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DEL.ICIO.USJarheads and doggies can coexist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Buehring, Kuwait — The military base here is nearly equally split between the soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team out of Georgia and Marines from Camp Lejune, N.C.
Although they are both American military units, and the two groups are easy to tell apart.
The Marines look like baby-faced high school kids who somehow came upon an arsenal of oversized weapons. While most of the Georgia soldiers carry M-16 or M-4 rifles, the Marines lug machine guns and grenade launchers everywhere they go and many of them keep pistols strapped to their thighs as well.
The Marines flew here on ship-based helicopters and it looks like they’ll be leaving that way, too. They’ve been told they’re not going to Iraq, and they seem genuinely distressed to be headed back to the coast.
“I can’t believe we got this close and they’re not going to use us,” said Lance Cpl. Rodrigo Santos, of Yonkers, N.Y. “What was the point of all the training we’ve been doing? WeÕve been getting ready for this for six months.”
There’s been remarkably little tension between the soldiers and Marines here. Both groups tend to stick to themselves, and the strutting and swagger so common at home seems totally absent.
Also, the extreme desert environment, adjustment to the eight-hour time change and seriousness of the mission has cut down on the most extracurriculur frivolity.
The heat and wind relented somewhat late last week. It was barely 100 degrees and the wind was less than 20 knots. But the sky and ground are the same filthy brown and there’s no horizon at all.
They say Baghdad is greener.
Different points of view
I was talking with a 48th Brigade soldier about the differences between the U.S. military and the insurgents they’ll face in Iraq.
I brought up the fact that none of the Americans I talk to expect to die in Iraq while, to my understanding, few, if any of the insurgents or foreign fighters there expect to live.
After thinking about it for a moment, the soldier pointed out that “Those two viewpoints aren’t necessarily incompatible, you know.”
The young and the foolish
Some of the 48th Brigade soldiers, particularly the young ones in the infantry, talk a brave game. They say that when they get to Baghdad they can’t wait to go “beyond the wire.” They want to seek out the enemy and they’re spoiling for a fight.
Others, particularly the older soldiers in support roles, hope never to fire their guns in anger. “If I can qualify with my M-16 using (the minimum) 18 rounds,” a career sergeant said, “that’s all the shooting I want to do.”
A cook was even more cautious.
“I intend to stay inside the wire the entire time we’re there,” he said. “I don’t care if I never go out. There’s nothing in Iraq I care about. I’ve got a wife and kids at home, and I promised them before I left that I wouldn’t step out at all if I didn’t have to.”
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