From Mensagenda - August 2004

The media dramatize events in Iraq, but little is said about the day-to-day lives of the U.S. soldiers there. In an attempt to fill that void, I am going to tell you some of the things that James, who is stationed at Camp Victory North near the Baghdad airport, has told me about his life in Iraq.

James is the security officer for the 411th Engineer Combat Battalion, which means that his main focus is on the safety of the members of the unit who travel and work outside the camp. As such, he must keep abreast of all the incidents that occur in Baghdad, other areas in Iraq, and the Mid-East in general. By 6:30 a.m. each day, he has to have published "The Baghdad Beat" (as he and his assistant, Sgt. Wong, informally call it) and give a briefing to the officers of the overnight events. He provides similar briefings to people who have to travel outside the camp. To meet his early deadlines, he gets up at 3:30 a.m. every day except Sunday.

The camp has a chow hall; James does not have to eat MREs. (During the height of the Iraqi war, some reporters stated that MREs — Meals Ready to Eat — were good; having tried one once, I beg to differ.) The chow hall, a 15-minute walk from James’s trailer, is run by Filipinos and Koreans; Iraqi vendors are allowed on base, but they are not allowed to run the chow hall. The food is plentiful and pretty good. The PX is a 15-minute walk in the other direction, but it sells basic snacks such as beef jerky and power bars. Soldiers rely on packages from home for better snacks. James and the dozen people he works with share their goodies from home with each other. Some of my friends wondered if the M&Ms I mailed James melted in the intense heat; all I can say is people were so glad to get M&Ms that they were all eaten before they had a chance to melt.

The heat is very intense in Iraq, often reaching 110 degrees F. during the day. James is fortunate to work in an office that has both air conditioning and its own generator, so he is comfortable during the day. Many others are not so lucky. Those working outside on construction projects or manning the checkpoints, without so much as a tent to shield them, suffer from the heat. Dehydration is a daily occurrence.

For living quarters, the Army has brought in trailers. Each trailer is divided into three separate (not to mention small) living quarters with thin plywood walls. Sometime James’s neighbor will say—not very loudly, either—"James, are you over there?" Then the two of them will come outside and talk for a while. Each person’s room has an air conditioning unit to keep it cool at night, since, unlike Nevada, the Iraqi desert does not cool down at night. Nonetheless, trailers can get hot at night because the camp experiences many unplanned power outages. Soldiers can’t leave their windows open, either, because of the wind that blows the powder-fine sand into everything.

The trailers are not equipped with plumbing; the porta-potties and the showers are a short walk away from the trailers. Because his day starts so early, James usually wades through the day’s accumulation of sand in the showers to shower and shave in the evening—if, that is, there is enough water left at the end of the day. Sometime there is not, so the next day he has to walk around with a day’s growth of whiskers. The Army normally has strict standards about soldiers being clean shaven, but these cannot be rigorously enforced under the circumstances.

The base has laundry vendors, but it is a long walk for James, plus it takes a week to get the clean clothes back. He takes his uniforms there, but washes his own underwear and socks in a bucket outside his trailer. He used to both wash and rinse his laundry but decided that took too long, so he has cut out the rinse process and wears soapy socks instead. Sometimes a sand storm will come up while he is doing the wash, in which case his newly washed socks will get dirty and gritty all over again.

James doesn’t see many Iraqis other than the vendors on base, but occasionally he does come in contact with Iraqis. One day when he was traveling somewhere, some boys (who couldn’t pronounce the letter "f") shouted "Uck you! Uck you!" at the convoy of soldiers. Another time, some boys who saw him shouted "Chocolate! Chocolate!" Since the M&Ms were all gone, James gave them a dollar instead.

About once a week, James goes off post to escort people to construction sites or to attend meetings. Traffic jams are common, as sections of the road are blocked off after an incident. When this happens, everyone honks their horns to no avail. Many people escape the jams by doing a u-turn and driving back the other way on the wrong side of the street. James has attended meetings at a couple of Saddam’s palaces. He described one palace as being like the capitol building, with a large rotunda and a lot of marble. The chandeliers and everything else were so opulent that it reminded him of being in a museum.

The camp is located between the airport and the "green zone." It is, James tells me, one of the safest places in Baghdad. Even so, they still hear shells exploding every day. Mostly it is ordnance destroying old ammo, but sometimes it is incoming mortar fire. At first it is disconcerting, but soldiers get pretty blasé about it after a while. One day James and a few other guys were in the bathroom shaving when they heard some mortar shells explode. Someone said, "Is that incoming or outgoing?" No one knew; they just shrugged their shoulders and went on shaving.

James is able to call me about twice a week, about 7:30 p.m. there and 10:30 a.m. here. We generally talk for about an hour, unless a long line of people are waiting to use the phone banks. Sometimes, too, power outages will cut us off sooner, so we have learned to express our love to each other at the beginning of the conversation rather than at the end.

Soldiers don’t have much in the way of entertainment. TV sets and satellite dishes are popular purchases by the soldiers. Also, James often sees soldiers staring at a small screen, watching DVDs. Personally, James doesn’t have much interest in TV or DVDs; he likes to wind down at the end of his long day by listening to one of his CDs for about half an hour before he falls asleep, weary from his long workday.