thedrifter
06-29-04, 07:48 AM
Marines get it; does everyone else?
By John Balzar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2004
AL ASAD, Iraq — The temperature is "a hundred and crazy."
Here in this summer of sand, everybody is within reach of lethal weaponry but nobody has sight of a cold beer.
They sleep in rows of flimsy prefab "cans."
And listen to rock 'n' roll.
For Americans in uniform, duty in Iraq in 2004 is some of what they expected and an equal measure of what they didn't. You wouldn't be wrong to say that life on the war front is something of an argument with itself.
They suffer the scalding heat, but they also enjoy plenty of air conditioning. Some days they wolf down cold MREs (meals ready to eat) in the field; other times, they enjoy second helpings from the ice cream freezer in the chow hall. They breathe clouds of dust and filth; yet many rest on comfortable mattresses and enjoy vast libraries of movie DVDs.
Some of them perform conventional combat roles here, patrolling and hunting insurgents. Ambushes, mortar attacks, mines and roadside bombings are grim facts of daily existence. But other troops have been occupied with the unconventional tasks of delivering playground equipment for schools, providing police, medical and leadership training, and fixing water treatment plants — front-line conduits for millions of dollars that have poured into jobs and rebuilding programs.
On almost any day of the week, they will tell you two things for certain: (1) It requires superhuman effort to drink the gallons of water necessary to counter the heat, and (2) the American press and the American people misunderstand their deployment in Iraq.
Get to know them and they soften a little. This is not an ordinary war, so there is little wonder about public confusion. It can be confusing up close too.
As this week's transition to Iraqi sovereignty looms, they all agree on something else. The days are getting edgier as troops contemplate events that will determine whether they advance a step or their efforts are pushed back. About that there is no softening at all.
Typical perhaps are the Marines here in western Iraq, midway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. Here, with the infantry of the 2nd battalion, 7th Marines, Cpl. John Preston of Warsaw, Ky., stewed for a while. As homeland news reports filtered back to troops, he saw too much emphasis on Americans being attacked and killed.
He wanted to convey a broader story.
He wrote a song with his friend Lance Cpl. Nick Hoffmann of Middletown, N.Y. Hoffmann put it to pictures in a music video. Preston established his own website. The two are now battalion celebrities, and Preston is considering a contract offer from a California record company.
His acoustic-guitar rock 'n' roll ballad is called "Good Good America." It was inspired by the day he led a squad into an Iraqi town and was surrounded by 60 or so smiling schoolgirls. They chanted, "Good, good America." "That grabbed me," Preston recalled. "It was the first time here that I thought we were serving a purpose, doing good."
But his lyrics also capture the inescapable dichotomy of service here, the frustrating rub of it — because in the shadows and alleyways behind the schoolgirls, there are plenty of angry men with their faces wrapped in scarves who sing another chant and provide a different chorus to his song: "Die, die American." His video can be seen at johnpreston.us But a warning: The opening scenes are laced with the unedited profanities of pumped-up Marines in the field.
Preston's personal tug-of-war about service in Iraq is part of a larger story of military life on the battlefield, told each day in a thousand other ways. A circular conversation that one hears frequently among youthful grunts is this: Why don't the Iraqis love us for all we're doing to help? Why won't U.S. commanders turn us loose to put down the insurgents? We want to go home. We want to fight!
At almost every base, even those far forward, Marines line up to use satellite facilities to call and e-mail home. Later, they complain about the difficulty of conveying to wives and families the nature of this assignment and the conditions under which they operate. Yes, many soldiers and Marines are attacked by mortars, rockets and remote-controlled bombs. Five rockets landed in the vicinity of the Marine unit as this story was written. But they tell their families: Please understand. These hit-and-run insurgents here are lousy mortar-men — most of the time.
So what is daily life like on the battlefield?
It is, of course, an old-fashioned mix of high anxiety and tedium that is familiar to fighting troops everywhere. But there are wholly modern elements to counterinsurgent warfare now. Such as unexpected comfort, which creates its own unexpected miseries. Marines of this unit, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif., arrived here believing they would live in tents, and at first they did. But they moved, and except for protracted field operations, they now live in small cities of 8- by 20-foot sheet-metal containers, "cans," complete with individual room air conditioners, electric lights, full-size beds and whatever furniture they can scrounge.
"We never thought we'd live like this," Marines say a little sheepishly.
On the other hand, electricity is notoriously unreliable. When the cans lose power, the scorching sun quickly makes them suffocating and uninhabitable, and Marines begin yearning for tents again.
Chow time, the most important ritual to mark the passing of the time, is likewise better than expected — hot meals with typically two and sometimes three choices of standard institutional fare. Breaded veal cutlets and baked chicken were on the menu the other night, along with potatoes and potato chips. The next night there was only chili-mac and rice.
Marines chuckle self-consciously to hear themselves then grouse that there is no lettuce for the table-full of salad dressings that go unused each night.
Water, water everywhere
"Dip" has replaced cigarettes as the infantryman's favorite tobacco. The bulging lip and improvised, hand-held spittoon now rank with the jutted jaw and the M16 as symbols of the warrior.
Above all else, the single most prevalent fact of life for American troops in Iraq this summer is 1.5-liter plastic bottles of water, imported from throughout the Mideast.
Wherever Marines go, vast crate-loads of these bottles follow. Water is both a savior and a tyranny. Troops carry bottles in their hands, they load their Humvees with them, they pour bottlefuls into Camelbacks and walk around with the hookah-stems clenched in their teeth. Exerting themselves under the weight of flak jackets and Kevlar helmets in the midday sun, troops must consume a quart of water or more each hour — three gallons a day — to keep from dehydrating, a chore made more difficult when some of the water is the temperature of coffee.
Much is reported about the 113-going-on-125-degree heat, the blowing sand, the floury and choking dust. But Marines also enjoy 80-degree dawns that can only be described as balmy.
"I sit outside in the mornings and the birds are chirping and the breeze is nice and cool. It doesn't get any better than that," says 1st Sgt. Harrison Tanksley of Thomson, Ga. "A couple of hours later, the sun is up, burning, and that brings you back to reality."
During off time, contemporary Marines live surprising lonely lives for men and women in tight quarters under the pressure of combat. Here and there, yes, one still finds a poker game or a cigar social as in wars past. But the personal DVD player, the Internet cafe and music videos on the chow hall TV have drawn many men and women into isolation. Navy Chaplain John Sears of Valdosta, Ga., counsels troops to make better use of their time here, to be more social, to cultivate those wartime friendships that have sustained other generations.
"You see people buying 'Band of Brothers,' which is all about comradeship, and then they sit alone in the middle of their own war and watch it," Sears said, shaking his head.
continued.....
By John Balzar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2004
AL ASAD, Iraq — The temperature is "a hundred and crazy."
Here in this summer of sand, everybody is within reach of lethal weaponry but nobody has sight of a cold beer.
They sleep in rows of flimsy prefab "cans."
And listen to rock 'n' roll.
For Americans in uniform, duty in Iraq in 2004 is some of what they expected and an equal measure of what they didn't. You wouldn't be wrong to say that life on the war front is something of an argument with itself.
They suffer the scalding heat, but they also enjoy plenty of air conditioning. Some days they wolf down cold MREs (meals ready to eat) in the field; other times, they enjoy second helpings from the ice cream freezer in the chow hall. They breathe clouds of dust and filth; yet many rest on comfortable mattresses and enjoy vast libraries of movie DVDs.
Some of them perform conventional combat roles here, patrolling and hunting insurgents. Ambushes, mortar attacks, mines and roadside bombings are grim facts of daily existence. But other troops have been occupied with the unconventional tasks of delivering playground equipment for schools, providing police, medical and leadership training, and fixing water treatment plants — front-line conduits for millions of dollars that have poured into jobs and rebuilding programs.
On almost any day of the week, they will tell you two things for certain: (1) It requires superhuman effort to drink the gallons of water necessary to counter the heat, and (2) the American press and the American people misunderstand their deployment in Iraq.
Get to know them and they soften a little. This is not an ordinary war, so there is little wonder about public confusion. It can be confusing up close too.
As this week's transition to Iraqi sovereignty looms, they all agree on something else. The days are getting edgier as troops contemplate events that will determine whether they advance a step or their efforts are pushed back. About that there is no softening at all.
Typical perhaps are the Marines here in western Iraq, midway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. Here, with the infantry of the 2nd battalion, 7th Marines, Cpl. John Preston of Warsaw, Ky., stewed for a while. As homeland news reports filtered back to troops, he saw too much emphasis on Americans being attacked and killed.
He wanted to convey a broader story.
He wrote a song with his friend Lance Cpl. Nick Hoffmann of Middletown, N.Y. Hoffmann put it to pictures in a music video. Preston established his own website. The two are now battalion celebrities, and Preston is considering a contract offer from a California record company.
His acoustic-guitar rock 'n' roll ballad is called "Good Good America." It was inspired by the day he led a squad into an Iraqi town and was surrounded by 60 or so smiling schoolgirls. They chanted, "Good, good America." "That grabbed me," Preston recalled. "It was the first time here that I thought we were serving a purpose, doing good."
But his lyrics also capture the inescapable dichotomy of service here, the frustrating rub of it — because in the shadows and alleyways behind the schoolgirls, there are plenty of angry men with their faces wrapped in scarves who sing another chant and provide a different chorus to his song: "Die, die American." His video can be seen at johnpreston.us But a warning: The opening scenes are laced with the unedited profanities of pumped-up Marines in the field.
Preston's personal tug-of-war about service in Iraq is part of a larger story of military life on the battlefield, told each day in a thousand other ways. A circular conversation that one hears frequently among youthful grunts is this: Why don't the Iraqis love us for all we're doing to help? Why won't U.S. commanders turn us loose to put down the insurgents? We want to go home. We want to fight!
At almost every base, even those far forward, Marines line up to use satellite facilities to call and e-mail home. Later, they complain about the difficulty of conveying to wives and families the nature of this assignment and the conditions under which they operate. Yes, many soldiers and Marines are attacked by mortars, rockets and remote-controlled bombs. Five rockets landed in the vicinity of the Marine unit as this story was written. But they tell their families: Please understand. These hit-and-run insurgents here are lousy mortar-men — most of the time.
So what is daily life like on the battlefield?
It is, of course, an old-fashioned mix of high anxiety and tedium that is familiar to fighting troops everywhere. But there are wholly modern elements to counterinsurgent warfare now. Such as unexpected comfort, which creates its own unexpected miseries. Marines of this unit, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif., arrived here believing they would live in tents, and at first they did. But they moved, and except for protracted field operations, they now live in small cities of 8- by 20-foot sheet-metal containers, "cans," complete with individual room air conditioners, electric lights, full-size beds and whatever furniture they can scrounge.
"We never thought we'd live like this," Marines say a little sheepishly.
On the other hand, electricity is notoriously unreliable. When the cans lose power, the scorching sun quickly makes them suffocating and uninhabitable, and Marines begin yearning for tents again.
Chow time, the most important ritual to mark the passing of the time, is likewise better than expected — hot meals with typically two and sometimes three choices of standard institutional fare. Breaded veal cutlets and baked chicken were on the menu the other night, along with potatoes and potato chips. The next night there was only chili-mac and rice.
Marines chuckle self-consciously to hear themselves then grouse that there is no lettuce for the table-full of salad dressings that go unused each night.
Water, water everywhere
"Dip" has replaced cigarettes as the infantryman's favorite tobacco. The bulging lip and improvised, hand-held spittoon now rank with the jutted jaw and the M16 as symbols of the warrior.
Above all else, the single most prevalent fact of life for American troops in Iraq this summer is 1.5-liter plastic bottles of water, imported from throughout the Mideast.
Wherever Marines go, vast crate-loads of these bottles follow. Water is both a savior and a tyranny. Troops carry bottles in their hands, they load their Humvees with them, they pour bottlefuls into Camelbacks and walk around with the hookah-stems clenched in their teeth. Exerting themselves under the weight of flak jackets and Kevlar helmets in the midday sun, troops must consume a quart of water or more each hour — three gallons a day — to keep from dehydrating, a chore made more difficult when some of the water is the temperature of coffee.
Much is reported about the 113-going-on-125-degree heat, the blowing sand, the floury and choking dust. But Marines also enjoy 80-degree dawns that can only be described as balmy.
"I sit outside in the mornings and the birds are chirping and the breeze is nice and cool. It doesn't get any better than that," says 1st Sgt. Harrison Tanksley of Thomson, Ga. "A couple of hours later, the sun is up, burning, and that brings you back to reality."
During off time, contemporary Marines live surprising lonely lives for men and women in tight quarters under the pressure of combat. Here and there, yes, one still finds a poker game or a cigar social as in wars past. But the personal DVD player, the Internet cafe and music videos on the chow hall TV have drawn many men and women into isolation. Navy Chaplain John Sears of Valdosta, Ga., counsels troops to make better use of their time here, to be more social, to cultivate those wartime friendships that have sustained other generations.
"You see people buying 'Band of Brothers,' which is all about comradeship, and then they sit alone in the middle of their own war and watch it," Sears said, shaking his head.
continued.....