Rocket Thursdays

I was settling down with a good book last night around 9 PM when I was startled by a loud explosion not too far away. I could feel the thump viscerally, like loud bass music, and the walls in my room rattled briefly, sending down a light shower of dust. Then, over the loudspeakers outside: “Incoming, incoming, incoming.” A few seconds later, the second rocket made impact, this time a bit farther away. The announcement then came for soldiers to don their body armor, for everyone to move to a hardened location, and for all nonessential movements to cease. My room is safe and secure, so I simply stayed put. After about an hour of periodic announcements about the ongoing threat level, the all clear was given. The incident was over.

For some odd reason, these recent rocket attacks seem to fall on Thursdays. I wrote in an earlier blog entry about the three soldiers who were killed in a rocket attack on the Thursday night before the Friday morning we arrived. There was another rocket attack the Thursday before last. And then the latest one last night. We’ve been speculating that, because Friday is the Muslim holy day, Thursday night might be like Saturday night to insurgents, equivalent to rowdy teenagers putting M80s in mailboxes and otherwise getting into weekend trouble.

I find these rocket attacks (or IDF, indirect fire, as it is described by the Army) to be not much more than a pesky annoyance. Last year, we experienced IDF when I was staying on bases in Wasit and Maysan, but it was a rare occurrence. Including the attack that occurred just before arriving here, this makes three events on this base alone since coming here. We’ve been told that the Iraqi Army has “rolled up” some of what the military calls “high-value targets” who are said to be responsible for these recent events, so I suppose we can take some solace from this.

I can rationalize the effect of IDF to my wakeful, conscious self and objectively conclude that such attacks represent a nominally small threat to my safety and well-being. They most assuredly do not induce fear or terror. However, the convictions of my unconscious self are less clear and firm. My sleep was fitful, almost feverish, last night, with a long dream that seemed never to reach resolution. In the dream, we were told that all civilians had to leave the base as a result of the rocket attack. I was very unhappy about a decision I believed to be drastic, unreasonable, and not at all commensurate with the nature of the attack. All of us complained to anyone who would listen that we didn’t want to leave. We were gathered to go, milling around with our bags packed, moving from one building to another, continuing to register our complaints, but never actually leaving. Perhaps my unconscious self was saying that I should get out of harms way, but this ran into conflict with my resolve to stay and my idealistic notions of trying to make some small difference here.

The bottom line is that I continue to stay safe. Job one.