Hydrate or Die!

After guns and ammo, water is the most important life-saving element that you must have with you in a desert environment. In Kuwait and then Iraq, our drinking water came to us in the form of pallets of cases of bottled water. When I say “bottled”, I don’t mean the wimpy 12 oz. size you get at the grocery store. I mean liter and half tall, thin bottles. In the desert heat, you could kill four of these in a day and never have to pee. When we arrived in Baghdad wearing our body armor, helmets, and ammo pouches, the Iraqis thought we had some sort of air conditioning or cooling coils in the body armor that kept us cool. I wish! When they found out that we just sweat, they were very impressed. One little kid asked me, “are you Super Men?” (50,000 of us just beat a 300,000 man army and overthrew Saddam’s regime in three weeks – Hmm.....).

We kept water everywhere. I had a bottle by my bed at all times. There was a spare case in every vehicle. Cases at the office. In that climate, you can dehydrate rapidly without even knowing it. In fact, the heat is so intense that you lose your appetite. I lost over 20 pounds in four weeks. Just didn’t feel like eating.

By August, the day time temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit. While the desert is generally a dry heat, in Baghdad the humidity could be as much as 50% due to the vegetation and the Tigris River running through the middle of the city. You could literally walk 100 yards in your uniform with no body armor on and your T-shirt would be soaked through at the end. Speaking of uniforms, salt lines would form on them showing the farthest limit of the “sweat line” that you perspired through that day. After five days, you could stand up your uniform top on the floor as if it was heavily starched.

We had a washer and dryer in our house. In the summer you could hang your clothes on the clothes line outside and they would be dry in 20 minutes – and hot as if you just took them out of the dryer.

But it’s true – your body does adjust to the heat and you get used to it. You could always tell the new guys right off – they were either pasty faced (compared to us) or beat red from sunburn. They walked real slow and were very lethargic. Water, boys, lots of water!

Hydrate or die.