BOOKS

When we arrived at the hotel, there was mass panic, as could have  been expected. The tiny elevators in the hotel were already jammed, so I  ran up six flights of stairs to get to my room. The ex-military guys  had packed a lot lighter than me and were already heading downstairs,  and I struggled with two overseas suitcases, a guitar, a stereo, and  other miscellaneous items. It was every man for himself. As I was  waiting for the tiny elevator, I was thinking, I didn’t sign on for this  crap! In my naivete, I was thinking, I’m an American, how can you get  away with doing this to me? Where’s my armed escort from IIAA?

I was the last person to get out of the hotel, and as I took a quick  look around, I saw that the locals were in the street laughing and  pointing at us. I was feeling pretty helpless and burning up with rage  as I boarded the bus. As we rapidly pulled away from the hotel, I’m  thinking, I’m in bad shape, but as I looked around the bus, I was the  only civilian on the bus. The rest were Vietnam vets, and most had seen  more in a few years there than I would ever see in a lifetime. It was no  consolation to me that they were freaking out too. Joe shouted out,  “this is Bulls**t! This is worse than Vietnam, at least in Nam, I had a  gun!”

Once we were safely away from the hotel, we asked the BHI rep where  we were going. He said we were being taken to a safe and secure compound  on the edge of town called Villa 3. We pulled up to a large, walled-in  compound right on the edge of the desert. The gates were opened by  Kurdish guards, and we pulled in and unloaded from the bus. Once we got  inside, I saw that this place was quite large and had been built to  house numerous people. It had a large living room and numerous bedrooms  lined with single beds, a commercial-sized kitchen, and locker room-size  showers. Once we got in and settled down to our new reality, we all  moved into the living room area to see who was there.