The Electric Shower

Tikrit Summer of 2004

by Chucky


The Army hired some Hajjis to build us three shower units. Really great! No more trooping to the shower point four miles away. We got showers right here behind the tent. We are all eagerly awaiting their completion. All of us were pitching in offering suggestions and helping carry wood and making sure our Hajji friends were well supplied with water, soda and MREs. Picture Hammid the pipe fitter and Aachlid the boss and the whole gang banging and sawing in eager anticipation of our new shower. Before they were finished I went on leave to the States for a month. And when I returned they were done! Oh Boy! I couldn’t wait to use our new shower facility. After a briefing from one of the shower vets on how to tell if there was enough water and turning on the water heater and all I was ready for my first try. There is lots of construction going on now. The unit has plenty of wood and are busy as beavers building themselves hooches. I noticed Top; the Unit First Sergeant was working on his when I entered the shower. Oh Boy oh boy oh boy. New shower just steps away from the tent. For those of you that have luxuriated in simply stepping into your bathroom to shower, you have no idea of how spoiled you are.


Our new shower hut is made entirely of wood. There is no metal except for the galvanized piping, water heaters and the piping…and the wiring supplying 220v to the water heater elements and lights. In the shower room there is a standard shower setup as you might expect to find in the facilities of a stateside campsite. There are the expected hot and cold knobs, and a middle knob to select between spigot and shower. Then there is the shower itself, which rises from the control unit and terminates in a plastic showerhead. There are two rooms in each of the three units. One room with the actual shower in which is built a small shelf for shampoo etc. and another area of equal size for shower prep and dressing. There is a chair and a shelf also. Just like camping out. Oh and there is a latch on the door. The unit is designed with slats in the floor so the wastewater drains out on the desert floor. No biggie. Hah! Having just returned from my green marble Jacuzzi tub and shower with multiple showerheads and heat lamp in Texas the thought had occurred to me that relatively speaking, this setup was nicer.


I turned on the cold water and got a good flow going from the showerhead. I then reached through the water stream to turn on the hot water. I got a pretty good shock. As an electronic technician the biggest jolt I ever took was 115 volts at 400Hz from an aircraft radio dynamotor. That one literally knocked me across the room. Any proximity to electrical potential since then has always been with that experience fresh in my mind…for going on 30 years now. I jerked back and just stared for a moment. No! That was just a nerve twitching or something. No one told me about this. I couldn’t have gotten shocked. I reached for the knob to hit it a glancing blow to test whether it was the knob or me. It was the knob.


Yo Top! Your $%##$% shower is a torture chamber. I just got the #$%&* shocked out of me in there. Top dropped his hammer and returned a blank look.

“I got a load of girls here” he said as he walked toward the showers.

“Look”, he said. “Here is how you do it. First you move the shower head to one side so that the stream isn’t hitting you. Then you turn on the water with one hand behind your back. I’m not sure why this works but it does. Now keeping one hand behind your back you test the water being sure not to touch both the water and the pipe at the same time. When the water temp is where you want it then you reach up and re-center the shower head by manuvering it with the plastic head. Simple. And you won’t get shocked. OK?” All electronic techs and engineers quit laughing there’s more.

I would give anything to have a picture of the expression on my face. I stood there, jaw drooping in disbelief. “Where is he hiding the bodies?”, I thought.


Top walked back to his hammer mumbling something but all I caught was: :”…load of Nancy’s” I walked into the tent and announced that I am not going to use the new showers and am going to the shower point. I left with their ears ringing about how those showers were going to kill somebody. I then got a Hummer and drove to the shower point because I needed a shower bad.


Notice!

Showers closed until further notice due to lack of water.


“Oh Great. That’s just &%$##$ing great!!”, I screamed. “Welcome back to Iraq!!” At that point I realized why they don’t issue civilians rifles because I would have shot someone.


Four days Later

I’m standing in front of the middle shower, toilet kit in hand, towel draped over my shoulder, staring at the shower head through the open door. My eyes drop to the slatted floor. I see myself lying there, twitching; the water streaming from the showerhead ice cold, and I’m lying there. My naked body is giving off little jerks. My eyes are closed. My hair is standing on end. There is a burning smell. My feet are black. Scenes from “The Green Mile” are materializing. I stand there rationalizing away every pre-caution I have ever learned about electrical safety in 30 years of working in the field. I have worked on Klystrons as tall as I am, traveling wave tubes, High power HF. I’ve Masted radio antennas on tuna boats while dangling from a rope seat 100 ft up in the air. I have worked on hi-voltage power lines. Tuned 20 Megawatt search radars. I have wired up cable tv, climbing poles with spikes on my boots in close proximity to 16000 volts. I have wired up 220v electrics hot at remote sites at midnight because the electric company wouldn’t give me the keys to their junction box. All this I did wrapped in the relative safety of knowledge and caution. Now I stand at the doorway of death, filthy. Staring at that showerhead “Everyone else seems to be getting away with it”, it says. It’s talking me into grabbing hold of an unknown voltage while soaking wet. I turned around and headed back to the tent. .

Three days after that


I’m standing in front of the middle shower, toilet kit in hand., towel draped over my sholder, staring at the shower head through the open door. I am thinking: “If I’m going to smell like I’m dead I may as well be dead”

Having survived I’m going to have a tee shirt made: “Electric Shower Survivor”.


The next day Top informs me he has fixed the “zapper” and proudly points to a metal stake he has driven into the desert floor about 15 feet from the showers. I lift the stake out of the ground.

“Hey. You are ungrounding the zapper there”, Top says. I stare at him with a quizzical look.

“Huh?”, I say.

“Sure. I grounded the zapper so’s you won’t get shocked anymore. “

I replace the stake in its 6-inch hole and follow his arm pointing to a 22-gauge wire he has wound around the pole to the other end terminating in three wraps to one of the water pipes on one of the water heaters behind the shower. “

I replaced the ground with my own 18” copper stake driven into the ground next to the water heaters and hooked it up with a large double aught copper cable I salvaged.

The next shower zaps me anyway. I notice someone has covered the shower knobs with electrical tape. I leave the shower to the awaiting taunts of the Warrants and nco’s still building their hooch. “Hey Chuck! Nothing like a good zap in the morning to get a contractor going huh?” Hey Chuck! We notice that you are checking out the new combo shower/heart defibulator we installed for you”

“Yeah Yeah Thanks guys”, I respond.

“Hey Chuck! Why don’t you just use the Shower Point?”

“Because they are out of water till further notice”, says I.

“They’ve had water there for 6 days now Chuck. No one uses the zapper anymore. A person could get killed in there. “