Keeping the war machine well oiled
McCurdy, 39, has recently completed an assignment in Iraq
as a civilian worker for Dynacorp, a contractor to
the U.S. military.
A 1988 graduate of Santa Ynez High School McCurdy
attended a technical school where he learned the trade of an automotive and
diesel repair technician. This skill took
him from the Santa Ynez Valley to the Prince William Sound in Alaska.
After spending five years with Tidewater Marine
maintaining tugboats that escorted supertankers in the area near where the
Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred, McCurdy joined Chevron working on oil tankers
as a junior ship’s engineer and sailed the Pacific from Alaska to Hawaii to the
Far East delivering crude oil.
On Sept. 11, 2001, McCurdy found himself on the island of
Kwajalein in the South Pacific working as a power plant maintenance
superintendent. Remaining there until March 2003, McCurdy found a way to serve
the military effort by joining Halliburton in Iraq as a power generation
foreman.
Responsible for 5 camps with 350 power generating units,
McCurdy had 25 expatriate Americans and 45 third-country nationals working for
him in the dangerous area around Baghdad known as the “Sunni Triangle”.
In 2005, McCurdy went to Afghanistan with Halliburton to
assist the U.S. forces there as a member of a forward firebase reconstruction
team. Later assignments moved McCurdy from the deserts of Afghanistan to the
tropics of Cuba, were he was a power plant superintendent on the military base
at Guantanamo Bay, notorious as the location where the U.S. imprisons the
people it labels as the most infamous and dangerous terrorists and illegal
combatants in a military prison.
At the March 29 barbecue, McCurdy displayed an
interesting photograph of himself surrounded by more than $58 million in cash —
money that was recovered by a military unit he was working with in Babylon
after he returned to Dynacorp, and Iraq, in
2006.
During operations, the unit stopped and searched a cement
truck that was carrying the cash. The pile of cash was put on display at his
base, and the members of the unit were allowed to take photographs of it — but
no souvenirs were allowed.
McCurdy said that the money was then used in the
reconstruction of schools and infrastructure in the area.
When asked about the possibilities of “corruption” due to
the amounts of money that is available to contractors, McCurdy said that he was
dissatisfied that a “huge” misappropriation occurred when Dynacorp
allegedly used $14.5 million for the construction of “special projects” in
Baghdad without authorization from the U.S. Department of State.
The special project, said McCurdy, turned out to be a
recreation center far away from where the majority of the troops would have the
opportunity to make use of the facilities.
After a short break visiting family in the valley,
McCurdy will be leaving again, this time for Djibouti with PAE, a division of
Lockheed Martin Company.
Located at the entrance to the Red Sea on the Gulf of
Aden, Djibouti is a small country the size of Massachusetts. At the northeastern tip of Africa, it has
long been a strategic, yet troubled, place, made up primarily of stony
desert.
The U.S. military has built a strategic base for
operations in support of worldwide anti-terror operations in this forbidding
place.
Supporting these operations is what McCurdy loves to do
best, and he wears his patriotism on his sleeve (and with a magnetic sticker on
his pick-up truck). Although he was unable to serve in the military due to a
hearing deficit, McCurdy said, “What I’m proud of doing is being able to
support our troops in the field.” Asked
what it’s like to live in places like this, McCurdy pointed out that “sometimes
you’re living in tents with a hundred other guys,” and that other times he might
be housed in a villa with swimming pool.
Of the many photographs McCurdy shared were several of
children in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The smiling faces on carts and on
dusty roads were testament to the good work that he feels is being done in
these places by the American efforts.