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The steel to Erbil was there already. The new threaded roads for both Hilla, Erbil and Mosul, were under fabrication in Copenhagen; and the only thing I could not do in 45 degrees census, was to wait and do nothing. It was also into my DNA. Long days at Razazh lake, while we were waiting at the new roads to Hilla, was not even a temptation.
Action! Let us move the circus op Nord; at least cooler up there.
This time I do not involve anybody in my decision, evening my director and our branch manager in Baghdad. I do not want any interfering with my choice. You are on your on Andersen! Yes, and now I take the taking at face value.
The truck drivers were control of the management team at Diwaniya, and they get an order to respond to my request. A request delivered from one of the Indian clerks who get around our camp in Hilla. As the skit-unit was loaded, I instruct the drivers very carefully to meet me in the early morning the next day outside Mosul by the planning described earlier.
At dawn, I get them in the right line for unloading on Erbil Silo area, lead them over Al-Hurriya bridge and speed up my car and reached the Silo managers offices in Erbil a half an hour before my trucks and our crane arrived. Everything as I carefully have planet earlier when I was in Diwaniya.
Some of the truck drivers were mumbled about the tight knot I tied at them, but they soon realised hove bat it could have gone, if they have arrived in defuse order and not perpendicular on the silo gate, with was to narrow.
For those PKK members who were up early in the morning, it must have been something of a view as six yellow truck loaded with white skit-unit cross through their backyard.
It was certainly not a discreet arrival to Kurdistan.
The skit unit is unloaded and placed in accordance to the camp plan.
>>Yes! It is cold up here in the early morning.<<
>>If you freezing then push harder. If you're closed is to thin? Work harder!<<
I can hear Kurt shut off them with mood. He was the perfect choice for this little job as a supervisor.
Azis in the blue jacket and the blue headband
Les than an hour after we arrived in Erbil our camp was in place. The water was connected, the coffee was on, and one of Pakistani was on a hunt for a chicken in downtown Erbil; and no further work that day.
Finally, we had become a team. Silo Brackets Offices was spinning as machinery in my spirit, and all were benefits from it.
Even Azis began to understand what it was I was doing. He started to call me "Chief"!
The picture I used here is actually not from Erbil but from our Mosul camp, but the camp in Erbil was organised in the same way. I have no similar picture from Erbil.
This picture said it all. We laughed at each other; we made jokes about the differences in our dress. Arzis is trying to show Kurt something, and the rest of team is smiling, probably because of Arzis tel them on a story on Pakistanis and another to Kurt in English.
Kurt has taken off his uppers in the heat, and the Pakistanis never do. It could alså be the cause of their indulgent smile.
Azis began to dress in between them and us, as he has kept his undershirt on.
We had become what I had hoped for.
I will vent back to the Kurdish boy on his bicycle later.
An accident that never happened:
We had done it four times in Hilla without problems. In-loaded the 800 kg heavy half-beams into the gallery from two open hatches in the gable at the silo complex.
And now we have to do again without considerations of how.
As in Hilla, I put my self in charge with all critical operations, as my director and branch manager expected it. To in-load, those half-beams was one of the vital activities, because of the particular technique we used when the crane should share the load on the gallery floor 36 m up in the air.
The first part of the operation was simple.
A plate-claw on a 40 m rope placed on the upper flange set before the crane began to hoist it up from the ground. All Pakistanis were ordered to line up four meters from one off the open hatches, and all them should grab of the rope. It was a simple order, and on a line with the rope in their hands, both Kurt and I knew where we have them.
They have been carefully instructed to pull the rope to a side and keep it free of there legs as they figure the trough with the crane lift.Kurt focus was on the Pakistanis, and their distance to the open hatches and my attention was on the crane driver and the position of the beam over the ground. I was standing in the other hatch with my head out into the free space.
Then the critical part.
When the beam reaches the level of the floor, they ordered put forces on the rope and drag the beam into the open hatch while I signal to the crane driver to follow them. His part was to let the beam go downwards slowly. As soon as the centre of gravity were in over the edge of the gallery floor, it was laying stable on the floor as the only support, and we could release the crane. From here, it was poor Pakistani manpower to drag it on scattered to its position in the centre building.
None of old that need the Pakistanis to now. They should only stay in there position and follow orders with was translated to them by Azis.
They put weight on the rope and drag it against them, there on their position four meters from the open hatch. Suddenly I so the beam tip backwards. I looked at the crane driver who stuck out with his hands. I shouted to his support on the ground; >> IT COMES DOWN,<< and I continued yelling so I was sure that Kurt could hear me,>> LET IT GO, LET IT GO.<<
Then, I shift focus to Pakistanis. My big sturdy workhorse has twisted the rope around his left arm and try to prevent it fails down, and the rest of them followed him, while they were draught over the floor against the open hatch.
I jump in front of, between him and the open hatch, where the distance was down to two meters. I hammered my knuckles into his left arm, while I shouted,>> LET IT GO, LET IT GO<<.I notice that blood and flesh was on the rope as it cut it way into his arm. Azis was dancing ballet around us, as he does what he could to let them understand, that they should release all. Kurt gets in "melee" with the line of rope holders behind him, while he repeated my order and continued, >>kip your legs free of the heap! kip your legs free of the heap<<, and >>drop the rope! drop the rope<<. They were in a panic and did not listen, and some of them were dancing around in a heap of 40 meters of free rope lying on the floor, while they still try to prevent the unprevented.
He was wild in his eyes and a few seconds I was terrified, that he will drag me out in open space with his free arm. If he realised that he could not fly, or he at least understood my reaction I never find out, but in the end, we managed to get them to released the rope and stepped aside from the heap on the floor. We were then down one meter away from the open hatch.
It was the breaker at the drum on the crane. The beam was accelerated slowly against the ground as fast it could drag the wire of the drum. Have it been a free fall in the gravity, we have been drag out through the hatch.
Kurt and I were in shock over there reaction and during a couple of hours after, we were discussing if we were lucky to continue with them.
I let Azis tell them some truths. We were on the level where I have not a word for it and the experience was never reported.
Andersen is gone:
How the secretive could stay so long, I have no idea. Maybe because the Indians clerk and the administrations in Diwaniya did not visit headquarter in Bagdad regularly, but as I was told later, it was my branch manager who discovered that we were gone.
He had a meeting in Diwaniya, rightly in the second week of September and lay his way around Hilla to said hello. Nobody in the Silo area, then to the camp, but it was not there. In Diwaniya they told him, that Andersen moved his camp to Erbil for more than a month ago.
That fact brought my director out into a car, probably with an Iraqi lawyer and up Nord in a hurry.
Of the minute of the last meeting in Hilla dated 28.July we were in place with the longitude beams in the first week of August, so I must have left Hilla there. The next minute of a meeting I have is my director and me, and it is dated 22.september and held in Erbil, so I conclude that my branch manager was not participating.
As Copenhagen learned that I have moved to Erbil without finish the erection on Hilla, the telefax was heating up.
>>How will he change bolt without a crane on cross beam already hanging there<<?
>>How will he erect the last cross beam without a crane who will not be available to him at the time<<?
>>And there is no camp there for accommodation<<?
The reader of this story will know how, but the planning department home in Copenhagen never figured it out. It becomes the telefax they should not have sent!
It took us less than two working days.
Change the bolt on the hanging beam took four hours on the first day and then back to Diwaniya. Erect the last beam took a working day by hand power by implementing my original plan. We have prepared it as we placed the cross beam in position under the bridge as we left to Erbil in the first place. With the last crossbeam in place, we continued directly back to Erbil.
Two working days and accommodation for one night and all the necessary equipment and workforce transported in our Pickup.
>>And Andersen, get it up hanging there, will you? How difficult can it be<<!
The last attempt to sabotage Silo Brackets Offices:
All the new threaded rods arrived as scheduled from Copenhagen.
Nothing could impossible bring us in a delay here up in Erbil in the farthest possible distance from Diwaniya and others, who promise to supply us but never did.
I should soon become wiser.
Kurt called me; He could not get the nuts on the new threaded roads. What! I was surprised. As we are studying, threads we could visibly see, that the pitch in the nuts was different from those pitches they have cut the new thread.They were clever. They hit me on details I possibly could not control.
Now it was not for fun; it was not a deleterious attempt to tease us with something we could not compensate for, it was sabotage that harmed the whole company. At that moment I request that I decided to play their game. Those who did that had a secret that they could not talk about, without exposing them self.
I decided to "do something about it" without telling nobody how I come around it. And those guys who have done that were not able to ask, how in the name of heaven we figured to compensated for the sabotage attempt.
My director was also playing a game with them at (HO)-Copenhagen as he in the last minute of a meeting in Erbil, heel at 1.december 1982 notes, >>that the new road was with unusable threads and he now requests reimbursement<<! That all. Not a single word of how we compensate for their attempt to lay us down and I can not request that he never ask me. "What he did not know could he not be blamed".
How we got hands on a manually operated thread cutter, is out of my memories, and I have no notes ore invoice on me to refresh my memory. Maybe Azis found one in Erbil we rented or bought. But I am clear, about what I decided to do. I left my strong workhorse to raise all thread up, so they matched the pitch in the nuts.
This was a significant drop in the overall capacity of the collection.
If you pull apart a thread/nut assembly in the laboratories, you will discover that it will break in the shaft and not in thread/nuts part. It is all laid down in the international standards and in that way is the height of nuts is designed. If you cut new pitch in old threads, you cut steel material away and weaken the assembly.
The assembly should be prestressed to 66 KN by the new torque wrench. It corresponded to the gallery's weight. The dimension of the assembly calculated with a theoretical load on the bridge deck at 5 KN/m^2. There was no problem to get the torque wrench to click the preload as requested without tearing the threads, but the theoretical load capacity on the deck was no longer 5 KN/m^2.
If they have a safety factor in-calculated on the load, I have to eat it up by my decision.
We finished at 1.december 1982 and moved our camp to Mosul at 5.december.
There was never anyone who asked me the question to a thousand dollars, >>how do you solve that problem<< ? Neither in Iraq nor in Copenhagen when I came home, and until this day, I have never told anybody.
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