next to
a Carnival Cruise lines ship that is housing relief workers.
Downtown is a bizarre sea of military and media feeding off of each other in a weird symbiosis. All of this taking place under the garish neon of the Hard Rock Cafe and Harrah's casino. Kind of like Las Vegas meets Saigon 1967. 3 minutes after leaving the downtown core in our commandeered city bus (an odd sight in and of itself), the
lights of the Hyatt and Hilton hotels fade out and give way to the most eerie pitch blackness I've ever experienced inside a major city. Back to No Man's Land and home sweet home.
Most days my fellow officers and I just try to stay under the radar of the higher ups in the battalion and brigade lest we become caught under the micromanagement microscope. When this occurs, all productivity ceases and the only things generated are reports and memos. Paralysis through analysis. Our next stealth project is to go in and take over a veteranary clinic, get that up and running so we can help save some of the animals I've mentioned. Like our
hospital project, the higher ups will surely embrace it as their own idea when they see the attention and positive response from the community. Until then it will probably remain a "bad idea". You should have seen how they changed their tune when Newsweek, the New York Times and a bunch of the local Oregon TV stations all did stories on the hospital. Whatever works. I have to say how proud I am of the soldiers of our battalion. I had 50 of them a day volunteering to come down and slog through that crap in those conditions with nothing more than flashlights to work by. They worked their butts off.
Well, it's late and I must be off for my nightly blood donation and dose of West Nile Virus. One last bizarre thing. As I write this, somewhere way off in the distance I can just faintly hear someone playing the old jazz standard Take 5 by Dave Brubeck. Go figure. Take care, have the coldest, hoppiest beer you can lay your hands on for me, and I'll see you all whenever. One rumor is another 2 weeks, and the other is 3 more months. As with everything, the truth, I'm sure, lies somewhere in between.
See Ya!
(Captain) Ron
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
elkcam:
Thanks for passing this story along. He did a great job of telling what's realliy going on. They are doing a tremendous job under almost impossible living conditions. My hats off to them.
mrsnl:
Damn. Thats crazy. I'll see you soon. I put in my notice at the apartment and I'll be home by Halloween. Don't know what to do though, maybe Corn Valley, maybe Portland, maybe maybe maybe. I got a kick ass costume though.