FIRST WARNING

(10NOV2008)

On my 73^rd day, I experience my first warning announcement. The Big Voice announces an “Amber Alert” (one step down from a “Red Alert” and very different than an Amber Alert stateside) and says something largely unintelligible about an indirect fire attack (usually meaning mortars, sometimes referring to rockets as well).

Just a few minutes later, the Big Voice declares “All clear” and then proceeds to announce that over and over again intermittently over the next half hour.

I was stationed in Balad, Iraq, last year – affectionately nicknamed “Mortaritaville” though I only heard it referred to as that when I was away off-post. If we went a day without a mortar attack in Balad, the enemy usually made up for it the next day. You get very use to IDF attacks there, almost to the point of complacency.

Here on BAF they are much less common, and we later wondered aloud if there was in fact an attack or whether it was a drill, a false alarm, or bad intel.

IDF = InDirect Fire
BAF = Bagram Air Field