Dust and Stars
By Karl Zinsmeister

Madison County, New York, March 1--In four days, I have just confirmed, I will depart for Iraq.

Amidst the immaculate winter frost of upstate New York--one day this week our digital thermometer announced 7.2 degrees below zero--my wife and I pluck some tickets off our calendar, gather up our children, and begin to drive. As we crunch down snowy streets, the tidy nineteenth-century homes of our village glide quietly by. Rounding Cazenovia Lake--now thickly iced, soon to sprout sails--we traverse rolling hillsides as beautiful as any between Ireland and Argentina. Even this time of year, the woods and pastures are thick with creatures; yesterday I saw a big tom turkey strutting across a frozen field in his odd birdish rhythm.

In 25 minutes we enter a Persian palace--our city’s grandest theater of the vaudeville era, now glitteringly restored in gold leaf and crystal. Inside, America’s sultans of jazz are holding court--New Orleans pianist Ellis Marsalis joined by his four sons: Branford on sax, Wynton behind a trumpet, Delfeayo playing trombone, and Jason at the drums. Father and sons tear into the set, pouring out an emotionally overwhelming mix of virtuosity, passion, precision, and familial love. Even as we settle into bed that evening, our bones and tendons are still vibrating.

The next night my wife and I journey through the same landscape to a very different destination. Entering a fine concert hall for the latest date in our Syracuse Symphony series we are swept by a lush romantic wave. U.S. and European composers Korngold, Barber, and Strauss provide the program. The interpretation is by our orchestra’s superb polyglot players--Americans with roots in Romania, Korea, Armenia, and many other lands, tightly joined under the baton of our Japanese conductor emeritus.

At intermission our delightful new friend the concertmaster comes to the edge of the stage to talk, and introduces the brother of one of his violin students. The 13-year-old marvel immediately engages me in political conversation far beyond his years. He is reading Tocqueville, prodigiously, on his own, and has just quoted one of the sage’s many eerily prescient observations--about the “Mohammedan” religion’s tendency toward violence. Only the dimming houselights can force an end to our chat. On the way to my seat another patron and I discuss recent late-game heroics by the Syracuse basketball team, our hometown gladiators.

Then Strauss’s Alpine Symphony bursts forth so vividly I can see the mountain grasses ripple with wind behind my closed eyes, and feel the spray of the waterfall as the composer chronicles his day on a peak. A joyous Haydn oratorio sung by the local university chorale further punctuates the evening. Our gaze is lifted even higher, beyond the mountain top, all the way to the mover of mountains Himself.

Just another weekend in the 59th largest city in the United States of America--a remarkable land where freedom, beauty, and opportunity are available in wondrous abundance to all people, every single day.

In the mad scramble to prepare myself, on just a few days notice from the Pentagon, for an indefinite-length assignment in an isolated and unprovisioned combat zone, I throw myself at the mercies of modern capitalism and technology. Internet commerce rapidly brings me two plane tickets, a shortwave radio, powerpacks for my computer, and vital memory cards and Lithium batteries for my digital camera. Internet sites provide the precise tunings that will make the radio useful in the Middle East, updates on local communicable diseases, and books and on-line archives that spell out innumerable essential details. A satellite modem is rented and Fed Exed to give me a communications link even in the most isolated corner of the forsaken land to which I am headed. Another editor acquires two marvelous “thumb drives”--plastic wands the size of my pinkie that can be plugged directly into a computer, loaded with hundreds of fresh photographs and thousands of words, then expressed back to Washington, weighing no more than a pencil.

Not only American capitalism but also American government comes through for me under pressure. The public health nurse for our rural county is a homey marvel of professionalism, surprising me with instant details, hot from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, on precisely which immunizations and malarial and bacterial therapies I will need to stay healthy in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East.

Four days later I walk into the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. to be inoculated against smallpox and anthrax, agents Saddam could employ as battle zone trumps. The attentive care of the military nurses and technicians, and the openness of the doctors from the Army and the National Institutes of Health about the risks and benefits of vaccination, leaves me impressed. As bureaucracies go, America’s various governmental arms are more benign than any in history.

Back in middle America, I am able to leave my wife and three children alone for a month or two, confident that they will be protected, and not extorted, by the local police. Unlike in many other parts of the world I needn’t worry that some competing tribe or religious sect will rampage through my home community in my absence. I can be comfortable that the town government will pipe my family pure water, and that our utility companies will keep our house warm and electrified in winter. I am certain that local and national businesses will make food, and insurance, and gasoline, and all of life’s necessaries available to them. I can rely on numerous private companies to send them generally trustworthy newspapers, magazines, and radio and Internet reports on the conflict I’ll be in the middle of.

Rather prosaic victories, you’re thinking. Except of course they aren’t. Literally most of the families on this planet cannot go to bed confident that these kinds of services and securities will be there when they awake. America’s relative peace and abundance, her deep cultural richness, her competence, her fair play, are very much exceptions in human history.

The pleasures and accomplishments and confident assumptions that fill my final days in the U.S. are minor miracles. We Americans must never take these things for granted, or falter in our determination to defend the economy and government and traditions of living that make them possible. As I think and then type this I am somewhere over the Black Sea, just hours shy of entering a land where none of this--not one single piece--can be counted on.

Costs

When navigating any airport today, one is sickened by the thought of how much time, motion, and energy must now be wasted simply to fend off the depradations of a tiny band of cruel maniacs. The hordes of new federal employees hired to x-ray, question, rummage, wand, and frisk. The enormous expenditures on explosive-sniffing machines and giant cargo scanners. The squandered time and opportunities represented by millions of travellers shuffling about in boredom, all across the country, when they would rather be doing something productive.

What mighty deeds could this army of workers and mountain of resources have accomplished if applied to some more fruitful task? It’s a Kafkaesque waste.

I’m likewise struck by the high price we pay for political terror when I stare at the thick pile of papers that accompanied my biowarfare innoculations--adverse reaction warnings, indemnity forms, wound treatment instructions, on and on, all methodically researched and drawn up, then explained to me by six or seven different individuals. An Army doctor--a highly qualified colonel--spent about 40 minutes giving me the briefing that precedes emergency smallpox immunization. I kept thinking guiltily that he should really be doing something more important than clicking through a Power Point presentation for an audience of one.

Bright medical professionals in a great many places have recently invested vast amounts of time and money brushing up on prevention, discovery, and treatment of diseases that by rights should be obscure or erased entirely as human threats. Had these needless threats not been synthesized by vicious terrorists, those men and women could have been solving other knotty problems instead.

For that matter, what would I be doing this spring if TAE’s readers and the rest of the world were focused on something more constructive than war? Certainly not buying airplane tickets to Kuwait for the privilege of sleeping in the dust and eating MREs (military “Meals Ready to Eat” that one friend insists should really stand for “Meals Refused by Ethiopians”).

What would President Bush and the U.S. Congress be focused on in this spring of 2003 absent the mad intemperance of men like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Saddam Hussein? Instead of pursuing progress on new frontiers, much of our national attention is now focused on, quite literally, damage control.

Certainly, our national economy wouldn’t be entering its third year of funk had Osama bin Laden spent more time taking care of his wives and less time destroying other people’s families. September 11 and the fear, uncertainty, and distraction that followed has taken a mighty whack out of U.S. financial vigor. Our powerful economic engine will eventually recover, but today’s slumping indicators are much more than just scratches on a stock table; they are symbols of lost opportunities and narrowed horizons for almost every American household.

One personal example of how the black gash on New York City’s skyline has fogged landscapes in other parts of America is the school budget in my own hometown. The Twin Towers collapse threw a heavy blanket over New York state’s economy, with the result that our school and many others suddenly face large shortfalls in state revenue. This will likely be made up by sharply increasing the property taxes on my house and those of my neighbors. That’s terrorism hitting close to home.

Executing war against our assailants is not cheap either. Figures from private and government agencies suggest that the costs of assembling our fighting force in the Middle East, conducting a month of combat in Iraq, and then bringing the force home again could easily total $40 billion or more. Occupying that nation may consume another $10 billion through the rest of the year.

Of course the cruelest price of all for Middle Eastern terror is paid in human lives. Saddam is estimated to have killed 3 million Iraqis since coming to power in 1979, plus hundreds of thousands of Iranians, many Kuwaitis, and some Americans. How many of the soldiers that I befriend on this reporting tour will be injured or killed? How many innocent lives here and around the globe will be ruined or extinguished by future terrorist bombs, plagues, or knives drawn across throats?

There is no painless solution to the devilish costs imposed by the terror masters. But there is a solution: Kill the killers. Quickly. And completely. That’s where my campmates the 82nd Airborne (and company) will come in. But first, meet some Kuwaitis.

From Kuwait to Berlin

Kuwait City, March 6--My first night in Kuwait, the wind began to howl through the downtown hotel towers with such shrieking force I opened the drapes at about midnight to watch. It was a scirocco, moving with enough force to not only make unearthly noise but also lift tons of fine sand from the vast expanses of desert that surround Kuwait City, and indeed the entire Persian Gulf. Think of a hard blizzard, but of dust rather than snow. Visibility declined to barely one meter at the storm’s peak, forcing drivers to stop dead in the road.

The next morning I got my first daylight glimpse of the city through a thick brown-gray haze which took nearly a weekend to fully settle. I saw fences and metal roofs on industrial structures that had been ripped away by the winds. And I heard reports from the military public af-fairs officers that scores of tents had been knocked down at the American Army and Marine camps strung along the Iraq border.

One soldier was stranded, disorient- ed, in the dust blizzard for three hours while trying to make his way from the mess tent to his sleeping tent. Some carry compasses with them during these short walks to avoid just such a situation. The sand berms that engineers have bulldozed to ring the camps are not just part of the security but also to prevent blinded servicemen from accidentally wandering into the desert during such storms, where they could become lost.

Kuwaitis have opened their doors wide for an American move against Iraq. The antipathy Kuwait feels for its immediate neighbor to the north is such that Iraq is not even listed in Kuwaiti phone books or time-zone guides or atlases--it has simply been erased as a respectable entity. People bitterly remember the looting and larceny--both petty and grand--committed by the Iraqi occupiers in 1990 and early ’91. One businessowner I talked to described how soldiers cleaned out his entire building, stripping not only all of his merchandise but even the furniture and fittings of the office.

Today there is little or no evidence left in Kuwait of this trauma from a decade ago. The country ripples with prosperity and progress, and indeed effects a nearly American standard of living, not only in its central districts but also in outer neighborhoods where I visited supermarkets and teahouses and shopping malls. Many Kuwaitis speak English, and Western products and ideas are ubiquitous. Extensive new buildings glisten in many quarters.

This is not a Western nation, a true democracy (only about one seventh of the population can vote), or a fully capitalist economy (Kuwait’s vast oil revenues paper over plenty of economic mistakes). But it is a peaceful and thriving place, where good newspapers are available, where there is no income tax, and where 60 percent of university students and 36 percent of the workforce is made up of women.

Kuwait, like most of the rest of the Persian Gulf states, is now a multicultural nation, where large numbers of imported Filipino, Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, and other workers blend with native Arabs in a tawny skinned, black haired gumbo. Hardly an American-style melting pot (it will be a while before Kuwait has the equivalents of Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, and Colin Powell representing it at international conclaves), but nonetheless a cosmopolitan society where al-Qaeda-style intolerance is simply not tenable on a mass basis.

Similar meldings of modernity and tradition are successfully underway in Qatar (which has a relatively progressive government that is enterprising, fair to women, tolerant of a mostly free press, and quite friendly to America), Dubai (which has made itself an economic success despite meager oil resources by opening itself to tourism and trade), and other Persian Gulf states. These provide encouraging hope that the Arab Middle East needn’t be an economic desert and human rights swamp in the future.

Could Iraq, under American tutelage, and with renewed links to its gradually modernizing neighbors, follow a similar course? There is good reason to hope. First of all, it is not (like Afghanistan for instance) an ignorant society. Iraq was traditionally the intellectual center of the Arab world. This is the land of Hammurabi, the society that introduced the concept of zero into mathematics, the home of the singer of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Iraqis are described by experts as having an “unquenchable thirst for knowledge,” and at one point boasted the highest rate of Ph.D. holders in the world. In the later 1970s, before Saddam Hussein seized power, the number of students in technical fields soared; great progress was made against disease; and the rights of women were established as nowhere else in the Arab world. Among the estimated 5 million Iraqis who are now political refugees and economic expatriates living abroad there is a great store of knowledge and experience. If they were to return, this could help jump-start their land into the family of decent nations.

Iraq certainly has a fighting chance. It retains much less of the medieval baggage that weighs down societies like Saudi Arabia and the Afghans. Nonetheless, remaking Iraq will not be simple, for this is a portion of the world without humane political traditions. It is sobering to note that the Iraqi government has been overthrown 23 times since 1920.

After making that an even two dozen, America will try to help the Iraqis put an end to their ugly political history. The U.S. has done it before--directly in places like Japan and Germany, and indirectly in places like Eastern Europe and Latin America, where decades of dogged effort finally shoved those societies away from dictatorship and toward representative free enterprise.

The fondest hope of any sensible American is that the remaking of Iraq will launch a kind of Berlin Wall syndrome in the long-accursed Middle East. A decade and a half ago, who could have guessed how rapidly other Iron Curtain nations would embrace freedom once it started to flicker in the heart of the Soviet bloc? Could a free and prosperous Iraq have an equally revolutionary effect on its neighbors?

Tyrants like Yasser Arafat and Syrian president Bashar Assad have already felt the winds blowing and made efforts to dodge and preempt the freedom spirit with cosmetic softenings. Iran is actively bubbling with a liberation spirit, and could well throw off its mullahs within a blink if an attractive model of modernity can be launched in Iraq. This is a grand and uncertain vision, but worth all effort. Redirecting the Middle East away from its self-immolating narrowness would be the accomplishment of a lifetime--and very possibly the difference between America’s safety over the next two decades and a terrorist holocaust of truly historic dimensions.

Saddam’s Gang

Bellicosity has been Saddam Hussein’s trademark right from the start. His first prominent public act was to plot to kill his nation’s leader at the time, Abdul Karim Qasim. Within a year of becoming president himself in 1979, Saddam had dragged his country into a war with Iran that lasted eight years and killed 435,000 people. During that period, the Iraqis used chemical weapons against soldiers and civilians on at least 40 different occasions. Two years after that disastrous adventure came to a close, Saddam invaded Kuwait, bringing more destruction, defeat, and death to his people.

Saddam’s willingness to inflict suffering on his own nation apparently knows no bounds. While only around 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in Desert Storm (thanks to the care of American and allied military leaders), Saddam’s brutality in quelling the internal uprisings that followed in 14 out of the country’s 18 governates (plus his neglect of basic health services) took fully 105,000 lives in the war’s aftermath. When the U.S. and Britain proposed in 2001 to ease the life of everyday Iraqis by loosening sanctions on civilian goods in return for tighter controls on arms, Saddam dismissed the offer, further pauperizing his people to keep his grip on power.

Today, incomes in Iraq have tumbled to a tenth or less of their levels two decades ago. A quarter of all school children no longer attend elementary school. Basic commodities like water have become so scarce that building lobbies are now sometimes mopped with fuel oil instead. (That is something Iraq will never run short of.)

In addition to the estimated 3 million Iraqi citizens he has killed, Saddam has driven 4-5 million people (about 15 percent of the population) into exile abroad. There are now about 80 different anti-Saddam parties operating throughout the Middle East, in London and other European capitals, and in the U.S. This man is an expert at making enemies.

The misery Saddam has been so willing to inflict on his country ends, however, at his palace door. Saddam’s personal wealth, all accumulated through state graft, is now reliably believed to total around $32 billion. On the day I write this, there are reports in the Kuwaiti papers that Saddam has just dispatched his personal jeweller to Thailand to buy millions of dollars worth of diamonds, presumably for Saddam to live off of should U.S. forces put him on the run.

Quite literally nothing is sacred to Iraq’s tyrant. A Defense Department briefing just before I left Washington presented photographs of ammunition dumps, anti-aircraft guns, and other military equipment recently relocated next to schools, hospitals, mosques, shopping centers, and other sensitive positions in an attempt to either play on American sympathy to prevent the war material from being destroyed, or else foment an international uproar if inadvertent damage is done in the course of bombing it.

Saddam is determined to repeat his successes of the first Gulf War, when he applied this technique notoriously. In one incident his forces sheared the dome off the Basra mosque and claimed it was done by an allied bomber, when in fact the nearest bomb craters were hundreds of yards away. Nearby is a famous 1991 aerial photograph of the Ziggurat of Ur (a 4,000-year-old religious pyramid located in the ancient city which produced the Biblical patiarch Abraham) with two MiG-21 jets parked almost touching its stonework. They were trucked there to be sheltered by U.S. unwillingness to desecrate the site, and indeed they were spared during the bombing.

Even more heinous is Saddam’s predilection for using innocent humans to shield his forces. The most famous example of this in the last Iraq war was the al-Amiriya incident, where civilians were invited by the Iraqis to use as housing the first floor of a bunker whose lower levels sheltered a command-and-control center. Unaware of the civilian presence, U.S. warplanes destroyed the bunker, resulting in more than 100 deaths, an uproar in Europe, and a pullback in American attacks.

Encouraged by the mobilizations of the Western peace movement, Saddam and his henchmen hope to create more such “strategic incidents” this time around. The idea remains that media-viewer outrage might cause military planners to get cold feet and put an end to their raids. As part of this, the Iraqis welcomed some 200 anti-war activists from foreign countries into Iraq to serve as “human shields.”

As hostilities approached, some of these shielders realized that their Iraqi sponsors were placing them around military and industrial facilities rather than the hospitals, schools, and other such locales they imagined they would occupy, and some hesitantly complained. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense warned that by volunteering to serve Saddam Hussein, the shielders may have crossed the line between “noncombatant” and “combatant.” Could this be a case of “Live by TV imagery, die by TV imagery”?

Our National Swat Team

Camp Champion, Kuwait, March 12--Two or three hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, the 82nd Airborne Division rolled its equipment out onto the pavement down in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “We thought we might be going somewhere. We were ready to move that day,” says Captain Jose Reyes, a 30-year-old TexMex product of the ROTC program at U.T. Austin, and a proud partisan of his Lone Star State.

The 82nd is the only major military force in the country in a position to do that. Instant response to crimes against the nation is their bread and butter. There are Marine Expeditionary Forces trained and equipped to move rapidly, but not as fast as the 82nd can get infantry, artillery, vehicles, and armed helicopters into an airplane with its wheels up, headed anywhere on the globe.

Only about a third of the 82nd Airborne has come to the Persian Gulf. Another third are in Afghanistan right now, pursuing an expanded campaign against Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants along the Pakistani border. The final third of the division has just rotated back home to Fort Bragg after an earlier tour among the Afghans.

The Army’s other airborne division, the 101st, is also a light, transportable fighting force, but very different. They ride helicopters into battle--hundreds of Black Hawks, among others. That’s fine if the division is already sitting within a few hundred miles of the hot zone. But flying wedges of helicopters can generally leap only 100 miles or so at a bound. Then they must land to refuel, let their security perimeter catch up, and regroup. So if you need to get thousands of infantrymen plus their associated artillery, helicopters, and fighting and engineering vehicles more than a few hundred miles from a base, and you don’t have time to wait for snail’s pace transport ships, or a tortoise-pace airlift, there is only one alternative: the 82nd.

Here’s how they do it: For every two or three thousand fighting men you need on the ground, take 60-70 communications trucks, gun jeeps, ammunition trailers, and construction vehicles (including a dumptruck and a bulldozer for rebuilding a blasted airfield on the fly), and pack them on huge pallets with stacks of shock-absorbing cardboard inserted under key pressure points. Then within hours of any call from the President these soldiers and this gear will pile into C-130 or C-17 transports, and fly to wherever the bad guys live.

When the site to be seized comes into range, the backs of the planes will be opened and small pilot chutes will be thrown out. The tie-downs on the pallet-packed jeeps and bulldozers will be removed. Then the mini-chutes will be allowed to pull out large main parachutes. When these fill with air, it’s good night Irene: The trucks are whipped out of the gaping transport with a teeth-rattling roar.

Within minutes, paratroopers follow the vehicles out the rear doors and into the darkness (troopers almost always jump and fight in pitch black now, where U.S. night vision technology gives them powerful advantages over adversaries). The soldiers come in carefully choreographed order--artillery teams placed near their howitzers, the engineers by their trucks, riflemen around the perimeter.

Each trooper will be strapped to a 25 pound parachute. He’ll wear body armor and a ballistic helmet weighing perhaps 20 pounds. His weapon (rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher) will add another 20 pounds, and he’ll have 45 pounds of ammo, food, water, night-vision gear and other equipment in his rucksack. As soon as they’ve landed and stowed their chutes, Task One for these men is to zap any bad guys and secure the drop zone--because Wave Two is already on the way.

Within a blink, more C-130s and C-17s begin to land within the perimeter protected by the first jumpers. All it takes, in a pinch, is 2-3,000 feet of firm dirt, grass, or hard sand, and the dance is on. The very first few birds disengorge an especially exotic cargo: armed Kiowa helicopters (two, wedged head to tail, per school-bus sized C-130 bay, or seven inside each C-17). If the landing zone is hot, each Kiowa’s seven-man crew can have its fins reattached, its rotor blades locked, and the turbine winding with both pilots strapped into their seats within a half hour.

“Infantry guys feel much better as soon as we see them go up,” one soldier told me. For the Kiowas serve as modern-day equivalents of horse cavalry: eyes up in the air to scout out threats (and send back voice and picture images of what lies over the horizon), plus a light weapons package sufficient to stop anything from two tanks (two Hellfire laser-guided missiles), to a mass of charging soldiers (seven 2.75-inch rockets and a .50 caliber machine gun).

The helicopters work closely in pairs or groups of four. I’m bunking with the First Battalion Kiowa pilots and crews. It’s a smart, sharp, and close-knit group. They’re known as the Wolfpack.

Camp Champion

Five weeks ago, what is now called Camp Champion was a sandy plot on the fringe of Kuwait International Airport. Today it’s a tight little city of maybe 80 very large rented Bedouin tents connected by gravel paths, each capable of holding about 50 men or women (there are perhaps 100 women among the 3,320 soldiers now calling the camp home). Outside each tent is a Scud bunker--a long precast concrete arch layered with sandbags laboriously filled by soldiers under a mid-day sun. In the event the camp comes under attack, we’ll all don our gas masks and dive under the four-foot tall shelters.

Security is tight. Stern M.P.s check IDs three times before allowing entry. Concrete barriers and concertina wire ring the acreage, and there are pillboxes at the corners and gates. Military secrecy forbids me or the other six reporters embedded with the 82nd from mentioning, or photographing, our Kuwait Airport location in stories we file during the lead-up to battle.

The territory occupied by the Signal Corps prickles with a forest of antennas. There is also a rudimentary sick tent, and a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation tent equipped with ping-pong, weight sets, and other distractions. There is a massive soft-walled mess hall where chow is served eight hours per day.

A canvas chapel is kept busy with services and Bible studies throughout each day. When the troops first arrived there was a surge of demand for baptisms. Chaplains built a hot-tub sized font out of sandbags, put in a plastic liner, and filled it with water for a goodly number of immersions. Some were first-timers, a chaplain told me; others were renewing their commitments.

The place is a bee hive of activity. Day and night, soldiers, pilots, and maintenance workers come and go through the tents as they rotate shifts. There is a constant rumble of trucks, forklifts, and six-wheeled gators. From very low overhead comes a continuous roar of airplanes and helicopters--mostly large military cargo planes ferrying in the mountain of supplies required to provision an army of a quarter-million men.

There is the lawnmowing buzz of the C-130’s four giant propellers, the hushed swish of the intermediate sized and very high tech C-17, and the unearthly buzzing whistle that distinguishes the gigantic C-5 as it lumbers up into the heavens, a veritable giraffe-dodo-hippo of floating improbability. Layered on top of this are periodic thwack-thwack-thwacks from Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, and the high streaking roars of supersonic fighters. Non-stop. I’ve always smilingly told my children to think of military jet noise as “the sound of freedom.” Here it is that and also the sound of insomnia.

I have the run of the camp, and further tours reveal a polebarn popped up by the engineers (where vehicles get packed on pallets for airdrops), a good-sized lumberyard, rows and rows of steel shipping containers filled with almost every supply imaginable, all of this ferried about by a green herd of forklifts. Around the camp’s perimeter, hundreds of vehicles are carefully staged in the order in which they’ll roll into transport planes or convoys. Phalanxes of chemical porta-johns ring the fringes of the camp, equipped with dispensers of liquid hand sanitizer to keep dysentery down. A few modular buildings contain the post’s only running water--a limited number of shaving sinks and some welcome warm showers.

Even in early spring the desert gets quite warm during the day, yet remains cold at night. The dust storms hit about once a week, filling every cranny of each tent, pack, sleeping bag, camera, computer, and body with a fine, lightly brown, distinctively dirt-scented grit. Lungs and nasal passages sting, wheeze, and swell. It’s impossible to keep clean, but most of the soldiers bear up like, well, troopers.

The old-timers know it could be a lot worse. Back in 1991, when the 82nd Airborne rushed into the sands of Arabia to discourage Saddam Hussein from rolling his army beyond Kuwait and into the Saudi kingdom, the desert living conditions were miserable. There was no running water for months. No cooked food. Poor shelter. And no relief from brutal summer heat. I’ve overheard veterans of that deployment talk about going two or three months without a proper wash or hot meal.

This camp is vastly more humane than its predecessor of 12 years earlier. And one of the major reasons is the Army’s new preference for private civilian contractors. Most of the non-military operations here in Camp Champion--rental and erection of the tents, operation of the mess facility, raw foodstuff purchases, maintenance of the showers and porta-johns, laundry, the PX shop, garbage pickup--are run by for-profit companies, because the Pentagon has discovered that letting the private sector handle these tasks not only saves money but also results in a higher quality service.

Even tasks like weapons training and personal security are being contracted out. The bodyguards the Defense Department hired to take over protection of Afghan president Hamid Karzai are civilian contractors (DynCorp), as are the specialists selected to train and equip the new Bosnian army (MPRI), and the people de-mining the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan (RONCO).

Leg Land

“I’d get my eardrums ripped if I walked around like these guys,” observes one Airborne soldier, a personable Hispanic from California, as we stroll, on a postal errand, through an adjoining camp that houses regular Army and National Guard troops. Such camps are referred to (somewhat derisively) as “Leg Land,” and such soldiers as “Legs,” by the elite Airborne soldiers used to winging rather than walking their way into conflicts.

At Arifjan, another post I visit which is one of the Army’s major logistical centers in Kuwait, the personnel are almost all supply-chain staffers and other non-fighters, part of the massive “tail” that follows the “tooth” portion of our military beast. The atmosphere here is comparatively lax. Soldiers wander about without their gas masks, in motley clothing, shirttails hanging. The word in the tents of Camp Champion is that 75 pregnant female soldiers have recently been pulled out of Arifjan. I don’t try to confirm this, but it doesn’t seem implausible for the locale. Pregnancy epidemics have indeed swept other corners of the American military where loose discipline and easy fraternization of the sexes have been allowed to root. The naval repair ship USS Acadia had a scandalous 36 female sailors return home pregnant during its seven month sea tour amidst the first Gulf War.

Among the airborne of Camp Champion, however, the uniforms are sharp, the bodies are hard, and the discipline is tight. “You have to volunteer twice to get here,” they tell me, “once to join the Army and once to become a paratrooper.” Here, officers are saluted on the street. A soldier doesn’t step foot outside his tent without his rifle or machine gun slung over a shoulder, or without a complete uniform of battle fatigues. If he wanders any distance he’ll definitely be wearing his body armor and ballistic helmet (the “Dome of Discipline,” as it is known). No one goes anyplace without his gas mask. And leaving the area requires strapping a rucksack on your back holding a full NBC suit (15 pounds of protection from Nuclear/Biological/Chemical attack).

I get extensive training, like everyone else in camp, in techniques for surviving NBC warfare. It takes a few hours to learn how to don, clear, and seal a gas mask in 8 seconds, and quickly self-inject the three doses of atropine antidote that each of us carry at all times in case of a nerve agent gassing. We also carry a strong anti-convulsant to administer to buddies already on the ground. We’ve been trained how to decontaminate our exposed skin with charcoal powder, how to drink from a canteen with the special built-in hose, and how to carefully change out of one contaminated suit and slip on a new one.

As the risk of chemical or biological attack increases, due to physical proximity or battle escalation, more and more gear must be piled on. First the coat and pants. Then the rubber boots and rubber gloves. Finally the gas mask and hood. It’s definitely possible to fight in all this gear, but you’d better not be claustrophobic, and exposure to the hot sun is a brutal experience.

Practice Makes Perfect

March 17--Today is the “expiration date” of President Bush’s original warning to Saddam Hussein, and it’s safe to say that the rank-and-file in Camp Champion are chomping at the bit to get the Iraqi strongman into either a new career or a fresh grave. “Soldiers, who do the fighting, are generally not enthusiasts for war. But our people are convinced they have an important job to do here, and they want at it,” says strapping 6’6” Colonel Arnold Bray, who as commander of the 325th Regiment is “boss” to about 80 percent of the men and women here. When Colin Powell announced to the world this evening that the U.S. and its allies were withdrawing their resolution before the obstreperous U.N. Security Council, and that “the time for diplomacy has come to an end,” riotous cheers rippled through the vast mess hall where soldiers of the 82nd packed in to watch the news on a big screen TV.

Of course it takes more than discipline, more than enthusiasm, more than ferocity to make an effective fighting force. There are countless technical and physical skills to be mastered, long mental checklists to run through, and the students are mostly young males with short attention spans. All day and night, throughout the camp and on firing ranges and airstrips way beyond its borders, there is teaching, practice, mentoring, and fanny whacking going on.

Infantry cross training on different weapons. A slideshow on identifying mines and booby traps. Lots of brushing-up on mortar fire. Endless repetitions jumping out of trucks and helicopters to set up security perimeters. Tutorials on how to shout “Halt!” “Drop your weapons!” and “Who is in charge?” in reasonably accented Arabic. Supply masters carefully calculate plane loads and queue up vehicles. Practice flights in dust and at night for the helo pilots.

Plus dogged physical training of all sorts: Improvised weightlifting, running, calisthenics, chin-ups, teams of six pushing out-of-gear trucks up and down dirt paths. And regular review of the procedures necessary to avoid injury when jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with a heavy pack on one’s back.

There are many reminders that today’s high-tech warfare is not easy, not automatic, not something that just happens on a pushbutton basis (as the public occasionally seems to imagine). The process of speed-loading helicopters onto transport planes turns out to be, well, not so speedy on the day I observe it being practiced. Infantrymen arrayed across a parking lot in the prone rifle position are stacked up in a fashion that could lead to one soldier popping another in the back. When I visit an anti-aircraft battery responsible for keeping hostile planes and missiles away from the 82nd, they’re having trouble reading the squawk boxes that are mounted on each friendly helicopter. Make a misidentification in battle and you could either launch a Stinger missile at a U.S. pilot or let a bad guy fly right into your lap.

I get up at 3 a.m. to accompany a howitzer team to the artillery range, where they test their ranging procedures and then lob some heavy 105 mm punches over the horizon in a series of gut-sucking thuds. The “six minute drill” intended to quickly prep the howitzer for firing features a little Keystone-cop bumping and fumbling, some erase-and-redraw over at the plotting table, and way too much delay to stop any charging horde. These are all glitches that need to be worked out through concentrated repetition.

Teenage Burdens

March 18--Today some teenage paratroopers from the division’s 325th Regiment got a taste of life and death decision making.

Amidst intensified camp-wide training during the final countdown to action, these soldiers are run through full-dress scenarios, platoon by platoon, very like those they may face in real life within days. In one, a squad simulates a helicopter drop into a hot zone where a friendly humvee has just been attacked. Their mission is to secure a perimeter and then evacuate the wounded Americans.

All is proceeding well until a mob of “Iraqis”--actually other soldiers from the same company, wearing desert fatigues but no body armor or helmets--swarm out of an alley between some nearby tents. The role-players menace the U.S. soldiers, shouting taunts, and throwing a few rocks.

Suddenly one Iraqi in the middle of the pack unslings a rifle that had been hidden behind his shoulder, and attempts to fire. An alert infantryman drops him with a single round (in this case, a shouted “bang”). Unfortunately, the rest of the crowd doesn’t flee when the shot rings out, reacting instead with rage. “You killed my brother,” shout several of the hostiles, rushing the kneeling perimeter guards.

Chaos breaks out. Additional shots are fired. “You want more? Who wants more?” yells one adrenaline-filled U.S. soldier at his enemies. In the end, four foolish but unarmed civilians lay on the ground, dead.

At the end, all Charlie Company troopers gather around the experienced Rangers and Special Forces officers leading the exercise. “You’re freaking going to jail,” one interjects, forcefully pointing at the rescue squad. “You have to escalate force gradually. First you shout. Then you show your weapon. Then you shove. Only then do you shoot. You’ve got dead civilians without any lethal weapons on them. You’ve got a mess.”

“There are going to be tragedies,” emphasizes another. “But we’ve got to avoid atrocities.”

The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne are highly disciplined. But there is plenty of room for consultation and debate. Immediately after the sergeants speak, a spirited (yet civil) group argument breaks out over whether the squad had any alternative.

“We’re in a place where the enemy has just attacked a friendly vehicle and shot two of our guys. Now they’re swarming us, and not halting when we tell them to stop, even with us hollering ‘kif’ [a tidbit of the phonetic Arabic that soldiers in Kuwait are being taught]. I’m sorry, but they’re gonna get popped. And we’re gonna be able to bring all of our guys home alive,” the squad leader says with heat.

“First Sergeant,” explains one private who pulled his trigger, “the guy touched my rifle. Which cost $500,” he adds with a broad smile, no doubt parroting information loudly driven into his skull by some drill instructor.

“That’s different. Under the Rules of Engagement your rifle is one of your ‘sensitive items’ and if someone grabs it you’re justified in shooting.”

The company breaks into smaller groups to further chew over the lessons of the morning’s training, and the emphatic debates continue. Most of the infantrymen and squad leaders argue they must err on the side of keeping their men safe. “We’re not just waxing people. That’s wrong. But listen up: the rules have changed since September 11,” a lieutenant suggests. “There are people out there willing to commit suicide. We can’t let them near us.”

One of the trainers tries to slow the train of sentiment. “Imagine you’re at home, and soldiers shoot civilians. What are you gonna think then? Cops have to work through this all the time.”

An immediate answer zips back: “Sir, civilians shouldn’t be messing around with armed soldiers in an area where we got casualties.”

These lightning-fast decisions would be difficult for even Solomon to deliberate all the way through. For teenaged men facing possible death in a hostile country, the choices are hellishly tough. In a scenario run immediately after the one I’ve just described, four GIs get shot because some non-uniformed Iraqi attackers weren’t taken out quickly enough.

Invasion and occupation of Iraq is going to involve lots of raw military/civilian interaction. Defense intelligence shows that Saddam is secreting fighters and dangerous targets thick in the midst of innocent civilians even as we write. Sorting out the two populations is going to be hellish at times, and second-guessers in Europe and America will pounce on every hard case.

The encouraging news is, the men of the 82nd Airborne, and lots of other American fighters, are wrestling hard with these devilish choices. In sharp specifics, amidst rippling informed argument, they are trying to think their way through the snap decisions that can make the difference between justice and tragedy in wartime. Let’s hope that when bullets start to fly the Americans back home appreciate the difficulty of their burden.

The Real Army

After weeks of close observation, where I have been granted everything from sensitive information in classified battle briefings to valuable insider tips on how to find a clean privy, I can testify that airborne generals and colonels are not standoffish conference-center commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gehler, who commands the division’s attack helicopter battalion, will himself be flying regular combat sorties into potential anti-aircraft fire. The infantry commander, Colonel Bray, is sure to be in the thick of battle; he’s in a particularly aggressive frame of mind these days. The brigade battle briefings he runs are hard as ice, and each ends with all of the roughly 50 officers present jumping to their feet, then flinging themselves to the tent floor where they fly through 82 wide-spread pushups and 82 four-rep leg flutters. (As you might expect, 82 is a favorite number in this division.)

I run into Bray repeatedly during my days in Camp Champion, and the interactions are always interesting. Once around midnight I walk into the shower trailer, and who is there washing his socks in a bucket but the commander himself? As he twists laundry in his soapy bucket, and I shower and shave, we shoot the breeze about our kids, movies, college, and the like.

After brushing our teeth we step out into bright lunar light. While striding along, the colonel frets about the security of secret information, and explains to me why he would launch a “very personal, very harsh vendetta” against any journalist who releases advance intelligence that could endanger the lives of his men. The ghostly form of two paratroopers approaches us on the road. Suddenly the colonel stops them.

“What are your names?” Replies dart back. “Where are you from?” More replies. Outlines of individual lives begin to form. These are two human beings unlike any two others; somebody’s son, someone’s friend.

Then Bray turns to me. “They are why I take this so seriously. Men, carry on.”

It’s not adequately appreciated among American elites how vast a range of individuals serve in our armed forces at present. There are hillbillies and kids from concrete canyons, wealthy suburbanites and first generation immigrants, people with graduate degrees and self-taught mechanical wizards. Consider just a few of the soldiers from the 82nd I’ve recently become acquainted with:

• A Russian who moved to Brooklyn at age 17, joined up, and now drives the brigade commander.
• A sergeant who was half-way through a Ph.D. in philosophy at Fordham when he decided he’d like to become a paratrooper. That was four years ago.
• A warrant officer who, after breaking into fluent Spanish, explains that he served two years as a religious missionary in Bolivia.
• A bright, self-educated Californian who taught himself German, and is now about halfway through a rigorous Special Forces battlefield medicine course that will leave him qualified to do everything up to and including surgery.
• A chaplain originally from Kenya who grew up so destitute his greatest childhood treat was to sneak sugar from his mother’s cupboard.
• A Long Islander whose grandmother is a veteran protester at the White House, and whose father was a draft dodger, who considered joining the Peace Corps but signed with the Army instead for financial reasons. He got sent to the Balkans, where he concluded that the military is now doing more good to change the world than any other agency of government. With the idea that if he was going to jump in he should do it right, he enrolled at West Point, and is now a lieutenant commanding cavalry.
• A pilot who started in the Army as a mechanic, took a tour as an artilleryman, was selected to fly helicopters, and now has turned himself into an expert on the art of coordinating airstrikes with ground troops, hoping to literally write the book on this subject for the Army.
• A military intelligence officer who, over the last few years, learned first Mandarin and then Arabic at a Defense Department language school, Wesleyan, one of the toniest (and most anti-military) colleges in the country.
•  A personable Colombian helicopter mechanic who left his home for the U.S. after guerillas in that South American nation marked anyone with military helicopter expertise for assassination.

Meshing persons with wildly different backgrounds, educations, personal tastes, and occupational talents is not easy, but the Army does a better job of bridging human gaps than any other large institution I’ve observed up close. There are far fewer barriers and castes than one finds at a typical civilian corporation, campus, or agency of government. And when this wide spectrum of men turn their minds and bodies to the same task, despotic enemies hardly stand a chance.

The Ides of March

March 20--I’m now officially a beneficiary of missile defense. Early this morning, coalition forces got wind from the CIA of a conference of Iraqi leaders that was too tempting to miss. A round of cruise missiles was aimed at the meeting site, inaugurating the first day of America’s second Iraq war.

It didn’t take long for us to receive a response. About half past noon, the air raid sirens at Camp Champion began to wail. “Dynamite, Dynamite, Dynamite!” exclaimed the loudspeaker (the shorthand for “this is a real attack”), “Scuds inbound from southern Iraq.” For a second, all of us in the tent stared at each other wondering if this was just a drill. Then we ripped the Velcro on our gas mask carriers, clapped our masks on, leapt for the bags containing our chemical protective suits, and darted for the Scud bunker.

It became very quiet as we jammed together under the sandbagged concrete culvert. The only sound was the ethereal hissing of the breathing respirators on our masks. Depending on where it’s launched from, it would take somewhere between three and 13 minutes for a ballistic missile to reach us. As the minutes ticked by, the normal Army repartee of jokes, jive, and anti-Saddam oaths began to return. “I hope somebody sandbagged one of the porta-johns,” somebody cracked.

Then the loudspeaker began to rumble again. Clearly the announcer was wearing his own gas mask. Through the muffling, however, came his quite intelligible and welcome announcement: “Missile destroyed.” Some soldiers told me they heard the explosion of the Patriot thudding on the horizon. Just one hour later, the first attack was repeated in almost every particular. Once again a gratifying verdict eventually echoed over the loudspeakers: “Missile destroyed.”

The Patriot system that knocked down these two missiles has been harshly attacked by defense critics for years; more generally, skeptics have savaged the entire concept of missile defense, sneering that the prospect of hitting one missile with another missile is a pipe dream. Well, those of us who spent mid March in the Kuwaiti desert are here to tell you ballistic missile defense works. If one of Saddam’s Scuds had landed on a U.S. camp, where military personnel are densely packed in open tents, he could have achieved a Beirut Bombing or Khobar Towers-style killing.

Certainly U.S. soldiers think highly of the Patriots. They’ve learned to trust and love the protective umbrella that the U.S. military now stretches over critical military arenas and nearby cities. “We’re gonna have to take those Patriot boys out on the town when we get home,” suggested one trooper, with smiling nods all around. Over the next days, our anti-missile batteries were a perfect ten-for-ten in blocking threats headed for U.S. military camps or residential areas in Kuwait.

Inexplicably, media reports failed to properly mark this day as a ringing vindication of missile defense. The establishment media also elided over another fundamental lesson of this skirmish: intermediate-range ballistic missiles are one of the weapons Saddam Hussein was banned from possessing years ago by U.N. resolution. They are one of the weapons that, just weeks ago, he swore on a stack of Holy Korans he didn’t possess. They are one of the weapons U.N. inspectors told us they saw no sign of. They are one of the weapons that Security Council opponents of the U.S. sniffed that Iraq was now unlikely to possess.

So: On the very first day of hostilities, Saddam revealed himself (once again) to be a liar. Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, and other apologists for the U.N. inspection charade were shown to be feckless fools. And American anti-ballistic missile technology was demonstrated to be a defensive bulwark of our future.

Battle Ready

In the Army, sergeants major are the bosses of the factory floor. They are the bridge between enlisted soldiers and commanding officers. And they guide and manage other sergeants--who are the real backbone and institutional memory of the military.

Paul Weidhas--the bluff, sometimes stern, yet kind and good humored sergeant major of my mates in the helicopter battalion stops by my cot. Have I got ballistic armor? With supplemental Kevlar hard plates? Let me see your helmet. Got the special canteen that fits with the drinking straw sealed into your gas mask? You need to sew squares of glint tape on your sleeves, your back, and your helmet cover so our soldiers and pilots see you glow in their night sights, recognize you as a friendly, and hold their fire. Do you know your blood type? Write it on your t-shirt. Does somebody have a DNA sample for you? We’ll need it if a body part has to be identified.

Meanwhile, Jake Froehle, the strapping 27-year-old helicopter pilot and father of two from Alaska who is Headquarters company commander, is completing the kind of paperwork that only military officers process: Each of his troopers must fill out a form providing some weirdly intimate personal information that would be used if it became necessary to positively confirm the identity of a shot-down pilot, captured soldier, unknown radio caller, or in some other situation where impersonation is a risk. The written statements are quirky declarations on things like what kind of hair your wife has, or which sibling is your favorite, or some food preference or detail of home life or personal friendship. Jake chuckles perversely, and anonymously shares a few odd details aloud, as he reviews the forms for completeness from his corner of the tent.

All around me the soldiers are getting down to business: Cleaning M-4 carbines and other weapons. Testing radios. Sifting through what should be included in the main battle pack, versus what will go into a second pack which can be abandoned if the soldier gets into deep trouble. I must pack the same way. Among the infan-try, physical drills have gotten harder, a little savage even.

Throughout the camp, a definite ferocity is building. These troopers don’t want to be left behind as the combat operation builds; they desperately want to carry out the part they’ve trained so hard for. The missile launches, the odious demands of constant chemical and ballistic protection, the trickling casualty reports, the obnoxious rhetoric continuing to flow from Baghdad, have left them testy and itchy for action.

The rhetoric from second-guessers in Europe has also annoyed some. I was in the mess hall when a report aired over the camp TV that French president Jacques Chirac was “warning” the U.S. and Britain against trying to rebuild Iraq without French help. “I’d like to know why France thinks it should have anything at all to say about it,” scoffed a sergeant sitting across from me. (Except he said it in French himself--that peculiar English form of French that is spoken by salty paratroopers.)

The brass are nearly as keyed up as the rank-and-file, but they are proceeding with great patience. They understand the stunning level of destruction their forces could inflict if fully unleashed, and realizing that America will need to fix most of the physical infrastructure it destroys in this war, they are showing great reserve. Force is being ratcheted up only gradually, in hopes that a coup, the death of Saddam, or some other early capitulation by the enemy might spare everyone much unnecessary damage. We are getting lots of military intelligence reporting infighting (even gun battles) within the Iraqi forces, as they hash out their next move.

A good deal of planning and training is going on in camp to prepare our forces to win the peace after the battles end. Civil affairs, intelligence, M.P., and psychological-operations units are working at crowd control, quick identification of local leaders, aid distribution, and loudspeaker broadcasting in Arabic.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Yesterday was Sunday, and quite possibly the last chapel services before these soldiers go into combat, most of them for the first time. A large tent packed with burly, heavily armed men bowing deep in prayer, reading from their camouflaged Bibles, and singing out in full-throat is quite a sight. The preachers emphasized the importance of individuals getting right with God, and scripture’s many positive references to loyal soldiering in the cause of good.

A number of first-time fathers stood up to announce the birth of their babies this week, reminding us what these men give up to be here. During prayer call at the Protestant services there were requests from sergeants and officers for wisdom so that they might ably lead the soldiers under them. I was struck that several requests for prayers for Iraqis were offered up by servicemen in the congregation--prayers for the safety of Iraqi civilians, and even for Iraqi soldiers, that they might recognize U.S. troops as “liberators not enemies,” and not throw their lives away.

This camp is full of that characteristically American combination of no-nonsense ferocity hard amidst deep decency and kindness. The noblest, and rarest, mix for any military setting.

Tech vs. The Fog of War

The early sprint through southern Iraq by U.S. Marines and the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division was a welcome kickoff to the war. Relatively few lives were lost, and the key southern oilfields and ports were secured mostly undamaged. The speed of the southern rollup was no great surprise, however. Iraq’s south has long been a kind of rebel province due to religious and cultural schisms separating it from Baghdad.

Days and even weeks before any hostilities commenced, certain Iraqi troops and border guards were trying to surrender to U.S. troops across the Kuwaiti fence. Noting that no war was yet underway, the Americans sent them back. “I guess we can think of these guys as pre-positioned POWs” stated one military intelligence officer with a straight face at a nightly pre-war battle briefing.

The 82nd’s commander, General Swannack, has granted the embedded journalists unusual access to his councils of war. I’ve attended a number of Battle Update Briefs (BUBs) at the division, brigade, and battallion levels. These are the central daily events for sharing intelligence and planning missions, and have always previously been closed to any but officers with secret clearances. I’m told that only a handful of journalists in the war theater were accorded this privilege during the combat planning phases.

To give us a sense of how a battle is controlled, Karl Horst, the bright, personable, thick-necked, multilingual colonel who is the division chief of staff (making him General Swannack’s top assistant here) gives me and four or five other reporters a tour of their new Digital Command Center. Two years ago, battles were still run using paper maps, pins, stickie-notes, and overhead projectors. Today, a complex of up to 17 separate computer information screens is projected on a large wall, under three clocks set to relevant time zones, surrounded by rings of tables crowned with laptops where perhaps 50 officers monitor individual components of communication and data.

The main battle screen is a map, upon which critical boundaries are imposed--artillery ranges, air defense zones, political limits. A brand new Northrop Grumman system known as “Blue Force Tracker” allows commanders to see the true, exact location of all friendly forces with no delay from lagging radio or courier reports. Vehicles of all sorts--trucks, tanks, ships, airplanes--have been fitted with transceivers that constantly send their GPS coordinates back to headquarters. Intelligence reports on enemy positions are layered on top of this to create a composite battle map.

Soldiers in the field can also send back information on minefield locations, downed bridges, chemically contaminated areas, and such. These get entered onto the central battlefield map, which is in turn shared digitally by all units. The system will even automatically set off an alarm in a vehicle whenever it wanders dangerously close to an enemy position, mines, or some other hazard the field commander might not have noticed.

Both HQ and individual units out in the field can thus easily monitor the relative positions of friendly armor, artillery, and supply units, the progress of ships carrying critical supplies, the nearness of the enemy, and the like. A similar screen portrays the exact location, type, and direction of all aircraft in the sky. (Good guys show up as green, bad planes are red.) Someday it will become practical to extend elements of this tracking system right down to the level of the individual soldier. Live or taped video feeds from helicopters, Predator drones, or surveillance planes can also be fed onto the battle center screens.

None of this is foolproof. Friendly fire accidents and the like will never be completely eliminated from the battlefield. But great progress has been made.

One panel in the battle center is an index page for the division’s Web site, which is where all information is now disseminated. Until quite recently, any sensitive new order used to be typed, photocopied, then dispatched by courier to as many as 50 different sub-command nodes. Today, new orders are simply posted on SIPRNET, the encrypted military intranet, where all commanders can have instant access to them, as well as voluminous archived background information.

The interestingly named Major Miner, who has put much of this hardware together, reports that the system is made to be broken down and rebuilt quickly. Within eight hours of when the first parachute pops in an airborne assault, this entire command center can be set up afresh in the middle of the battlefield. With its own power, and coded satellite links to the entire globe, commanders will be able to see and assess almost any aspect of their fight, as well as the larger war.

“I want you to go out and look your paratroopers in the eye,” stated General Swannack as he closed one Division BUB. “I want you to make sure they’re ready. Because this fight, like all fights, will ultimately be won by our infantrymen and sergeants.” Which is certainly true.

But today more than ever before, the men moving the chess pieces inside the battle centers can also make a tide turn. They now have current, accurate information that can make all the difference between success and failure, life and death. The fog of war will never be blown away altogether; but it’s thinning.

Pressure Builds, Then Breaks

Some advance elements of the 82nd Airborne, mostly supply units, have already trickled north into Iraq, following the armored elements that plowed open the road. Out in our camp’s staging area, almost all of the division’s vehicles are now fully loaded, their tarps pulled tight. The frantic calculations of the loadmasters responsible for fitting into a limited number of airplanes everything the assault force will need to fight a battle for several days are nearly finished. We’re ticking close to our d-day.

I ask Captain Andy Reiter, a pleasant 27-year-old Kiowa pilot who grew up solid in a Wyoming mining town, then went to West Point, how he feels about the prospect of flying his small helicopter into real anti-aircraft fire for the first time. He looks at me soberly, steadily, with piercing blue eyes. He knows how to respond to various threats--never flying the same route twice, turning his turbine’s exhaust port away from a heat-seeking missile in a last-second dart, other forms of evasion. The threat that worries him most, he says, is a Rocket Propelled Grenade blasted straight up from the ground as he buzzes in low. There’s really no preparing for that.

Because of the media embedding that has made this an almost instant-broadcast war, the soldiers have gotten a close-up glimpse of what could lie ahead for them. Many were angry and riled when news arrived that Americans captured by the Iraqis had been abused and executed. Some said it was time to change the name of the effort from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation Iraqi Asswhuppin’.

Our military leaders had been expecting skullduggery. One intelligence briefing I observed warned that certain Iraqi military groups had purchased American-style uniforms, and that they aimed to commit atrocities against Iraqi citizens in these which they hoped would be blamed on coalition forces. But now the dirty tricks cascaded in some unexpected ways.

Everyone seemed surprised that there were false surrenders. A large number of Marines were wounded and killed when Iraqis waving the white flag suddenly pulled hidden weapons and attacked the Americans accepting their capitulation. Another group of Marines was forced to halt a firefight when the Special Republican Guard unit they were battling dragged a number of women and children into their front lines. The Americans pulled back, unsure how to proceed. In other places, Baath Party irregulars shed their uniforms and began to fight in civilian clothes. Of course, the people most endangered by these dishonorable actions were everyday Iraqis, whom American troops were now forced to treat as risks, rather than people needing help.

No matter how graphic the TV footage in the mess hall, however, the troops never get grim. This afternoon, as I sat writing from some notes spread across my cot, a clutch of black and white soldiers clustered ten feet away, kicking back in our shady tent on this hot day, reminiscing warmly about favorite odd foods cooked by their mothers and grandmothers: pigs feet, pickled cabbage, apple butter, red hot dogs, chitterlings, fried cornbread, mountain oysters (bull testicles), boudin (Creole rice-and-blood sausage). “My granddaddy used to give me whiskey, honey, and a piece of peppermint mixed in a glass when I was sick,” smiled one sergeant. “Man, we used to pretend something was achin’ just to get some of that.”

Brand New Game Plan

March 25--The camp was aflutter all night, and today we learned the 82nd is going into action. General Swannack offered a briefing on the division’s fresh orders at 08:30 Zulu time. (Zulu, or “Z” hours refer to Greenwich Mean Time, the global standard which the military uses for operations to avoid confusion as orders cross time zones.) The division had been assigned an entirely new mission. Instead of seizing Baghdad International Airport by parachute assault—the 82nd’s long-planned assignment as part of the final move on Iraq’s capital city—our men were now tasked to take up their other specialty: urban warfare.

As the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force raced up Highway 8 toward Baghdad, they largely bypassed the cities along the route. After being ringed by coalition forces, Basra, Iraq’s second largest metropolis, quickly erupted in street fighting between Iraqis revolting against Saddam Hussein and hardcore defenders of the regime. British forces were given the task of stabilizing that city.

The next town up the highway, Nasiriyah, has been the locale of some of the sharpest fighting in the south, including all the dirty tricks of false surrenders, fighting in civilian clothing, using innocents as shields. It too was sealed off for door-to-door cleanup, this to be done by the Marines.

At this writing, the third city up the Euphrates, Samawah, is likewise being used as a hiding ground for hardcore Baath Party fighters and fedayeen partisans. They are carrying out terrorism across the city, and guerilla warfare in the countryside—including ambushing the U.S. supply convoys that pass by on their way toward Baghdad. After engaging, these fighters melt back into the streets of the 180,000-person urban area. The 82nd has been ordered to clean these irregulars out of the city.

And so, within a span of hours, the entire brigade has had to shift its plans from a parachute assault to an infantry sweep. Most of the troopers will drive the 240 miles to Samawah in armed convoy. The rest will fly up in transport planes. I’ll go by land, hoping to get a closer look at the terrain and battle sites along the way. We’re told there has been a lot of shooting on this road.

Each of the soldiers has drawn 210 rounds for his M-4 or M-16, 45 rounds for his 9mm pistol, and more than 800 cartridges for the machine gunners. Lieutenant Colonel Gehler climbs onto the back of a humvee and gives a stern speech telling the troops to put on a combat mentality, to choose action over inaction, to be aggressive as soon as we cross the berm into Iraq. This route we’ll be driving is where the heaviest action of the war has taken place, and it needn’t be an enemy tank to be a threat--attacks are being made from schoolbuses, taxis, by people who look like civilians.

The colonel assures all that their rules of engagement allow unencumbered self-defense against any apparent threat. No radioing for permission to shoot. No more asking for orders.

If the convoy is attacked, the escorted vehicles will keep moving at all costs. But the 70 members of Alpha Troop cavalry assigned to provide the helicopter battalion with security will pull over and engage the enemy with the Mark 19 grenade launchers, .50 caliber guns, TOW missile launchers, and .240 bravo machine guns mounted on the roofs of their humvees, plus the rifles they carry. I’m riding in one of these gun trucks with three Alpha troopers: Private O’Connor, Sergeant Campos, and Lieutenant Mosby.

When the division’s various elements regroup closer to Samawah, new base camps will be established from which daily missions can be run into the city and outlying lairs. Saddam’s guerillas will be tracked down and eliminated. It promises to be delicate and dangerous work.

In Iraq

It’s an eerie feeling rolling down a crowded highway at up to 40 miles per hour, with all the vehicle lights taped over, in total darkness. Everyone except me is wearing night vision goggles. (Which infantrymen call NODs; pilots prefer the term NVGs.) Even goggled up, though, driving in blackout is dangerous. Several hours into our trip, a Kuwaiti truck on a dirt road crossing our highway, himself driving with no lights, piles into the side of one of the darkened humvees, injuring two soldiers and sending the driver of the pickup through the windshield.

Taking part in a convoy like this makes you realize how much of the Army is just a giant trucking operation. Supply, supply, supply. Literally hundreds of cargo carriers of all descriptions roar down the road, humping troopers, fuel, water, food, rucksacks, generators, medical supplies, ammo, you name it.

Keeping this massive string of overstuffed vehicles together in a secure formation is an exercise in hurry-up and wait. There is a kind of science of secure convoying, and because of what is known as the “slinky effect,” the limiting factor is the acceleration speed of the slowest freighter in the line. So most of the night we rumble along at about 30 mph or less. There are numerous stops for breakdowns, refueling, lost drivers, and the like.

Between the herky-jerky movement, the heavy stink of diesel, the rattle of loose sheetmetal, the hissing radio, and the lumpy armor and chem suits we’re wearing inside the cramped humvees (seemingly designed for lower-body amputees), it’s a blue-ribbon recipe for cabin fever and deep-vein thrombosis. But we’re all a little keyed up and tolerate the physical displeasure surprisingly easily.

At 01:03 in the morning we cross a breach in the fence and enter Iraq. The road is lined with burned-out buildings and vehicle hulks from the last Gulf War. But a shot-up armored personnel carrier and security truck are more recent relics of this week’s fight. A dead man sits in the truck, his windshield perforated, his mouth open, his door swinging--an advertisement for tardy escape reflexes. Off in the distance, a large fire burns a hole in the horizon.

We’re running up the infamous Highway of Death, where the rats fleeing Kuwait in 1991, their vehicles stuffed with plunder, were strafed and bombed into eternity by coalition pilots. Even in the inkiness of night, a series of vehicle graveyards shine alongside the road. As we edge closer to dawn, the sky becomes crystalline for the first time since I’ve been in the dust-swirled Middle East; a warmly familiar set of stars crowns our heads, even as the ground beneath our feet and wheels becomes ever more strange.

At 06:30, the lieutenant is driving, and after a long night of navigating and surfing the radio traffic he is falling asleep. Whenever he starts to swerve off the highway either the gunner (who, with his head sticking out of the top of the jeep, is wide awake in the cold air) or I, sitting behind the driver’s seat, whack the lieutenant to waken him. After we stop, we hear that an identical drill was taking place in nearly all the vehicles, giving new meaning to the phrase “back seat driver.”

Nearly 22 hours after our start, we pull off the highway and onto a narrow track. In the distance I notice what looks like . . . could it possibly be the Ziggurat of Ur? I pull out the binoculars and, sure enough, I’m thrilled to take in the instantly recognizable 4,000-year-old Sumerian temple constructed by the world’s very first civilized humans. The civility of more recent residents is open to question, however. What kind of barbarian would build a massive concrete and steel military base right next to one of the three or four oldest human structures in the world?

For, turning onto a dirt road, we immediately enter one of Saddam Hussein’s biggest air bases. Here, the 82nd will establish a forward camp. At the base entrance, there are two of the obligatory large portraits of the maximum leader. Next to the main one, however, some soldier with a sense of humor has erected a cardboard sign. It reads: Bush International Airport.

Home Away from Home

Tallil Air Base, South-Central Iraq, March 26--We eat our first food in nearly a day, MRE pot luck, inside one of the couple dozen ruined concrete bunkers where Saddam used to hide his MiGs. The bunkers are impressive in scale, but a close look shows the concrete work to be painfully shoddy. And the burned out jet and helicopter hulks in the yards outside testify to the insufficiency of Iraq’s crude fortifying instincts.

This is Tallil Air Base, which used to be one of Iraq’s strongholds. It was pounded by U.S bombers in the first Gulf War--some of the six-foot-thick concrete hangar walls have been neatly perforated by bunker-buster bombs, and the whole facility has taken on an air of rack and ruin, which is not surprising given that Iraq’s air force nearly ceased to exist a dozen years ago. This was still an active military facility a week ago, however, until the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division swept through and cleaned it out.

After it is cleared of bombs and debris, we’ll set up a semi-permanent post in one of the abandoned bunkers. Tonight we’re sleeping under the stars on a concrete apron. Determined to pack light I left my camping mat home, so tomorrow I’ll be the guy with the flat spot on the back of his head.

We are on a huge plain with unsecured boundaries, and vulnerable to attack should there be any dead-enders in the area. Defensive preparations begin with the same ac-tion as in prairie schooner days: The wagons are circled in a tight loop around the mouth of the bunker. Patrols wearing NODs will watch our perimeter all night; they chamber cartridges as they move out. If nature calls, don’t go out far or you could be mistaken for a haji.

Sergeant Major Weidhas is really taking care of me, as he does his soldiers. He suggests it would be a good idea for me to know how to use the sidearms that serve as a second weapon within the 82nd’s ranks. He walks me through a quick tutorial on loading and firing the Army Beretta. He promises a primer on the standard M-4 carbine next.

Major Jim Corcoran, the regiment’s helpful executive officer, has just briefed me on the latest details of our mission. U.S. mechanized units have the bottom crescent of Samawah sealed off. The 82nd will start in the east and sweep across the middle and top of the city. No one knows exactly what lies ahead, but a CIA agent inside the gates radioed in a whispered report during the night that members of the Fedayeen Saddam are holed up and preparing to defend the metropolis. Exploratory helicopter and infantry patrols will start tonight or tomorrow.

If the next city over is any model for what to expect in Samawah, there may be a hot reception. The Marines went into Nasiriyah yesterday and took 40 casualties in stiff street fighting. Dirty tricks continue. I am told it’s been determined that the American soldiers taken prisoner and then executed in the early days of the war were caught by using children to lure them close to some camouflaged ditches where fighters lay in ambush.

Starting with a Bang

The men are in great spirits tonight, and ready for action. They’re sober enough, though. Around sunset, a massive fireball erupts down the plain, followed by a mushroom cloud, and last a huge boom. The radio reports that an Army EOD (Explosive Ordnance Division) team exploded a large cache of mortars uncovered at the edge of the base. Irregulars had mortar tubes all set up, and rounds stockpiled, to unload on American positions under cover of darkness.

One powerfully built young officer confided shortly after the shock wave passed that the spectacular flames and noise were a reminder for him that military work is all about destruction and loud jolts and other scary things. These men aren’t insensitive to the dangers around them, they just proceed in spite of them.

One of the squad commanders walks around to each of his helo pilots, one at a time, puts his face next to theirs, and asks if they’re ready to fly tonight if the general calls. Are they rested enough to handle the trickiness of NVG-navigating for several hours? Are they mentally ready to get fired at? Colonel Gehler is lobbying hard for a decent night’s sleep before his pilots enter the fray, but the infantry officers in the 325th are reportedly gung-ho to start whacking at the hornet’s nest right away.

A friendly and handsome blond-haired pilot named Jeff Sumner invites me to use his camping stove to make some tea. We talk about our families. He was set to marry this month until the Middle East called. He says his fiancee, a pharmacist in Shreveport, Louisiana, was understanding. When interrogated about his flightworthiness Jeff somberly tells his leader he’s tired but thinks he could do three or four hours under goggles if there’s an emergency. Even if no helicopter mission is scheduled, a 911 call is always possible should some infantry unit get pinned down.

At the MedEvac facility being set up here at Tallil, we saw wounded soldiers and Marines being brought in this afternoon. On the drive back across the base, Major Corcoran reports, there were dead bodies, tags on their toes, waiting in the same area.

At about 04:00 a soldier in full battle gear taps me in my sleeping bag. “Reynolds?”

“No, next man over.”

“Reynolds, it’s your turn for guard duty.”

As I come to, I notice that not far off in the distance some helicopters are winding up. One takes off. Then another. I’m wondering who is behind the controls, and where they’re going.  

I look up at the sparkling sky. Then, with a lower glance, my brain takes in the bunker, the trucks, the outline of a rifle nearby. Still the same familiar stars. Still the same decidedly unhomelike land they’re shining down upon.

Meat and Potatoes

I’m enjoying a split life: part of my day with the suave, tightly wound pilots, part with the earthier, more ribald cavalry troopers who provide the unit’s ground security. A perfect meat and potatoes combination for warfighting, and also for storycollecting.

As I sat on the ground yesterday eating from a plastic pouch, two cavalry buddies being tormented by the swarming flies had an extended time-passing conversation on the cosmic justification for pests.

“What the hell use are flies? I’d like to know one good thing they do for the world.”

“Dude, you’re thinking small. I saw it on the Discovery Channel: Flies lay their eggs on trash and crap, and the maggots eat it all up.”

“Hey, you could put a bucket of maggots on each of the craps we produced here today and there’d still be crap left behind when they’re done.”

“But not as much. Definitely less crap.” 

“Yeah, and then there’s mosquitos. And fleas. And chiggers. I think there should be just one global, universal pest for all purposes. Fewer options out there to bother us.”

“Man, you’re such a white suburbanite! Thinking too much, all the time.”

“Alright, then you tell me the reason for jellyfish. I am quite certain there is no good purpose for jellyfish. I mean . . . ” 

Cavalry are pretty much what the name implies--fast moving scouts and raiders who literally live on their mounts. Unlike the rest of the Army around them, they pitch no tents. They sleep on the hood, in the back, and across the unbelievably cramped seats of their humvees, nap in the shade underneath the trucks by day (because their most important guarding is often done at night), and remain always ready to roll on a moment’s notice. Cavalry charge in to save more lightly armed soldiers when they get trapped or ambushed, protect command posts and supply lines, and swoop down to destroy enemy vehicles (including even tanks) in packs. The personalities of the troopers tend to be as slashing and devil-may-care as their duties.

And this is their moment. For helicopter pilots there are lots of thrills even in peacetime. For airborne infantry, jumping out of planes and fighting hand-to-hand in bullpens can be almost as challenging during training as in the real thing. But for cavalry troopers, it’s almost impossible to recreate within a training exercise the free-floating, slash-and-burn buccaneering that combat brings.

Recovering from our 22-hour roadtrip, we are enjoying a lazy morning. Someone has built a fire to burn garbage, and the happy simpleton we’ll call Ricky, who is a kind of mascot for the rest of the Alpha Troop, is fairly dancing around, exulting for hours over the POP!s he finds he can make by throwing empty water bottles into the flames with their caps on. Ricky is sweet-tempered, hard-working, and very slow-witted--and beloved by the other cavalrymen. Recounting Ricky stories is a favorite pastime among them.

Ricky is a driver, and this morning his sergeant is hilariously and quite profanely describing one of his latest foibles. It seems Ricky’s determination to stick rigidly to the agreed speed limits during our convoy had him staring down, bent-necked, at the speedometer most of the night--to the point where he kept veering off the road. All night long it was “Watch out Ricky, you’re on the shoulder!” “Get your damn eyes off the needle Ricky!” “What the hell good does it do to go the right speed, Rickster, if you’re in the bushes?” and “Ricky, I’m not gonna yell if you go 24 instead of 25, but I’m gonna kill you if drive into that ditch!”

Sergeant Campos and Private O’Connor add a little firepower to our ride, digging out of its case an AT4 rocket (a kind of point-and-shoot disposable bazooka) to add to the humvee’s rooftop armory. Lieutenant Mosby takes a few moments to synchronize the truck’s plugger (GPS positioning device) with his handheld unit.

Out here with the cav I’m watching the field end of the Blue Force Tracker in action. Mosby was a computer science major at West Point and he’s taken to the new toy with enthusiasm, tutoring some of the more electronics-averse sergeants around him on its fine points. Whereas a few months ago he would have perched in the front passenger seat with a paper map on his lap, he now has not only much better digital maps on an electronic screen, but also a rich source of what soldiers call “situational awareness.” He has, for instance, just been looking up where the infantry elements of our task force were located last night.

Buried Nuts and Warthogs

Tallil, March 27--We uncovered a little surprise this morning. Just as I sat down for a breakfast of chicken and salsa some older guys decided that what looked like a buried wheel and hubcap, located maybe eight feet from me, was possibly an anti-tank mine. A humvee was parked just short of it, and the guys had been stumbling over it all night in the dark on their way out to pee. This morning, Cory O’Connor, who was in high school in Rhode Island ten months ago, actually jumped up and down on top of it. Curiosity, I guess.

Luckily, tank mines, unlike the anti-personnel versions, take thousands of pounds of pressure to detonate. Just the same, I pick a new breakfasting spot a little further back. Wouldn’t want to get any dirt and rocks in my salsa.

After finishing the vegetable cracker with peanut butter and the poundcake (I’d rate it about 7 on a 16 ounce scale), I walk over to look at a huge stinging centipede one guy has cornered. Turns out he (the trooper, not the centipede) was in this exact location back in ’91.

“There were about 50 tanks in this air base that we had to take out. The 82nd Airborne had Sheridan armored vehicles back then, and I was in one. Almost met my maker here, actually, at the hand of some Iraqis hiding behind a berm. But between aerial bombs and our TOW missiles and A-10s we finally killed the tanks off. Then we destroyed all the aircraft here. After we ran out of rounds to blast them with we started running over the Hind and Hip helicopters with our Sheridan.”

Sergeant Cory Kroll--perfectly described to me as having an exterior as gruff as a Montana grizzly bear enfolding the persona of a kindly father of four girls--tells a similar story. He entered Tallil after Air Force planes and Army attack helicopters had softened things up, but still took heavy fire. “I was the gunner in an armored personnel carrier and we killed a T-55 tank and a bunker. But there were some close calls. An Iraqi jumped up from a camouflaged position and fired an RPG that whistled right between the turrets of my armored personnel carrier and the one next to me.”

The Air Force must be gaining confidence in the security of the Tallil air field, because a squadron of A-10 Thunderbolts has just been moved in here to support the infantry operations to the north. Popularly known as the Warthog, the A-10 is a legendary plane, unslick in every regard, but beloved of any American military man who has ever put boot to earth with a rifle on his back.

Even an Air Force ground controller like Buddy McArthur, who makes his living calling in close air strikes from B-52s, F-15s, B-1s and other needle-nosed craft toting cool laser-guided munitions, says his favorite tool for sheer effectiveness is the A-10. The troopers who’ve maneuvered with A-10s swear the plane noticeably slows whenever it fires its massive six-barrel 30 mm cannon. In fact, they claim that’s why the gun was mounted offset on the fuselage--because early models where it was mounted parallel actually stalled in the air during heavy firing. In any case, the plane has a mighty unhealthful effect on enemy tanks and infantry.

But this is a war where good weapons are only one part of the solution. Captain Robin Brown just stopped by with the latest news. She’s the battallion’s efficient, spirited operations officer. (She and her husband are both helicopter pilots; he’s currently vacationing in Afghanistan while she entertains herself further south.) She reports that a minivan roared through an Army checkpoint just north of here and exploded a suicide bomb, killing five soldiers.

Overall, however, the night’s momentum flowed strongly in the other direction. Hot off the C-130s that brought them north from Camp Champion, infantrymen from the 82nd’s 1st Battalion of the 325th Regiment trucked up to the fringes of Samawah, disembarked, and maneuvered on foot up to a ditch and berm some Iraqi fighters had dug along a major pipeline. They killed 17 enemy during the night, while sustaining no casualties of their own, and took numerous prisoners of war, who are now corralled behind some wire just down the road from where I sit. If I had to guess, Colonel Bray was right there along the berm himself much of the night.

Up in the Air

During our first eerie night at Tallil, before any helicopter sorties had been run, there was a distinct, understandable edginess in the pilots’ tents. But the next day, having flown a few missions without encountering any especially nasty anti-aircraft fire, the old surety and humor came back. Show me a cocky pilot and I’ll show you a happy pilot.

The infantry pushing into Samawah from the east were taking mortars in addition to rifle fire, and the Kiowas went up repeatedly to add extra firepower. Lieutenant Sosa fired a Hellfire missile into a building being used as a site to rain mortars down on the 325th. Mortar silenced, eight guerillas dead. Just now, the radio has crackled news that pilots Kirschbaum and Marx rocketed a motorcycle that had been spraying AK-47 fire as it raced down a street.

A little earlier, Charlie Company Commander Jack Murphy, a fun-loving pilot with a stock of stories about Canadian girlfriends from his years at Fort Drum in northern New York, encountered a hostile crowd of about 40 irregulars in an open area. They began firing AK-47s at his Kiowa. He responded by launching a shrapnel-filled flechette rocket, ending that threat.

The Kiowas were returning with their missile racks empty after each sortie, then cycling back out to lay more Hellfires and rockets on paramilitaries and the buildings from which they were firing and mortaring. Our pilots were getting as well as giving. Kirschbaum and Marx returned from one flight with six bullet holes through the underbelly of their bird. Surprisingly, given the light build of the Kiowa, there were no injuries and the helicopter remained flyable. “The shots missed the fuel tank. And fortunately they passed through a narrow six inch strip that’s directly between two sensitive areas which, if hit, would almost certainly have ignited an electrical fire,” Commander Murphy tells me.

In addition, landing after dark has turned out to be dangerous, because the powdery dust kicked up on descent makes the ground invisible even in night vision goggles. There were some hard landings before the decision was made to suspend black-out operations, perhaps until some Rhino Snot (a kind of plasticizer) can be sprayed on the sand and dust to seal a landing surface. Of course the on-call Quick Reaction Force is an exception; if there are soldiers in danger, they’ll fly despite the risk.

Overall, it’s been a solid stretch for the aviation regiment. Captain Brown is ebullient when I run into her: “We were kicking ass today.”

Plans Change

The Iraqi Desert South of Samawah, March 28--If you can’t roll with a punch and adapt to entirely new circumstances within a fingersnap, you don’t belong in warfighting. Just now it’s been decided that, less than 24 hours after settling into this abandoned bunker, the battalion needs to have a base closer to Samawah. Tallil is still about 45 minutes flying time from the main battle zone, and by the time the Kiowas get there and back, and leave themselves a small fuel cushion, they only have enough fuel for 30-45 minutes of fighting time.

So a skeleton crew will pull up stakes and set up a small command center and good sized FARP (Forward Arming and Refueling Point) much closer to Samawah. That’ll give the helicopters a place to quickly pick up more ammo and fuel before they hop back into the fray inside the city. I decide to follow the action north. My friends in the Alpha Troop cavalry are being dispatched to provide security for this new base, which will start as little more than a few tents and a huge jet fuel bladder or string of tankers in the dust alongside the road. I squeeze into a gun truck with Sergeant Cory Kroll, Specialist Josh Farley, and Private Chad Stapp (who appear on the cover of this magazine).

On the drive up, the radio was crackling with reports of frenetic action by the Kiowa pilots, and I’m suddenly wondering if I should have stayed back at the main air base where I could debrief the pilots as they came off shift. When the future FARP site turns out to be a hellhole of Iraqi hellholes--a wasteland of shoe-deep dust without so much as a blade of living growth--I again second-guess my judgment in drifting out here. I wouldn’t lay down to sleep in this red-brown talcum powder, full of scorpions and stinging centipedes, if the alternative was to stand all night.

The only domicile in sight for miles on this flat, treeless plain, is a 15’ x 15’ tent--which turns out to be the brand new world headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division. Unbeknownst to me, the Commanding General also wanted to get closer to the action than Tallil allowed, so he has relocated his command center to the site of the FARP-to-be. Talk about direct access to the brass: Suddenly I’m part of the inner circle whether anyone wants me there or not.

Literally the only objects in this dust bowl aside from the dust are three large tanker trucks laden with jet fuel (the downpayment on a helo gas station), six gun trucks, and the lonely command tent with a handful of humvees parked next to it. Inside the canvas flaps of the CG’s temporary battle center are the top dozen officers running the division. Alpha Troop’s gun trucks positioned in a ring around them provide a total of about 20 men, 15 truck-mounted weapons, and some of the best thermal night sights possessed by the U.S. Army.

And that is literally all that blocks General Swannack and his brain trust (as well as the rest of us) from becoming casualties or prisoners of war in an enemy hot zone. All day long this immediate area has seen mortar firings, artillery strikes, and paramilitary infiltrations. Very nearby, a Bradley came over a berm and stumbled upon a group of Iraqi irregulars, blasting them into oblivion. The 325’s foot soldiers are now sweeping through Samawah proper, routing enemy positions and wracking up dozens of kills every day. Yet in a ring all around us, the magical optics reveal, the desert still crawls with suspicious men.

On Hair Trigger

As the night deepens, F-16s thud 500-pound bombs onto buildings just north of us, then circle back above our heads to boom, boom, boom a second and third and fourth and fifth time. Later, we watch an American M-1 pound out several rounds at some other target. Meanwhile, the gunner manning the TOW missile launcher on the roof of our humvee, southern Californian Josh Farley, is finding a regular ant farm of activity out in the darkness between us and Samawah.

This crew values the optical sight of the TOW as least as much as the weapon itself. If we get close enough to a tank to need a TOW somebody hasn’t done his job. But the imaging system--a quarter-million dollars worth of glass and electronics--is an invaluable tool for surveilling one’s day and night surroundings at up to several miles away. “We can see a guy smoking a cigarette miles out. At a half mile we can see facial expressions and if they have weapons,” reports Sergeant Kroll.

“Sergeant, I see a black SUV. Looks almost like a small bus. Now it’s meeting up with a pickup truck. Several men are getting out,” says Farley.

“Range?”

“Lasing now. 2205 meters.”

“Any weapons visible?”

“I can’t quite see.”

“I want you to track them tightly, Farley, you hear?”

“I’ve also got four dismounted individuals climbing up on some buildings. I was watching those buildings in daylight, sergeant, and they were empty. Now they’re climbing up on the roof of the buildings. They’re out at 5153 meters.”

“What are they doing?”

“The ones on the ground seem to be handing something up to the ones on the roof. I can confirm that now; they’re handing up boxes.”

“Weapons?”

“They’re too far to tell.”

“That’s beyond TOW range, Farley. Our max shot is around 3750 meters. Give me a grid and I’ll call those dudes in to Gillespie’s mortar crew.”

“365/593”

“Meanwhile we’ll get on the radio to see if there might be any friendlies out in those sectors. I’ll bet the farm those are bad dudes, the way they’re acting. But they could just be Bedouins stashing MREs. They were picking them up along the convoy route and taking them out of broken down transport trucks all day long.

“And there are some Special Forces who operate in this area out of SUVs and other non-tactical vehicles. That’s how you can get fratricide if you’re not careful. So just keep watching them Farley. We’ll ask our Air Force controllers to have somebody fly over them and see if they can tell anything more about what they’re doing.

“Now you go back to that SUV and pickup, Farley. Don’t lose them.”

“They’re parking behind a dirt ridge, about four feet high. But I can still see their hoods over the top. Actually, now the pickup is gone. Damn. Let me look for it.”

“Don’t worry about those dirt berms. Your TOW missile will rip right through them. You know that, right?”

“Roger. All right, I got the pickup again. It’s moving. Toward us. Fast. It’s running behind a little levee, roughly southwest. Range now 1900 meters.”

“If you see any pink tracers I want you to light up that vehicle, Farley, you got that? Right now, right quick.”

“Roger. Range now 1815.”

“Don’t nobody stand behind that missile tube for about 70 feet, or you’ll get toasted. And Karl, be ready for a bad ass noise.”

And so for about 45 tense minutes we were on the brink of launching a missile and mortar strike. Eventually, the action out in the dark subsided. These may be Iraqi irregulars up to no good. But following the general pattern of this war it’s decided to wait for them to reveal themselves as a definite threat rather than take the risk of hitting some Bedouins or friendlies. Farley and co-gunner Chad Stapp carefully track the quadrant in front of us all night, ready to pull a trigger on a moment’s notice if a weapon is spotted, occasionally getting a start when a desert hare leaps across their lens.

The individuals out there in the gloam could never guess they are being so closely watched from far away. They have no clue they’re being repeatedly illuminated, because the laser on the TOW is invisible to the naked eye. Sometimes Farley will point out to an adjoining gun truck a person in need of watching by painting him with his laser while the other cavalryman observes through a night vision lens. “Man, I’m gonna give this guy cancer from lasing him so much,” Farley jokes.

The trucks 30 yards to our north and 100 yards south represent the final outposts of local civilization, with miles and miles of hostile territory stretching to the horizon in all directions. In total blackness, these few Americans hunt predators who are hunting us. Our lives depend on their competence and stamina.

Meanwhile, the F-16 bomb drops and the tank firing have ceased. The paramilitaries of Samawah took a hard beating from the 82nd Airborne today, but tomorrow will be another day. The radio traffic in our hummer reveals that the general staff hidden behind blackout canvas a stone’s throw away is planning a feint tomorrow morning, aiming to draw the Republican Guard and supporting militias out from their holes. It’s been an exhausting, high-tension evening.

And I’m extremely glad I didn’t stay back at Tallil to interview pilots, or spend the night over at the general’s battle tent. For I’ve just witnessed several vivid hours of ground-level warfighting, in which a grizzled veteran sergeant and a sharp-eyed young soldier uncovered, sorted, and dispatched a range of threats. It is reliable repetition of this kind of basic soldiering, repeated over and over by thousands of individuals in hundreds of places, that makes our Army so formidable.

As I type this it is the middle of the night, and I’m being swept by a wave of fatigue. I’m not expecting any more than a few restless hours of sleep snatched upright in a rough truck seat, but even that suddenly seems a great luxury. For no sleep at all--and conceivably not even another sweet day of life--would accrue to me or the other individuals in this circle of trucks if it wasn’t for a handful of tough men willing to force themselves awake all night: scanning, studying, aligning cross-hairs on threats, watching to make sure no armed killers crawl into our laps. They are literally the only reason that I (and, at longer range, you and the rest of America) can drift off peacefully when slumber beckons.

Thanks, guys.

Sheet Metal Mattress

A sheet metal mattress, a Kevlar pillow, a warm groaning engine beneath me, and a 105 millimeter long-range alarm clock. Put it together and it yields my softest sleep in two weeks.

Kroll and Stapp curled up in their front seats, and Farley flitted between his rooftop gun nest and a poncho spread on the ground next to the truck. So I unrolled my sleeping bag on the hood of the humvee, my helmet wedged on the airlift hook to prevent me from rolling down the slope and off the nose. Every couple of hours the team would start up the humvee to recharge the batteries of the large computer that runs the TOW sight and aiming mechanism. Which turned out to be be pure pleasure. The diesel underneath me sent a very wife-like warmth rippling through my bag--most welcome on another of those cloudless desert nights where all earthly heat races off to the icy stars above at the speed of light. I nearly purred along with the idling diesel.

At 05:52 I was awakened by perhaps 40 explosive beeps from a howitzer located due north. The battle of Samawah had never stopped--Sergeant Kroll says the radio reported another hot firefight in the city through the night. The 1st and 3rd Battallions of the 325th infantry pushed right up to the Euphrates bridges, not quite halfway into town, apparently killing another dozen gunmen without suffering any casualties of their own. The American artillery rounds we’re continuing to hear are being called in by our troopers downtown.

The sun started the day as just a soft, moon-like lozenge on the horizon, but burned hotter and higher with each turret recoil. Now, an hour after cresting land’s edge, it reveals its burning truth. No longer masquerading as a passive reflector of someone else’s light it announces a hot and airless day ahead. The two-inch-long flying ants which swarm at night disappear, but the flies and biting gnats descend on us in infuriating force.

At one point General Swannack actually tells someone to call the preventive medicine department and have them do something to control the flies in the area. “If PM gets rid of these flies I’ll pin a damn medal on them,” he roars. The entire swatted-out command staff heartily urges him to make this today’s number one battle priority. We may be badly outnumbered, but angry U.S. forces have declared war on their winged nemeses.

Meanwhile, my laptop batteries are flat from a night of writing. So I hike a mile down the road to the FARP where the helicopter battalion is based. I stride the whole way in camel tracks, which are thick as fallen leaves here, and provide solider traction than the uncompacted powdery dust.

First I get an update in the tiny aviation HQ tent on the last 24 hours of aerial work. And then I call once again upon the kindness of Sergeant Bert Foley. The sergeant lived in Seattle for several years, where he developed a loving coffee addiction. He hands out coffee-flavored hard candies mailed over by his wife, and has brought an inverter which converts his humvee’s 24 volt battery to 110 volt power useable by his coffee maker each morning. Once I discover this, the inverter is also used on more than one afternoon to juice my Apple. I think of this as re-arming my weapon--because when my laptop’s dead I’m out of the war.

When the situation reports flow in at the end of the day, it’s clear the U.S. military is still very much in a war. This night will feature some of the most concerted bombing of the campaign, with the Air Force planning to drop something like 1,500 separate packages, many of them hammering the Medina Division, Saddam’s most cohesive tank corps which blocks the southern approach to Baghdad. This is the final preparation for a climactic push to the capital starting tomorrow night. The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division and other units will blast up through the Karbala Pass, which promises a mighty tank battle.

Hellfires to Avoid Damnation

April 1--April Fool’s Day. I’ve just spent my second night on the hood. I’m going on a month without running water. I haven’t had my current pants or shirt off in more than a week and temperatures are starting to hit 100 degrees. Even with my new airborne high-taper cut I’ve got a bad case of helmet hair, and, like others here, I’m getting lots of desert bloody noses. So I guess the joke’s on me.

But I’m surrounded by noble spirits. And I managed to shave and give myself a highly satisfying wash this morning with two and a half cups of water. So I can’t help feeling bubbly.

The uncomplaining stamina and toughness of the cav troopers continues to astound me. As usual, Josh and Chad alternated on two hour shifts, while the Sergeant was on call all night making final judgments. They were glued to their scopes to make sure no one would creep up on us, or lob high explosives onto our heads. By the time they’re deployed back home, these This morning a dozen of us crowd into the tiny command tent, hunching on crates and boxes of water. At 10:07 a radio call from Colonel Bray comes in, asking for a surgical strike to take out a building in Samawah. The CIA reports that two high officials of southern Iraq’s Baath Party are meeting there right now. The structure is also being used as a command post for coordinating attacks by irregulars throughout the city.

But this is a war where the U.S. is taking extraordinary measures to avoid any actions which might hurt innocent people or inflame Iraqi or international opinion. “You know that’ll require approval from the four-star level [General Tommy Franks at CentCom headquarters in Qatar],” growls General Swannack. “Have you considered other methods of taking out the building’s occupants from your location?” The infantry had, and concluded it would take too long to stage enough foot soldiers to storm the premises. “Let me work on this,” the CG concluded tersely.

Instantly, the intelligence officer and judge advocate sprang to check the quality of the intelligence justifying the strike, and to assess the desirability and practicality of such an action. In a whisker, they had the CIA agent on the radio. “It’s humint [human intelligence]. We have a source who has proven extremely reliable over the past ten days. Most of the aerial bombing we’ve called in during that period has been based on his information. We’ve learned from this source that Muhayfan Halwan, the number one Baath party official in the Salman region down on the Saudi border has come up to meet with Sultan Al-Sayf, the number two Baath guy in this region. As of 09:15 this morning they were planning future ops in this compound.”

Simultaneously, the CG asks for double confirmation and pinpointing of the location of the building from forces on the ground. An intelligence officer in the corner pivots to his laptop and begins to search a database of known Baath Party offices to see if there is any match. He checks the known uses of nearby buildings.

“That grid coordinate shows one school 135 meters from the target building, and several others in the area beyond 200 meters,” he relays to the CIA officer.

“Yeah, but since the shooting started school hasn’t been meeting in this area. We believe those schools are empty.”

On the side, the judge advocate is reminding other officers of this war’s rules of engagement. “A building may be fired on if it is a source of active fire or imminent danger. This can even include mosques, whatever, in extreme circumstances. But otherwise the basic ground rule we’re operating under is that pre-planned destruction of Iraqi buildings--not just sensitive buildings, but any building--must be approved at the highest level by Central Command.”

Then the CIA agent summarizes his case strongly, “Look, if two heads of the Baath Party can be taken out here today, that sends a powerful signal to the enemy. Then your infantry push proceeds to the bridges tonight as planned. And very quickly, resistance looks futile. This could definitely hasten the liberation of Samawah within the next 48 hours or so.”

18 pound Hammer

After some crosstalk, amidst a cacophony of radioed details, this quickly becomes the consensus position. The CG picks up a handset and explains the request to the staff of General Franks. “I’m looking for a precision strike from fixed wing aircraft on grid coordinate NV 256/635,” he concludes.

The JAG suggests that CentCom be informed the building can be lased by a hovering Kiowa Warrior to ensure that the bomb goes exactly where it’s wanted, further reducing the chances of any collateral damage. Then the CG jumps in. “Maybe we should just have the Kiowas lob a couple of Hellfires into the building.” The communications officer quietly places a call. Across the plain, turbines begin to wind and pilots scramble.

Colonel McDonald, the fire support officer or FSO, draws out the thread: “The smallest Air Force precision bomb has a 500 pound warhead, versus 18 pounds of high explosive on a Hellfire. If we’re looking to minimize risks of destruction overflow, maybe that’s enough.”

The JAG continues the thinking out loud. “On the other hand, there’s a big political and psychological component to this strike, and if we’re trying to send a message, a bigger boom is better--so long as we’re comfortable we’re not gonna get unwanted collateral damage.”

Then a new voice, apparently calling from an airplane, rasps across the radio waves. “All-American 6, this is Thunder X-ray. I need to talk to your forward controller about laser illumination versus other means of acquiring the target.” This seems to be an AWACS controller, or perhaps even a pilot, getting down to nitty gritty. That suggests CentCom approval may be coming, and surprisingly rapidly. In a quick conversation, it appears the munition most easily available is a 2,000 pound satellite-guided bomb.

“I think 2,000 pounds might be overkill. If we get approval, let’s consider using the Hellfires. Less chance of messing up nearby buildings and houses,” states one of the officers.

Just as these final details are being debated there is a beating of Black Hawk rotors and a cloud of dust. Everyone in the tent stands up. Lieutenant General William Wallace, the V Corps commander out of Germany, who currently controls the 82nd Airborne and other divisions in this theater, slides under the tent flap for a previously scheduled update.

First he’s quickly briefed on the possible strike at the Baath officials. As this is happening, Thunder X-ray once again hisses over the radio. It’s 11:16, a little more than an hour from when the initial request came in, and the strike has been O.K.’d. But it’s been modified based on the preceding discussion. “You are to destroy the building with Hellfires using visual spotting,” he crackles from on high.

“O.K.,” begins General Swannack, “based on the size of that building I want you to put at least a couple Hellfires into it to make sure we destroy it.” Then he returns to his boss at his elbow. General Wallace is extremely soft-spoken, almost mute. He seems deeply tired. The discussion between the generals turns to current operations to free Samawah.

An anecdote that came in from Colonel Bray this morning is passed along. A young boy presented himself to soldiers from the 325th with a note from his father in broken English offering to share information on the location and operations of the guerillas. Details would have to await the arrival of an interpreter, but the colonel explained that this was just one of a surge of incidents suggesting the city’s populace was coming to trust American intentions and would be cooperating more and more.

Some unconfirmed intelligence is laid out for the visiting general: There are sketchy reports that suicide teams are arriving from Syria and Lebanon; the suicide attacks seen so far may be the work of people other than Iraqis. There are hints that up to half of all the fighters previously in the city may have given up or fled the area. A major explains that this is based on signals intelligence--information intercepted in a newly launched program to monitor local cell phones.

Then the 82nd’s CG spins toward his FSO, who is on the line with the helicopter battalion. “All right, what’s the status of the Hellfire shoot?”

“Sir, the KWs [Kiowa Warriors] are inbound now.”

“How many Hellfires are they hauling?”

“Four missiles, sir. They’re going to fire them all and we’ll see what happens.” (That’ll make it a big event for the pilots I’ve been hanging with. Each Hellfire costs about as much as a Mercedes.)

“Right. Immediately after the shoot I want a DA [damage assessment] so we can see the results.”

“Will do, sir.”

Now we can hear the pilots on the radio. “Red Wolf to All-American: approaching site.”

“Roger, let me know when you have a shot.”

The room falls silent, awaiting a denouement. The two generals, who clearly have no more than a formal relationship, sit uneasily shoulder-to-shoulder, sending parallel stares silently down at the map that’s taped to the table in front of them. We all listen to the rasping communication between the pilots.

“Still trying to get a shot?” presses the CG.

“Just seconds, sir. Just seconds.”

But in truth it’s more like minutes, and then more minutes. “Let’s hope Baath leaders like to linger over their tea,” someone cracks.

Now the Black Hawks are spooling up. General Wallace can’t wait any longer and must depart for his next hop. Both commanders step out of the tent, gusting a wave of accumulated tension out between the flaps with them.

The Gentlest War

After seeing off his superior officer, General Swannack slips back in. At 11:52 the radio finally crackles a live report from the pilots: “Two missiles fired.” Then a minute later. “Third missile in.” An awkward hesitation, then more reporting from the air: “A pickup truck just raced away from the side entrance. Three individuals inside. There’s another empty truck on the other side. Should I engage it?”

Momentary whirring of mental wheels, then two or three officers blurt out the same thing. “No! Save that last missile. Go find and engage the truck with the men in it. Leave the empty one alone.”

The FSO relays that instruction, but almost right away a reply comes back. “Negative. Truck proceeded only one block north, and then turned into side streets.”

“In other words, they lost him,” summarizes someone, with disappointment in his voice.

“See if you can re-acquire that vehicle,” says the CG with surprising calm. But a few minutes later it’s clear the truck and its occupants are long gone. The damage assessment: clean holes in the side of the building, no secondary explosions. No building collapse. No knowledge of who escaped, who was stopped inside.

“Looks like we needed a bigger punch,” says General Swannack quietly.

And so ended another judicious--probably too judicious--application of force by the U.S. military. What I witnessed were extraordinary efforts to avoid cracking any innocent eggs. In the end, smaller rather than larger weapons were selected. And as a result, the bad guys may have gotten away. (Or maybe not. It does appear the strike made someone angry--fedayeen mortars flung several rounds in our direction within minutes of the loosing of the Hellfires.)

Such are the tough choices and uncertainties of a war being conducted with unusual restraint and even gentleness, by commanders aiming to be accepted as saviors rather than conquerors. It is a pattern I’ve seen recur over and over again in this fight. The real story of the Iraq war thus far, I suggest, has been the leverage the U.S military has foregone, not the leverage it has applied. Military leaders have been shooting for the hearts and minds of everyday Iraqis as much as for the gangsters of the Baath Party. Anyone who tells the world otherwise is just plain wrong.

The King Speaks

In late afternoon, while I was on my satellite phone dictating a story for publication back home, I heard a loud explosion quite nearby, and then saw a plume rising hundreds of feet into the air behind the headquarters tent, which obscured