thedrifter
06-15-07, 06:23 AM
Americans enjoy surreal haven at military center in Iraq
Camp Anaconda keeps war, and home, at distance
By David Wood, Baltimore Sun | June 15, 2007
CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq -- No one breaks stride on the elliptical trainers when the announcement blares over the loudspeakers every few hours. Nobody pauses at racquetball at either of the two multimillion-dollar gyms at this war-zone base.
"Attention, attention, attention, there has been an indirect fire attack," says a pleasant female voice, as if announcing an airline flight instead of a potentially deadly rocket or mortar attack.
Swimmers continue to plow furrows across the huge indoor and outdoor pools.
"Please be vigilant," the loudspeaker urges. "All clear, all clear, all clear."
For this city of 28,000 Americans, the main US military logistics center in Iraq, and for tens of thousands of other support personnel who make up half or more of the 160,000 troops in Iraq, life creeps pleasantly along, one day at a time, in an existential black hole.
Home seems distant and unreal. So does the war.
Pairs of F-16 strike fighters torch off the runway every few hours and thunder off into the distance.
Medevac helicopters wheel in bearing unseen battlefield wounded, who are airlifted out hours later on nighttime C-17 flights. The dead also arrive at night, for ceremonies and respectful transfer to Fallen Angel flights home.
After midnight, heavily armed convoys of trucks lumber down dusty streets and disappear "outside the wire," that mythical and fearsome place where most troops assigned to Anaconda never venture.
For that reason, residents here are known as "Fobbits," residents of a Forward Operating Base, or FOB. Like J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits, they rarely venture far from their comfortable and familiar burrows.
Elsewhere in Iraq, soldiers and Marines patrol into dangerous Iraqi neighborhoods from squalid COPs, temporary Combat Outposts set in those neighborhoods, places where heat, dirt, and foul odor triumph and plumbing, air conditioning, and cold water are distant memories, a grueling existence with the constant threat of sudden death or dismemberment.
Here, no one goes "outside the wire" except on the nerve-wracking convoys. If something is needed -- computer paper, communion wafers, concrete slabs, drinking water, an Iraqi souvenir -- it is made here or comes by truck or air. People fly in for a year's duty and never set foot "out there."
Some try.
"I have guys who want to go out to see what it's like," said Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Parsley of Scotts Bluff, Neb., who commands a National Guard battalion on convoy security duty. He is unsympathetic. "If there's no reason to go out, there is no reason to go out."
For Fobbits inside the wire, after all, life is tolerable. The food is abundant, the showers have hot water and usually good water pressure, the $5 million gyms are open 24/7, as are the swimming pools, the post exchange, and the 745-seat movie theater.
These are built inside two-story steel buildings that stretch a city block long, hidden behind foot-thick concrete blast walls 12 feet high. Engineers recently added, at a cost of nearly $20 million, additional blast-resistant roofs that sit over the buildings on massive steel girders, comfort against mortars and rockets.
There's a Pizza Hut, Green Beans Coffee, and a Burger King, but a Whopper and fries go for $5.50 and taste suspiciously like the stuff available for free next door at the immense chow hall (four steam-table entrees every meal, burgers, fries and onion rings and pizza, double 40-foot salad bars and burrito bars, and cakes, pies, and Haagen-Dazs over past the mounds of energy bars, Gatorade, and Pop-Tarts).
"Biggest threat here is gaining weight," huffed a beefy airman.
Pedestrians wear gym shorts, official T-shirts, and combat helmets and carry a rifle along with a plastic bag of goodies from the PX, where you can get socks, censor-friendly magazines, and television sets but no liquor. You can even order a car or a Harley-Davidson here; pick it out from a catalog and have it shipped home from international dealers in Europe.
People work in air-conditioned trailers or 20-foot steel shipping containers that come with plug-in power and sometimes showers and toilets. Flanked by stacks of green sandbags, these "cans" are arranged in rows behind blast barriers, rows of 12-foot high, inverted-T blocks that resemble 5-ton dominos set on end.
Inside, everyone has a laptop connected into military networks that track convoys or logistics systems or repair activities while denying access to popular civilian websites. Windows are blocked with sandbags. People work eight-hour shifts in fluorescent light and emerge into the blast-furnace heat and bright sun, squinting like mole-children.
What's missing from this picture, of course, are Iraqis. They are spoken of with distrust and fear, referred to as "Hajis" or other uncomplimentary names.
Here and at other bases, Americans tried to contract business out to Iraqi firms, but after their workers were targeted for assassination, interest flagged on both sides.
Occasionally, small groups of Iraqis are brought in to sweep or clip the date palms. They toil in the sun at gunpoint, under the watchful eye of military escorts.
Once a week the command opens an Iraqi bazaar where real Iraqis come to sell souvenirs and crafts. A large sign outside proclaims "No Bargaining," prohibiting an integral Middle East marketplace experience.
Otherwise, the monotony slowly builds stress. Days stretch out in a haze of heat and dust. The chow hall menu rotates predictably -- if it's Thursday, it's chicken-fried steak -- and everyone usually eats in the same section of the same one of four dining facilities, vast rooms of long tables under giant flat-screen TVs tuned to the Armed Forces Network.
Every day pretty much unrolls like the previous one, whether your job is tracking convoys, logging inventory or preparing the daily intelligence briefing for air crews. Families are close by e-mail or phone and sometimes too close: You can sympathize with a $700 brake job on the family car but you can't do much about it. And there is the guilt of missing birthdays, graduations, and the unimportant events that make life precious.
And there is the overriding stress of being at war: Everyone's job is critical, and everyone is mindful that a mistake could cost someone his life, outside the wire.
"There is zero tolerance for error," says Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Pat Pollock, who supervises the ground crews who keep C-130s flying with critical war supplies.
Ellie
Camp Anaconda keeps war, and home, at distance
By David Wood, Baltimore Sun | June 15, 2007
CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq -- No one breaks stride on the elliptical trainers when the announcement blares over the loudspeakers every few hours. Nobody pauses at racquetball at either of the two multimillion-dollar gyms at this war-zone base.
"Attention, attention, attention, there has been an indirect fire attack," says a pleasant female voice, as if announcing an airline flight instead of a potentially deadly rocket or mortar attack.
Swimmers continue to plow furrows across the huge indoor and outdoor pools.
"Please be vigilant," the loudspeaker urges. "All clear, all clear, all clear."
For this city of 28,000 Americans, the main US military logistics center in Iraq, and for tens of thousands of other support personnel who make up half or more of the 160,000 troops in Iraq, life creeps pleasantly along, one day at a time, in an existential black hole.
Home seems distant and unreal. So does the war.
Pairs of F-16 strike fighters torch off the runway every few hours and thunder off into the distance.
Medevac helicopters wheel in bearing unseen battlefield wounded, who are airlifted out hours later on nighttime C-17 flights. The dead also arrive at night, for ceremonies and respectful transfer to Fallen Angel flights home.
After midnight, heavily armed convoys of trucks lumber down dusty streets and disappear "outside the wire," that mythical and fearsome place where most troops assigned to Anaconda never venture.
For that reason, residents here are known as "Fobbits," residents of a Forward Operating Base, or FOB. Like J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits, they rarely venture far from their comfortable and familiar burrows.
Elsewhere in Iraq, soldiers and Marines patrol into dangerous Iraqi neighborhoods from squalid COPs, temporary Combat Outposts set in those neighborhoods, places where heat, dirt, and foul odor triumph and plumbing, air conditioning, and cold water are distant memories, a grueling existence with the constant threat of sudden death or dismemberment.
Here, no one goes "outside the wire" except on the nerve-wracking convoys. If something is needed -- computer paper, communion wafers, concrete slabs, drinking water, an Iraqi souvenir -- it is made here or comes by truck or air. People fly in for a year's duty and never set foot "out there."
Some try.
"I have guys who want to go out to see what it's like," said Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Parsley of Scotts Bluff, Neb., who commands a National Guard battalion on convoy security duty. He is unsympathetic. "If there's no reason to go out, there is no reason to go out."
For Fobbits inside the wire, after all, life is tolerable. The food is abundant, the showers have hot water and usually good water pressure, the $5 million gyms are open 24/7, as are the swimming pools, the post exchange, and the 745-seat movie theater.
These are built inside two-story steel buildings that stretch a city block long, hidden behind foot-thick concrete blast walls 12 feet high. Engineers recently added, at a cost of nearly $20 million, additional blast-resistant roofs that sit over the buildings on massive steel girders, comfort against mortars and rockets.
There's a Pizza Hut, Green Beans Coffee, and a Burger King, but a Whopper and fries go for $5.50 and taste suspiciously like the stuff available for free next door at the immense chow hall (four steam-table entrees every meal, burgers, fries and onion rings and pizza, double 40-foot salad bars and burrito bars, and cakes, pies, and Haagen-Dazs over past the mounds of energy bars, Gatorade, and Pop-Tarts).
"Biggest threat here is gaining weight," huffed a beefy airman.
Pedestrians wear gym shorts, official T-shirts, and combat helmets and carry a rifle along with a plastic bag of goodies from the PX, where you can get socks, censor-friendly magazines, and television sets but no liquor. You can even order a car or a Harley-Davidson here; pick it out from a catalog and have it shipped home from international dealers in Europe.
People work in air-conditioned trailers or 20-foot steel shipping containers that come with plug-in power and sometimes showers and toilets. Flanked by stacks of green sandbags, these "cans" are arranged in rows behind blast barriers, rows of 12-foot high, inverted-T blocks that resemble 5-ton dominos set on end.
Inside, everyone has a laptop connected into military networks that track convoys or logistics systems or repair activities while denying access to popular civilian websites. Windows are blocked with sandbags. People work eight-hour shifts in fluorescent light and emerge into the blast-furnace heat and bright sun, squinting like mole-children.
What's missing from this picture, of course, are Iraqis. They are spoken of with distrust and fear, referred to as "Hajis" or other uncomplimentary names.
Here and at other bases, Americans tried to contract business out to Iraqi firms, but after their workers were targeted for assassination, interest flagged on both sides.
Occasionally, small groups of Iraqis are brought in to sweep or clip the date palms. They toil in the sun at gunpoint, under the watchful eye of military escorts.
Once a week the command opens an Iraqi bazaar where real Iraqis come to sell souvenirs and crafts. A large sign outside proclaims "No Bargaining," prohibiting an integral Middle East marketplace experience.
Otherwise, the monotony slowly builds stress. Days stretch out in a haze of heat and dust. The chow hall menu rotates predictably -- if it's Thursday, it's chicken-fried steak -- and everyone usually eats in the same section of the same one of four dining facilities, vast rooms of long tables under giant flat-screen TVs tuned to the Armed Forces Network.
Every day pretty much unrolls like the previous one, whether your job is tracking convoys, logging inventory or preparing the daily intelligence briefing for air crews. Families are close by e-mail or phone and sometimes too close: You can sympathize with a $700 brake job on the family car but you can't do much about it. And there is the guilt of missing birthdays, graduations, and the unimportant events that make life precious.
And there is the overriding stress of being at war: Everyone's job is critical, and everyone is mindful that a mistake could cost someone his life, outside the wire.
"There is zero tolerance for error," says Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Pat Pollock, who supervises the ground crews who keep C-130s flying with critical war supplies.
Ellie