I've been trying to set up an embed for a while now; for various reasons the plan kept changing or falling through.  I'd been telling people for probably two weeks that I was about to do an embed.  Last night, after the final schedule change, I said I was starting to feel like the kid who tells his friends that he has a girlfriend, she just goes to a different high school.

But today I went to the Green Zone for an interview and then headed over to the landing zone to catch a chopper.  I met up with Peter, the photographer doing the pictures.  He's cool and laid back—being laid back is a big bonus in a place like this.

I noticed at the end of the day a dry erase board listing today's high temperature as 117 degrees.  That's hot enough that you collapse exahusted at the end of the day and then realize that all you did was get sit on a chopper, sit in a Humvee, and walk around a little bit.

The chopper ride was the usual; very hot, very crowded and very loud.  As I was cinching up my four-point harness one of the crew chiefs saw me and loosened up the belts that go over your shoulders.  He smiled at me—and all I could see was the smile, because he was wearing a dark gray visor over his eyes—and put his hands up around his throat.  Then he leaned close to my ear.  I could barely make out him saying, "IF WE CRASH YOU'LL CHOKE YOURSELF."  Then he moved away, smiled and shook his head, and said (I could read his lips) "That's not what you want."  Crew chiefs are cool guys.

We flew to a base near Sadr City and then drove to another base near the river.  The drive made me realize how long it's been since I spent any real time in East Baghdad.  It was close to curfew, and the sun was setting.  A lot of the stores had already drawn down their metal gates.  Some kids ran along the Humvees for a bit yelling and giving thumbs-up; the adults mostly looked on impassively.  I looked down a side street and noticed that it was really just a dirt road with sewage running down the middle.

The base we're at is a complex of old Saddam-era government buildings where American military trainers live and work with Iraqi soldiers.  Up on a balcony you can look over towards Adhamiya in one direction and Sadr City in the other.  The occasional pop of gunfire came over from Adhamiya.  A couple of the soldiers said that when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction the smell of bodies wafts over from a nearby morgue.

There's the usual ingenuity and no-BS attitude here.  The men have rigged up their own internet, and one of the sergeants managed to set up a connection for Peter and me in our room.  I'm absolutely beat—mostly from the heat and from not getting enough sleep last night.  I'm going to hit the sack early (for me) so I'm not useless by the end of the day tomorrow.

 

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