I have to admit it: though I like all of the soldiers who work in my clinic, Specialist Maria Cordero is probably my favorite. The reasons for this are multiple. First, she is originally from Stamford, Connecticut, just down the Merritt Parkway from my home town of Cheshire. Amazingly, of the 15 people in my clinic, three of us are originally from CT.

Additionally, SPC Cordero is only a few years older than Madeline (my oldest daughter), and she looks even younger than Maddy, so she has been sort of a surrogate kid for me.

But the best thing about Cordero is her very laid-back, self-deprecating sense of humor, which has served our whole clinic well when we needed to lighten up a bit. She has also been a consistently interesting medical case for me, as she has had four or five mysterious illnesses while I have been here, one of which landed her in the hospital for a couple of days before completely disappearing as fast as it came. This propensity to catch any virus, bacteria, or fungus brought in by our patients resulted in the medics referring to Cordero as the “outbreak monkey,” and that was eventually combined with her last name resulting in her current nickname, as per the title of this post.

Since I arrived here, SPC Cordero has been our front desk staff. Though she is a trained laboratory technician, we are currently without a lab, so SPC Cordero’s job description had to be modified a bit. Unfortunately, she will be leaving us in the not-too-distant future for another undisclosed location, which is a real bummer, as she has been an important part of our team, and an even more important part of our deployed family. Earlier today, I talked with SPC Cordero, and here are a few of the highlights:

You were raised in a rich community in Stamford, CT. Not too many kids from Stamford end up in the Army. When did you join the Army, and why?

I joined in November 2003. I honestly was too lazy to apply to college. I was offered scholarships, I had good grades, but I was so stressed-out with the idea of having to apply to colleges, that the Army just seemed like an easier thing to do. One day I saw the recruiter at lunch, and he told me to just take the ASVAB test, see what happens. I took it, and in my mind I decided that whoever calls me first, I’m gonna join. The Marines called me first, and I thought to myself “Hell, no! Whoever calls me second is who I’m gonna join.” And it was the Army.

Did you get to pick your MOS [military occupational specialty]?

Yeah, I wanted to be something in the medical field. Medic and x-ray didn’t sound very exciting, but when I heard about lab and all of the gross stuff that has to do with it, I though that was pretty cool. So I picked it.

Have any of your family members been in the Army?

My dad was in from ‘84 to ‘91. He got out right after desert shield, desert storm. He deployed a good three or four times. I remember my mom crying when he left.

You are part of a small group of soldiers in this war who ended up with a 15-month deployment. Did you know before you came out here that you’d be here for that long? What did you think about it?

I knew I’d be in Iraq for fifteen months. I thought “this sucks,” but I knew what I was getting myself into, and I was prepared for it.

Do you like being deployed?

Overall I like it. The only thing that sucks is being away from the family, missing out on everything that is going on with my daughter, Lola, who is two years old. My husband is in Afghanistan right now, and he’s a fifteen-monther too, and he left seven months after I did, so I won’t see him until seven months after I get back.

What experiences out here will you remember?

I haven’t been shot at or had to fear for my life at all, which is good. The only thing that really stands out is the people I have worked with. Even though I’ve reached the point in my deployment where I can’t stand most of them, I know I’ll never forget them. It’s one of those things that you’re gonna remember for the rest of your life.

So, you were trained in the lab, but the Army has made you our front desk staff for now. What do you think about your current job?

I love it. I wish I had known about this job before I picked lab. Being able to work with the medics, and bother the docs, and hear all of the funny things that the patients come in with…

Plus, you have your own office, which I don’t even have.

[Laughs] I know! And my own computer, my own desk. It’s nice.

What do you do to pass the boring time here?

I watch a lot of TV. If I’m not lazy, I go to the gym. I hate running so I do put it off as much as I can. I read a lot. I’ve been studying, taking online classes from George Washington University, trying to get my Associates in laboratory medicine. I’m six credits shy of that degree.

Are you considering a four year degree?

I’m definitely going to do a four year degree. My husband and I have been talking about me getting out, and now that the GI bill is such an awesome thing, the way they changed it around, we are definitely going to use it. I’m going to go to school first, get my four years, and then we’ll switch. Once I have a good steady job, then he’ll go to school for four years.

Will either of you stay in for twenty?

I’m still considering it, but my husband is pushing me to get out, and with the baby I’m really leaning towards that, too. I would love to put in the twenty years, maybe take a break, go to school, come back as an officer. That’s still an option.

Have you re-enlisted?

I re-enlisted last summer, and got a bonus of 8500 for an extra two years. It’s all in savings.

Who are you going to remember out here?

Bits and pieces of everybody. The two people that I’ve incredibly bonded with are Villa [SPC (p) Andres Villareal] and Vera [SPC (p) Castulo Vera]. Villa because he’s got kids and he understands what I’m going through, and Vera’s just a crazy awkward Mexican, and he’s like a brother to me.

Okay, perhaps a bit too much info on my last entry (at least that is the consensus of all the Rupards who commented). So, we’ll keep this one perhaps a bit less revealing.

Days continue to fly by, as evidenced by my little countdown timer at the upper left of your screen, which will likely have gone below the one-month mark by the time you read this. Still, thirty-one days to go (Darn you July, for having that extra day!). I have been able to learn a bit about what my re-deployment (Army lingo for “return home”) will be like from various sources including my friend John Zaugg, who returned a few days before I deployed. John tells me that after I catch that fabled “Freedom Flight,” I will eventually arrive at Fort Benning from whence I departed six months ago. There, I will get a chance to see Lorri, though she won’t be able to see me get off of the plane, like in the movies. They have a waiting area in the military airport for the family members, and we will walk off the plane and into that area. Next, we’ll have some briefings (death by PowerPoint), and will be released for the night, with orders to show up at oh-dark-thirty the following day. At that point, we will go through many of the same equipment lines which I went through during CRC, but with an obvious difference: this time, I’ll be giving stuff back.

Some of the items which the Army wants back are sort of obvious, e.g. my Beretta M9, my body armor, specialized and expensive equipment like my gas masks. Some of the things they want back are simply weird. What are they gonna do with my raggedy, dusty, sweaty old uniforms? I was issued four of these, and told that I will be required to give three of them back. Some of the people here have suggested that they actually do not ask for them back, especially if they are well-used, so we’ll see what happens. There are a few other useful things I get to keep (boots, “under armour” t-shirts, some of my cold weather gear), and a few which I truly hope I can keep (my Camelbak).

Riding The Loop

My biking companion of the last few months has been COL Guy Gober of Tiger, GA. Next week, COL Gober and the majority of the doctors at the Combat Surgical Hospital come to the end of their three-month tours. Why do they get three months while I get six, you ask? Among other things, those docs are in the Army National Guard, while I am active duty Army. Must be nice to be a 90-day rotator.

So, yesterday the COL and I hit the 14-mile loop one last time before he heads back to GA. Al Asad temperature at launch was 111 degrees, and the wind was mild. We rode around in good time, with a mild breeze, and a lot of water in my Camelbak. Good to see COL Gober for that last time.

Now, through the magic of the internet, you can see him too.

The Debunk-inator

When I first came out to Iraq, I heard a lot of things about how hot it gets here in the July and August, with people telling me that it hits the 130s regularly, and 140s occasionally. People would quote me temperatures from their prior tours, swear that there were days in July and August that hit 145, etc. After the very modest temps that we have had in July thus far (110-115, but nothing higher than that, and it has actually cooled off a bit lately), I began to wonder if these claims of intense heat were merely exaggerations. So, I embarked on months of research, performed at our massive, 300,000-volume scientific library here on Al Asad. (Okay, actually, I looked it up on wikipedia five minutes ago. But still…)

It turns out that my suspicions were confirmed. Not only has it probably not been 145-plus degrees in Iraq, I seriously doubt that it has been 145 degrees anywhere, at least not in the past century. According to the Wikipedians, the hottest temperature on official records is 136 degrees, which occurred in Libya in 1922. Second highest? Death Valley, California hit 134 back in 1913.

Those alert readers who are skeptical of my skepticism might suggest that, as Iraq has not always had a plethora of scientists, perhaps some very high temps were not recorded. Weather Underground to the rescue! At wunderground.com, you can look up the past few years’ worth of July and August temperatures. Turns out that the peak temp in July 2007 was 118. August actually had a cooler peak at 116. 2006 was a bit cooler, peaking in the low teens.

Just to make it clear: 118 is still pretty darned hot, and the consistency of heat here is remarkable. If you look closely at the Weather Underground numbers, you’ll see that the average minimum temp in that same July 2007 was 84 degrees farenheit, which means that even in the wee hours of the morning, it’s pretty warm. And though this is a dry heat, the sun seems to bore right through me, especially during the middle of the day (10 AM to 6 PM).

But 140 degrees, it ain’t. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The internet and the electricity have both been down most of the day today, and the former just came back up a few minutes ago. I figure I’d better blog quickly, and get it posted before we crash again.

Catching up a bit: on Friday of last week, the electricity went out in Centurion Can City, the very exclusive gated community in which I and my fellow TMC personnel reside. This is unusual: it is actually more common for the lights to go out in the clinic and other parts of the base, as they are on the “power grid.” Our cans have their own separate generator, so usually we stay up when other areas go down. But, as I learned on Friday, when we go down, we go down hard.

My computer tells me the lights went down sometime between 1 PM (when I received an e-mail message) and about 2:30, when one of our patients informed us that our cans had gone dark. By 5 PM, when I got out of clinic and back to my hermetically sealed container, it had to be 110 degrees in that thing. The sun beats down on our tin cans all day long, and without A/C, they’re about as cool as your average parked car in Arizona. I went to Family Home Evening, and was happy to find electricity and A/C functioning at the chapel. When I returned home an hour later, as I rode my bike past the commons area, I could see that the lights were still off, and in the low ambient light I could just make out a large circle of my compadres, sitting in their captain’s chairs, escaping the stifling heat inside the lightless trailers. I grabbed my own chair and sat out with them for a while, but at around 10 PM, I decided to try to hit the sack.

I put my weatherproof Army blanket on top of my bed, in attempt to not sweat all over my sheets, and lay there in the heat, with no breeze, and my door propped open in attempt to encourage the tiniest bit of air flow. Didn’t help much. Throughout the next hour, my homies slowly made their way back to their cans, but most did not last inside for long, eventually opting to lay on a table outside their trailer (CPT Baker), or in a chair (my civilian neighbor Ron and SPC Santiago, among others). A couple of the women, CPT Hall and SSG Macomber, went back to the clinic, where the A/C was intact.

For my part, I forced myself to remain on my rubberized bed, because I knew that if I lay there long enough, I would eventually nod off. I had done it many times before in the stifling heat of San Antonio during my mission. When one is trying to go to sleep in the heat, it is crucial not to have any parts of one’s body touch any other parts. This means that the legs have to be scissored a bit, and arms flailing under and above the pillow, going in different directions. It requires a lot of maneuvering, too, so as not to let the sweat concentrate too much in one place. But I did eventually fall asleep in my contorted position.

A bit after midnight, the lights went back on, with accompanying shrieks of joy among the Marines next door. It took a good thirty minutes to cool my room, though, and I used some of this time to de-stickify myself with a long, cool shower. I then called Lorri and found out that, in some twisted approximation of sympathetic suffering, she was having A/C problems of her own, with our Georgia home’s entire lower floor unit not working. The HVAC guy was over as we spoke, checking it out. Strange brew.

I eventually hit the sack around 2:30 AM, with two thoughts in my head:

1. This was easily my worst night in Iraq to-date.
2. If, at the end of my deployment, this remains my worst night, I will be very grateful.

Those of us who are members of both the LDS Church (”the Mormons”) and the United States Military eventually figure out that we are, indeed, in two separate very small worlds, in which the twain shall not only meet like the circles in a Venn diagram, but shall do so repeatedly. This Sunday, I had no less than three of these “small world” experiences in the space of an hour during our first church meeting of the day.

Exhibit #1

Around 12:50, ten minutes before our services began, I noticed a new face in the small crowd. He was a Army Specialist with short cropped hair, a kind and friendly face, and the sort of ruddy complexion which made me bet silently to myself that that hair would be red when in full bloom. As soon as he found himself a seat and put his stuff down, this gentleman introduced himself as Brother Karl Kurtz of California, and asked if he could help prepare the sacrament. As he took his seat behind our makeshift sacrament table, I thought he looked vaguely familiar. However, since I have begun to suffer (unofficially, as yet) from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, I have learned to distrust these impressions. I have such impressions frequently, and have investigated some, only to find that the Person In Question simply had a physical trait or mannerism (i.e., a haircut, gait, or accent) which reminded me of someone else I had known. So I tossed this one out, and church proceeded on.

Next came a talk (Bro Neff), an interlude musical performance (the three members of the group leadership, Bros Diaz, Lloyd and I sang “O How Lovely Was The Morning”), and a testimony by Brother Phillips who will be redeploying after 15 months (!) in the Brown Zone. Finally, my lesson on Chapter 13 in the Priesthood/R.S. manual. During the lesson, I referenced and experience I had on my mission, though I did not mention where I served. After class, Brother Kurtz came up to me and asked if I served in the Texas San Antonio mission. Indeed, I had, and as he asked the question, I suddenly pictured a younger but no less smiley Elder Kurtz, who served in Austin, TX (among other places). I remember him at that time being a faithful, humble missionary, and he does not seem to have changed a bit in that respect. We talked about our mission president, the great Dale Huntsman, who was such an inspiration to so many of us, and I learned that his wife Karma had passed away many years ago, which saddened me. Brother Kurtz will be here for the rest of the year, and possibly a bit beyond. It was great to see him again, and I look forward to talking with him some more, and feeling of his tremendous spirit.

Exhibits #2 and 3

During the aforementioned lesson, I also referenced a very unique experience I had in/around 1984 when I was involved in an LDS Encampment of the Boy Scouts of America in upper New York state (Litchfield or Letchworth, something like that—google is not helping me much here, perhaps Mom Rupard will remember?). It was a huge gathering of Latter-day Saint scouts and we had a great time.

The story I told was of one of our adult leaders, a man named Frank (he had us call him that, so his last name escapes me), who was a Vietnam veteran. Around the campfire we would beg him for stories about his experiences, and he would tell us a bit here and there, probably scaling things down a little, but occasionally letting loose a PG-13-rated word, if you get my drift. He was a crusty guy, not used to being around a bunch of squeaky-cleans, and at one point he taught us (motivated us, really) to march very closely and well. We eventually used this new found skill to march our entire platoon into the Hill Cumorah Pageant, where our very crisp and in-step cadence garnered our unit, among the dozens there, the only standing ovation offered by the crowd before the show itself began. In my lesson, I told how this bearded, hardened veteran of a terrible war had gone with the rest of us into the Sacred Grove the following day, and broken down and wept as he gave his testimony of the marvelous events that had occurred in that place. That moment moved me greatly, and is one I will always remember.

After the lesson and at separate times, two Marines came up to me (Brother Callahan, Brother Martz) and told me that they had also attended that encampment, and we shared memories of the event. One of the nice things about the Church and the Military is that members of each have surrogate family wherever they can find another member. In both cases, it is our mutually-held values, our colliding spheres of activity, and in many cases our shared experiences which bind us together. I treasure the “small world” moments which this closeness affords.

A quickie tonight. I am currently having the unexpected pleasure of watching the Yankees game (a day game to you; a night game to me) against the Tampa Bay Rays—a rare opportunity for me to root FOR the Yanks, since the Rays are currently in a solid first place ahead of the Sox. Sox are also playing an early one and are currently holding a tenuous lead over the Twinkies.

Clinic has gotten busy again, which makes the time go by quickly and is therefore officially a Good Thing. During our daily noon-time walk to the gym, my colleagues and I marveled at how moderate the temperatures have been here: only in the high 90s today. We all expected it to be sweltering by this point, but except for a few days, it hasn’t been too bad.

I spent much of the afternoon filling out my “OER Support Form,” which is a document in which an officer describes to his superiors in great detail all of his accomplishments during the period being evaluated. This document is then used by one’s “senior rater” to write the OER (Officer Evaluation Report), which is a form completed annually or at the end of an assignment, and is filed in the officer’s permanent record. The OER is brought out when the individual is being considered for an award or a promotion in rank.

I’m sure that it appears to you, the alert and incisively observant reader of this blog, that my description above sounds suspiciously like I am, in effect, writing my own evaluation for this deployment. There is a good reason for this perception: I am, in fact and to a large degree, writing my own evaluation. This is how the OER process works in the Army in all cases, but even more so in mine due to a unique aspect of my situation: because I am the highest-ranking officer in our Company, there are no 581st officers who are eligible to be my “rater,” so a LTC from our Battalion will complete my OER and decide whether I am eligible for a medal or other recognition of my service. Since this particular LTC has never met me, he will be, in large part, relying on the written opinion of one who knows me quite well: me.

Works just fine for this soldier. God bless the U.S. Army!