thedrifter
04-27-03, 06:44 AM
Correspondents become link between soldiers, loved ones
Sharon Schmickle, Star Tribune
Published April 27, 2003 SCHM27
SOUTHERN IRAQ -- Lois Hyde hungered for news about her son, a Marine Corps machine gunner who was poised along with tens of thousands of other U.S. troops on the brink of war in Iraq.
"He should be easy to spot -- just look for the best-looking guy in the bunch," Hyde of Eden Prairie said in an e-mail she sent on March 3.
Hers was the first in a flood of e-mails that anxious families sent after word spread that Star Tribune photographer Mike Zerby and I were embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
We were humbled by the hope the families placed in us as communication links.
By the time we returned from the Middle East last Monday, I had 638 e-mails in my in box, most of them from friends and families of Marines and sailors we covered.
Finally, there was time to respond by telling about day-to-day life in the military camps.
War seen up close is chaotic, confusing and often irrational. Back at the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait City, Marine officers had trained us "embeds" in the practices of slapping on gas masks and using atropine injections if we were hit with nerve gas. What they didn't teach us was how to swim the emotional currents that war inevitably would bring. What does it feel like to be attacked? To invade a hostile nation? To see the wounded and dead up close?
If we were to be the eyes and ears for the people back home we would need to deliver personal detail that can't be seen in a broad view.
At about noon on the day after the initial U.S. bombing of Baghdad, we were camped with advance parties waiting to cross the border into Iraq. Baghdad responded to the attack by tossing missiles toward the U.S. forces.
"Incoming missile . . . Incoming . . . Incoming," the cry would ring through the camp, and we would run for trenches.
This was war, and I learned something that night about its nature. It was confusing, not clear-cut. The word fear would be inadequate to explain it to those back home.
Yes, the adrenaline was pumping, but there was a necessary preoccupation with the minutiae of logistics and gear: Fiddling with your gas mask until you knew what was loaded on any missile that made impact. Helping a buddy fit a canteen to the mouthpiece on the mask. The scorpions lurking in the desert beneath you. The heat. The sand in your eyes.
The experience was an eye-opener; many of us quickly realized our personal strengths and limitations.
I am physically smaller than the average Marine, about 5 feet 4 inches tall. I learned that there is only so much gear you can carry and effectively use on a small frame. The left hip was reserved for the gas mask and the filled canteen. The gloves for the biochemical suit fit in the pocket of the pants that came with the suit. The flak jacket wouldn't fit under the biochemical jacket, so I wore it on top. The Kevlar helmet never seemed to fit right, especially worn with the gas mask.
Add reporters' notebooks and cameras, and we were less than track stars in the dashes for those trenches. We couldn't complain, though. Unlike the Marines, we didn't need to carry M-16 rifles and ammunition. We also knew in the back of our minds that we could leave if we wanted to.
"Can you reporters call someone to come in and get you out of here?" Lance Cpl. Scott Wing from Portland, Ore., wondered during one stint in a trench. "I'm asking because I could fit in a small backpack and go with you."
The fireworks continued well after nightfall and it was often hard to know exactly what we were seeing, but we did see the tails of Patriot missiles the United States fired to deflect the Iraqi barrage.
It was also hard to get any sleep, with the officers ordering us to run for the trenches every couple of hours. Several of us carried sleeping bags into the trenches and curled up there. That was a choice between two ugly options because the sand was alive with scorpions that seemed almost as terrifying as opposition missiles. From that night on, I shook every sock, every boot, every item of clothing before putting it on.
The next day, the U.S. forces invaded Iraq. Absurd as it may seem from afar, many of us who crossed the border that day hungered for the same news people were getting back home. At every stop of our convoy, Marines and sailors crowded around the short-wave radio to listen to the BBC describe what we were doing.
What the BBC report didn't say is that chaos reigned at the border. Tanks and troops leading the invasion met heavy Iraqi fire, and they gave it back. Later, the tank gunners told me how difficult it was to sort out friends and enemies. British forces took aim on one U.S. tank but backed off before firing. Two U.S. tanks were lost for days.
Drivers of the troop and supply convoys following the tanks were warned to stay in the track of the vehicles ahead of them because the route had been mined and boobytrapped.
But sand flew like snow in a blizzard, and the tracks drifted over. Vehicles disappeared in the darkness, then suddenly reappeared so close that a crash seemed certain. It was easy to understand how friendly fire happens. With visibility low and tension high, the machine gunners atop many of the trucks seemed both a menace and a protective force.
We were invading a hostile country. But we were also busy with comparatively trivial details, such as protecting our tailbones as we bounced around on the hard seats of the trucks and Humvees. Sandwiched between Navy corpsmen James Conor and Nate Livingston, I had to keep a two-fisted grip on the seat in order to avoid slamming into them.
Primitive conditions
Many families back home worried about daily living conditions as well as about the dramatic acts of war.
Inside Iraq, camping conditions were more primitive than they had been in northern Kuwait, where we had slept on cots, eaten hot chow twice daily in a mess tent, showered and used portable johns.
We wouldn't eat at a table, see a plate or hold a knife and fork for several weeks after the invasion. The Meal Ready to Eat -- our breakfast, lunch and dinner -- comes with one spoon. Never mind whether the package contains a pork chop or spaghetti. You eat it with a spoon, usually squatting in the sand.
As a coffee junkie, I was in trouble. Most MREs come with a one-cup ration of instant java. But there wasn't room in the heater pack for the entree and coffee water, too. I shook the powder in cold water, and I learned to be grateful for it.
Toilets were a particular problem. In the desert, there are no trees or shrubs to hide behind, and everyone could see everything moving all the way to the horizon. What's more, you wouldn't dare stray too far from camp because the desert was peppered with mines and unexploded ordnance from the 1991 Gulf War.
Initially, the few women in the advance party wore large ponchos to make their toilet treks. Everyone knew what you were doing, but at least some parts were private. Eventually, we got plywood enclosures surrounding buckets that served as johns.
It would be 14 days before we saw showers again. Meanwhile, baby wipes were in hot demand. The simple pleasure of cleaning yourself with those tiny moist towels would be unimaginable in any place where water comes with the twist of a faucet handle.
The day after we set up camp in Iraq, a CNN crew pulled in. That night they did their standup in a howling sandstorm. The next day, their camera was ruined, and they left.
We journalists were among the few people allowed to carry communications equipment. It was a privilege that came with much guilt. Everyone envied the Iridium phones and satellite receivers that allowed us to use e-mail.
Don't believe that macho Marine image. Acute homesickness was a communicable disease. Come mail call, one person's care package pushed everyone's talk-about-home button.
The problem was that mail rarely arrived. And we had to be very stingy about sharing our equipment, because blowing sand constantly threatened to shut us down. We wrapped laptops, cameras and satellite gear in plastic and uncovered the equipment only long enough to file our reports and communicate with our editors.
A few times, the sand was so heavy that we couldn't risk using the equipment at all. Instead, we donned face masks (the kind hardware stores sell for dusty home improvements) and waited, sometimes days, for the desert to settle down.
Worried back home
It broke my heart not to answer the hundreds of e-mail messages I was getting from worried people back home -- such as Robin Laursen from South Milwaukee, whose youngest daughter is a Marine.
"Bethany celebrated her 23rd birthday on March 3 over there and I have her little boy, Samuel, who will be 2 on April 19th," Laursen wrote. "If you are there, do you think you could contact her and tell her I love her very much? I have gotten four letters. They all came on the same day. But she is my baby, and I am worried about her. . . . I sure hope for your sake every worried mom in America isn't contacting you."
It wasn't just mothers who were worried.
"I am a firefighter in Minneapolis," Donald Rowell III wrote on March 25. "You were with my brother's unit. . . . I was just worried and wondering about him. If there is a chance you run into him, tell him that his family and the guys at the station are thinking about him."
And so it went each day of the war.
The concern was general, not tied to specific danger. The people who wrote us had no way of knowing that our first stop in Iraq was near the scene of the war's deadliest fighting as Marines took control over bridges spanning the Euphrates River.
continued.........
Sharon Schmickle, Star Tribune
Published April 27, 2003 SCHM27
SOUTHERN IRAQ -- Lois Hyde hungered for news about her son, a Marine Corps machine gunner who was poised along with tens of thousands of other U.S. troops on the brink of war in Iraq.
"He should be easy to spot -- just look for the best-looking guy in the bunch," Hyde of Eden Prairie said in an e-mail she sent on March 3.
Hers was the first in a flood of e-mails that anxious families sent after word spread that Star Tribune photographer Mike Zerby and I were embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
We were humbled by the hope the families placed in us as communication links.
By the time we returned from the Middle East last Monday, I had 638 e-mails in my in box, most of them from friends and families of Marines and sailors we covered.
Finally, there was time to respond by telling about day-to-day life in the military camps.
War seen up close is chaotic, confusing and often irrational. Back at the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait City, Marine officers had trained us "embeds" in the practices of slapping on gas masks and using atropine injections if we were hit with nerve gas. What they didn't teach us was how to swim the emotional currents that war inevitably would bring. What does it feel like to be attacked? To invade a hostile nation? To see the wounded and dead up close?
If we were to be the eyes and ears for the people back home we would need to deliver personal detail that can't be seen in a broad view.
At about noon on the day after the initial U.S. bombing of Baghdad, we were camped with advance parties waiting to cross the border into Iraq. Baghdad responded to the attack by tossing missiles toward the U.S. forces.
"Incoming missile . . . Incoming . . . Incoming," the cry would ring through the camp, and we would run for trenches.
This was war, and I learned something that night about its nature. It was confusing, not clear-cut. The word fear would be inadequate to explain it to those back home.
Yes, the adrenaline was pumping, but there was a necessary preoccupation with the minutiae of logistics and gear: Fiddling with your gas mask until you knew what was loaded on any missile that made impact. Helping a buddy fit a canteen to the mouthpiece on the mask. The scorpions lurking in the desert beneath you. The heat. The sand in your eyes.
The experience was an eye-opener; many of us quickly realized our personal strengths and limitations.
I am physically smaller than the average Marine, about 5 feet 4 inches tall. I learned that there is only so much gear you can carry and effectively use on a small frame. The left hip was reserved for the gas mask and the filled canteen. The gloves for the biochemical suit fit in the pocket of the pants that came with the suit. The flak jacket wouldn't fit under the biochemical jacket, so I wore it on top. The Kevlar helmet never seemed to fit right, especially worn with the gas mask.
Add reporters' notebooks and cameras, and we were less than track stars in the dashes for those trenches. We couldn't complain, though. Unlike the Marines, we didn't need to carry M-16 rifles and ammunition. We also knew in the back of our minds that we could leave if we wanted to.
"Can you reporters call someone to come in and get you out of here?" Lance Cpl. Scott Wing from Portland, Ore., wondered during one stint in a trench. "I'm asking because I could fit in a small backpack and go with you."
The fireworks continued well after nightfall and it was often hard to know exactly what we were seeing, but we did see the tails of Patriot missiles the United States fired to deflect the Iraqi barrage.
It was also hard to get any sleep, with the officers ordering us to run for the trenches every couple of hours. Several of us carried sleeping bags into the trenches and curled up there. That was a choice between two ugly options because the sand was alive with scorpions that seemed almost as terrifying as opposition missiles. From that night on, I shook every sock, every boot, every item of clothing before putting it on.
The next day, the U.S. forces invaded Iraq. Absurd as it may seem from afar, many of us who crossed the border that day hungered for the same news people were getting back home. At every stop of our convoy, Marines and sailors crowded around the short-wave radio to listen to the BBC describe what we were doing.
What the BBC report didn't say is that chaos reigned at the border. Tanks and troops leading the invasion met heavy Iraqi fire, and they gave it back. Later, the tank gunners told me how difficult it was to sort out friends and enemies. British forces took aim on one U.S. tank but backed off before firing. Two U.S. tanks were lost for days.
Drivers of the troop and supply convoys following the tanks were warned to stay in the track of the vehicles ahead of them because the route had been mined and boobytrapped.
But sand flew like snow in a blizzard, and the tracks drifted over. Vehicles disappeared in the darkness, then suddenly reappeared so close that a crash seemed certain. It was easy to understand how friendly fire happens. With visibility low and tension high, the machine gunners atop many of the trucks seemed both a menace and a protective force.
We were invading a hostile country. But we were also busy with comparatively trivial details, such as protecting our tailbones as we bounced around on the hard seats of the trucks and Humvees. Sandwiched between Navy corpsmen James Conor and Nate Livingston, I had to keep a two-fisted grip on the seat in order to avoid slamming into them.
Primitive conditions
Many families back home worried about daily living conditions as well as about the dramatic acts of war.
Inside Iraq, camping conditions were more primitive than they had been in northern Kuwait, where we had slept on cots, eaten hot chow twice daily in a mess tent, showered and used portable johns.
We wouldn't eat at a table, see a plate or hold a knife and fork for several weeks after the invasion. The Meal Ready to Eat -- our breakfast, lunch and dinner -- comes with one spoon. Never mind whether the package contains a pork chop or spaghetti. You eat it with a spoon, usually squatting in the sand.
As a coffee junkie, I was in trouble. Most MREs come with a one-cup ration of instant java. But there wasn't room in the heater pack for the entree and coffee water, too. I shook the powder in cold water, and I learned to be grateful for it.
Toilets were a particular problem. In the desert, there are no trees or shrubs to hide behind, and everyone could see everything moving all the way to the horizon. What's more, you wouldn't dare stray too far from camp because the desert was peppered with mines and unexploded ordnance from the 1991 Gulf War.
Initially, the few women in the advance party wore large ponchos to make their toilet treks. Everyone knew what you were doing, but at least some parts were private. Eventually, we got plywood enclosures surrounding buckets that served as johns.
It would be 14 days before we saw showers again. Meanwhile, baby wipes were in hot demand. The simple pleasure of cleaning yourself with those tiny moist towels would be unimaginable in any place where water comes with the twist of a faucet handle.
The day after we set up camp in Iraq, a CNN crew pulled in. That night they did their standup in a howling sandstorm. The next day, their camera was ruined, and they left.
We journalists were among the few people allowed to carry communications equipment. It was a privilege that came with much guilt. Everyone envied the Iridium phones and satellite receivers that allowed us to use e-mail.
Don't believe that macho Marine image. Acute homesickness was a communicable disease. Come mail call, one person's care package pushed everyone's talk-about-home button.
The problem was that mail rarely arrived. And we had to be very stingy about sharing our equipment, because blowing sand constantly threatened to shut us down. We wrapped laptops, cameras and satellite gear in plastic and uncovered the equipment only long enough to file our reports and communicate with our editors.
A few times, the sand was so heavy that we couldn't risk using the equipment at all. Instead, we donned face masks (the kind hardware stores sell for dusty home improvements) and waited, sometimes days, for the desert to settle down.
Worried back home
It broke my heart not to answer the hundreds of e-mail messages I was getting from worried people back home -- such as Robin Laursen from South Milwaukee, whose youngest daughter is a Marine.
"Bethany celebrated her 23rd birthday on March 3 over there and I have her little boy, Samuel, who will be 2 on April 19th," Laursen wrote. "If you are there, do you think you could contact her and tell her I love her very much? I have gotten four letters. They all came on the same day. But she is my baby, and I am worried about her. . . . I sure hope for your sake every worried mom in America isn't contacting you."
It wasn't just mothers who were worried.
"I am a firefighter in Minneapolis," Donald Rowell III wrote on March 25. "You were with my brother's unit. . . . I was just worried and wondering about him. If there is a chance you run into him, tell him that his family and the guys at the station are thinking about him."
And so it went each day of the war.
The concern was general, not tied to specific danger. The people who wrote us had no way of knowing that our first stop in Iraq was near the scene of the war's deadliest fighting as Marines took control over bridges spanning the Euphrates River.
continued.........