Posted on 12/12/2005 7:32:57 AM PST by Valin
EDITORS NOTE: AP writer Ryan Lenz is embedded with the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq and will be filing periodic reports on life in that unit.
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SUNDAY, Dec. 11, 5:15 p.m. local.
BEIJI, Iraq.
Going outside the wire. It's a slang expression for leaving the security of a military base in Iraq to travel on highways pocked with holes from roadside explosions.
Silence runs deep during that moment soldiers cross the barrier lined with concertina wire and guard posts. At first their silence struck me as boredom, which sometimes it surely is if nothing happens.
But after several patrols into the villages around Beiji, I've realized it's an uncomfortable mix of excitement, fear and the realization this could be it that keeps them silent.
Have you been blown up yet? The question is normal among soldiers in Iraq. Sgt. Marcus Barnes, a 22-year-old from Birmingham, Ala., said this when I asked him the question recently. "I ain't been blown up yet, but my time's coming."
The reality is that soldiers sometimes die in a flash of tearing metal while on patrol in Iraq. They've burned to death, been shredded by shrapnel that tears through the skins of their vehicles when a artillery shell disguised on the side of the road blows up.
A soldier told me not to worry the first time I went out with the 101st Airborne Division. "If we die, we won't be around to know about it," he said. He slapped me on the back and laughed.
A convoy rolls past a pile of sand on the side of the road; I grit my teeth. If there's a pothole in the side of the road, my stomach turns to the point of nausea.
But the truth in Barnes' statement can be comforting. The fact that IEDs blow up nearly every day across Iraq make even the shortest of drives a tense moment.
There's a saying the soldiers tell each other often. Being bored is OK. A boring day is a good day.
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SUNDAY, Dec. 11, 11:25 p.m. local.
BEIJI, Iraq.
FOB, short for forward operating base in military slang.
Fobettes, a nickname for those soldiers who never leave the fortified compound, who stand by on the radios, who make sure soldiers are fed three times a day.
There's a general disdain for fobettes among those who routinely go into the villages in Iraq armed with rifles and a vest full of ammunition. While they listen to heavy metal music and pace around their Humvees before leaving, fobettes play videogames, watch DVDs and write letters.
Life on a military compound in Iraq can be like like a college dormitory. The only thing missing is the booze.
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SATURDAY, Dec. 10, 10:35 a.m. local.
BEIJI, Iraq.
Anybody seen a power adapter around here?
My bags bulged with doohickeys and thingamajigs when I left New York, bound for parts of the world where electricity would be of paramount necessity for the slew of appliances a reporter in far off places must carry.
But once in Iraq, where buildings still show the scorched markings and broken windows from firefights and looting rampages during the invasion nearly three years ago, few things worked in the bag of goodies I brought to keep powered up.
A boxy-looking adapter that can charge a laptop from a car's cigarette lighter. A satellite phone that should work all the way into Russia. A plastic bag with power adapters for outlets across the world. (If I ever go to Asia ...) All of it partially useful at best.
The satellite phone gets poor reception, and Humvees don't have cigarette lighters. Apparently soldiers aren't supposed to smoke while on patrol - so much for the iconic image of men patrolling the battlefield with a Marlboro dangling from their lips.
It's all part of a developing trend for me in Iraq.
My doohickeys? Incompatible. My thingamajigs? Useless.
The wall jacks in the tin sheds where soldiers live have let me down again and again. Outlets are mixed between 110 and 220 volts, and you never know what you're going to get when you plug something in hoping for that charging light to flash.
There are ways around the power dilemma, though. Somewhere there's an outlet that works, the problem is finding one set up with the proper adapters.
I've begged and borrowed exotic contraptions to keep going, and have come to one solid realization: Electricity is like cash in the desert.
Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it. And I've found myself willing to trade in all I have to get it.
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THURSDAY, Dec. 8, 5:20 a.m. local.
BEIJI, Iraq.
The darkness. It struck me first about this place even through the flames from gas flares at an oil refinery on the horizon that dazzle the sky outside Beiji in a burst of orange.
The darkness penetrates everything at Forward Operating Base Summerall, where the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade has deployed. I'm told you get used to it, but my eyes haven't adjusted yet.
Gunfire broke the early morning silence just a moment ago. Before that, loudspeakers just outside the camp's wires bellowed a call to prayer. Soldiers working in the largely Sunni Salah ad Din province say they can set watches by it.
It took an overwhelming five days after leaving New York to arrive here. Two nights in a Kuwait City hotel room, waiting for transportation that never came. Two nights on a stained nylon cot at the Convention Center in downtown Baghdad, waiting again.
Traveling through Iraq has proven to be a troublesome nightmare. Heliports jam with lines that form at dawn with soldiers eager for any available space on a Blackhawk. Flights get scrapped because of mission priority.
It takes some finagling to move anywhere.
One Blackhawk crew mistakenly left me stranded about 15 miles outside Baghdad at Camp Taji, a former Iraqi airfield where an aviation brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division flew Apache helicopters. (My screams of I-Z, short for International Zone, must have sounded too much like Ta-ji through the din.)
The soldiers were getting ready to return home in about a month, and many already were wearing red and white Santa Claus caps. They ran through hallways of the post's buildings, laughing and skipping. They were going home soon. It was understandable.
I spent six hours trying to arrange a flight out with a National Guard sergeant from Texas stationed at Camp Taji who wanted instead to tell me about the videos and animated cartoons he makes in his free time.
"Sergeant, I'd love to see your cartoons, but can you help me get to Baghdad?" I pleaded. He found me a flight leaving after dark, but insisted I watch some of his films while waiting. He sent me away with two DVDs, films of the soldiers he made.
Moving by helicopter is necessary. The threat of roadside bombings before the parliamentary elections on Dec. 15 has made traveling by Humvee too dangerous.
I finally arrived with the soldiers from the 101st around midnight a day ago. More than a hundred hours in transit had left me exhausted when the Chinook finally landed, dropping a dozen or more soldiers out.
I fell asleep on a cot again, this time in a motor pool, choking on the smell of grease and diesel fuel.
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