Posted on 04/10/2003 10:57:40 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
ITH TASK FORCE TARAWA, near Qalat Sukkar, Iraq, April 10 — In Baghdad, a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled, and a crowd cheered. Here, a dusty lug nut fell from a Humvee wheel to the sand with a mute puff, and no one said much of anything as the marine began loosening the next one.
If Baghdad is center stage of the war, this is the back lot. No happy crowds, no we-love-the-Americans chants, no roses. Just tires balder than the heads of the men changing them and used engine oil dripping to the sand, back to where it came from.
Marines tried to make their grimy hands ignore what their ears heard on the radio: the government of Saddam Hussein had fallen, and plans for rebuilding the nation were under way. On the road to this old airfield on Wednesday, a small patch of a huge place somewhere between fighting and victory, a driver removed his helmet, and was scolded.
"We need to tell the commanders to get with their marines," Lt. Col. Glenn Starnes told his officers, "and tell them the war's not over yet."
The question here, then, in this pause in the desert a couple of hundred miles from Baghdad, is: Where is it not over? Where is the fight?
Senior officers of the artillery unit here huddled over maps and awaited word from their regimental commanders. There remain several towns and small cities that allied troops bypassed and that intelligence reports now suggest may be dens of paramilitary activity. Those towns need to be secured. The artillerymen prepared their 18 howitzers for whichever place becomes the next mission, their cannons the bristles of a broom sweeping out the corners of a country.
Two marines sat around their Humvee, one writing a letter, age 32 but looking younger, the other digging into an envelope of teriyaki for breakfast, age 43 and looking older.
"Are we still in the war phase," the younger man asked, "or the peacekeeping phase?"
"We're in the standby mode," the older man, a master sergeant, replied. "Stand by to stand by."
Today was a day of maintenance. These vehicles have been ridden hard over hundreds of miles of rough terrain, most recently a few dozen miles east, to confront an Iraqi armored division. But its soldiers had already given up, leaving tanks and uniforms behind, and the marines turned around and came back here.
Just as important, today was a day of attitude maintenance.
"I call this a lull," said Col. Ron Bailey, one of the senior officers of the thousands-strong Task Force Tarawa, on a brief visit with the artillery battalion. "This is a lull." He is wary of paramilitary confrontations. "There's a potential for some combat up here," he said. "Now's the time to be on top of your game."
A few dozen yards away, a marine was on top of a game of computer solitaire. Two young corporals struggled to right a pole with a water-gorged camp shower rigged on top, their little victory in the battle against dirt.
"I don't want to go north," a marine said. "It's a waste of time."
"I like the sound of Basra," another said. "It's spitting distance from Shoup."
Camp Shoup, home base in Kuwait, will be the last stop for the marines on the way home.
Those with radios have, here in the middle of nowhere, found local music stations. One plays American hits from the 1980's, and the marines listened in the shade of the hot sun. "There's something about you, girl," the once-popular band INXS proclaimed, "that makes me sweat." A driver pulled out a disposable camera to snap a photo of passing camels, and his friends laughed. "This isn't a tour bus," one said. "Just drive."
There has been no mail for several days. Marines are running low on cigarettes, on Gatorade powder to jazz up their hot bottles of water, on precious Baby Wipes, key to at least feeling, if not exactly being, somewhat clean.
The news from Baghdad yesterday was so positive it was jarring, and led to open speculation on when they might get home. By Memorial Day? The Fourth of July? Marines allowed themselves to talk that way for the first time since the war began, only to be told to stop and get back to work.
"The marines are starting to get a false sense of security," said Gunnery Sgt. Jerry C. Blackwell, 35, of Chester, S.C. "But they ain't secure yet."
Colonel Starnes, in his orders for the day, almost added "filling out missing gear paperwork" to the list. But he cut himself short. Those forms are generally among the last tasks of a unit in the field.
"Now's not the time to start thinking about going home and relaxing," he said later. "Even though we are in a relaxation period."
He wants the men to leave this camp as alert as they were when they crossed the Iraqi border three weeks ago. "We're still at war. We're getting too comfortable with our driving. That's how somebody gets hurt."
But even he could not help himself. He is quietly thinking ahead to the trip south, which will probably take the battalion through Nasiriya, where the marines fought for a week and lost almost 20 men, one of them one of his artillerymen. He plans to stop short of the city for a prayer service on the side of the road for the man, First Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr. They will leave something there in his honor.
In the hot breeze of this dead airfield, Colonel Starnes is preparing his remarks for that day, whenever it may come.
Me thinks the author has taken a few liberties with reality. I find it hard to believe the humvee would be pressed into battle with bald tires and a leaky oil pan. And the trip from Kuwait to the present position is surely not going to produce 25000 + miles of wear on those tires unless of course they were purchased under the previous administration's "Shoddy material is the best we can do for our military."
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