Around the perimeter, we visited a
Harrier Jump Jet squadron. They'd
planted in their sandy range a 3-by-3-foot board bearing my smiling puss, which they use for target practice. "I can
do you one better," I told one airman
and ran to the 100-yard mark, dropped
my pants, and gave them something to
shoot for — a thin sliver of Arabian
moon. But the hole was too tight, even
for major champions Lehman and
Watson. "I missed on purpose,"
Harmon said. "No one wants that kind
of a lie for a second shot."
The base's hospital had hardly anyone in it. In one room lay a young, Asian-American soldier who'd been electrocuted, his life saved by a female sergeant who kicked him off an electrified fence that was in the process of broiling him. Of the six patients here, two were insurgents, treated, I'm told, with all of the care and respect given to coalition forces. We weren't allowed to see the wounded insurgents, which is just as well, as Harmon or I might have "accidentally" stepped on an oxygen hose.
In the next room, we visited a U.S. soldier, who, on his third tour, was struck down by depression. I didn't have to ask what was wrong; I could feel it enveloping him, and trying to suck the air from my lungs, too. When I was researching my family history, to find the origin of my battle with mental illness, I discovered that my grandfather, David Weir, fought in the Great War, at the battle of the Somme, where more than a million men were killed or wounded. He did not speak a word for three years after he came back, one of the few in his regiment to survive. The horrors he witnessed in the trenches lingered for the rest of his life. While this young man had all his limbs, he might have been the most broken soldier in the hospital.
From Al Asad, we visited three Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), each closer than the last to Baghdad. Our first trip was to FOB Hit on a Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion transport helicopter, which was dripping hydraulic fluid ominously onto its tailgate. I asked one of the crew if this was, umm, normal. He screamed over the roar of the rotor, "If it's not leaking, we don't fly, because that means it's empty!" Very reassuring. We make it, though, and meet Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Dill, one of many base commanders who explained eloquently why the Anbar situation has so dramatically improved. His men move freely among Iraqis outside the base's barbed-wire perimeter in the town of Baghdadi, where just a few months ago they regularly endured small-arms fire and IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
The locals now have electricity and clean water. They no longer have to slaughter a goat every day for fresh meat. They have an optimism, thanks to the determination of Coalition forces and the bravery of locals, such as Colonel Shab'an B. al-Ubadi, the local police chief who has survived eight assassination attempts, seen family members killed, and spurned countless bribes on his way to delivering the No. 1 insurgent into the hands of the Americans, precipitating the collapse of Al Qaeda in the area.
From FOB Hit, a V22 Osprey tiltrotor Marine chopper (Watson, aka "The Desert T-Wat," reassuringly noticed that it wasn't leaking) whisked us away to Haditha Dam, the only operating hydroelectric plant on the Euphrates. A driving range has been fashioned atop the dam, where soldiers splash shots into the Euphrates some 300 feet below. It's a hoot, and one hulking Marine won the long drive with his first swing, smacking his drive a good 400 yards, 50 past Watson and Lehman!
It was back into the Ospreys, westward, close to the Syrian and Jordanian borders to FOB Korean Village, named for the Korean workers who built Saddam's roads. The camp bears the scars of war. That night we visited the men who run the IED seek-and-destroy missions using a "Buffalo," a massive, blast-proof, Kevlar-reinforced vehicle with a pneumatic shovel arm designed to break away if a device explodes. The men were about to take it out to play. Walking past heaps of defused and exploded devices, we retired with a bunch of soldiers to the chaplain's quarters, and then to his rooftop range, where we broke open glow sticks, poured the chemicals over a bucket of balls, and lashed them like tracer bullets into the inky blackness of the Arabian night. One soldier caught a ball dead on the heel and gonged the chaplain's satellite dish, prompting a "Holy Crap! There goes my ESPN!" from the man of the cloth. I turned in early, my right hand crushed, a result of shaking the hands of thousands of muscular men — and two dozen women who could kick my ass. Ego deflated, sex life ruined.
The base's hospital had hardly anyone in it. In one room lay a young, Asian-American soldier who'd been electrocuted, his life saved by a female sergeant who kicked him off an electrified fence that was in the process of broiling him. Of the six patients here, two were insurgents, treated, I'm told, with all of the care and respect given to coalition forces. We weren't allowed to see the wounded insurgents, which is just as well, as Harmon or I might have "accidentally" stepped on an oxygen hose.
In the next room, we visited a U.S. soldier, who, on his third tour, was struck down by depression. I didn't have to ask what was wrong; I could feel it enveloping him, and trying to suck the air from my lungs, too. When I was researching my family history, to find the origin of my battle with mental illness, I discovered that my grandfather, David Weir, fought in the Great War, at the battle of the Somme, where more than a million men were killed or wounded. He did not speak a word for three years after he came back, one of the few in his regiment to survive. The horrors he witnessed in the trenches lingered for the rest of his life. While this young man had all his limbs, he might have been the most broken soldier in the hospital.
From Al Asad, we visited three Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), each closer than the last to Baghdad. Our first trip was to FOB Hit on a Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion transport helicopter, which was dripping hydraulic fluid ominously onto its tailgate. I asked one of the crew if this was, umm, normal. He screamed over the roar of the rotor, "If it's not leaking, we don't fly, because that means it's empty!" Very reassuring. We make it, though, and meet Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Dill, one of many base commanders who explained eloquently why the Anbar situation has so dramatically improved. His men move freely among Iraqis outside the base's barbed-wire perimeter in the town of Baghdadi, where just a few months ago they regularly endured small-arms fire and IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
The locals now have electricity and clean water. They no longer have to slaughter a goat every day for fresh meat. They have an optimism, thanks to the determination of Coalition forces and the bravery of locals, such as Colonel Shab'an B. al-Ubadi, the local police chief who has survived eight assassination attempts, seen family members killed, and spurned countless bribes on his way to delivering the No. 1 insurgent into the hands of the Americans, precipitating the collapse of Al Qaeda in the area.
From FOB Hit, a V22 Osprey tiltrotor Marine chopper (Watson, aka "The Desert T-Wat," reassuringly noticed that it wasn't leaking) whisked us away to Haditha Dam, the only operating hydroelectric plant on the Euphrates. A driving range has been fashioned atop the dam, where soldiers splash shots into the Euphrates some 300 feet below. It's a hoot, and one hulking Marine won the long drive with his first swing, smacking his drive a good 400 yards, 50 past Watson and Lehman!
It was back into the Ospreys, westward, close to the Syrian and Jordanian borders to FOB Korean Village, named for the Korean workers who built Saddam's roads. The camp bears the scars of war. That night we visited the men who run the IED seek-and-destroy missions using a "Buffalo," a massive, blast-proof, Kevlar-reinforced vehicle with a pneumatic shovel arm designed to break away if a device explodes. The men were about to take it out to play. Walking past heaps of defused and exploded devices, we retired with a bunch of soldiers to the chaplain's quarters, and then to his rooftop range, where we broke open glow sticks, poured the chemicals over a bucket of balls, and lashed them like tracer bullets into the inky blackness of the Arabian night. One soldier caught a ball dead on the heel and gonged the chaplain's satellite dish, prompting a "Holy Crap! There goes my ESPN!" from the man of the cloth. I turned in early, my right hand crushed, a result of shaking the hands of thousands of muscular men — and two dozen women who could kick my ass. Ego deflated, sex life ruined.
