Putting the "Wait" in Kuwait

Elements of the 1st Armored Division might not make it all the way to Iraq this year. While they wait, the troops seek "console" - ation:

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait — Ernest Gentry, a 21-year-old Texas native, was staring wide-eyed at a video game, mesmerized by the images of a futuristic gun battle designed to kill alien religious zealots trying to destroy the human race.

“Whoa. … That was violent. That was pretty cool,” Gentry, a private first class, said as he and several others watched and played the video game, called Halo, at the recreation tent here on a training base south of the Iraqi border.

The shoot-’em-up video game could be as close as Gentry gets to combat this year. As one of the nearly 3,500 troops with the Baumholder, Germany-based 1st Armored Division’s 2nd Brigade, Gentry has been here for nearly two months while his unit, originally expected to go into Iraq, has been in a holding pattern — deployed and away from home, but outside Iraq with no enemy nearby.

As a result, video games are just one of many nonmilitary activities that the soldiers here devise to help pass the time between their ongoing training drills and maintenance programs.

“Our biggest challenge here is just trying to fight boredom,” said Spc. John Holt, a 27-year-old medic, as he was waiting to watch a copy of the movie “Roadhouse” on one of the televisions at the newly expanded facility for Morale, Welfare and Recreation.

But don't misunderstand, that's what the soldiers are doing in their off-duty time (and they'd likely be doing he same in Iraq). On duty, they train and prepare.

[Lt. Col. Rich] Anderson said the commanders continue to plan for a range of possible missions that may include bringing the entire brigade or a portion of it into Iraq later this year. Formally, Army officials say the 2nd Brigade should expect to stay in Kuwait for an entire year, serving as a rapid response force for any regional crisis in Iraq.