Return to life in a war zone

September 30, 2006

Two hundred forty-three steps.

That's how far it is from the front door of my trailer here at Balad Airbase, Iraq, and the bathroom.

Those 243 steps seem like 2,000 sometimes.

There are Port-a-Potties along the way, so it's not bad, really.

I'm sitting on the front stoop of my room, one of three in a metal trailer set on blocks. Concrete walls surround the living area and sandbags cover much of the trailer’s metal walls.

Little green lizards run along the gravel walkway. They're everywhere, some barely an inch long with huge black eyes. Other lizards are a bit larger. They like to sit and stare, wrapping their banded tails into tiny little S's.

The night is warm, but not 100-degree warm like earlier today. It may be fall, but the sun here is blistering.

Can you believe it's humid?

I know, I know. They call this the desert. But Balad is on the Tigris River surrounded by lush, canal-fed farmland.

Even with all that, Iraq is still the dustiest place I've ever been. It's a fine, baby powder dust, that gets into everything. And all this comes with a rush of memories.

Thoughts of my year in Iraq with Arkansas' 39th Infantry Brigade comes over me in waves sometimes. I remember the gunfire, the mortars, the laughter, the exhaustion and the sound of taps blowing from a single horn.

Things have changed since I left this war a year and a half ago. Everything except for the mortar rounds and rockets. We've been pounded every day since we arrived. Nothing is terribly close, but we can hear them.

Today, on the way to the chow hall, we heard four mortar rounds hit somewhere near the perimeter. Whoom! One after another.

A few minutes later a warning bell went off sending people to the bunkers.

I'm not a bunker kind of person. I don't really like them. It's not that I'm claustrophobic or anything like that. Everyone who comes to a place like this has their own philosophy on explosions. I believe that it will either hit you or it won't and there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.

Wanna hear about trailer living?

I walk through my sandbag-flanked door into the ill-lighted, wood paneled palace that is now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Balad Bureau.

It's identical to what most of the members of the 463rd Airlift Group from Little Rock Air Force Base are living in. In fact, we live in their neighborhood.

A decent college long-jumper could clear this whole room as a warm-up.

The whole place shakes with the roar of a departing F-16 fighters. Helicopters rattle the place a little and you can hear the whine of C-17 engines and the hum of the Herc's props.

My air conditioner is rattling away, pumping in dust-scented cool air.

If you walk past the bathrooms — communal showers and toilets housed in trailers — you'll find a coffee shop (thank God), a nice porch, the recreation center, internet cafe, gym and chapel. Things are improving. They just opened the rec center, with its big screen TVs, computer games and stage.

Like I said, not too shabby. I only wish we could all live like the boys in tent F-3.

"When we showed up to our tent, it was an open bay with eight beds and about 20 cots thrown in," said Capt. Blair Watkinson of Jacksonville, a pilot.

This crew is one of three who are living in tents. And they want to stay there. I would too if I had a space like this. On the outside, it doesn't look very comfy. The tan tent has a wooden door and sandbags, just like every other tent over here.

Open the plywood door of tent F-33, however, and you'll find an entertainment center with stadium seating, Christmas lights — which they call ambient lighting — rugs, walls, shelves, specialized ductwork for the air conditioner and more.

"We did all of this with a drill and hand saw over a trash can," said Staff Sgt. C.J. Campbell of Cabot.

And they did it in four days. That's right.

They took a tent and built six separate rooms, a platform for stadium seating in front of computer to play movies, strung wire and built shelving units in each room in four days with a two-pound hammer, a power drill and a hand saw.

Unbelievable.

"Who'd want to leave this?" Campbell said.

The tent’s air conditioning passes through a massive duct that runs through the tent’s center. You have to duck to get under it. When the plywood walls went up, the guys cut off their access to air conditioning.

So they cut the tops and bottoms off some water bottles, duct taped them together, spliced them into the main duct and ran the make-shift air-lines through holes in the walls to move the air.

Yes, they've had some practice at making their desert home a little nicer. Most of these guys have lived in tents more times than they can count.

They even acquired a pulley and some rope. They ran the rope around the door, through the pulley and added two water bottles as counterweights. The door closes smoothly and quietly behind everyone who enters.

"It just takes a little elbow grease and imagination and you can build anything," Campbell said.

The proof is in tent F-3.

Posted by editor at September 30, 2006 11:11 AM