07 September 2007: "Oil Mud"

There’s a weird phenomenon I’ve been noticing occasionally. When it occurs it causes great consternation. It also results in a big mess. I call it “oil mud”. It doesn’t happen everywhere. However, I have experienced this muck in Camps Liberty and Striker. They both pale in comparison to Camp Taji. The first few days we were here it wasn’t a problem. There was evidence of the stuff everywhere. This morning we awoke to find oil mud everywhere. It coated the gravel, the dirt, the streets, and anything that wasn’t paved or concrete. At first I thought it was a treatment that was being sprayed to keep the dust down. Yet it would be impossible to have sprayed all of Camp Taji on one night. The conclusion I reached is that it seeps up from the ground. It happens sometime between midnight and 0600. The crazy thing is that it doesn’t happen every night. When it happens it’s a nightmare. Iraqi mud sticks to everything. When it has an oily texture it smears on everything and simply ruins boots, clothing, floors (from people tracking it everywhere), and gravel areas. It’s so bad that even gravel sticks to boots when the oil mud strikes. I know that dust is a big problem. I’d take dust over oil mud any day. I have a hard time believing that we would have been so stupid as to treat the soil with petroleum in order to mitigate dust. Stranger things have happened though. My hope is that this is either a natural occurrence or a leftover from the environmental disaster that was Saddam Hussein. We pay the price now. I step gingerly everywhere I go and take long detours just to avoid this muck. It’s so prevalent that it’s impossible to completely avoid.

Our day was marked by our attempts to stay away from oil mud. Our mission requirements in Taji came to a successful conclusion when I inspected the last unit at around 2300. Other than that we were very slow. That’s a good thing because we were all about to hit a wall from all the late nights we’d been working. I even took a nap during the afternoon. Damn that felt good.

I made a goofy observation on my way to breakfast. I had just boarded the bus to the DFAC when a group of soldiers ran past headed towards some ruined buildings adjacent to the billets. They were all in PT gear. It became immediately apparent they were rehearsing assaulting the buildings. Well… On board the bus were several soldiers belonging to a brigade that’s headed home after fifteen months. The guys practicing were in a new brigade that had just arrived. The veterans on the bus immediately started heckling the new guys. “Look at me! I’m attacking a building!” Another yelled, “Hey the door’s easier unless you just want to look pretty jumping through the window!” I had to wonder how many generations of soldiers have seen the veterans making fun of the new guys. I was just witnessing the latest iteration. Joes will be Joes. Unfortunately, these new guys were conducting their morning rehearsal straight across a field of oil mud. Not only did they get heckled, they ruined their running shoes too. What a suck-ass morning.

Now that we’re done in Taji we have the next hurdle – getting out of here. The weather has gotten worse. Sandstorms abound.