Greetings and Salutations!
Well I’m glad everyone enjoyed the story about the midgets. Per y’all’s comments, it seems that there’s a LOT of other places in the area, to include Afghanistan that ALSO had Dwarven Villages. I mean do you refer to places like that as “The Shire?” What’s the multiple of “Shire” I wonder.
I even got a text from The “Other BC” here in Tampa who got an email from one of the Feral Irishman‘s cronies, Rico, who ALSO contracted overseas. Rico asked The Other BC to forward them to me, and I’m throwing them up here as they ARE appropriate to the subject:

Like I said… pretty appropriate AND cool.
The other pic is this, and I can only guess as to which one is Rico… I’m thinking the guy on the left with the PKM as, to me at least, LOOKS like a ‘Rico’… The guy in the middle I’m guessing is a ‘Terp, and the Big Boi on the right with the AK and Drum Mag? No idea.

Either way, great pics Rico! Appreciate them!
Now, in keeping with the entire premise of some humor, I have ANOTHER humorous story from “The Big Country Baghdad Files.” This one ties into some of the things that OrangeManBad has been up to as of late, and I think y’all will get a chuckle out of it.
Now I started contracting back at the End of 2003. Meaning I got the job, however I had no idea what sort of build up that entailed. Meaning that it wasn’t a “Hey, grab your passport and get on a plane!” Nope. For quite a spell it was like that, but Uncle Sugar in his infinite wisdom of course had to set up a bunch of shit that absolutely positively had to be done before you could set out for the Wild Wild Middle East Shooting Gallery.
The problem stemmed from having to get medical clearance, prove I was who I said I was, and a bunch of ‘other things’ that as far as -I- could tell after the fact were fucking worthless. Like going to the Combat Readiness Center in El Paso at Fort Bliss. Outside of getting my ID card (which I could have done at McDill) and catching one of the chartered “Retired General Officer Airliners” CRC was a fucking two week joke.
I spent the majority of my time either shitfaced and/or hung the fuck over. I mean it was that bad and an absolute waste of money and time. The gear they gave me? I didn’t used one fucking piece of it. Not a damned one. In fact we didn’t get our body armor and helmet until we hit Kuwait FFS. Fun Note: I still have that original Old School K-Pot:

The only thing that is different on this one, is as I had it for SO MANY years, I upgraded the interior first chance I got. That means when the very first interior pad and webbing upgrades became available, I bought them and installed them.

As you can see by the pic, the OLD-OLD original Aramid layered shell is plainly visible. Those pads BTW are old leftovers that were left/found/worn out that I just stuffed in there as I moved the newest and bestest over to each helmet as I ‘upgraded’ the outer shell.
They issued me ONE whole dufflebag filled with the most useless shit imaginable. VALUABLE wasted space as we were only allowed TWO duffs per person. I think that duff spent like the first two years in a connex… I literally never opened it, and when the first contract ended w/CACI I brought it back to Bliss and just -dropped it- at CIF. When they tried to play that “It no clean!!! We no take it!” games with me, I told them “Too bad, so sad, I’m not in your fuckin’ Army anymore, so you fucking clean it!” and walked out. Those of you who served are familiar with asshole Civvies who run CIF…
THAT was glorious as I still got my “cleared” stamp, much to the consternation of Ajima and her ilk. (I use the Korean as for some reason, damned near all the CIFs I ever went through in the DotMil were run by Korean dependas which is also why it was broken ‘Engrish’ in what they said).
Anyways.
So… I finally made it to Iraq.
It took a looong minute, but I made it there. The Comedy of Errors of the First Night in Baghdad is worthy of it’s own post. At some point I might get around to telling later, but I and Lil Country, along with a cast of characters right out of a B Grade Spy movie arrived.
Officially my job was “Logistician”
In reality?
I was a bodyguard/recoverer of lost items/scrounger/thief as well as whatever else my Boss handed me as he felt like having us do. We worked for a Chief Warrant 5, which back then was rarer than rare.

We used to call them “The Tetris Cubes” The old CW5 was 4 Hollowed Out Cubes, instead of that silver bar with a line.

A side story:
Our Heap Big Chiefy-Chief, and yes I’d call him that to his face (he’s the one who hung the Big Country name on me, and FYI he was cool as Moose Piss on a January Morning in the Artic Circle), was one of the OG CW5s. When the DOD changed to the new rank badge, he had to fly back to Sodom on The Potomac for the ceremony, as well as brief the JCoS of just how the supply game was running in the AOR, as he was the Theater Property Book Officer… the head motherfucker in charge of ALL property books in the theater.
When he got back?
I saw the rank, and he looked pretty salty.
Lil Country broke the ice and asked, “Hey Big Chief, izzat the new rank badge?” He scowled and started muttering to himself as much as us something about “…hate that fucking thing…mumble grumble.” and told us that yeah it was, and he hated it.
Me being me? I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “Damn Chief, I don’t blame you… You look like a cancelled 2nd Lieutenant!!!”
His eyes bugged out rather impressively.
Because of that, I thought he was going to kill me, but I think it ‘clicked’ and he suddenly started laughing his ass off and said “Big Country, you nailed it!“
Whew.
THEN he told us he had a new assignment for us.
Uh Oh.
Maybe I did shoot my mouth off one too many times…
The new gig: Oversee the construction and rehabilitation of two warehouses in Area 51 on VBC proper to be the first CIF in Baghdad. A CIF is a Central Issue Facility… all the uniforms, gear, armor, “stuff” was going to be issued to troops from there to save on the potential danger of having to travel back to Kuwait via convoy and such. Reason being this was July of 2004, and the Haj were getting really good at blowing up our convoys.
Needless to say, it was a hot, dirty job. We worked in connexes filled with gear, sort and size what was what, from what and where it would eventually go. 120 degrees in the sun, and the inside of a container was about 40 degrees hotter if you can believe it. Lethally hot if we weren’t careful:

Let me tell you, I lost that gut pretty damned quick working in that heat. Uniforms, boots, belts… we had it all. For a scrounger it was a dream come true as well, as it was ALL OURS!
Now, the facility itself.
Unfortunately those earliest pictures are lost to time. The warehouses we got were tin-roofed beat to hell empty GIANT warehouses that were left over from Saddam’s Mint, and where the ink and paper had been stored according to Rumor. No idea as to the veracity of that rumor, but the MPs lived in the Mint Building which was just a ‘ways over yonder’ from us, so maybe? Essentially we had a floor, 4 walls and a shot-to-shit roof. This is an ‘in progress’ pic that I took August 24, 2004 according to the data:

Now, you see that roof?
The original roof was a literal tin roof, rusted.
Plain, rusty metal. Gray in color. Part of our job was to get our workers:

To replace the roof.
As well as install/build ALL the ‘other stuff’ over a period of months.

Now, bossing a gang of Haj who don’t speak English isn’t without it’s issues. They were nice enough fellows, and all vetted and theoretically cleared from being ‘bad guys’. We had the architect/Head Haji Mohamned, who was our Straw-Boss Haj:

There on the left with one our NCOs, Sgt G.
Miss you G!
Now, the new roof as you see it is made up of aluminum sandwich panels. Much like seen below:

We went with this due to availability, and the insulation factor, as we ended up air conditioning BOTH of those GIANT warehouses. Each warehouse ended up with like 8 AC Units in each, and actually kept the temp tolerable.
Now anyone who’s ever worked with Iraqis know that there’s a few quirks you have to deal with. One is they’re damned child-like in their fucking around while they work. Lots of pranks, lots of tomfoolery. My attitude was it was all good unless it started causing problems. Another was pig-ignorance. LITERALLY zero higher education unless we were dealing with Mo our Haji-Pusher. Mohamned had a degree in architecture from Baghdad University, and spoke very good English. He was also a former soldier who did his two years mandatory for Saddam when he was 18 before THIS war, but AFTER the First Gulf as a Sapper.
So he could chew some ass like a good soldier should when we needed him to. Unfortunately I have no idea what happened to him in the long run. Nice guy. Hope he made it. He was also a great straw boss/pusher. Just to be dicks, we got him addicted to bacon and sausage just for fun by feeding him breakfast in the AM, and when he found out, he was like “Cool! Wish I had known about this before!” He started asking for ‘Infidel Meat’ whenever he could… go figure.
So a couple of weeks/months went by. One day, as construction was going on, and the Haji were up on the roof scurrying around, replacing the tin sheeting with the sandwich panels, a truck pulled up that we didn’t recognize. Big US Ford pick up. A largish American Male got out, wearing a construction helmet, safety orange vest, and carrying a clip board. He started bellowing “Who’s in charge here!!! I need to speak with whomever is in charge of this circus right now!!!”
Uh Oh Part Two.
Lil Country and I looked at each other, and since we were obviously had to deal with this guy, as we were the ones in charge, he said “I got this.” He knew that if -I- interacted with him, the odds were that bad things might happen. He usually was the ‘politician’ out of the two of us, and I was reserved as the ‘muscle’ should the need arise. Lil Country was known as such as he was a lot smaller than me:

Add on that back then my tolerance for bullshit was in a constant negative state, and since it was Baghdad 2004, killing someone wasn’t the issue as much as hiding the body. Even then, stashing a corpse wasn’t hard, just hard work in that heat… anywho… This was my regular work wear back then:

As you can also see, I had burned off a LOT of weight in 3 months, gotten swole, and had a great tan.
The attitude?
Dangerous
“Do Not Annoy”
So LC went to deal with this guy. I went and found Mo, and told him to stand by, make sure our guys were ready for whatever play we had to make, and to just roll with the punches. (“Get the tarps and the bleach!”)
LC then motioned me over all mad-like (never a good sign) and introduced me as such: “This asshole here claims that he’s from OSHA and said he’d shut us down, as our guys don’t have safety gear while working on the roof!” LC was getting really irate… I knew him that well. Said asshole started getting all affronted, and started to open his mouth, when I held up my hand, and literally said “Not a word.” shutting him down before things could escalate.
Now… mind you, the guy was right. Our Haj were running around barefoot on the roof, (literally running mind you) without a care in the world. That’s another thing about working with them, is their inherent fearlessness which I attribute to their religion that if Allah wants them to fall to their deaths, then they fall to their deaths. If not? It is as Allah wills it, Insh’Allah.
So the reason I kept my cool and interceded, with my rationale is LC never got heated, especially under these sort of circumstances, so I knew it was time to play it straight. I also wasn’t letting this asshole be an asshole, and I needed to take control of the situation, as I had no idea what sort of ‘juice’ this fool had. I also kept thinking was OSHA???? What in the blue-balled FUCK is OSHA doing here in fucking Bahdad!!!???!!!
OSHA: Per wiki: “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA; /ˈoʊʃə/) is a regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces.”
As far as -I- knew, OSHA’s mandate was stateside… no one told US that OSHA had any claim to our turf…
I turned to said aforementioned asshole and introduced myself as Big Country, and then asked him WTF was he on about? He started in on quoting regulations, safety and allllllll the ‘usual bullshit’ one has found here in Construction sites here in the States. I pointed out “Warzone duh!” and (as far as I knew) complete lack of jurisdiction for him, over us, my Haj, Hell… anything and everything we were doing. I think I even asked if he was retarded at one point… I mean we’d been working with these guys for months, and when Mo said something was a bad idea we generally listened. This was “The Iraqi Way” of doing things… Now Mo who’d been listening in started muttering “Oh sheeet, Oh sheeet!” as he started worrying the way the conversation was heading.
So this supercilious prick really seemed to think he had the power here, so I decided to try a different tack. I called Mo over to be part of the conversation, and asked him “Mo, do we have safety harnesses, ropes and gear like that available?” Mo got this look of horror on his face and started stammering “Yes, Big Country, but is bad idea, very very bad idea!”
Under stressful moments, Mo’s English started to break down to a more-broken variant than when he was mellow.
OSHAPrick heard this, and then decided to try and gain the upper hand “Then why aren’t those workers using it? If I don’t see them in safety gear in the next ten minutes, I’m shutting this whole operation down, and launching a formal investigation!!!” he declared.
Mo, ever the worry-wart: “Oh sheeet! Oh Sheeet! Oh Sheeet!”
Mind you, Shut us down?
Suuuuuure buddy. I started wargaming it, thinking of ‘…how after I shoot you in the head, my workers are going to wrap your corpse in a tarp, throw your dead ass in a Connex, which we’ll then seal with a “Classified Equipment” marker on it, and have it sent to Thule or some other remote location without the proper paperwork, where the connex will languish in a frustrated cargo yard there until probably 2027, and when someone does open it, you’ll have been ‘Missing/Presumed Dead’ for so long, ain’t no one gonna care mister now-dead OSHAPrick.’

This thought made me grin like a Cheshire Cat.
OSHAPrick seemed to take a different meaning from the grin, and said “So you’ll do it?” I broke my reverie and said “Ab-so-LUTELY! No need for any unpleasantness!!! (the inner voice saying: “Yet.”)” I told Mo to “…go break out the safety gear, and get it to the guys post haste!!!”
Mo on the other hand kept saying “Oh sheeet, oh sheeet, bad idea, very very VERY bad idea! and muttering various imprecations in Arabic I assume on OSHAPrick and his life…
“No arguments Mo! This guy is now in charge of safety! Do what he said!” For the briefest ‘Mo’ment, I think he got where I was going with this. He dutifully went and grabbed a Haj who wasn’t on the roof, and had him and another break out a VAST assortment of what looked like climbing gear.
Mo called down the roof-guys, who then grabbed it all up and they gleefully started putting it on. THAT should have been a big Red Flag for OSHAPrick. To me, knowing and having worked with these guys, I knew this was leading to something fucked up. I had no idea what, but I knew it was going to good/bad. Probably good for us, but bad for the OSHAPrick. Mo kept muttering to me “Fucking children… Workers are like fucking children! We just gave them new toy! Sheeet!!!” I told Mo to calm his jets, and I then told OSHAPrick he could come back inside of a hour, and re-evaluate the situation. He then packed up with a smug look on his face, and told us imperiously that he’d be back!
What-Evz dude.
It didn’t take long.
In that big ole pile of various harnesses, helmets and ropes, there were bungee cords. BIG thick bungees. The kind they use on a job like this to lessen the impact of a fall-from-great heights.
What the Hajis did was one of them would ‘harness up’ and snap onto one of the bungees. He’d then have 4-5 guys go to the other side (downward slope) of the roof and hold the other end of the bungee cord, opposite from where he’d do his ‘Derring-do of Death Defying’ and then he’d jump up, and slide down the roof (at speed mind you,) and OFF the fucking roof, to have the bungee “sproing” him back up onto the roof. Good Times and Great Fun considering how much laughter and giggling we heard coming from them. Mind you the pic above has smol buildings on the side of the Warehouse built up… back then they hadn’t been constructed yet, so there was nothing stopping them from going over the side for a distance.
Mo was damned near apoplectic over this. He was worried about wasting time, and that allowing these shenanigans long term might cause problems. I told him to relax, and enjoy the show.
About 30 minutes later, a now-familiar truck pulled back into the yard, and maaaan… Shock, horror, and disbelief ALL on the same face, at the same time. Lil Country and I at the time were leaning against our truck, grading the jumps on duration and distance. We gave points for distance, style and grace, and negative points if they failed to nail the landing back ON the roof cleanly… and having to be lowered to the ground for failing to make the bounce back up was an instant DQ.
So whilst we were fucking around, OSHAPrick bailed from the truck and came positively sprinting up to us and started sputtering and generally being utterly incomprehensible. He was literally trying to scream, all the while choking on saliva that I -think- would have come out as ‘outraged spittle’ had he not been so utterly discombobulated.
Lil Country said again “I got this.” and went over and held his hand up in a vague imitation of me, and said “Well, you got what you wanted. We tried to tell you. Our Head Haj tried to tell you as well. WE don’t speak the lingo, and I’m sure you don’t either, and since you didn’t listen to Mo, our Haji Pusher, he’s all moody now, and doesn’t want to translate as you made him all moody-like. So since YOU done fucked up, and didn’t listen to people who know how things are done here, Why don’t you fuck off, and keep fucking off and we’ll go back to working the way things are done here in Iraq as opposed to wherever the fuck you came from?” I just stood there behind LC being large and glaring.
Gotta say, he never said a word.
He just slumped his shoulders, and went back to his truck.
I think we broke him.
Never saw his ass again. EVER. In fact when I say that, mid to late 2004, Victory Base was small and you’d get a feel for seeing the same faces daily of who lived there. We never saw him again.
And like so many OTHER useless Federal Agencies in the gunsights of OrangeManBad, OSHA should be on the chopping block. Per the wiki (which ain’t zigzactly a bastion of Right Wing thought) even said: “A New York Times investigation in 2003 showed that over the 20-year period from 1982 to 2002, 2,197 workers died in 1,242 incidents in which OSHA investigators concluded that employers had willfully violated workplace safety laws. In 93% of these fatality cases arising from willful violation, OSHA made no referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. The Times investigation found that OSHA had failed to pursue prosecution “even when employers had been cited before for the very same safety violation” and even in cases where multiple workers died. In interviews, current and former OSHA officials said that the low rates of criminal enforcement were the result of “a bureaucracy that works at every level to thwart criminal referrals. … that fails to reward, and sometimes penalizes, those who push too hard for prosecution” and that ” aggressive enforcement [was] suffocated by endless layers of review.”
IE they don’t do shit, except suck up massive tax dollars ($26,563,600 in Fiscal Year 2020 alone, and they’re complaining it’s NOT ENOUGH!) doing jack and shit. If there was ever a bureaucracy that needed to die, it’s this one. And that investigation was from 2003. Just how much more worthless could it be? I shudder to think. Never mind what the current bloated budget is….
We also never got an answer on just the “Who/How/Why” of OSHA being on the Victory Base Complex and thinking they had some form of jurisdiction over anything anyone was doing at the time? Believe you me, we asked everyone as we still wanted to crush this Assholes nuts… nothing ever came of it tho… So I’ll just chalk it up to one of those fucked up “Forget it Jake, it’s Baghdad” things I guess…
So hope you dug that one too. I get some chuckles bringing up these old memories. I hope you laughed like I did.
More Later
Big Country

Is there any weapon out there that DOESN’T look like a fuckin’ sawed-off Red Rider BB gun in your hands when you hold it?
Poast to follow! Thanks for the idea!
Middle East, Africa, my job took me to both, and (because I’m not an asshole) I quickly realized that, in the third world, sometimes you just have to let them do it their way. There was this German shore guy in Nigeria who thought that yelling would get the job done faster. I cringed for him when I heard the yelling start, knowing that whatever paperwork he was waiting for just now got a permanent home on the bottom of the pile.
OMG BCE– I got a good hearty LOL from that story… imagining all these skinny Haj in the blazing sun, “playing” with the “jump off the roof” gear. And your responses to OSHAman. There is no better humour.
Keep the stories coming.
Pure hilarity.
I had a best bro in Vietnam who had just come in from a week outside the wire. He was unwashed, unshaved and had a serious case of fuggit. He hopped into the back of a deuce and a half full of FNGs.
A Sergeant started giving him grief about not being shaved and my friend, a PFC, told him where he could stick the razor.
The Sergeant turned his 16 toward my friend and said that he could drill him right there.
My friend was a blooper man carrying the M79 grenade launcher and he crooked it in his arm and offered to blow the Sergeant and the next three guys beside him clean off the truck.
Cooler heads prevailed and bloodshed was avoided. I thought it was hilarious.
I don’t know how you put up with the years of organizational and personnel BS. I finally whittled down my career to just me and my computer, and there’s still too much BS. Maybe, I should get rid of the computer.
Yea, OSHA
what a buncha pricks, they show up at our site with their clip board and attitude, even some of us who do speak English act like we dont and just give them blank looks, i cant believe they would go and bug you out in that miserable place, buncha ignorant bureaucrats
Two decades ago as a for hire engineer I had the privilege to work on a project with a retired Marine CWO5. Nicest guy you didn’t want to piss off, ever. We were working on a 10 wheel drive, 8 wheel steer, logistics short Connex hauler. The cab held three grunts and could be outfitted with a Ma-Duece in a ring turret. It was 12 hours days/7 days a week. I was one of the project leads. Our vehicle went to Aberdeen and blew the crap out of the competition and the specs. We had some very good mis-fit toys engineers. They didn’t conform to the usual company BS and ended up working for us.
The competition didn’t like losing so they called their paid for Senators and had the specs changed to meet the truck they could build. As an example the braking spec was to stop from 60mph with a full 23 ton load out in 310 feet on dry tarmac. We could do it in 256.4′ full weight and 256.8′ empty. Climb a 40″ tall wall from a dead stop, child’s play. Pause and continue on a 60% grade, no sweat. Moose test, no problem. But lets get back to the CWO5, Mr. Carlson, where ever your are, Godspeed and following winds.
Spin
BC I have followed your work for years (way before the mountie)
I agree keep it up, you deliver knowledge and humor and hope in perseverence . #1^
Good story. Fibbies must have some attitude canned and hand it out to new hires. They all think they are smarter than the average human. Like they are Einstein or something.