BenThere.com in Kuwait
by special arrangement with the Mal James Experience

Greetings one and all A somewhat eventful and frantic week here, as the US Army war machine trains for the somewhat inevitable - but time to be decided in Iraq. Let me preface this by saying I spent three days living in the desert this week filming the 3rd Infantry in Urban Warfare and desert trench warfare.

The desert is big and sandy, and when you get sick of sand you can look up at the sky, because that is all that is out there. In the day it is warm, almost casual beach t-shirt weather, but at night it drops down to close to freezing. It is cold to say the least; the last night we were on a hill - read large mound of sand here, doing liveshots of a night attack on the trenches - fantastic to watch just like a New Years Eve fireworks display but with bad attitude and lots of noise. At the end of the night I was wearing a long thermal undershirt , long t shirt , rugby jumper , windbreaker coat and then a goretex jacket on top and I was just keeping warm.

A quick reminder here - when you go into the desert in your car make sure you have a second set of car keys, the crew from ABC America lost their only set and try ringing Hertz and asking for a second set and where they ask where the car is just give them the GPS reference and say you are six miles from the Iraq border and about an 90 minutes from the closest piece of road. So a friendly motoring tip there. Luckily they found the keys.

So it has been a week of watching men rub themselves into the sand , ducking as they let off claymore mines and watching them shoot bazookas (see attached photo of yours truly with the aforementioned bazooka). One good thing is that they continue to improve the Army rations, or MRE's as they are known (Meals ready to eat.) There is nothing like Beef Strips in Teriyaki Sauce or a Jambalaya whilst standing in the middle of nowhere.

The Humvee is best described as a beast to drive - photos next week. Anything that is 2.1m (7ft) wide and weighs about the same as a Mack truck is not going to get high marks for handling. But in the desert it just lumbers along and slowly beats you to death. Lets see what next week holds - hopefully peace.

Cheers, Mal

29 January 2003

Greetings One and all - and a happy Australia Day to everyone - and why the Americans insist on swearing in their President every fourth Australia Day is still beyond me.

So another week has passed. There is no war yet, and every pundit around the world is again refering to Nostradamus and looking into their Hello Kitty 2003 appointment books to see what date this will all happen. France and Germany have been proclaimed as leading the "Axis of Weasel's" because they do not want to support the War unless there is some proof - which to most people is quite rational and sane.

Now in a country like Kuwait where a litre of water costs twice as much as a litre of petrol, you would expect that petrol products would be available at the blink of an eye, and every corner 7-11 store would have a pump direct to an oil well out the back. The simple task of filling your car would be effortless.

Kuwait Motoring Tip #2 (following last weeks about having spare keys in the desert):

Do not, and I repeat that for the ocaasional visitor to Kuwait, do not wait until Friday to fill your car with petrol. Of course Murphy's law will dictate that you arrive just before Friday Lunch Prayers. Since you do not know what time they will be, remember that prayers will always begin two minutes before you arrive at the petrol station.

Now immediately every local will apologise for forgetting that this is the time for prayers and politely say that it will only be twenty minutes at the most, as the mosque is just next door.

Kuwaiti Motoring tip #3 - Prayers will always go a minimum of three times the stated minimum polite explanation.

So there we are in a petrol line that finally extended more than a kilometre down the road by the end of the hour. Waiting for petrol in a country that has nothing else to sell but petrol products.

Till next week

Mal

Me and the Bazooka - a definite winner going thru airport customs	The Lizard - the only local we found in the whole desert apart from two mice	Fireworks at night - tracer rounds cut thru the cold night air