A well-deserved treat

February 06, 2005

The entire building erupted in shouts of “OOOHHHH!!!” the second the beer bottle clinked against the chow hall floor.

It was a party foul of the worst kind.

Real beer is forbidden in the Iraqi theater of operations. Hundreds of soldiers across the U.S. Army stationed here have been prosecuted for imbibing alcohol in violation of General Order No. 1.

We’ve been swilling near beer for a year now. There’s plenty of it for the taking.

But that all changed today, Super Bowl Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Pete Chairelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, which controls Baghdad, toiled to get an exception to the no-booze rule.

The Marines were given a beer after the battle of Fallujah as a show of gratitude, he argued.

The division’s judge advocates argued the cause. Research was done. Problems solved.

The biggest issue, Chairelli said, was that army money could not be used to buy the beer. And let’s face it. Two beers for every soldier in the 1st Cavalry Division is a lot of beer.

To put it plainly, it’s more than 60,000 bottles — 10,000 six-packs.

That’s when Anheuser-Busch stepped into the picture.

The St. Louis brewery donated every drop.

It was flown to Iraq, piled on 5-ton trucks and then loaded into Blackhawk helicopters to be flown to every 1st Cavalry camp there is, including to some 1st Cavalry soldiers who were working at Butler Firing Range out east, near the Iranian border.

Just enough cases to fill the two-beer-per-soldier limit was piled onto a Blackhawk helicopter and flown out to the waiting men.

When the soldier escorting the beer told the crew chief about his special cargo — yelling over the churning helicopter rotors and through the crew chief’s earplugs — the crew chief lowered his night vision goggles and looked toward the stacked cases of beer.

I guess he had to see it to believe it.

Chairelli told me as we sat in his office on Super Bowl Sunday that his biggest fear was that someone would be hurt hauling the beverages to the camps. Every convoy and every helicopter made it safe and sound, without a bottle or soldier injured.

Well, until dinner time at Taji chow hall.

When that bottle hit the floor, the affect on morale the cold beer had was instantly obvious. The entire chow hall hollered and laughed.

Of course, some soldiers questioned the fact that some of their buddies had been punished for drinking and now the army was providing beer. It’s a valid question.

But it was a one-shot deal.

Each soldier was marked off a roster when they got their two beers. The beer that wasn’t claimed?

Well, it was destroyed.

After a brief respite, General Order No. 1 continues.

Posted by Amy at February 6, 2005 06:04 AM