Camp Korea?....email from Eli

Dear friends and family,

Seth and I got back last weekend from spending several days at a place called CKV (Camp Korean Village), which is up by the Syrian border. I thought since we have a strong contingent of South Korean military in the Coalitions Forces that maybe this was where they were based.....nope. Not sure why the name was what it was for this small base....but one of the Marines we asked that was stationed there said it was named by Marines...so who knows?
The drive to CKV was long...for several reasons. The first reason is simply because it is several hundred miles from Al Asad to CKV..and several hundred miles in Iraq is a very very long trip. Usually we spend most our our trips on unimproved roads where it is slow going, but one of the good things about this trip is we were on a four lane highway for most of the way. The other reason it was a long trip was because of the size of our convoy. We were attached to an 82nd Airborne convoy with over 200 vehicles. We were transporting TCN (third country nationals). Most of these men were Arabic and we only had a handful of interpreters, so there was a language barrier. What was impressive and reassuring about rolling with the 82nd and this size of a convoy was we had air support with us the whole way. At one point we came to unexpected stop (it turned out a TCN truck had rolled over) and all the sudden we saw from our vehicle a helicopter from each side of the road come swooping down to see what the problem was. I have no problems going on a convoy with over 200 vehicles if we have air support with us.
The drive took 12 hours. We did not get to CKV until the evening, and we had the next day off before we went back out. The weather was cool at CKV, as the high during the day only got up into the 60s. During our rest day we all huddled around a computer and watched the movie We Are Marshall and we also watched some episodes from Planet Earth, which just shows that infantrymen enjoy an educational experience every now and then. After watching We Are Marshall we were all in the mood for some football, so we went out to where our gun trucks were parked, got ourselves a couple cases of non-alcoholic Coors, put some country music on the speakers we have rigged up to one of the trucks, and just relaxed and threw football. It felt like a perfect fall afternoon......the weather, the company, drinking near-beer, listening to Brooks and Dunn, and throwing football, everything was good except the location.....in Iraq and a matter of miles from the Syrian border.
We were supposed to be going out on a mission tomorrow, Thanksgiving, but our mission got rescheduled, so instead of eating an MRE tomorrow we get to enjoy some turkey. It won't be as good as my mom's thanksgiving spread.....but none of the food over here is as good as home. We still have work tomorrow. I have a briefing at 8:30, am organizing a new shipment of medical supplies we just got in, going to the TMC (troop medical clinic) to pick up an order and drop off an order to the optometrist.......just another day in the life of a medic.
Katy has her last day of work today at Village Grill where she has been waitressing for the past four months, and she is going to spend the month of December babysitting her nephew, Charlie, who was born in September to her brother and sister-in-law, Sam and Elizabeth Herr. She has been very eager to spend some time with her nephew, so this will be great for her. She starts graduate school in January, so she will become a very busy person...hopefully she'll have time to talk to me on the phone as that i the highlight of my days. I will hopefully get to see my lovely wife soon as it looks like Seth and I will be home on leave sometime shortly after Christmas.
I thought I would share some updates from the war front and the home front. I hope you all enjoy a wonderful thanksgiving and know that what I am the most thankful for, over here and when I am at home, is my family and friends. So, enjoy your turkey, go Packers, go Cowboys, and go UVA! Take care!
Love,
Eli