Fob Brassfield Mora was named after two soldiers who were killed in a mortar attack north of Samara in 2003. Built on the site of an Iraqi grain storage facility, it was immediately off of a major highway - a grid of huge, long rectangular warehouse buildings. At its peak it housed, fed, trained, maintained and entertained over one thousand soldiers. Like almost all FOBs, it was surrounded by high walls (stacked 7 foot wire cubes filled with dirt and topped with razor wire) and guard towers.
I got there just before it started to get dark, a time of day solemnly commemorated by soldiers across Iraq by the switching of eye protection lenses, from dark to clear. Brassfield Mora lacked paved or gravel roads and everything threw up a plume of dust as it moved. The sun, low on the horizon, was invisible through a tan haze. A backhoe with a giant claw was grabbing piles of sand bags and dumping them in the back of a dip truck, destroying half of them in the process. The FOB TOC building was a one story Iraqi building, yellow brick with a large patio covered by a newer wooden awning. American soldiers in PT uniforms and Iraqis soldiers in the standard IA hodgepodge uniform sat talking in the shade outside.
Perhaps it had always been a sparsely decorated, utilitarian building, but the interior of the TOC had a feeling of emptiness. Hard cases were stacked against the walls, tables looked empty despite being cluttered with dust and small objects and the walls of the TOC proper had already been stripped of maps and posters. It felt like the last week of school or a going out of business sale.
I came prepared with a list of DFAC equipment, mostly tables, chairs, refrigerators and buffet serving lines, that Brigade and Division had said we were allocated. After introductions, the NCO in charge of giving away all the excess equipment told me to take anything we wanted from the entire FOB. Anything that was not presently in use was up for grabs.
The DFAC occupied about a third of long warehouse, perhaps 200 meters long, that had acted as Dining facility, gym, Internet and phone center, game room, and chapel all subdivided with plywood walls. All the expensive lightweight equipment - computers, voip phones, tvs and books - had already been removed, but the building still maintained a feeling of only having been abandoned for a couple of days. It was a ghost ship or a summer camp from some cheesy horror film, the traces of it's previous occupants hinted at and just out of sight. Though not so frightening, if only because there were twenty-five of us, all armed.
The gym and the DFAC went first. A knowledgeable guy was put in charge of each, figuring out what to grab and organizing the guys to load the equipment, whether it be weight benches or deep fryers, into to 20 foot shipping containers we brought with us. We grabbed everything that we could, anything that seemed like it might be useful. Some things were left behind only because we couldn't fit them through the door.
As I looked further into the small maze of rooms and closets that had been built into the building, the signs of an army presence, of soldiers become more and more evident. Doodles and graffiti on the tables in the now emptied phone center. Closets full paper towels and old trophies for some forgotten event, already ransacked for more valuable things. Small, personal spaces - webcam booths, small reading rooms, even a confessional booth made from plywood in the chapel - remained largely untouched. They retained a feeling of privacy, that though long gone, it felt that I was invading.
This place was always a bit sad, a bit off from the norm. From its beginning, the whole facility was not quite home. Soldiers ate good food, but a DFAC is never the same as home or a restaurant. Soldiers came here to call their loved ones, not be with them. You're no farther from god in Iraq, but you are farther from his familiar trappings. The men and women who made this place theirs, who made me the intruder, were gone, almost all returned to their homes, families, friends. They won't be back - at least not here.
It seemed only natural when I returned to FOB Warhorse, two years later, for this deployment. Despite the temporary, transient nature of everything we build in this country, it still feels as if it all should be here forever. Everyone who has deployed more than once has been back to a FOB or a city they had been in previously, and it feels normal, familiar, like going back to your college town, or the house you grew up in. A captain I know found an empty an inventory sheet he'd signed as a lieutenant, in a shipping container, on a FOB he'd never been to before. We like to say, "It's a small Army." It's a small war.
But that's changing. The security agreement, our changing mission, and the overall goals of Operation GTFH have led to "Responsible Drawdown." It's a decent buzzword for the idea of retrograding all the equipment, buildings, vehicles, ammunition, and stuff that we've poured into this country. In most places, most times, operations lead logistics. Right now, in most units, it seems that operations are justifying the time we need to complete the logistical work of finding all of our stuff and taking it home with us.
Iraq is building itself. Literally and figuratively, Iraq is winding up, finding it self. And our presence, our war, is winding down as we find the door. And try to fit all of this stuff through it.
