Ben Brody’s Photo Blog

A group of majors and sergeants, standing in a circle outside our leaky, freezing, muddy tents, discussing how to better our quality of life.  There are five portapotties for nine hundred of us, one says.  We’re on city power, so we won’t have electricity during the afternoon heat, another chimes in.  This is total bullshit, the attending brigadier general says, we’re not living like this.

The crunch of an roadside bomb on the other side of the huge base wall rips through the relative quiet.  The meeting continues unabated.  Hollow pops from AK-47s erupt from the same direction.  In my mind I can hear the fat rounds pinging off the vehicles in the stricken convoy.  The meeting shifts quietly to a discussion on the procedures for setting up email accounts.  Heavy machine guns roar to life, and the AK-47 fire stops.  I have to attend a class tomorrow to learn about the secure email servers.  Sirens wail in the distance, and helicopters race  south over our heads.  The meeting adjourns.

The sun is getting low, and I’ve got to get to dinner before the crowds.  There are still a few pops to the south, and a column of black smoke in the sky.  No one talks about it.  After my email class, I will sit in on a briefing.  Sir, complex IED attack south of the FOB, one US KIA, two US WIA, 6 AIF KIA.  Next slide.

It’s that magical time of year again, when the Fightin’ 3rd squeezes into its well-worn armor, oils its guns and roars off to its home away from home, the Jewel of the Tigris - Baghdad.

Notice was short for this one, given the requirements of the troop surge.  I’ve been dashing about trying to get everything taken care of while also committing 14 hours a day learning my new job.  What is this new job, you ask?  I’m trying to figure that out, but the explanatory PowerPoint slides send my mind into a shrieking tailspin.

The surge is resulting in a lot of corners being cut - but I suppose Rumsfeld would say, “You go to war with the training you’ve got.”  I’m certainly capable of taking care of myself, but I’ll say this - if I were new to this fight, I’d be very confused as to what exactly I should do if, say, someone tried to explode me or people near me.

So the muddiness that has defined our perception of this war will only become muddier, but I hope I will still be able to provide my friends with some insight into the nuts and bolts of urban combat and using the lives of Arabs as bargaining chips in a game of energy-policy brinksmanship.

Sunday evening I locked up the great swamp mansion and left the key under the mat for the next renter in a long string of twisted miscreants.  Took down my tattered 13-star Betsy Ross flag and attached it to my sunroof, cranked the Bruce Springsteen and tore off into the sunset on dusty red clay roads.  It sounds cliche, I know, but it felt Right.  Drove to the VFW and dropped the only flag I’ve ever flown into their box for worn out standards.  Headed for sushi in Savannah, and a motel bed.

People ask me how long it takes to get here.  I have no idea.  12 hours?  20 hours?  8 hours?  We took off around 1600 Monday, stopped in Iceland, then Germany, then hit Kuwait at 0100 Wednesday, local time.  OK, it’s not 8 hours.  But it’s very indeterminate.

Sitting on the plane, consciously ignoring some terrible Robin Williams movie, it was unnerving to realize that I hadn’t thought much about this deployment at all.  The past six weeks, in order to function, any free moment had to be spent sleeping.  But travelling on a large aircraft flying over a dark ocean has a way of leaving you alone with those thoughts that sleep alone will not reconcile.

Everyone on the plane had been to Iraq at least once, many twice, a few three times.  After a few hours, headphones came off and books were set down as the grim reality of the known settled over our group.  All the individuality and insensibility that we had in the states started to melt away.  Already the members of my group are beginning to speak amongst themselves without words, the unique mark of veterans of a fight against an invisible enemy.

Well, I’ve found the old routines are surprisingly easy to fall back into, and the fantastic Kuwaiti yogurt I had totally forgotten about is fresh on my lips.  There is a dust storm today, a merciful respite from the heat, which will be completely out of control by the end of April.

The march north begins very soon.