August 8, 2004

Subject: Ben Hoffman’s Emails

August 8, 2004

Hi Everyone

How is everyone? Everything is going good here.

I’m currently in Camp Cedar II doing KBR … not sure what kbr stands for.

My average day starts off at 0430, we head to the motor pool and get the vehicles ready to go by 0500, once we’re done we go to the chow hall and eat. When we’re done at the chow hall we all meet where we pick up our convoy of 20 to 30 semis, caring all types of supplies. Three humvees escort the trucks from Camp Cedar II to the north border of Kuwait to a camp called Navistar. After we drop the trucks off at Navistar we wait around for the people at Navistar to get a convoy ready for us to take back. The wait for them to get another set of trucks together can be anywhere from 15 min to 3 hours. The route is 300 miles round trip down a three lane highway, we usually arrive back at Camp Cedar around 4 pm pending on which convoys you get pushed out on, and there are 7 sets of trucks that head out everyday at each location.

We do an average of 3 to 4 days of that in a row then we have one day of tower duty and one day off…. It’s a pretty slack schedule. The route can get boring and long but that is mainly due to the heat … the humvees warm up to about 150 to 200 degrees, we have fans in them but they just circulate the warm air … they are starting to equip each humvee with air conditioning so that’s a plus.

Camp Navistar is pretty nice it has a subway, PX, and other civilian convinces. The first day at Navistar I had to eat Subway … it wasn’t bad but it didn’t taste anything like back home. Camp Cedar is also very nice, the food here is amazing, every Sunday they have seafood….crab legs, lobster, etc. The PX here is the best one I have seen yet, but I avoid it as much as I can. Internet and phones are much harder to get to ... the lines are always so long… but I’ll try to get to the internet to get some of you a reply sometime. They have a really nice weight room … I haven’t used it yet but I’m just getting settled in so I should add it to my schedule soon. I did stop in there the other day but that was to weigh myself for the first time since I have been over here….I’m usually around 145 to 150 lbs in normal clothes back home, I’m currently 135 in DCU’s (which is a little heavier than normal clothes), but with the food here I should be back up to my normal weight in no time.

Donnie and I have been spending the evenings together, we usually hit the MWR tent, eat chow and play some xbox in his tent, its good to hang out with the kid, its nice to have a friendly face from back home and with Donnie, like we all know, there is never a dull moment.

The tent I’m sleeping in is set up pretty awesome, there are six of us staying in it and we all have plenty of personal room, plus the air condition is awesome. The laundry service has laundry done in 24 hour so that’s a plus. I haven’t watched many movies while I have been at Camp Cedar, but there is one that I watch that I found particularly amusing, “Fahrenheit 9/11” … I’m not sure how true it is but it is very amusing.

Anyways everything is good here and it is a nice change of pace to do something new, I’m having a lot of fun and can’t wait to see you in September.

Benny