Note from Erik: I have just touched down on US soil, on Fort Dix, NJ. The air smells sweet, cool, wet, and green. God bless America. More to follow. The entry below was typed last night, and upped now at my first brush with net access.

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SNAPSHOT: I am now sitting in a very nice Mercedes Benz bus, in the middle of a convoy of about six of them, somewhere on a highway in Kuwait. We are headed, as we have been told, to a dirt lot someplace, where we will be allowed to get off of the bus, “smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em,” pee, and then back on for a few minutes before we get on the plane which will take us home by way of Leipzig, New Jersey, and finally, around 22 hours from this moment, Fort Benning, GA, which is where I get off. I am listening to Rogue Wave on the ipod, occasionally glancing, just for the thrill of it, at the counter on my laptop which reads “Erik Goes Home: TODAY!” We are all stinky from the day’s activities (read on), but there is an undeniable giddiness in the air, as we all know that, no matter how much the Department of Defense tortures us along the way, at the end of this long, strange day, we will be back in the good old US of A. Zimmy said it best:

Sailing around the world in a rusty gondola
Oh how good
To be back in the land
Of Coca-Cola

So here’s how the day has gone:

Up at 0445, got the packs all ready and out the door so that I could catch a ride to the customs area on one of the “gators” (small gasoline-powered golf carts with pickup-truck-like beds on them, for carrying bags around). Our bags were to be at customs by 0600, formation at 0700. After the bags were dropped off, I headed to the DFAC, where I ate a big breakfast, as I did not know when my next meal would be. This turned out to be a good move.

Formation at 0700, in which we were informed a bit about our journey, and were asked to produce our “L.O.R.” (letter of release, the document which states I am allowed to go home). Small snag there, because as of last night, my LoR had yet to show up. This is a document which is supposed to be in the soldier’s hands when he first heads to Kuwait, but mine had not been completed by the people at Brigade up in Balad by Wednesday night. On both Thursday and Friday, I was promised that I would have all of my paperwork by 1500 hours, to be sent electronically to my liaison officer, but each night I stopped by SSG Aleman’s desk and got the bad news. By Saturday, this had ceased to be an inconvenience and became a serious matter, as I could not get on the plane without those papers.

At the Saturday morning formation, I was excused to try and rustle up the paperwork, and SSG Aleman got paged out of her breakfast to check her e-mail, and:

Fortunately, the packet of goods was right there waiting for her.

Unfortunately, the text on many of the documents was so faint as to be entirely illegible.

Fortunately, the subject of those release papers (me) was a geeky type who though he could electronically “photoshop” the documents to render them somewhat legible.

Unfortunately, I was able to improve them a bit, but not a lot. Most of the lines remained illegible despite my best efforts.

Fortunately, I all that really needed to be visible on the documents was a stamp and a signature at the bottom, and fortunately my efforts did, indeed make that portion visible.

Unfortunately (I will stop this game soon, I promise), my orders printed out so faintly that the “printout” of them looked suspiciously like a piece of virgin white Hammermill paper.

Fortunately, I had brought approximately 7000 copies of my orders with me in the event of just such an emergency.

Bottom line: after some tinkering and a fair bit of angst, I emerged from the liaison tent with all of the papers I needed to get on the plane. However, I feel the need to point out how this little episode epitomizes all that is wrong with the Army. I have served the 62nd Medical Brigade faithfully for six months, and all it would have taken to help me avoid this little unwished-for escapade on the very day I am to leave theater, was for someone—anyone—at brigade to have completed my paperwork, scanned and e-mailed a legible copy to me 3 days earlier. A completely unnecessary waste to not only my time, but that of the liaison officer, her staff, and the people who were supposed to be briefing me about my flight at the time that I was taking care of all of this stuff. This kind of hassle sends a message to the departing soldier that he/she is not valued by the brigade, and that our welfare is not of any import to them. Frustrating, and unacceptable.

By 0800 I was forwarded to the briefing tent, and then the real fun began: customs. I had been warned about this, even promised that it would be a tortuous experience, but it is not hyperbole when I state that the next few hours were to be the least pleasant of my entire deployment.

Before I get into the customs process, let me remind my alert readers that all 200-or-so of us in that formation were, at the end of the day, going to board a plane for a 19-hour ride, at the end of which we would be hugging loved ones. There was a great desire to avoid getting too sweaty prior to the ride, as this would 1) make the plane ride less comfortable, and 2), possibly result in our loved ones recoiling after smelling the sweaty person who had just 36 hours previously been in a formation 7000 miles away.

After briefing, we were led, in groups, to the customs tent. Image a line about ten blocks long of people carrying three-to-five bags each, waiting to be thoroughly inspected. The line moved slowly, but this was actually a blessing, as all of us had our hand full sliding our bags along in the Kuwaiti dust, leaving a thousand little trails behind them. I stood in line with CPT Daphne Sims, a pediatrician whom I knew from Al Asad, and the extra set of hands proved invaluable to each of us as we worked together to get each others’ bags through the line, and eventually into the customs tent. Unfortunately, said tent was not adequately air-conditioned (and by “adequately,” I mean “at all”). There were a number of huge government fans situated around the room, but they were not getting it done by a long shot. Inside the room were about forty tables, with an inspector lined up behind each one. I could not quite see what the process was, and didn’t really have time to look as I was too busy getting sliding my bags around in the line. Eventually, it was my turn.

I lifted my bags up to the stand, where a kind-looking man explained the process to me: for each of my five bags, i was to take every single thing out, put it on the table in front of him, and he would rummage through each article. I would then put the bag and all of its contents into a big plastic bin, set that to the side, and then we would start the process again with the next bag.

This process took about 10 minutes per bag, which doesn’t sound too bad when you read it, but it means that I was standing on the other side of a table, undoing my careful packing, and watching this guy rummage through my skivvies, inspecting every last ipod plug, tube of steroid cream, DVD, bag of Atomic Fireballs, etc in my bags, and then dump the stuff unceremoniously into a plastic bin, where it would all need to be repacked. All in a warehouse-sized tent with temps upwards of 90-degrees.

When the inspector finally got through my stuff (no flagged items), I took my five huge bins o’ Erik’s crap to the tables in the middle of the room for repacking. 1 hour, ten minutes, and about two gallons of sweat later, I had repacked all of my stuff, strategically swapping out the drenched t-short on my body with a clean one from one of my duffles.

Finally, out of the goshforsaken customs tent, and into a “lock-down” area, from whence we were not allowed to leave. I made it into my lockdown tent by about 1100 and a few moment later, we were informed that we would remain there until 1800. Why would we spend seven hours in a tent waiting to be transported to the airport? As opposed to just starting the process seven hours later than we did? Or having the flight—which was only for us, and no one else—leave seven hours earlier? These are questions which you and I are not allowed to ask. Mine is not to question why; mine is just to sit in a tent eating the provided granola bars and Gatorade drinks and talking with other similarly confused people. Gotta love the military.

At 1800, as promised, we boarded the Benz-buses. I seriously lucked-out in that I ended up on the last bus, which had some empty seats. This meant that I do not have to keep my monstrously-oversized carry-on bag in my lap, but am able to sit it to my side, which has enabled me to write this lengthy tome.

As I write this, we are sitting in a dusty lot, somewhere not too far from the airport, and are told that we can use the porta-potties, smoke, get some water, and/or hang out in the bus for the next hour, after which we will be boarding our plane.

Then, the journey begins.

To my friends (and nieces) in the Waterford, Connecticut Young Women’s Program (and your leaders):

Yesterday was kind of a “blah” day in our clinic. It was stiflingly hot outside, the flow of patients was slower-than-usual (often happens when it is really hot out—even the sick people don’t want to leave the air-conditioning to get seen), and there was just not a whole lot going on.

At around 3:30 PM, we sent a medic out to pick up the mail. When he returned to clinic at 4:15, he looked pretty glum, as he brought in four priority mail boxes, and not much else. A few of the medics got up when he walked through the door, but he shooed them off, saying “don’t bother; it’s all for MAJ Rupard.” I looked at the return addresses, and knew right away that the boxes were from you, and were not just for me, but for everyone. When I explained this, everyone got pretty excited again, and we gathered around the boxes and opened them, one-by-one.

Some of the great things in the boxes included:

• drink mixes by crystal light (and other brands)
• lots of great books for our clinic library, including a couple of my all-time favorites (”Holes”!!)
• Quaker Granola Bars
• Peanut M&Ms
• Peanut Butter M&Ms (woo-hoo!)
• kudos bars
• gum
• Chips Ahoy cookies
• and a lot of other good stuff

In short, the boxes were packed with sugary (and sugar-free) goodness. By far, my favorite thing were the letters, though, which are so sweet and heartfelt.

So, to the young women of the Waterford Ward, and to your adult leaders, please accept a grateful “Thank You” from me, the medics, and the patients of the 581st Troop Medical Clinic in Al Asad, Iraq. Your generosity and kindness has touched many lives. There are a large number of soldiers and Marines out here who rarely or never receive packages from home, and the efforts of people like you go a long way toward making deployed life just a bit nicer for all of us.

Your brother,

MAJ Erik J. Rupard, MD
Medical Officer-In-Charge
Troop Medical Clinic
Al Asad, IQ

On Saturday, my wife and daughter arrived in Park City, Utah, where I am attending a conference at the Canyons ski resort. We met my Oncologist friend Tony Fadell, who is also attending the conference. Though I am LDS (Mormon) and attended BYU, I am not from Utah, or even the west coast (I am from Connecticut), and this is my first trip to Utah since 1994, when I left to go to medical school.

I had forgotten how beautiful this area is, and the Canyons resort is just spectacular. Tony and I went skiing for around 7 hours today and only hit a tiny percentage of the trails here. The way they have set up the trails is very respectful of the natural beauty of the area, and the result is really stunning. I can’t imagine a nicer place to ski (though I wish they had more easy trails for wimps like me), and the accomodations (we are in the Silverado lodge) are clean, roomy, and comfy. 

The Sundance film festival happens to be taking place this week, and Lorri and I had the opportunity to attend a screening last night, which turned out to be a very neat experience. The movie we saw was a documentary called “Made In America.” This was the world premiere of the film, and the director, pro-skateboarder-cum-documentarist Stacy Peralta, was introduced before the screening (to rousing applause). There were a few celebs in the audience, and some of the key interviewees in the film came up to the front of the stage after the credits had rolled (again, big applause) and took some questions from the audience. In some of his columns, Roger Ebert laments the loss of the theater-as-community, but this was a notable exception. We were all there because we wanted to be, and the presence of the movie’s key players made it a very intimate, unique experience.

As to the movie itself, Lorri and I had the same general opinion of it. The opening shot was incredible: it began with an inverted aeriel wide of downtown Los Angeles, the skyscrapers hanging from the top of the screen like stalactites. The shot dipped south, with the camera angle slowly changing from inverted, to straight-on (a la google satellite), and finally to a right-side-up view of south LA, which looked immense and menacing. The film is about the origins of gang violence in LA, and the first 20 minutes or so described the genesis of these gangs, which started as “clubs” which the black kids essentially made on their own, as they were summarily rejected from the Boy Scouts and other “white” institutions. This portion of the film was fascinating and one of the interviewees, a man named Kumasi was absolutely captivating in his evocation and explanation of the rage which developed in this truly oppressed group of South L.A. blacks in the 50s and 60s. This particular gentleman truly stole the show, in the sense that when the film moved away from him, it got considerably less interesting; Kumasi has a commanding presence, and his views on the racism which sparked much of the discontent in South L.A. (and, by extension, elsewhere) were well-articulated, forceful, and clearly justified. I found myself thinking that a 105-minute interview with him would have been better than the film, which went downhill about midway through its description of the Watts riots.

So what are my problems with the movie? To name a few:

• The film has a near-fatal case of the “bad white males” syndrome. Virtually every white guy in this movie is either 1) a 60s cop, in black-and-white, holding a billy club, 2) a politician who, the narrator tells us (surprise, surprise!), either did nothing to help, or failed miserably at his attempts, or 3) a professor of sociology (with requisite bookshelf in the background) who tells us without blinking the simple roots of this very complex social situation (again, bad white guys). You know, I’m betting that the billy-club wielders have a story, too. Maybe that story can’t be told in this movie (time constraints, etc), but would it hurt to acknowledge that it exists?
• About midway through the Watts portion, the movie starts to drag in points, with a serious overdose on Microsoft Earth effects, and whole lot of interviews with people (both the L.A. bangers and former-bangers, and the white-guy sociologists [hereafter, "WGS"es]) who say exactly what the prior guy just said. The editing, which offers some really innnovative transitions, and a unique way of skipping over unneeded portions of the interviews, almost makes up for the repetitiveness of the content here. Almost.
• Where are the girls? We hear from gang members, former members, sociologists, and even mothers, but I’ll bet that less than two minutes of the interviews are of girls and young women being raised in this environment. Again, gotta be a story there.
• I think the film’s major flaw was the lack of a clear link between the violence between blacks and whites which arose from racism (i.e., the Watts and Rodney King riots) and the “civil war” (not my term), black-on-black violence of the Crips and the Bloods. The assumption was made in the film that these are directly related, and some mention was made of the way a person becomes “twisted” when constantly under the thumb of racism and oppression, but this is a very simplistic view of a complex social phenomenon. I agree that racism and subsequent rage from the oppressed likely lit the fuse, but what perpetuates it? According to the movie, more oppression. Certainly part of the problem, but just as certainly, not all of it. Example: the film talks about the “gangsta rap” soundtrack to South L.A., and extols the virtues of this music (”brought the plight of American blacks to a world audience”), but never suggests that the ultra-violent, often sickeningly misogynistic lyrics may glamorize and therefore perpetuate gangster violence. Where is the clip of the belated Delores Tucker, or an interview with Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, both of whom have lately acknowledged the insidious influence of gangsta rap? I could come up with many other examples, but suffice it to say that although racism is a major issue which needs to be dealt with if south L.A. is ever to change, it is quite obviously not the only issue.

Having said all of that, I do believe that Peralta’s heart is in the right place. Though he does not appear in the film (except for a few voice snippets), his empathy for these young men is very evident. I don’t think that anyone left that audience on Saturday night who did not feel deep sorrow for the plight of those touched by gang violence, and for the gangsters themselves, who are clearly caught in a trap from which they can’t escape. Cut out about 20 minutes of film time, broaden the discussion of the sources of gang violence, and replace every single one of the WGS interviews with more Kumasi, and I think this would have been a great film, rather than a merely good one.