thedrifter
07-20-06, 07:24 AM
Body armor gets a pass in Iraq cauldron
Imagine sweltering in temperatures nearly 40 degrees hotter than yesterday.
Also imagine wearing body armor and carrying full combat gear in heat that leaves you sweat-soaked, chafing, itching, your head pounding.
Also imagine struggling to remain hyperalert as the thermometer nears a stupefying 120 degrees, your sweat-stung eyes searching for some tiny clue that will accord you the fraction of a second that can mean the difference between life and death in Iraq.
Imagine all this and you will not be surprised by what was inside the recycled ammo box that 24-year-old Marine Sgt. James Brower mailed home to Staten Island the other day.
Brower had told his mother to keep an eye out for a package, but he had not told her what was inside.
"He said he's sending stuff home," his mother, Elaine Brower, recalled yesterday. "I said, 'What stuff?' He said, 'Just stuff.'"
When the box arrived, Elaine Brower opened it to discover the extra body armor she had bought online at considerable expense to supplement his standard-issue protection. She noted the gear was covered with bugs such as he had told her infest the combat zone.
"They were dead, I think, but I put it outside," she recalled.
Bugs or no, the gear was now thousands of miles from the mortal dangers she hoped it would protect her only son against. She was hardly the happiest of moms the next time he called her from Iraq.
"He said, 'I can't wear it. It's too hot. I can't maneuver,'" she recalled. "He said, 'If I can maneuver, maybe I can dodge the bullets better.'"
The mother suggested that if he did not successfully maneuver, the reduction in body armor might result in him getting killed by an undodged bullet.
"He says, 'Well, it's too hot,'" she remembered.
She had acquired some insight into exactly how hot it is over there from the regular e-mails a first sergeant in his unit sent the families back home.
"We know exactly what one of the rotisserie chickens at KFC feels like," the first sergeant wrote in late June. "There is no doubt in my mind that the temperature here has to be the same as the one in one of those ovens. We continue to walk around so that we cook evenly."
Last week, the first sergeant wrote, "Well, we are creeping up on the middle of July. The sun continues to pick up in temperature here with no sight of letting up. I can imagine when we get home it will feel twice as cold as it actually is after our bodies have gotten so used to this heat. I was thinking after this place that after every time I get rained on back home I will take a shower as I have no doubt the rain clouds over there must be the sweat we are giving up into the atmosphere here. ... Okay, time to go in the shade and cool down to about 110..."
In one bit of good news from the battlefront, the unit managed to acquire a freezer. The families back home that had been sending air fresheners and boot insoles and Pop-Tarts and seemingly anything else the Marines might desire added one more item to the list. The unit became the envy of the combat zone as word spread it had ice pops.
'They were a big hit after the hot patrols," the first sergeant reported via e-mail.
Elaine Brower went to her local Pathmark and bought five boxes of ice pops such as she gave her son as a youngster. She mailed them to the realm that is close enough to hell even without the searing heat.
But her grownup Marine had been posted with a small detachment some distance from the unit's headquarters and therefore the freezer. Even if he allowed his fellow Marines to risk their lives bringing him an ice pop, the heat would melt it long before it reached him.
So the next time we are hit with what passes for a heat wave in New York, take a moment to consider Marine Sgt. James Brower in that distant place where it is quite literally as hot as hell, without his extra body armor or even those ice pops he loved as a youngster.
"He'd eat the cherry and his big lips would get all red," his mother said yesterday. "The things you think about."
Originally published on July 20, 2006
Ellie
Imagine sweltering in temperatures nearly 40 degrees hotter than yesterday.
Also imagine wearing body armor and carrying full combat gear in heat that leaves you sweat-soaked, chafing, itching, your head pounding.
Also imagine struggling to remain hyperalert as the thermometer nears a stupefying 120 degrees, your sweat-stung eyes searching for some tiny clue that will accord you the fraction of a second that can mean the difference between life and death in Iraq.
Imagine all this and you will not be surprised by what was inside the recycled ammo box that 24-year-old Marine Sgt. James Brower mailed home to Staten Island the other day.
Brower had told his mother to keep an eye out for a package, but he had not told her what was inside.
"He said he's sending stuff home," his mother, Elaine Brower, recalled yesterday. "I said, 'What stuff?' He said, 'Just stuff.'"
When the box arrived, Elaine Brower opened it to discover the extra body armor she had bought online at considerable expense to supplement his standard-issue protection. She noted the gear was covered with bugs such as he had told her infest the combat zone.
"They were dead, I think, but I put it outside," she recalled.
Bugs or no, the gear was now thousands of miles from the mortal dangers she hoped it would protect her only son against. She was hardly the happiest of moms the next time he called her from Iraq.
"He said, 'I can't wear it. It's too hot. I can't maneuver,'" she recalled. "He said, 'If I can maneuver, maybe I can dodge the bullets better.'"
The mother suggested that if he did not successfully maneuver, the reduction in body armor might result in him getting killed by an undodged bullet.
"He says, 'Well, it's too hot,'" she remembered.
She had acquired some insight into exactly how hot it is over there from the regular e-mails a first sergeant in his unit sent the families back home.
"We know exactly what one of the rotisserie chickens at KFC feels like," the first sergeant wrote in late June. "There is no doubt in my mind that the temperature here has to be the same as the one in one of those ovens. We continue to walk around so that we cook evenly."
Last week, the first sergeant wrote, "Well, we are creeping up on the middle of July. The sun continues to pick up in temperature here with no sight of letting up. I can imagine when we get home it will feel twice as cold as it actually is after our bodies have gotten so used to this heat. I was thinking after this place that after every time I get rained on back home I will take a shower as I have no doubt the rain clouds over there must be the sweat we are giving up into the atmosphere here. ... Okay, time to go in the shade and cool down to about 110..."
In one bit of good news from the battlefront, the unit managed to acquire a freezer. The families back home that had been sending air fresheners and boot insoles and Pop-Tarts and seemingly anything else the Marines might desire added one more item to the list. The unit became the envy of the combat zone as word spread it had ice pops.
'They were a big hit after the hot patrols," the first sergeant reported via e-mail.
Elaine Brower went to her local Pathmark and bought five boxes of ice pops such as she gave her son as a youngster. She mailed them to the realm that is close enough to hell even without the searing heat.
But her grownup Marine had been posted with a small detachment some distance from the unit's headquarters and therefore the freezer. Even if he allowed his fellow Marines to risk their lives bringing him an ice pop, the heat would melt it long before it reached him.
So the next time we are hit with what passes for a heat wave in New York, take a moment to consider Marine Sgt. James Brower in that distant place where it is quite literally as hot as hell, without his extra body armor or even those ice pops he loved as a youngster.
"He'd eat the cherry and his big lips would get all red," his mother said yesterday. "The things you think about."
Originally published on July 20, 2006
Ellie