Division Street

Burning cobras

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

He's got one about cottonmouths at the old swimming hole that will keep the children up.

Such stories breed Twain-style competition, like rattler hatchlings and jumping frogs.

So, Cpl. Dean Frame of Quartz Hill gives me a yarn to save for the campfire. We were out on the compass course in the bulrushes of "Camp Bob," the base where National Guard troops from Antelope Valley and statewide are training to go to "The Sand Box" for what may or may not be the final act of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Frame is a Desert Storm vet from 3rd Armor, the "Spearhead" division. We're puzzling over our compass and protractor, and Staff Sgt. Michael Forkin cautions us about walking in the dry grass.

"Watch out for rattlesnakes," he said. A sensible direction in the grassy hills of central California.

So, the question arises. What about snakes in Kuwait? We hear they are real monsters.

"Well, they're cobras," Frame said. With his hands, he framed a firehose thickness. "About that big around."

OK, so the snakes are impressive. Are they aggressive?

"Did you see any?" I ask. "Did you have a deadly serpent encounter?"

Cpl. Frame ponders. "Well, they were out at the trash point."

That makes sense. Trash begets rats. Rats attract reptiles.

Army camps in Vietnam, Afghanistan or any 'nam or 'stan you pick accumulate quickly the trash and detritus of thousands of troops, offal which must be dealt with daily.

"We weren't really looking for them," Frame recalls. "But you had to burn the trash. That meant you had to set the trash on fire with gasoline."

Off to do the dirty detail. As ever was, privates, corporals, specialists do the detail work that noncommissioned rank often liberates a soldier from.

"We poured the gasoline on the trash and lit it up, and out they came out of their holes. Maybe five, six, maybe 10 cobras, and they were all on fire."

He shook his head. "It snapped us back, I can tell you that."

Then he advised, "Sleep up in your cots with your boots on, and change out your socks. The camel spiders up on top of the tents you can't do anything about. They just climb up there and fall off."

Camel spiders? A bit bigger than a tarantula and a good deal more gnarly. High-speed stuff, as the troops say.

So, there's one for the kids and the campfire, old buddy. And a hell of a thought picture to take to sleep with you in the old sleeping bag. Any more, the Army calls it a "sleep system," a bag with lots more snaps and folds, so you can sleep warm or cool. Or, just damned scared of the boogering snakes.

So, now, the troops are 24 hours, more or less, away from their journey to "The Big Sand Box." The job of these National Guard troops, drawn from units across California, is to drive their monster trucks to all four points of the compass in the recently liberated and still smouldering strife-torn ground of Iraq.

The troops, like Ron Buckles and Victor De La Fuente, of Lancaster, will be gone for a while. Their mission may be to carry bullets and beans, or to carry damaged battle tanks or to carry humanitarian aid into the war-torn land. Wives like Cindy Buckles and Bobbi De La Fuente will work and worry and wait.

"There's a lot of sacrifice that goes into this," said Spc. Gil Carrillo, who is leaving behind his trucking company job and a waiting and caring family. "But I've got a lot of years in, and I've trained for something like this for years."

For these soldiers, Operation Iraqi Freedom is not ended. It is just beginning. Ducking bullets and grenades is one hazard. The boogering snakes and camel spiders are another consideration.