July 10, 2009

Dear friends:

Greetings from Camp Virginia, Kuwait, a heat-lover's dream, where it never falls below the mid-90s and where 108 degrees is a cool day. If that doesn't float your boat, you can be greeted by the thick haze created by airborne dust, which sometimes covers the entire sky and always covers the horizon. I spent my first morning here observing the remarkably bright moon for a few moments before realizing that I was looking at the sun! It was to this paradise that the U.S. Army decided to build a large base for American service members going into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. This camp could house thousands in its many tents. It is remarkable that the U.S. could construct such a large base so far from home and fill it with soldiers, if necessary. My little Navy crew from Fort Jackson is just one of many units-- not all American – grimly preparing for future adventures or relaxing after leaving a tour of duty. Despite the dreary
locale, everybody is well fed at the DFAC (Dining Facility). The DFAC also has four large-screen TVs: one set to Fox News, another to CNN, and two to sports. American Forces Network radio, Central Command edition, broadcasts throughout the Middle East "from beautiful downtown Baghdad." If one wants a little more Americana a McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Starbucks await, along with other small fast-food places. The USO and other recreational activities are also available to service members, which is good because the nearest civilian city open to Americans is dozens of miles away. And did I mention, there are no private vehicles on the camp?

What are we doing here? Besides getting acclimatized to the heat, we are doing the same things we did at Fort Jackson: shooting and convoying. Convoying is the art of multiple vehicles traveling together in a potentially hostile terrain, and how to fight should the convoy come under attack. It is more complex than it seems and of great importance to me as I expect to be convoying now and then in Afghanistan.

Camp Virginia is the first place in the past month where I've spoken to soldiers who didn't have a Southern accent. In Fort Jackson, an outsider wasn't sure to which army the base belonged: the Union or the Confederacy. Here, although Southerners are still predominant, there are accents coming from other regions of our beautiful country. We sailors seem to be from hometowns far more evenly distributed across the US than the soldiers. We started the Fourth of July on an airport tarmac in Scotland and ended it in a tent on Camp Virginia. Soon we will be in our various
duty stations: Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This base is also a "ground zero" of Catholicism: the Church is basically non-existent here. The Marines are such a heavily - Catholic outfit (albeit the majority Christmas-and-Easter types) that I forgot that the other services aren't necessarily so. There is no Catholic chaplain assigned here: a priest comes from another base to provide one Sunday Mass (at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon) and a couple daily Masses each week. Mass numbers are correspondingly low: my ad hoc Mass on Sunday afternoon of four souls raised the base Mass attendance 50% this past week! The Protestant base chaplain is affable and keeps the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in good repair and Catholic literature stocked, but he cannot be expected to generate a viable Catholic
program in the absence of a priest alongside his ministries and keeping this pretty chapel open. I wonder if Afghanistan will be like this. Very soon all of us will be going to our ultimate duty stations. From the TV it looks
like the US has been preoccupied by the death of Michael Jackson. We, on the other hand, follow the changing scenes in Iraq and Afghanistan with great interest, and hope that our fellow countrymen are doing the same.

God bless,

Fr. Michael