To build roads, one needs asphalt. To make asphalt, one needs gravel. Sometimes getting gravel for engineering projects at Anaconda-Balad-Balad Air Base seemed as primitive as the cartoon celebrity, Fred Flinstone, operating a bronco crane at Bedrock’s Slate Rock and Gravel Company.
After eighteen years in the Air Force, Lt. Col. Greg Rosenmerkel was used to having some discretionary funding authority. The United States military process in Iraq was very different. No matter your rank, all expenditures went all the way to the “corps” for approval.
“One of our challenges has been getting construction work estimated, bid, and completed in an incredibly volatile market. In the past few weeks we’ve seen costs for gravel range between $200 and $400 per ton. For those of you that don’t buy much bulk rock that’s about a factor of ×10+ off market rates in the states, which makes it hard to come close on estimates when it takes forty-five days for work to get funded,” Rosenmerkel emailed his friends.
Gravel woes went beyond paperwork pushing and market drivers. They were gravely serious.
“The story goes that this week the quarry operator was taken hostage and the family had to pay a $500,000 ransom,” Rosenmerkel wrote, adding the driver was beaten or worse. “Further, a passage fee must be paid to the village sheiks to use the roads, so in an industry where profit margins are generally around 3 percent, there ain’t much left.”
Getting gravel delivered also created security problems, which slowed the process. Because a truckload of gravel is a great place to hide a bomb, and the U.S. military try to give work to local contractors and suppliers, and getting material on base is quite an operation. First, the local contractors line up at the gate, often as far as the eye can see. One by one, they come in and dump their load for dirty ops where the material is screened. Once that’s done, it’s loaded into other trucks that are permitted on base as clean ops. Camping overnight in a line is something Americans do for concert tickets, not paychecks. Not so in Iraq. If their gravel truck didn’t go through dirty ops early enough to ensure they would be out by 1700 hours, the Iraqi drivers would line outside the gate and camp overnight.
“It’s a good reminder of the blessing of having regular work hours as most Americans do,” Rosenmerkel concluded.
It’s also a good reminder to pray for those in need.
Thank you for reminding me of the blessings you have given America. I pray that the Iraqis will soon overcome the challenges they face just to get a paycheck.
“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” (Psalm 40:2)