After completing 2 months of Army pre-deployment training at Ft. Sill, OK, I headed to the other side of the world to work as a psychiatrist (and also work on my tan). As I never deployed previously, I had no idea what to expect about traveling to a warzone. The first lesson I learned was that there were no direct flights to Iraq (shocking, isn’t it?). The second lesson was that a round trip ticket was not booked for me, i.e., there was no guarantee that I was going to return home. Awesome.

I was full of glee when I saw that my flight to Qatar was on a civilian DC-10 complete with flight attendants, tray tables, reclining seat backs, and lavatories. However, that spark of euphoria was quickly extinguished. The plane’s air conditioner blew a balmy breeze throughout the cabin for the entire flight. I think this was the Air Force’s crude attempt to get us acclimated to the desert heat before we even arrived.

As the cherry to this ice cream suck, the flight attendant got on the intercom as the plane was landing and said “Welcome to Qatar … the local time is 3:30 A.M. and the temperature is 104 °F. We would like to thank you for your business. Enjoy your stay in Qatar or wherever your final destination may be. We hope to see you in the future if you make it for a return trip. Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival and cross-check.”

After a brief stay in Qatar (highlighted by my consumption of three beers in a 24-h period since it would be the last time that I could drink for a while), we left for Kuwait. I was in Kuwait until I could fly to Iraq. Due to the diversion to Qatar, we didn’t have to complete further Army deployment training in the blazing tandoori oven that is the Kuwaiti desert. We were supposed to have left for Iraq 3 days ago, but we kept getting bumped. In the warzone, your ability to get on a flight was determined by how essential your mission was. I guess mental health was not important, especially when one of the missions that bumped us was rumored to have delivered toilet paper downrange. Of course, toilet paper is essential as a wiped ass is appreciated by everyone around you.

While we awaited a flight out of Kuwait, I wondered why I was doing this. I joined the Air Force for pragmatic reasons because the military would pay for my medical school education. 9/11 occurred in the second year of my psychiatry residency. Thus, I knew it was not a matter of if I would be deployed, but rather when I would be deployed.

I had no problems with deploying. Unfortunately the gods must have been playing a game of “Can you top this?” My father unexpectedly died 4 months prior to my lottery number being selected for an all-expenses paid trip to the battlefield. My mother was still grieving (they had been married for 38 years). Knowing the risks of deploying (e.g., being killed) and given that I was leaving my mother alone during her time of need, I asked those in leadership positions to push back my deployment tasking to the next cycle given the circumstances.

Sadly, no one gave a damn and I deployed at the appointed time. That was my first realization that the military’s emphasis on “family first” was a nothing more than lip service. Despite this bitterness, I deployed … mostly because a Uniformed Code of Criminal Justice (UCMJ) proceeding was not on my bucket list.

Once I completed that trip down memory lane, I returned to the task at hand. The Kuwaiti base was not as good as the Qatari base in many aspects (e.g., no local vendors selling cheap rugs or giving camelback rides were found on the Kuwaiti base). Even worse, you did not get a beer ration card in Kuwait. Although real beer was not available, you could purchase “near beer” at $1.50 a bottle if you felt desperate. “Near beer” looked like real beer but had no alcohol in it. Not wanting to make a rash conclusion, I shelled out $1.50 and tried this “near beer.” After I carefully examined my taste buds, I reached the conclusion that “near beer” was actually closer to crap than it was to real beer. It tasted horrible, but it did wonders for my jet-lagged digestive system.

Having been in Kuwait for a few days, I got bored and found humor in the most mundane things. Take urination, for example. Over each urinal, the military posted a urine color grid by which to monitor hydration status. Clear meant “excellent.” Darkening shades of yellow meant you were one, two, or three quarts low. Brown, red, or black … seek medical attention. As I used the latrine one day, I met an Army sergeant who had his own interpretation of the urine color grid. He told me “If you see all the colors of the Lucky Charms rainbow when the sunlight hits your stream, you are doing good.” That’s probably the best piece of advice that I got since being there. Using his method, I was behind the power curve since my arrival because all I got were yellow moons. I started to drink more water after that encounter .

My jaunt around the Middle East eventually landed me in Mesopotamia (i.e., Iraq) at Contingency Operations Base (COB) Adder . After playing an Army grunt for the past 2 months, I found being at war quite soothing and relaxing. Before I get into my life there, it really pleased me to know that so many of my friends back home paid closer attention to their hydration status. I thank them for sharing their experiences urinating, suggesting new techniques to measure hydration status, and providing thoughtful analyses on the different colors of urine they produced.

It gave my Iraqi excursion more meaning to know that, as a result of me being there, people built happier lives through hydration. Meanwhile I consumed water as if it was going out of style. The downside to my near continuous water ingestion was that I peed about every 30 min. My coworkers were convinced that I had an overactive bladder condition and/or a raging urinary tract infection.

It was a very unusual feeling when I finally stepped off of the plane and realized that I was in Iraq. The landscape was littered with rocks, sand, and dirt stretching to the horizon. This created a mosaic of every shade of brown and gray imaginable. As the outgoing psychiatrist eloquently stated, “It’s as if God had used all of the pretty colors for the rest of the world and rushed through Iraq with the crap that was left over.”

COB Adder was split into two parts (similar to post WWII Berlin): an Air Force side and an Army side. I lived on the Air Force side and worked on the Army side. I nearly soiled myself when I saw my living quarters. I lived in a trailer and had my own room with a full-size bed, a bathroom, and a television. It was actually better than my apartment. All the officers received similar living arrangements.

The poor enlisted guys shared tents and bathrooms. Needless to say, they were a smidge bitter. Their acrimony manifested itself as snide comments veiled as funny quips. “Hey Major Joshi, did they forget to fluff your pillows last night?” “Hey Dr. J, were you disappointed that the mini bar wasn’t stocked?” “Oh Dr. J, were you upset that the jazz quartet lullaby ensemble had to cancel?” My standard retort was “No, those things don’t upset me. What upsets me is that I have to ring a bell for my attendants to come wipe my ass. I mean, really, I shouldn’t have to ring a bell.” Only in Iraq was living in a trailer considered bourgeois .

I had been there for about 45 days and I had been having a great time in Iraq. If by “I had been having a great time” you meant “This” and by “in Iraq” you meant “sucks.” Our mental health clinic occupied the second floor of an old building. In fact, our entire base was an old Iraqi air base. The structures were made from mud, straw, and something called “concrete.” They clearly fell below known building code standards.

If the mortars didn’t get me, the shoddy construction would have. The steps leading to our offices were the most interesting that I had ever encountered. Each step was a different height ranging from 6 in. to 14 ft. In America, walking up steps is a fairly unconscious process . Your feet just know exactly how high they’re supposed to be in order to negotiate each stair. Such thinking in Iraq could have ended your life.

The rest of the building had lots of character too. For instance, there were these sinister-looking hooks in the middle of all the ceilings of the large rooms. These hooks may have been used in countless ways to torture people. I was even more convinced that my office may have been used to facilitate such a purpose during the winter months as I had no heater. My patients had to wear their cold weather gear prior to entering my office.

I didn’t expect too many referrals from them.

There was a TV in most buildings. I guessed even the torturers needed a break. AFN (Armed Forces Network ) was the only television network here. AFN was an example of state-controlled media, commonly found in communist countries. Rather than showing the latest commercials AFN bombarded us with pro-military propaganda, prohibiting us from learning about the outside world. The lack of commercials about the latest episode of Pimp My Ride atrophied the brain cells that hadn’t already been destroyed by alcohol, which resulted in a precipitous drop in IQ by about two points a week.

Since the TV spewed worthless rubbish and the internet was excruciatingly slow, where did one turn to get the latest current events? The answer was right outside most buildings: Port-a-Potties. Tormentors of my time at Ft. Sill, those much maligned and often ridiculed Port-a-Potties served as the bastions of free speech. If you ever wanted to get a sense of the issues that occupied the cortical space of the community, you needed to look no further than the plastic latrines.

Stepping into these synthetic commodes created a sense of nostalgia. In between the latest Paris fashions and war commentaries, there were exquisitely detailed anatomical drawings of the female and male mammillary and reproductive systems; veiled references about people’s mothers engaging in the world’s oldest profession; plethoric aphorisms bespeaking the assorted and impressive accomplishments of Chuck Norris; and introspective, eloquent discourses on each military branch’s inferiority. Many were appalled by these literary monstrosities … I petitioned for their designation as national landmarks.