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Monday, October 10, 2005
The dogs of war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad — Dogs are everywhere in Iraq.
Single strays. Large packs of wild mutts.
Some appear emaciated and sad. Others, while thin and matted, are spunky.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Hear the howling of the dogs
They bark at convoys of U.S. soldiers, weaving in and out of traffic. Soldiers throw rocks at them to keep them out of the way of their Humvees.
Some dogs rely on handouts from soldiers. They chew through the garbage and dig out what is left of the military’s prepackaged Meals Ready-to-Eat.
Though it is against U.S. military rules, some soldiers adopt them as pets. They are good for watch duty since they bark at strangers.
At night, the soldiers can hear packs of dogs howling. They sound lonely, almost mournful. Sometimes they are shrill and insistent. Sometimes haunting.
Listen to what a platoon of Puerto Rican National Guard soldiers heard recently on night patrol just south of the Baghdad International Airport.
The soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team were patrolling on narrow dirt roads along deep canals, hunting insurgents. Through their night vision goggles, the soldiers could see the dogs under a striking canopy of stars.
Ugly, but at least free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — Soldiers jokingly call them BCGs. Short for birth control glasses.
They are the standard, brown, thick-frame military issue eyewear. The type your old uncle Ed would wear along with long white socks and black sandals.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Staff Sgt. Jon Stach, a 36-year-old manager at a Circuit City store in Peoria, Ill., shows off his Army-issue glasses in his tent at Camp Striker.
The glasses are so ugly, soldiers say, that no woman in her right mind would date a man wearing them. Thus, birth control.
Some soldiers with impaired vision will avoid the BCGs at all costs and wear contact lenses in Iraq. That’s a big no-no because of the threat of infections from sand getting between the contact lenses and the eyes. But anything for looks.
Staff Sgt. Jon Stach doesn’t care too much about what people think. Now that he is 36 and married with five children, he’s way past that stage.
That doesn’t stop other soldiers from teasing him about his BCGs. They say he looks like Drew Carey, a stand-up comedian known for his thick, dark-rimmed glasses.
“That’s OK. I give as good as I take it, so I don’t mind,” said Stach, 36, who lives in Peoria, Ill., but is attached to Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team as a truck driver. “You have to have a thick skin over here.”
Stach, who is nearsighted, said the military didn’t give him a choice of frames when he got his glasses. He started wearing them after his more classy civilian pair broke.
At least the military glasses are sturdy, he said, and free.
