The Other Victims of Battlefield Stress; Defense Contractors’ Mental Health Neglected
by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica – February 26, 2010 1:48 am EST
On the one-year anniversary of her husband’s suicide, Barb Dill breaks down at her husband’s tombstone. Wade Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, took a contractor job in Iraq. Three weeks after he returned home for good, he committed suicide (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / Redding, CA / July 16, 2007).
REDDING, Calif. — Wade Dill does not figure into the toll of war dead. An exterminator, Dill took a job in Iraq for a company contracted to do pest control on military bases. There, he found himself killing disease-carrying flies and rabid dogs, dodging mortars and huddling in bomb shelters.
Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, was a different man when he came back for visits here, his family said: moody, isolated, morose. He screamed at his wife and daughter. His weight dropped. Dark circles haunted his dark brown eyes.
Three weeks after he returned home for good, Dill booked a room in an anonymous three-story motel alongside Interstate 5. There, on July 16, 2006, he shot himself in the head with a 9 mm handgun. He left a suicide note for his wife and a picture for his daughter, then 16. The caption read: “I did exist and I loved you.”
More than three years later, Dill’s loved ones are still reeling, their pain compounded by a drawn-out battle with an insurance company over death benefits from the suicide. Barb Dill, 47, nearly lost the family’s home to foreclosure. “We’re circling the drain,” she said.
While suicide among soldiers has been a focus of Congress and the public, relatively little attention has been paid to the mental health of tens of thousands of civilian contractors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. When they make the news at all, contractors are usually in the middle of scandal, depicted as cowboys, wastrels or worse.
No agency tracks how many civilian workers have killed themselves after returning from the war zones. A small study in 2007 found that 24 percent of contract employees from DynCorp, a defense contractor, showed signs of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after returning home. The figure is roughly equivalent to those found in studies of returning soldiers.
If the pattern holds true on a broad scale, thousands of such workers may be suffering from mental trauma, said Paul Brand, the CEO of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a firm that provides counseling to war zone civilians. More than 200,000 civilians work in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the most recent figures.
“There are many people falling through the cracks, and there are few mechanisms in place to support these individuals,” said Brand, who conducted the study while working at DynCorp.”There’s a moral obligation that’s being overlooked. Can the government really send people to a war zone and neglect their responsibility to attend to their emotional needs after the fact?”
The survivors of civilians who have committed suicide have found themselves confused, frustrated and alone in their grief.
“If I was in the military, I’d at least have someone to talk to,” said Melissa Finkenbinder, 42, whose husband, Kert, a mechanic, killed himself after returning from Iraq. “Contractors don’t have anything. Their families don’t have anything.”
Some families of civilian contractors who have committed suicide have tried to battle for help through an outdated government system designed to provide health insurance and death benefits to civilian contractors injured or killed on the job.
Under the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, defense firms must purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees in war zones. It is highly specialized and expensive insurance, dominated by the troubled giant AIG and a handful of other companies. The cost of it is paid by taxpayers as part of the contract price.
But the law, which is designed to provide coverage for accidental death and injury, blocks payment of death benefits in the case of almost all suicides. Cases linked to mental incapacity are the lone exception, judges have ruled.
A joint investigation last year by ProPublica, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that contract workers must frequently battle carriers for basic medical coverage. While Congress has promised reforms, there has been no discussion of changing the law when it comes to suicides involving civilian defense workers.
The military, by contrast, allows survivors to receive benefits in cases in which a soldier’s suicide can be linked to depression caused by battlefield stress.
Hundreds of soldiers have committed suicide since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, according to studies by the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In response, the Defense Department has become more active in trying to prevent suicide than its hired contractors, military experts said.
The military is “aggressively trying to reach people and do intervention beforehand and set up suicide awareness programs,” said Ian de Planque, a benefits expert at the American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans group. “Awareness of it has increased. I don’t know that it’s transferred over to the civilian sector at this point.”
Birgitt Eysselinck has spent years trying to prove that her husband’s death in Iraq was related to stress from his job with a company specializing in the removal of land mines and explosive ordnance. So far, courts have sided with the insurance firm, Chicago-based CNA, in denying Eysselinck’s claim. (CNA declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.)
Eysselinck, 44, said that neither federal judges nor insurance adjusters understand that civilian contractors face many of the same risks in Iraq and Afghanistan that soldiers do. Her husband, Tim Eysselinck, endured mortar attacks and frequently traveled across Iraq’s dangerous highways, she said.
“There is a huge percentage of contractors who are silently suffering,” Eysselinck said. “That obviously puts them and their families at risk. Communities are bearing the brunt of this, especially the families.”
* * *
Wade Dill was working at a local pest control company when he decided to take a job with KBR in Iraq in late 2004. The money was good – almost $11,000 a month for handling extermination and hazardous material disposal, more than double his normal salary.
“He said this was our opportunity,” Barb Dill said. “He could start a college fund for our daughter, pay off the mortgage and have a nice retirement. He told me at his age, 41, he didn’t know if he had enough years left in him to give us what he wanted.”
Wade started that December, working on bases in central and northern Iraq. Violence was ever present. A base near Mosul was shelled frequently. He told Barb that a mortar landed close enough to temporarily deafen him. Once, he called her sobbing.
“My husband never cried, ever,” she said. “Marines don’t cry. A young man, a soldier, had put a pistol to his head and blown his brains out. And Wade had to go in and clean up after they removed the body – he had to clean up brain matter and blood. It really upset him.”
Barb Dill noticed a change in her husband when he returned home for a visit in December 2005. The couple had been high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. They had troubles, but had always worked them out. Now, he seemed moody and often angry, lashing out at her and their daughter, Sara.
“He would say hateful things to me and our daughter – things he had never said before.” Dill said. “This was a man that loved his little girl and his wife. He always called us his girls.”
When Wade returned for another visit in June 2006, he abruptly quit his job and began acting erratically, Dill said. He ripped the wiring out of appliances, smashed mirrors and poured lighter fluid on their furniture.
After a few weeks, Wade took a room at a local motel. On July 15, he asked Barb to come see him. Their conversation spiraled into a confrontation. Frightened and angry, Barb sped off in her car. The next day, the Shasta County coroner’s office called to tell her that Wade’s body had been found in the room.
“He told me that he was sick and needed help,” Dill said. “I told him to get help and then we would talk. The last time I saw him was in my rearview mirror.”
Dill soon found herself in financial difficulty. Her husband had always taken care of the bills. He had spent lavishly with his higher salary, buying two BMWs during trips home. Now, Dill discovered the couple was $300,000 in debt on their mortgage and car loans.
She plunged into depression, struggling to cope with her daughter’s grief and the sense that she had failed her husband in his time of need. She sold the cars and nearly lost her home after falling behind on mortgage payments.
She suffered mostly by herself. Except for a handful of Web sites, no support groups exist for widows of civilian contractors. The federal government offers no counseling for civilians returning from work in war zones.
Dill said that she felt abandoned by everyone: her husband’s employer, the insurance company and especially the federal government, which oversees the Defense Base Act system through the Labor Department.
“Shouldn’t our government be responsible for the companies they hire?” Dill said. “Shouldn’t our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?”
* * *
Survivors of civilian contractors whose death is related to their work in Iraq have the right to apply for compensation benefits that pay up to $63,000 a year for life.
Dill applied, asserting that her husband’s PTSD made him an exception to the rule against payments in suicide cases. Her claim was denied by AIG, KBR’s insurance provider.
She protested, sending her claim into a dispute resolution system run by the Labor Department. Her case is still grinding its way through the system, which can take years to produce a final result.
Experts hired by the family and the insurance company differed on what led to Wade Dill’s suicide.
A psychiatrist hired by her attorney found that job stress in Iraq was one of the factors that drove Wade to suicide: “The bottom line is that the combination of physical separation and work-related stress resulted in increasingly emotional distance, greater distortion of the relationship, increasing emotional intensity, and a pattern of increasing erratic behaviors that culminated in suicide,” wrote Charles Seaman, an expert in PTSD.
A Labor Department examiner recommended that AIG pay the claim, but the company refused. AIG and KBR declined comment about the case. In court filings, AIG has argued that the Defense Base Act does not cover suicides.
AIG attorneys also have said that Wade Dill’s actions were related to marital and family problems. A psychiatrist hired by AIG testified at a hearing in San Francisco in January that he had performed a “psychological autopsy” on Wade Dill based on interviews with his family and court documents.
The psychiatrist, Andrew D. Whyman, said his evaluation led him to conclude that Dill suffered from depression and that his suicide was unrelated to the violence he witnessed in Iraq.
“Take out the Iraq experience, (the suicide) would have happened,” Whyman testified. “He had a choice. … He could have chosen not to do that.”
Barb Dill insists her husband came back from Iraq a changed man.
“No matter how strained our relationship could get at times, we always pulled out of it with no problem,” Dill said. “Iraq changed all that.”
Now, she said, she is trying to hold her life together. A final decision in her case is not expected for months.
“We’re just slowly sinking,” she said. “It’s hard to be strong.”
Watch a preview of ‘Disposable Army,’ a documentary currently being produced by Mark Crupi, which contains interviews with Barb Dill and T. Christian Miller.
Disposable Army: Read the complete coverage of injured defense contractors and their struggles to receive promised medical care.
Write to T. Christian Miller at T.Christian.Miller@propublica.org.
By LINDA A. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Quickly giving morphine to wounded troops cuts in half the chance they will develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a provocative study that suggests a new strategy for preventing the psychological fallout of war.
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Health Research Center led the study of about 700 troops injured in Iraq from 2004 through 2006.
“It was surprising how strong the effect of the morphine was,” said study leader Troy Lisa Holbrook, an epidemiologist at the naval center. The findings were published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Whether the Pentagon will adopt the practice on the battlefield remains to be seen. Dr. Jack Smith, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for clinical and program policy, said in an e-mail that the “very interesting findings” are “likely to stimulate further research.”
About 53,000 troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated for PTSD, a disorder in which someone who has endured a traumatic event keeps re-experiencing it and the fear it caused. Patients often have trouble with work, relationships, substance abuse and physical ailments.
Researchers have been testing ways to treat it, and the new study looked at whether fast and strong pain relief can help prevent it.
It was unclear whether it was the fast pain treatment or something specific to morphine that made the difference.
But researchers theorize that simply easing pain might reduce the severity of the psychological trauma, or that prompt relief might alter the way the brain remembers the attack or injury – in essence, causing the mind to file away the episode as less traumatic.
Troops in the study initially were treated at military medical facilities in Iraq, mainly for wounds caused by roadside bombs, bullets, grenades or mortar fire. A few dozen had burns or were hurt in crashes or falls. The decision on whether to give morphine was up to the individual doctor, based on the patient’s condition.
Of the 696 troops in the study, 493 – about 70 percent – were given morphine, most within an hour of injury. Two years later, 147 of them had developed PTSD. Of the 203 not given morphine early on, 96 developed PTSD.
That worked out to a 53 percent lower risk of developing PTSD for those treated early with morphine. No other factor, such as the nature or severity of injuries, had much effect on the chances of developing PTSD, Holbrook said.
“These are provocative and thought-provoking findings that should lead scientists to investigate the underlying mechanisms” in future studies, said JoAnn Difede, a PTSD researcher at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Difede and Barbara Rothbaum, who heads the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program at Emory University School of Medicine, said that until more research backs up the findings, the study probably won’t lead to many more patients in civilian emergency rooms getting morphine.
“At this point, I don’t see it having a huge impact” for civilians, Rothbaum said.
A second study in the journal found that Army wives were more likely to develop depression or sleep problems the longer, or the more times, their spouses were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.
That study, by researchers at the University of North Carolina and elsewhere, examined medical records for outpatient care of about 250,000 wives of active-duty soldiers from 2003 through 2006.
Compared with wives whose husbands stayed home, those whose husbands were deployed for up to 11 months were 18 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression and at least 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders, anxiety and acute stress.
For wives whose husbands were deployed for more than 11 months, problems were even more common: They were at least 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety, and about 40 percent more likely to be diagnosed with acute stress or sleep problems.
The researchers didn’t have data showing whether husbands were deployed or at home when the wives were being treated for mental health problems.
That meant the scientists couldn’t conclude whether those problems were caused by worries about the spouse’s safety and the difficulties of being a single parent, or by stress caused by the returning spouse’s psychological problems or other behavior changes.
“I suspect that if you look at the Reserve and National Guard wives, the toll might be even worse,” because they have less social support than families living in a military community, Rothbaum said.
She said the effects of deployment on children also need to be studied so the military can figure out how to provide more help to families.
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On the Net: http://www.nejm.org
I have to say, that sometimes I wonder about this world and the people in it. Working for the company that I work for now, I live on the economy. Which means that I see the country as it really is. With KBR, they kept us hidden away, secluded form the general public. That doesn’t happen now. I am living like I was in the states. I have a flat and a car that I make the rental payments on and I have no restrictions on my off hours. In that, I see a lot more than I did before and being a woman, I experience some of it first hand. Let me give you a few examples.
A little over a week ago, I complained about the truck they were going to put me in for that days mission. We all have been complaining about the trucks not being clean, but this day, I not only had a truck that was filthy, but it smelled bad and only ran 75kmp, (about 45mph). Now if it were just any one of these things, I could have dealt with it, for that day, as long as the problem was taken care of. But when I refused to driver the truck, they guys in the office, called the big boss man. I was not the only one that was refusing to driver their truck that day, we all were. Anyway. The project manager told us that he would get the problem fixed, but that we would have to deal with it for the day. That sort of satisfied me, but I still didn’t want to spend the day running around Kuwait in a slow truck that smelled bad. It being slow meant I had to spend MORE time in it. I was not happy. But I relented and took the truck. To the project managers credit, the next day, we had trucks that were assigned to just us. They were not clean to what we would call clean, but we could fix that ourselves. These guys think that sweeping out a truck and clearing out the trash make for a clean truck. Go figure!!
We all took our cleaning supplies to work and while waiting to get our guys loaded, we clean and sanitized our trucks. We were doing good. Things went well for a few days, then yesterday, I came in after being off for a few days because I was sick and got a filthy truck. I again was not happy. I explained to the guys in the office, that the uncleanliness of these trucks could be the reason I had gotten sick in the first place. It is possible, but I did what I had to, to make my point. Besides, where were the trucks that we were assigned? This sure was not one of them! I will give them credit, this morning when I came in, 3 of our assigned trucks were there. The one I usually driver was not clean, but at least it was not filthy. So again, I dug my cleaning supplies out of the truck of my car and cleaned my truck. I am on stand-by tomorrow and off the next couple of days. So I have no idea what it is going to look like when I get back, but I am counting on have to start all over again. But my question is, what is so hard about giving us clean sanitary trucks to drive?
NEXT EXAMPLE
Today, I only had to load one truck out of 5 I had to take to Arifjan. That is a good thing. Since the camp I was going to was up near the border and was a long drive, the fewer trucks, the less time I would have to be in this camp. It is a dust bowl. The slightest wind and they have a major sand storm to deal with. With the wind blowing and sand flying everywhere, I thought I would be smart and go up the back way. There is a Kuwaiti check point on this route. Most of the time I have no problems going through this check point. They see that it is an American leading the convoy and they let us on through. Well, today, there was an older Kuwaiti manning the check point and I have had problems with him before. I knew as soon as I saw him there we were going to have trouble. He motioned for me to stop, so I did. (We usually don’t have to), and he asked me for my ID. I showed him my DOD badge and he was OK. Then he asked if the driver I was escorting, had ID. Of course, I said he did. They have to have a Kuwaiti ID or a red striped DOD badge to get into the camps. I pulled up and let this guys check my driver. Then I saw that he was motioning for us to pull to the side. The driver I was escorting is Filipino, a TCN, (third country national). I got out of the truck and asked what the problem was. He all of the sudden acted like he didn’t speak English. That pissed me off. I know they do and he did, because he had talked to me already. He keeps saying something about ID. MY driver opens his wallet and I see the red striped DOD badge. I tell him that that badge should be all he needs. This Kuwaiti guard guys snatches the badge out of the drivers hand and then takes his Kuwaiti ID out of his wallet. He kind of says that we have to come back this way on our way out because he is going to hold this drivers ID. Well, that pissed me off even more. The Kuwaiti’s treat these people like they are sub-human. I wont go into all that I know about that, but needles to say, I got even madder at this. I told him I as not leaving without this drivers ID. He still would not speak English to me. I told him that we would just turn around and go in the other way then. He gives me this blank look. I told my driver to get I his truck, we were going to do a u-turn. After we did that, and were sitting in the other side of the check point, this guard brings ME the drivers ID. I set my break, got out of my truck and walked the ID back to the driver while blocking the check point. How dare he treat this driver like this! Thing is, I see this all the time. The guys that go through this check point never have a problem. I usually don’t either, only when this one guys it there. I don’t think he likes the idea that a WOMAN is leading the pack and driving a truck. I know he doesn’t like the TCN’s and treats them like dirt. This angers me to no end. And the TCN’s are so afraid fo being kicked out of the country, that they just take it. And they say this is better than where they come from. I just can’t even imagine.
Well, I have let off enough steam for today. I will stop now. Be grateful that you live in the United States. We have a great country that this kind of thing should not happen.
I am sure that all of ya’ll are wondering what is going on with the job changes. Well at first it was a little hectic. They were giving us trucks that the TCN’s had been using and they were dirty and smelled bad. They smelled so bad that I had a problem holding down my breakfast. All of us complained about the condition of the trucks. Then a couple of us were giving truck that not only were filthy and smelled, but they only ran 75 kph. Can you imagine riding in a truck in the condition that these were in and then it only running 40mph?!! OH, no! I wasn’t going to drive it and neither were the other guys. The had a big blow out that morning over it. The office even called the project manager about it all. He told us that they would have the problem taken care of the next day, but we were going to have to deal with it for that day. One guy said he wasn’t going to deal with it, he wasn’t going to driver the truck. He was told to deal with it today or find another job. That didn’t sit well with me either. We had been told several times by the office personal that the problem w0uld be taken care of and it never was. The project manager said we could trust that when we can in the next morning, that we would have clean trucks that didn’t stink. So, we relented and dealt with it for that day. The next day, everything was as the project manager said it would. The trucks were not “clean”, they were dirty, but not filthy. We could deal with that. AND, they had pulled 5 trucks that would be kept to the side and no one would driver them but us. OK, now we were getting some where.
As far as the job goes now, it is going OK. Things have settled down and are staring to fall into place. As with anything that is new, there is a breaking in period. I hope that we are just about done with ours. Escorting TCN’s around Kuwait is not a hard job other than dealing with guys that want to try to make you think that they don’t understand. I can understand the language barrier, but most of these guys can understand and speak English. Some of these guys are really cool, while others I wish had decided to play hooky for the day. But we are getting there. I think in the not to far off future, it will finally falling into place and everything will, for the most part run smooth. Until them, we are all leaning on each other to help on those days that are just bad days and we should have stayed in bed.
What a deal! My laptop went down last Thursday. I am not sure what the problem is, but I suspect it is something in the bios, because it wont even boot up. I was freaking 0ut. I have not backed things up in about a month and can’t afford to loose some of the stuff I have on that hard drive. It is still under warranty so I can’t just have “someone” look at it. So I decided that I would buy a desk top. I went to Hawalli where all the computer shops are here and told them I wanted a desk top computer. They asked me what I wanted in it. Cool! They don’t really sell ready made systems, like HP, Dell, Toshiba and so on, here. You can get them, but they cost you more than it is to just have one built, so I had one built. I got the 3.2gig P4 processor, 256 N-Vida G-force video card, DVD writer, 1 gig of ram and a Samsung 17 in LCD ,monitor, to give you some of the spec’s for it. 24 hours later, I brought it home, plugged it in and looked for the button to turn it on. Just my luck, I heard something pop and nothing came on. I didn’t make sure the power supply was set to 220. Somehow in transport or hooking everything up I have flipped the switch to 110. Now I had blown the power supply and still was without a computer. WHAT A DEAL!I took it back down to Hawalli the next night and had the power supply replaced and rushed home to give it another try. Now, for those of you that have never been in Kuwait and tried to driver down to Hawalli, you can’t imagine the torturous drive that this is. The traffic is a nightmare!! Imagine rush hour traffic in any major city in the states and multiply it by 3, then add in the fact that these people can’t drive and not many of them are very courteous, and you can see what I had to drive through. Not once, not twice, but three times, to get my computer. But, night before last I got it home, plugged it in again, making sure that it was set to the right power setting and was ready to load a few software programs and get on-line. I plugged the internet cable in and……………… nothing. The internet was down. Frustrated?! OH, yes, I was frustrated and pissed! The caretaker of this building tries to make you think that he can’t speak English, but I know he understands it. But I called the gal that showed me the flat when I was looking at them and told her my problem with the internet. She said that he internet was running fine, but that she would give him a call. At 22:00 I gave up on him showing up and went to bed.
Yesterday, I felt a bit under the weather and called in sick. I have not felt good since my trip to Bahrain and as much as I tried to fight it, I couldn’t yesterday, so I stayed home. Here I am, resting in bed, not worried about getting on-line at the moment, cause I don’t feel good and there is a knock at the door. I drag my tail out of bed, answer the door and guess who? The caretaker, speaking Arabic and trying to tell me something. (I have got to learn some of this language!) He wants me to come with him. I follow him down to the 5th floor where the network is set up, if ya want to call it a network, and look at the jumble of wires in this little box attached to the wall of the stairwell. I groaned and started looking at it. The wires are marked with a piece of tape indicating to which flat it goes. I didn’t see one for my flat. But there was one unplugged and labeled with a 25. 25 is not my flat, but I plugged it in anyway, ran back up to my floor and checked my computer. It was working! YEAH!! I ran back down to the 5th floor and gave him the hand signal that everything was good and came back to my flat and went back to bed. Then yesterday afternoon, I started loading software onto the computer and noticed, that computer shop had partitioned the hard drive into two drives. This is just and 80gig driver and I didn’t want it partitioned. So, I had to format and start all over. Thanks goodness I looked at it before I loaded to much on it. Anyway, I have most of my software loaded now and as you can see I am on-line now. It will take ma a few days to get it to where I want it, but at least I am up and running again.
Well, that’s it for this morning; I have to get ready for work. Even though I am still not feeling to well, I am going in. I have the next two days off and hopefully today they will give me one of the easy runs. So, till tomorrow, one my day off, ya’ll take care. Those of you up north, keep you heads down and watch you tails.
Well, what can I say?! I have made a few trips into Iraq in the last few days. The trips have been uneventful as usual. I know everyone at home likes to hear that. The rain has not started yet and I am in fear that when it does show, we are going to be in for a flood. Of course, it doesn’t take much rain to fall to flood things around here.
I had hoped to go diving Wednesday, but my diving buddy, Mickey, Hollywood to others, works for KBR and was not able to get loose from work to go. With him going on R&R soon with his daughter on a diving trip, he is having to train someone to do his job. That person just didn’t feel that he had it all down, so Mickey had to stay in camp. Dive Caroline, the dive shop I dive with usually had a boat on Thursdays and Fridays, but as my luck lately would have it, there are not enough people to go today, so once again, I am stuck on land. It has been about a month since I have been in the water and it is driving me nuts. I bought all my gear about 2 weeks ago and am dieing to try it all out. Other than getting in the pool to test it, it has not seen water yet. ARGH!!!
Yes, I am addicted to diving! I love it!!!
Christmas is just a few days away and I am still not in the Christmas spirit. Before over here I was able to scrape up SOME Christmas cheer, but this year, just can’t seem to do it. We are busy with getting the mail to the troops and I have been running a lot of the Iraq missions instead of the Kuwait camps lately. That is by choice of course. Ya’ll know me, I like to stay busy and I have this adrenaline rush thing I have to try and feed once in a while. I had planed on cooking a big dinner for some of the guys, but that has not worked out yet either. OH well, the turkey is in the freezer and I will get to it one day.
In other news of what is happening with me, I am trying to quit smoking. I have been working on it for 2 weeks now. I have gone from a little over 2 packs a day to ½ a pack a day, to about 5 a day. I tried to go cold turkey, but that drove me nuts as well as those around me. I am hoping that within a week or so, I will be totally smoke free. Why am I doing this you may ask? Well, diving of course!!! Told ya I was addicted to it.
Also, I think I am going to be moving. The apartment building I am in right now has no security. Several times I have had strange men start following me while on my way home form work. Two of them have followed me all the way to the turn for my street. I have heard rumors of women being kidnapped here in Kuwait. So, for my security, I am looking at an apartment building that has some security and that I can park right in front of my door. Not to mention that several of the guys I work with live there. One guy lives there now with a room mate and two others are thinking about moving there. We have all talked about trying to get flats that are side by side, with mine in the middle. I have a lease on this flat and will have to wait till the first of February to move, but until then, they try to help watch out for me when I come home. Please don’t worry, I will be safe.
To my Mom, Sorry about missing your birthday. I loose track of what the date is and the day of the week over here. I hope you had a great birthday.
Till next time, everyone take care, and my love to all!
Yesterday was one of the days that makes this boring job worth it. With the border being shut down for several days due to the elections, mail has backed up a bit. The soldiers in the couple of camps north of the border that we run to, have not had mail for 3 or 4 days. The camp I went to yasterday is a small camp and we usually only need a 20 foot trailer to ge the mail to them. With Christmas coming and the shut down, we took 2 40 footers! One was nearly full and the other was 1/4 fill.
We rolled up to the APO and they were happy to see us. Now, lots of times I get out there and help unload, the three of us tat did the run yesterday had planned on givng them a hand in unloading since there was so much mail. But, we didn’t have to. They had volunteers waiting. So Steve, Eric, and I went to lunch.
You should have seen the place when we came back. We walked around the corner of the building and all around were humvee’s, gator’s, and soldiers, soldiers, and more soldiers. Everyone was helping everyone else get their mail and get my trailer reloaded. There was a great energy buzzing around the area. I had to stop and just watch it for a few minutes. I have complained about my job being the most boring job over here. All I do is drive to a camp, back in, sit all day, and then drive back to the yard once reloaded. There is noting to do. But I have to say, yesterday, put things back in perspective for me. I still have a VERY boring job, but I have a very meaning full job, I deliver the mail to the troops. That is so very cool!
