Sleeping til noon in Qatar

January 24, 2007

From Camp As Sayliyah - Doha, Qatar

Internet service is painfully slow here and I’m often disconnected. One of the reasons is a lot of the guys log on and play various video war games that slow the system down. It strikes me funny that they do this on R&R.

It takes a long time to post this blog, so if it comes up then I can truthfully say (as opposed to some others), “mission accomplished”.


We left Djibouti at 4pm yesterday and didn’t arrive at our barracks until 6am this morning. We got 6 hrs sleep and downed lunch, then set up the gear and did a and sound check.

There are a lot of restrictions on taking photos, so this blog will have only those taken in the area where the show was performed.

Our barracks are large square metal buildings that remind me of those storage buildings back in the US that you rent out to store your junk stuff. Except here they’re huge and inside instead of garage doors there are bays of bunks that seem to go on forever in a grid fashion. Latrine and showers are inside and a stroll of about 100 yards away.

Campsign:



Camp As Sayliyah is, among many other operations, a big R&R camp for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They get a 4 day leave here to get away from it all, so we’re told we’ll be getting a lot of those guys tonight for the show.

In fact, two R&R soldiers were hanging out at sound check. One was wearing a Titans hat and it turned out he was from Clarksville, TN. Another was from Kansas City and we had a great time talking Gates BBQ, the Royals and Chiefs. His name is GM3 Tony Jacob:



We made plans to get together in KC for some barbecue and beer. Tony, if you’re reading this, get home safe and don’t stand me up!

We met many men and women all geting the best out of their 4-5 days here before going on the front line again. These are the ones really seeing the bad stuff, living to tell about it and then going back.

The venue and stage area here was pretty cool. As you can see, it was a very large stage with a huge, huge American flag behind the band. Here is the band - now is that not perfect for an Armed Forces Entertainment tour?



Here’s a shot of me playing towards the end of the night:



After the show, they lined up for autographs and thank-yous:



Here’s Thom doing his usual great job of making each soldier feel special:



One soldier from Georgia asked me if he could buy my guitar shirt I was wearing. I gave it to him which blew him away. Right then some Navy girl came up and wanted my shirt (my, my I’m popular!) so he gave it to her:



And another soldier showed us his camera that had been in his shirt pocket under his vest. He got caught under enemy fire and a bullet came through the vest and stopped just at the camera. Here he is showing with the camera exactly where the bullet penetrated.



It has been very interesting as to the “what’s next” factor in this trip. First we go to Bahrain and play for the sailors coming off of sea duty. Then to Djibouti playing for those serving the base there and preparing to move “downrange”

And finally we come to Qatar for soldiers who are right at this very moment active in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are truly in the thick of things that we see sound and video bytes of on the news.

Tomorrow afternoon we plan to go into the city and tour Doha. No show scheduled tomorrow nite, so this will be our first official day off.

We’ll stay one more night in Qatar and then we’ll be off to Kuwait.

I see that several of Thom’s friends and family have checked in here. Welcome aboard - glad to have you! And thanks again to everyone posting back. I never get tired of it!

Onward.....