A different kind of holiday tour for Culpeper’s Chavez

While her husband held down the fort at home in Culpeper, participating in Saturday’s holiday house tour, Felecia Chavez settled into a five-month tour with the Red Cross in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq.

Former outreach coordinator for the Culpeper and Madison Red Cross, Chavez arrived at Joint Base Balad last month as part of a four-person team facilitating emergency communications back home for U.S. troops. The U.S. Air Force base is headquarters of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, the most forward-deployed combat wing in Operation Iraqi Freedom; the base is located in Balad, about 42 miles north of Baghdad.

In her latest dispatch to the Star-Exponent, Chavez, who has served with the Red Cross for 25 years, shared what life is like around base.

She works through the night, about 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Iraqi time — when “message traffic is the heaviest.” That’s because Iraq is nine hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, “so when it’s night time here it’s daytime back in the States,” Chavez said.

Her accommodations consist of one 10-foot-by-10-foot room enclosed in a three-person “CHU,” or containment housing unit, “divided by very thin walls.” Chavez compared the structure to a trailer.

Each room has its own door and window, she said, noting there are about 100 CHUs per “pod.” In turn, each pod is surrounded by “T-walls,” that is, free-standing concrete dividers that are partially buried and in place for protection in case of a mortar attack.

“Bathrooms and showers are housed exactly 456 steps from my room,” she said.

It’s the Red Cross’ 20th deployment to Joint Base Balad, Chavez said, noting that new teams move into the rooms as departing teams leave. Inevitably, things get left behind, like small refrigerators, coffee makers or free-standing closets.

Their beds sit “very high off the floor,” Chavez said, mentioning, “You never know about creepy crawly things.” Her room also has a desk, made of two-by-two boards, and a folding metal chair.

Joint Base Balad features three dining facilities, where food is abundant, but “quite different sometimes,” Chavez said, naming lots of fresh fruits and vegetables among menu items. The mess hall stays open 24/7, she said, and there is constant movement regardless of the hour.

The base comprises “a huge complex,” Chavez went on, to include a PX/BX, which she said is like Target or Wal-Mart on a smaller scale.

“Our office is within walking distance to just about everything,” she said. “Of course, no one is allowed outside the gates for obvious reasons.”

Back in Culpeper this weekend, Felecia’s husband, Keith Price, opened their West Street home for the Holiday Home Tour. It snowed all day. Price is a Gulf War veteran retired from the U.S. Army.

Reports from the field in Balad, Iraq
Felecia Chavez, former Red Cross outreach
coordinator for Culpeper and Madison counties, is a few weeks into a five-month tour at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, where she is facilitating emergency communications back home for American troops. Chavez, who lives in Culpeper, has agreed to send occasional dispatches regarding her service in the Middle East. This is her second report.