I got back Monday afternoon from three nights with Alpha Company (aka Animal).  [REMOVED AS PER GUIDANCE FROM PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFIFER] because New Ubaydi is a planned community for workers at the nearby phosphate plant).

At Animal’s battle positions there are few if any of the surprising little luxuries you get used to at the big forward operations bases.  The food is okay, but only because the men (and there are only men at these bases) are constantly getting care packages from home.  The guys I bunked with at BP Vera Cruz have granola bars, cookies, muffins, and other snacks in such quantity that a couple guys said they never eat military chow at all.

One Marine noticed another peeling open some tuna and raising it to his lips to sip directly from the can.

Marine 1:  “Are you drinking that water?”

Marine 2:  “Uh-huh.”

Marine 1:  “You are a disgusting human being.”

Marine 2:  “That water came from America.  That makes it delicious.”

Marine 1:  “I’ll stick with my bottled Haji water, thank you very much.”

What eventually becomes of all that food is another adventure entirely.

At Chapultepec the Marines shit into specially-designed plastic bags which are then stored together and burned.  But at BP Vera Cruz they use plywood johns positioned over barrels, the contents of which are burned periodically.  Capt. Jones explained the science behind making sure the shit burns properly—if you just dump diesel on the turds and ignite them they’ll bake, creating a sort of char-broiled turd with a charcoal exterior and a soft interior.  The trick is to pour in the diesel and stir, creating a flammable diesel/feces mixture that will burn off completely.  Capt. Jones also explained, without really needing to, that the shit-burning detail is usually reserved for the lowest-ranking Marines on-site.

I arrived at Chupeltepec after dark and left early the following afternoon, so I didn’t get a great feel for the place.  From what I could tell most of the Marines live in an old gym, with some of the NCOs and officers living together in a couple smaller rooms.  I noticed that all the Marines keep their weapons loaded.

Vera Cruz was built entirely from scratch in about eight days.  It’s an impressive engineering feat under the circumstances, but still a pretty uncomfortable place.  The living areas are built on a slight angle, so you feel like you’re hiking when you head to the back to grab a Gatorade.  There are gaps in the plywood-and-Hesco construction, so the moon dust outside hangs in the air when the wind kicks up.  The second day I was there the Marines unpacked some bottled water and left it in the middle of the room.  That night a windstorm rolled through, and the new waters were caked in dust.

One Marine, the same one who was disgusted by the tuna water, said the bottles looked “like we found them in a tomb.  Those waters belonged to King Tut.”

There’s a lot of dry humor.  When word went around that gas in the States was over $3 a gallon the guy who’d drunk the tuna water suggested the US just get more oil pumping in Iraq.

“Last time I checked we were still in pretty good control of this country,” he said.  “Isn’t that why we’re here? [pause]  I mean… to kill terrorists?

The guys spend a lot of time joking at one another’s expense.  Other than that there’s not much to do other than read, listen to music and play video games.  My first night I joined in with a few guys who were trying to chip golf balls into a cardboard box.  The next night I started to get the hang of knife throwing.  That kind of leisure time is conditional.  When the radios started misbehaving Capt. Jones pulled one of the enlisted men away from a boxing video game, telling him, “I will do my best to avert your untimely demise.  Other than that your time is my time.”