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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Herding camels easier than herding cats, or sheep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Buehring, Kuwait — If this Army gig doesn’t work out for Sgt. Guillermo Thorne, he’s got a future in camel wrangling.
Thorne, 23, of Duluth, was driving a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi to a remote desert firing range Sunday evening when he noticed a herd of about 50 “ships of the desert” moving toward the place where machine gunners from Alabama Army National Guard’s 167th Infantry Regiment were about to erupt in a sunset target practice.
“Don’t get too close,” warned Maj. Matthew Saxton, 38, of Cedartown, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. “Those (camels) can be pretty ornery.”
Thorne put the pedal to the metal, and the baby SUV kicked up a dusty rooster tail as he maneuvered to cut the camels off, then shepherded them out of danger.
The brown and tan, two-humped camels put their heads down and trotted away, and Thorne gleefully followed. As he began to overtake them, however, one of the larger animals slowed down, raised his long neck and gave the car a disdainful glare.
“You better back off,” said Saxton, operations officer for the 108th Armor Regiment. Saxton had warned about the chiggers, ticks, lice and other bloodsuckers known to attach themselves to camels.
“That is, unless you want to clean up a bunch of nasty camel spit off the windshield,” Saxton added.
Thorne complied. But minutes later he came upon a herd of about 100 sheep.
Unlike the camels, which went in a fairly straight line, the sheep darted one way, then another, as Thorne sought to herd them with the car.
Finally, he used a trick any Border Collie would envy. He honked the horn. It wasn’t much of a blast, hardly enough to get an Atlanta driver’s attention. But the sheep seemed impressed and quickly cleared the area.
Bedouins clear desert of used shell casings
The herds are owned and managed by nomadic Bedouins who reside in and among an eclectic mix of vehicles that travel the desert.
There are trucks, trailers and even a 1972 Chevy Impala crusing the vast area that surrounds Camp Buehring. They say the nomads gather at firing ranges to collect expended brass shell casings — and there are no shortage of shells to collect.
The soldiers of Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team have fired tens of thousands of rounds in recent days as they calibrate weapons ranging from carbines and machine guns to tanks and artillery.
What do the Bedouins do with the brass?
They pound it and shape it into jewelry and art forms to sell in shops. From time to time the base PX, a sort of general store, even sells their handiwork.
After the Alabama infantry unit finished its firing, a Bedouin man in loose-fitting white clothes and a red scarf paced the beachlike sand where the soldiers had been blasting away at paper silhouettes. He gathered up hundreds of casings expelled from M-16 rifles and SAW machine guns and put them in the upturned tail of his long shirt.
He smiled at the soldiers and waved amicably. Then he walked to a small, dark donkey tethered nearby. He poured the items into a saddlebags that hung nearly to the desert floor, and led it off into the night.
Iraq is a four-letter word around these parts
The word “Iraq” is seldom heard around here. Soldiers speak euphamistically about “going north” or “crossing the berm,” but Iraq isn’t part of the everyday vocabulary.
