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The Dave Box Chronicles - Volume 4 After writing and erasing and rewriting this letter a few times, I've discovered that my days are quite boring!!!   In fact, it reminded me a great deal of the movie Ground Hog Day, with Bill Murray. Every day, I get up and trek across the desert to my office where I spend anywhere from 12-15 hours monitoring every movement into and out of the AOR (please see the last installment of the DB Chronicles for a definition of "AOR"), which equates to hundreds of airlifts, thousands of passengers and thousands of tons in cargo. While the job I do is important, fast paced and exciting, it is in fact, pretty much the same thing every day. Luckily, I do get to travel quite often for work and I enjoy that very much.   The Place   This is an ugly and harsh environment. There is not much 'beauty' in this place. The desert is a hard location in which to live and it wears on the people who call it home. It's certainly not what I expected. There are no tall drifts of sand and the sand is not like sand as we know it. It is more like a talcum powder. When the wind blows here, the desert 'sand' creates an effect that looks like brown fog. The 'fog' gets into EVERYTHING wreaking havoc on both people and machinery. Spending time outdoors means being covered in powder and breathing becomes difficult. I was told prior to coming here that baby-wipes would become my best friend. After my first sand storm I understood exactly what that meant. Going out in a sand storm means taking a baby-wipe bath when you come back in!!!   There aren't many roads here because the desert is mostly rock with a light covering of sand, so in essence, the entire country is a road. From the air, you can see tire tracks that go off in all directions with little rhyme or reason and people set up camp wherever it suits them. The temperatures range from 30's in the winter months to 120+ degrees in the summer (OUCH!).   The People Who Live Here   There are two groups of people who inhabit this part of the world. The first group is much like we are. They are a proud people who respect their past, their religious beliefs and their country a great deal. They work hard to support their family and while they may look at life a little differently then we do, there are many similarities. Unfortunately, there is also the second group of people here whose sole purpose in life (in their somewhat twisted mind) is to bring terror to people they see as less then human. The problem lies in the fact that you can't tell one group from the other. I've had the great misfortune to see first hand the 'work' done by this second group of people and I can tell you without any reservation that it has altered my life. I will carry the memories of the devastation created by these people forever. While it has affected me deeply, it also serves to strengthen the resolve to continue doing the work that needs to be done here.   The People I Work With   To a Sailor, the term "Shipmate" is a compliment meant to explain the shared experience of sailing together during fair winds as well as in harsh seas. To be called a Shipmate means to have earned the respect and admiration of someone who has been to sea and endured the hard times along with the good.   Like most jobs, it's the people that make the difference. In my case I work with some TRULY GREAT people. I don't say that about many folks, but these people are very special to me and to our country. I've had the privilege of meeting and working with some of the most professional, dedicated, and intelligent people the military has to offer. I'm stationed at a Joint Command, which means that the folks who work here come to us from all branches of the military. I work with Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps officers and enlisted ranks. These are some of the greatest individuals I've had the honor to serve with in my 18+ year career. They are my Shipmates and I cherish my time with them.   Cheers,   Dave   David W. Box CDR, SC, USN CENTCOM DDOC/BLDG 505 Camp Arifjan APO AE 09306