Tuesday...into week three..

From Bruce...it's a long read but this will give you an idea of what we have to look forward to. Thanks homey!!!

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq1. Sleep on a cot in the garage. 2. Replace the garage door with a curtain. 3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot." 4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away. 5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off. 6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head. 7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell. 8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one. 9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level. 10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut. 11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you. 12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub. 13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker. 14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal. 15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose. 16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again. 17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking. 18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them. 19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books. 20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them. 21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight. 22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time. 23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith." 24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week. 25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them. 26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria. 27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter. 28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance. 29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation. 30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding. 31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows. 32. Drink your milk and sodas warm. 33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard. 34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in. 35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it. 36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator. 37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum. 38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard. 39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot. 40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.

Monday...

Here is a little something that needs to be shared....(Thanks George!)

One reason the Services have trouble operating jointly is that they don't speak the same language. For example, if you told Navy personnel to "secure a building," they would turn off the lights and lock the doors. Army personnel would occupy the building so no one could enter. Marines would assault the building, capture it, and defend it with suppressive fire and close combat. The Air Force, on the other hand, would take out a three-year lease with an option to buy.

We will be working under Marine command. I know that we are going to be running into situations such as this one but that is what is going to make all of this easier to deal with.

Effective the end of this month, give or take a week, my mailing address is going to be changing.

EO2 Zamora
NMCB - 18
Main Body
FPO AP 96601-1704

Take care...

Saturday...

"This is my rifle, there are many like it but this one is mine."

We don't spend as much time on the range, going through weapon quals as the Marines and the Army do and you could see it from the way some people handle the M-16. I'm no expert, I don't even own a gun of my own but I know the damage that a gun especially the M-16, can do. I don't know how many times the range coaches had to rip on someone for handling their weapon incorrectly. While on the range it is muzzle down range or when not on the firing line, point it to the sky. SAFETY ON! But there is always, ALWAYS one or ten people that talk like they sleep with a rifle but when it comes down to it they have no clue. These are the people that are left behind. I don't mean that in a bad way but once we go boots on the ground many of us will have to provide security for our own teams. I don't want to have someone that is afraid of the weapon on point and I'm not going to feel too good having Bubba from Redneck County USA "I shoot all sorts of CANS back home" watching my six either. The cool thing is that these folks will be weeded out and left in the rear to work the supply lines. Even then, I am sure that they will figure out how to get hurt or hurt someone else. Maybe a friendly reminder is order, blanket party?

Later...

Friday...

"Training for war, praying for peace."
My last message may have come across a bit on the negative side, the thing is that everywhere I look I see guys and gals that are thinking about the upcoming deployment with the same questions and concerns as I have. There is a tremendous amount of tension that is growing throughout the battalion and it is only going to get worse. We keep hearing all of these rumors and it does not help matters. We have a number of guys that are wound up way to tight. You can bet that we will be keeping an eye one them. I found out what my assigment is going to be. I will be working with a small unit, rebuilding roads in and around the coalition base and one of the villages in the area as well. The work outside of the wire is going to be very interesting. Again, the rumors confirm this.
NMCB 7 just came back from their deployment and according to them, once in country, time goes into overdrive. The work does not stop even at night so you are constantly on the move. I can deal with that. The majority of the locals understand that we, the Seabees, are there to help rebuild the infrastructure. God willing, we will be able to change their minds about America. OK, I'm pusing it a bit.
I can only do what I do best and that is work hard, keep my head on a swivel, crack a joke or two and come home to my wife, my sons, my family and my friends.

Keeping the faith...

Tuesday..

We finally made it out to do some field work. Our mornings start off at 0400. Work out, shower and get information at the armory. From their it is off to the range. We go through the safety brief and get started with qualifying. It is a drawn out process (surprise!) but safety is paramount. Notice I did not mention a break for chow. Not a big deal for me. I know what I am in for but so many of my peers just don't seem to get it. This is the military, we have to plan ahead. Oh well. By 0900 or so the temps are in the mid to high 80's but the humidity is what gets to all of us down here. The sweat builds up in a hurry. The good thing is that we were all issued Camelpaks. (I need to buy some stock!) I'll go through about 300 ounces of water in a day. Once we finish on the range we head back to the armory to return our weapons. It is now around 1600. We have dinner and then meet up for evening PT, physical training, or evening training.
As much as I enjoy shooting and working on getting qualed, I mean the M-16 is alot of fun but I hope that I, or anyone of us, does not have to draw down on anyone. I don't care about the political or religious differences, I'm not about that stuff. I just ask God to not put me in that situation.
I am not having any luck uploading photos but as promised, I will keep on trying. Thanks!!

Saturday...

Due to the fact that rental cars are not authorized for us I am stuck on base. It feels like being in a minimum security facility or so I am told. We can walk around the base but getting off base is kind of difficult. We need to use the buddy system and most of these guys want to walk to the closest watering hole and just get smashed the problem is that the base is located in a not too friendly area so we are better off staying put.
We did find out that we will be heading to a base somewhere north of that city in Iraq. It seems to be a bit safer than at the previous location. (somewhere south of that city in Iraq) I do not know what projects we will be working on as we will be splitting up the workload with our counter parts with the Army Corps of Engineers (Rocks + rocks + lots of water = DAMN!) and the Airforce's Red Horse (the Pink Ponies) We have an ongoing history with the two of them. They think that they work better than we do but the thing is that the Army has a tendency to overlook the small stuff (see equation above) and the Air Force hates to get their equipment and/or themselves dirty. Seriously though, we are one big happy family. I'm sure that things will work out for the better.
Anyway, I have not been able to post any photographs lately as this site has been experiencing some difficulties. I will keep trying. Take care.

Saturday...

Due to the fact that rental cars are not authorized for us I am stuck on base. It feels like being in a minimum security facility or so I am told. We can walk around the base but getting off base is kind of difficult. We need to use the buddy system and most of these guys want to walk to the closest watering hole and just get smashed the problem is that the base is located in a not too friendly area so we are better off staying put.
We did find out that we will be heading to a base somewhere north of that city in Iraq. It seems to be a bit safer than at the previous location. (somewhere south of that city in Iraq) I do not know what projects we will be working on as we will be splitting up the workload with our counter parts with the Army Corps of Engineers (Rocks + rocks + lots of water = DAMN!) and the Airforce's Red Horse (the Pink Ponies) We have an ongoing history with the two of them. They think that they work better than we do but the thing is that the Army has a tendency to overlook the small stuff (see equation above) and the Air Force hates to get their equipment and/or themselves dirty. Seriously though, we are one big happy family. I'm sure that things will work out for the better.
Anyway, I have not been able to post any photographs lately as this site has been experiencing some difficulties. I will keep trying. Take care.

Another weekend

It's Friday and I am just winding down from a crazy week down here. Due to some red tape and some hoops that I had to jump through, I did not get a chance to make it out to the field as planned. That sets my training back quite a bit so who knows how that will affect my mobilization. Every one of us has to meet certain requirements with all of our training, course work etc. For those of that arrived after the main body showed up and/or for those that are having a hard time achieving a passing grade may end up getting bounced around and that is no fun. I'll keep y'all posted.
Anyway, for those of you that want to drop me a line or a package...

EO2 Zamora, Sergio A.
NMCB 18 Mobilization Unit Alpha Company
CBC Gulport, MS.
39501-5001

Wed. Week Two

Well, I got a chance to head over to Highway 90 which is the highway that cuts right along the coast line from Louisiana to Florida. I was not prepared for the devastation that is still everywhere to be seen. It is hard to comprehend just how powerful Katrina was. The people of this region are very optimistic. You can see the optimism with the efforts that they are putting forth with the rebuilding process. It's hard for most of us to understand why they would bother to rebuild but when many of these peoples go back two, three or four generations it is easy to see why they are willing to take the chance of making it through another storm.
I finally finished with the processiong period. I will begin my official training next week. Desert training and so much more. Cool pics to follow.

Tueday, Week 2

Yo! Well another morning spent trying to complete the check in process. I spent almost two hours on the phone with tech support trying to get access to my military online training site. It's a joke. These issues should be taken care of in house but many of the active duty personnel have a tendency to not make themselves available to us reserve types. Just one of those things.

Monday, week two...

It's Monday morning and we are still be processed in. Not sure what the delay is but it is part of the Navy way of doing things. I am having to redo some military courses that I have completed, at least a dozen times over the years but I have to do them again (and again). The mentality seems to be, "Oh, you did them when you were with the reserve unit, you are active duty now." Some things never change. The weather is not getting any better. It hit 101 on the base but the heat index is pushing it over 110, easy. We have to wear our sleeves down so that adds to the misery but it is the best way for us to get used to the conditions that we will be living in in the very near future. Good times.

The weekend...

This is my first week down here and unlike the rest of the battalion, those of us that are in the processing phase do not have to attend classes/training over the weekend. Sounds cool but without a vehicle there is not a whole to do on base.
There is a rumor floating around that they are not going to be dispersing us around to the different zones instead we will be flying into one location. Not sure what that is all about but again, this is only a rumor. I'll keep you posted but keep in mind that I will not be able to provide any details. You know?, national security and all that. Remember, we are not into this to be a heroes, just doing our thing but we will be as safe as we can be. Much love to all of you...

P+3

Third day of processing. The latest rumor is that we will not be leaving here until the middle of next month. I know that this is the military but I would be cool for us to be stick to the original plan of leaving this month. We are scheduled for a six month deployment, so the sooner that we get there the sooner that we come back home. The truth is that I will believe that we are there once my feet hit the sand.
I posted a photo of Sergio, pitching, since I have not had a chance to take any cool military pics but those are coming. For those of you that do not know if my son, Sergio, is a heck of an athlete. He has excelled at every sport that he has participated in. He must be adopted.
Marcelo is a real cool little brother. He comes along to every game with minimal complaining. Nothing that an ice cream and/or a masapan won't fix. He is starting to show real prowess on the soccer pitch. As long as they both continue to have fun at any and every sport that they participate in, I'll be more than happy.

P + 2

Well, today is the second day of processing. We received our desert cammies, flak jackets, helmets and other items. Don't freak out on me. It is all standard issue for everyone heading over there. I still don't know what my assignment will be but by the looks of things I will be working directly with many of my old friends from Everett.
The weather is unreal. Constant heat and humidity. You do not have to do a thing and the sweat starts to build up. I'm sweating in places that...ha! We had a heavy thunderstorm roll through here yesterday. It built up quit a bit, forming large ponds and filling the run offs to the top but unlike El Paso, the rain actually has someplace to go!
One of the battalions just came back from Kuwait yesterday. They completed an eight month tour. It seems like that they day is too far off in the distance for us to even imagine it but that day will come and what a day it will be. I think about my family, Monica, the boys, my parents and my siblings. I know that this is not easy for them either but I hope that they understand the reasons why we are here preparing for our deployment. I saw a magnet that read, "Home of the free, because of the brave." I don't know if I can label myself as being brave, but I do know that I am doing the right thing. If that effects democracy here and allows for all of us to continue enjoying the liberties that we do, and some times, many times, take for granted, then so be it.

P+1

The family dropped me off at the airport yesterday morning and although Monica and I have gone through two deployments together this is something totally different. We were not at war then and I was on a ship at the time. And of course their were no kids involved. I know that my boys will have a hard time with all of this but I hope that they understand the reasons behind my being here. No, not the political ones, but the reasons involving patriotism and gratitude.
Processing: Day 1. Today was the first day of processing. Medical, dental, admin etc. It's alot of sitting around waiting on "key personnel" to be available to see you but that's the military for you. I have run into many of my buddies from the Everett detachment. Many of them I have not seen in about 16 months or more. That makes being out here that much easier. We are going through the same emotions and dealing with the same issues. A band of brothers in the making.

Hurry up and wait....

Well, things did not get off to a very good start. I spent the morning with the kids just talking and trying to set their minds at ease. We then dropped the boys off at my parents place and headed to the airport. I was to fly out at 1047. I showed up at 1005, this is El Paso so you don't really have to show up that early. Anyway, American Airlines decided to open up the flight to the stand by folks. I got bumped. This being El Paso, they only have one flight to Gulfport per day, oh well. I had to reschedule my flight to tomorrow. On top of that, I found out that I was to report at 0800 TODAY. The reserve center personnel and I overlooked the fine print. I am going to hear it tomorrow.

One more day

I'm in the process of packing up all of my uniform items. The boys have that look in their eyes. At around 2 in the morning I woke up to see Sergio just staring at me. It was time for our talk. His big concern was that one of the bad guys would be dumb enough to try to hurt me. His words. It is true that in our childrens eyes we are supermen. I explained to him what we would be doing, the lines of defense that we have. I had to drive home the fact that we are very well trained and we will be going through training with Marines and other Seabees that have been there at least once. The good this is that although my orders are for 365 days, I found out that we are expected to be in theatre for no more than six months. If that holds true we will be back in the states by March or April.
My family has not come around much but that is their way of dealing with the inevitable but that's cool we've been through the depoloyment thing before. My boys took me out on Friday and that was a good time. (So they tell me) Vinny, Sammy, Louie, Bubba, Jaime and Robert, my nephew Abel....Thank you! Much love to all of you.
To my son Sergio, my ichiro, be strong mijo. Marcelo, keep on being you. Monica, you are my rock and I love you more than I show it but know that loving you is the only thing that I am really good at. Mom and Dad; soy quien soy por ustedes, y se los agradesco. Mando, Linda, Vero and Chela; we don't hang out as often as we should. I hope that changes. To everyone keep the love, positive juju and prayers coming. Thank you and God Bless all of you.

T-3

Well, the last few days have been real crazy around these parts. Lots of ran with a dash of sunshine. After spending ten years in Seattle people assume that this is nothing new for us but this is just crazy! Unlike the pacific northwest, the rain has no where to go down here. After a foot or so the earth is compacted and when they built this city they did not think to install a proper drainage system, then again it's not supposed to rain like this down here. Anyway, the boys and I enjoyed the show on the news. That is,when the sattelite was working. Even though the rain kept us at home, I am sure going to miss views like the one right here.

T-4

Well, here we are. I received my official orders three weeks ago. Since then I've been going through a turnover at work, taking care of a few things around the house, running errands etc. Since 9/11, Monica and I knew that this day was coming. It does not make it any easier but it's part of the deal. As far as the family is concerned, I'm just taking in, absobing, as much as I can. I know that I am going to miss more than a few important dates but my sons, Marcelo and Sergio, are one of the reasons why I am going. I just don't want them to have to make the same choices that I am making. That, and fear is something that no one should have to live with.