Posted on 05/04/2003 4:13:49 AM PDT by AFPhys
First, let me explain: I don't camp, and when I did, flush toilets were always within an easy midnight walk. I subscribe to Bon Appetit and Cook's Illustrated and would never open a can of Chef Boyardee. I don't go outside without a shower and makeup. I have no military experience.
Yet, I spent the last two months in the Middle East with the Seabees of Port Hueneme-based Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4; most of the time in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We were in Baghdad before the city fell. Bullets flew over our heads. A land mine blew up a minibus next to our camp.
I ate prepackaged meals sealed in plastic called MREs for six weeks. I lived in the dirt and went two weeks at a time without showering. Often, I didn't have so much as a bucket to pee in.
Since February, I've been telling the stories of the battalion's Seabees, remarkable men and women whose resiliency, commitment and kindness will stay with me always.
This is my story.
Quick preparations
I got the assignment to go to war on a fluke. I'd been at the Ventura County Star for only four months when the reporter originally slated to be embedded with the battalion bowed out. There wasn't enough time for The Star to send me to the Department of Defense journalist training, so I had to wing it.
The battalion's chaplain, Lt. Brandon Harding, showed me how to put on a gas mask and a chemical protection suit, and walked me through the "gas chamber" to make sure my equipment worked. He explained that, if war began, there was a chance the Seabees would get near the front lines, but most likely they would stay in camp, taking small day trips to repair bridges and roads. He didn't think I needed to bring a tent.
I told my best friend I would most likely be in Kuwait during the war: "I just hope I get into Iraq afterward to cover some of the humanitarian efforts."
Colleagues asked over and over: "Are you scared?" I said, "No." Although the possibility of chemical weapons haunted me, my biggest fear was boring stories.
I got desert boots, two desert camouflage uniforms, a sleeping bag, a couple of sea bags, a computer, a satellite phone and three months worth of Clinique skin care products. I was ready to go.
The journey begins
We were scheduled to board a bus early in the morning on Saturday, March 1. The bus would take us to March Air Force Base near Riverside, where we would catch a chartered military flight to Kuwait. So I canceled my trip to Washington state to see my son's first solo horn recital that weekend.
I hadn't yet heard the Navy mantra, "Hurry up and wait."
It was three days before we actually boarded the plane. When we did, many Seabees assumed I was a poorly trained reservist. I not only wore makeup, but my tool-belt-looking thing was crooked, and my shoulder-length hair was untethered. Getting onto the bus, Seabees grabbed Meals, Ready-to-Eat for dinner, but I had no idea how to even open the thick brown plastic pouch. When we boarded the plane, I left it behind unopened.
Once aboard, the pilot asked: "Please put your weapons on the floor facing the outside of the plane." Many Seabees were already snoring when he made the announcement. After years in the military, they had perfected the art of falling asleep whenever given the chance. I, on the other hand, had never slept sitting up and spent the 33-hour plane ride completely awake.
At the first stop, Chief Deborah Faye Young worked to get me into regulation. With the loving kindness of a mother, she explained my hair should be back and above my collar. She showed me how to tuck my pants into my boots so sand fleas wouldn't bite my ankles. She bent down to hide my shoelaces in my boots so there were no untidy loose ends.
When we arrived in Kuwait, instead of being allowed to continue on with the Seabees, I was pulled out of formation and taken to the Department of Defense media center at the Kuwaiti Hilton to apply for formal clearances along with the other 500-some embeds. I was at least heartened that the public affairs officer had a hard time finding me among the enlisted.
At the Hilton, Marines gave the journalists chemical weapons protection training. They also gave us the syringes we would slam into someone's thigh if they were affected by chemical weapons and on the ground doing the "funky chicken." Several journalists decided to go home.
Learning experiences
A few days later, I was among 150 embeds, only about a half-dozen of whom were women, waiting for the buses that would take us to our units. TV reporters did standups. "Like never before, the media is going to war," said one, pointing a handheld camera at himself. Cameramen took pictures of rolling bus wheels each time the buses moved to a different parking lot. Journalists interviewed each other. It was swelteringly hot. Kuwaiti hot. I had been in the sun several hours, so I ran back into the hotel for a bottle of water.
But the store wouldn't take a $20 bill. I was flushed, faint and frustrated. A man in line behind me offered to buy the $6 bottle of water.
"You'd do the same for me," he said, telling me he was Michael Kelly of the Atlantic Monthly. After I thanked him, we talked about our embeds, wished each other good luck, good stories and safe journeys.
At the camp, I was put in the female officers' tent with a half-dozen other women. We slept on bunk beds, but the Seabees called them "racks." It was just one word out of a whole new vocabulary I learned in the first few days. The Port-a-Potties were "heads." The kitchen was a "galley." The tents, "berths."
But other than sandstorms and a false alarm over a possible gas attack, my first few weeks were lessons in the military rhythm and rhyme and reason. I've always lived life by my own timetable, but suddenly people were telling me where to go, and when to do it and to take off my "cover" (hat) when I was in the galley.
My stories were the stories of Seabees. They were simple, quiet stories that I privately called "Fluff from the Front." Getting them to my editors was my biggest frustration. I would sit in my tent and type out my story on my laptop computer. Then, I would set up my satellite phone, get a connection and try to send it by e-mail to my editors. My first few stories wouldn't send at all, ending up at The Star via military e-mail.
The computer and phone weren't connecting, said Petty Officer 1st Class Tom Wooten, the battalion's resident computer whiz. He sat in the sand with it until the connections began to occur. Still, the satellite was overloaded and I couldn't get through. I developed a habit of getting up at 2 a.m. and sending my stories then.
I made other adjustments. I stopped wearing my contact lenses: The grit of the desert seemed to get under the thin plastic. I gave up makeup. I bathed in moisturizer, but still watched the tips of my fingers crack and bleed.
One day, the chaplain asked to speak to me.
"It looks like we will be moving up just behind the front lines," he said. "You can go if you want, but you don't have to."
I asked where he would be. He said with this forward group that was part of Task Force Mike. He needed to be there to comfort anyone who was hurt or dying. I said I would go also.
The war begins
At 2:30 a.m. a few days later, a male voice shouted at the tent door. "Senior Chief Lavoie, Senior Chief Lavoie." Michelle "Shelly" Lavoie was the only woman chief in Task Force Mike. Knowing this might mean we were convoying out, I headed for the showers. By 4 a.m., I was fresh and clean and packed, although I was exhausted from a hacking cough that had afflicted about half the women in the tent.
But we didn't leave. Like the trip to Kuwait, there were several false starts.
Then on March 19 we were given an hour to get all our things on the trucks.
"Hurry up and wait," Seabees laughed or fumed. I realized, as frustrating as it was, I was no longer in control of the simplest aspect of my life: my time.
The convoy arrived at a blank spot in the desert near the border as the sky was taking on the rosy glow of morning. We passed scattered Marines rousing from the sleeping holes they'd dug in the sand. There were explosions somewhere in the distance.
"Training," most people concluded, setting up their tiny two-man tents and sleeping through the heat of the day. There were five embedded journalists on the convoy. One, Nick Oza, a Knight Ridder photographer, had a short-wave radio. He was the one who told Lavoie the war had started.
By dusk, most Seabees still did not know President Bush had announced the start of the war. That night, I was eating an MRE at the front of my tent when I saw two bright lights streak across the sky toward our camp.
I pointed and asked, "Should we be worried?"
Screams erupted all around me: "INCOMING! INCOMING!"
I ran for the bunker behind the combat operations center, but I have no night vision. I couldn't see it. I ran for another bunker, but got lost in the blackness and the shouting.
"INCOMING! INCOMING!"
Chaplain Harding called out: "Dani, this way."
I followed his voice to a big hole in the ground, tumbling 4 feet into the soft dirt, wondering how I would get out again. There were four or five others in the bunker. After we scrambled to get our chemical protection gear on we watched in amazement as the missiles sailed over our heads. More followed. It was like Fourth of July without the picnic or the celebration.
It was a cool evening, so the first few hours in the chemical protection gear were comfortable. Over the next few weeks, though, I came to hate the charcoal-lined jungle camouflage pants and jacket. Worn with the gas mask, boots and gloves, it is supposed to protect the military men and woman from chemicals like mustard gas that could harm their skin.
But no chemicals in meant no air out. Everyone wore it all day, then slept in it all night, for about a month. We sweated profusely. I developed heat rashes that itched like a thousand ants chewing on my back. Usually I wore a flak jacket and Kevlar helmet as well. It was 20 extra pounds of protection to drag around. After a few hours in it all, my back ached so badly it was hard to sleep. Many Seabees complained about the same problem, yet others wore it like gym clothes and still sprinted around our makeshift camp.
That night, I wore my boots to bed. I began using my flak jacket for my pillow and my helmet to hold my glasses. I went to sleep with my hand on my gas mask.
Tomorrow, Part 2: Covering the Seabees in Iraq
There are so many in this country who have no idea what people in the military go through, and this type of article will really serve to educate them. I also hope that they are able to convey the heroic nature of the military spouse.
Speaking as a woman, I had to laugh at her taking a 2-months supply of Clinique with her! LOL!
On a more serious note, it is obvious from this opening article of the series that she has undergone a transformation.
I also was the type of person who didn't do camping or outdoors. In order to finish my degree in geology I found it necessary to complete a summer in field camp in Montana, doing geologic mapping from the field. While not having the rigorous demands this woman went through, nor the danger, the overcoming of outdoor challenges and discomfort gave me a confidence I lacked in my personal life. So in a small, small way, I know what effect this had on her.
I would pay cash money to hear what she says to her son the first time he whines about having to do some work around the house. LOL!
The Tarheel
I am a physician who served on active duty in the USN from 1979-1987. I was involved in medical support of the operation in Grenada and in several missions in support of the USCG after disasters. Education in medical school is necessarily directed at self and the doctor-patient relationship. Involvement in a military mission challenges that emphasis and places the elements of the mission ahead of individual interests.
I can always tell when I'm working with someone in a medical setting that has military experience.
We lost a good one when we lost Michael Kelly.
Nothing to add.
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