Dave's World: Dispatches from Iraq 9

I'm happy to say Matt is back from Iraq, safe, sound, and back with his wife and daughter. Dispatches from Iraq has been a rewarding experience for all involved, both in giving readers an unfettered firsthand look at what is going over in the desert from the perspective of someone actually over there; and in the passion in the email we've gotten from friends and family of military members, which has been overwhelming.

The series will continue in some form -- Matt and I have discussed the idea of putting things in a bigger perspective now that he is back home. If you've been making it a point to check in here every other Sunday, please keep tuning in and thank you.

We're going to run one more piece from last winter that we had on reserve in case anything happened where Matt and I were out of touch with each other for awhile. Matt takes a look at what some guys and gals over in Iraq will do to pass the time when things are slow:

We've been pulling our 24-hour guard shifts in Mosul again, only this time we're in a different building. I can never give many details about our operations due to security issues, so I can't really explain much about this building yet, except that it's drafty and has no heat. We guard the rooftop overnight in the cold Mosul air, and then come back to sleep in an even colder building. This is the setting for my epic Battle of the Makeshift Wood Stove.

In between shifts the other day, I went exploring the guard site and found a room filled with machine parts, tools, and wooden miscellany. One discovery was a medium-sized metal cylinder with two doors on it that looked a little like an old pot-bellied stove. My memory of a previous cold night here, my inner mad scientist, and more than a little boredom, started me on my goal of turning this rusted piece of metal into a virtual furnace.

I studied the piece thoroughly. It had four metal legs, and stood about three feet high. The body of the contraption was less than two feet tall and just a little more than a foot in diameter, split into two sections. The top section was larger and had a solid door, while the door to the smaller section had three, dime-sized holes in it. The six-inch diameter cylinder that hung beneath it was covered with small holes. I paced around it, ideas turning over in my head.

Keep in mind that the only real tools I had to work with were my Gerber multi-tool, a sledgehammer I found in the room with the stove-like apparatus, and my Lone Wolf Harsey Ranger knife.

The first thing I did was turn the contraption upside down. I figured the small cylinder would work well as the beginnings to a smoke stack, and the flat top of the large cylinder would make an excellent base. The floors were made of marble in this building, so I didn't have to worry much about keeping it off of the ground. I took some rebar, and using the sledgehammer, pounded it through the rusted top of the small cylinder. I put about ten holes in a circle and then busted through the entire thing with the sledge. I covered the cylinder with a piece of pipe, and -- voila! -- it was a smokestack. Now that it had a smokestack, it was a full-fledged wood stove, and that's how it will be referred to from now on.

I found some pipe joints, and used them to extend the smokestack out one of the windows. It was really coming together, or so I thought. I tightened the clamps on the pipe joints together with my Gerber, and started looking for fuel to test the stove with. I found some strange wooden frames covered in plastic mesh in the stove room, which I started splitting up in to kindling. I cut the mesh off with my knife, and broke the wood in to smaller pieces over my knee. I started a fire with some MRE matches and tissue, and it burned nicely.

The smoke wafted up through the smokestack and out the window. I wish that this were the end of my story.

Unfortunately, night rolled in, and the fire's light was entirely too intense to be tactical. It lit up the entire room, and silhouetted everybody and everything in it. The flames from the fire were also traveling up the smokestack. I let it burn out at my platoon sergeant's request, and went back to the drawing board. I was thwarted for the evening, but I thought long and hard the next few days before we had another stint on the roof. I needed something to cover it with that wasn't flammable and contained the light, but didn't block the heat.

I returned to the guard post yesterday, and found a hinged cap to put on the smokestack to hide the flames should they flare up as high again. I bolted it to the end of the smokestack and when dusk hit, I went about trying to contain the light. At first, I used scraps of plywood situated around the stove at a distance. I kept rearranging the plywood and adding wood to the fire to keep it bright when the stove's door fell off of its hinges. When I had turned the cylinder upside down, I hadn't noticed that the hinges were meant to be held together by gravity. As it was, they were held together by rust, and after opening and closing the door enough times, the rust gave way, and now I had even more light to contend with.

That and a really hot metal door. I gave up on the plywood, which wasn't working too well anyway, as the flames started to tickle it even at a small distance. I found a bent piece of metal that looked like some kind of cover, and used it as a grate in front of the stove. It worked well, but it reflected the light behind it. Had I had two such covers, I would have been set, but as my resources were limited I had to let it burn out yet again.

Later, while on guard, I noticed extra concrete blocks lying around, and I think they'll encompass the stove and diminish the light wonderfully. But by then, I had also come to the realization that you can only fit small kindling-sized pieces of wood in to such a tiny stove, and that those pieces burn extremely fast. I'd have to stay up feeding the fire to keep it burning, and that would defeat the initial purpose of making the room a warm place to sleep.

If the situation was any different, I may have given up, but having to spend a year until you return to your family and friends gives you a lot of time on your hands. The soldiers in my platoon read, play video games and cards, contact their families, and watch movies over and over… and over again. I've talked with "the guys" and for the most part, these are all things they only did in moderation back in the states. Their lives were too busy doing things with their families, working on their trucks, clubbing, etc. to allocate much time to these distractions. I'd personally give just about anything to be playing with my daughter, cuddling with my fiancee, or playing poker with my dad and his buddies right now. I can't really do any of these in the middle of Iraq at a guard post, so the "wood stove of woe" will still probably continue to be my way to make the time go by.

Dispatches from Iraq series links

Dave's World

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Dispatches from Iraq 9