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Sunday, February 25, 2007
Uneasily entering the war zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kuwait City, Kuwait - It’s not as though I need reminding that I am about to go into the war zone again, but reality begins to set in here on a vast military base in the desert.
Not until now did I feel the familiar softness of sand and the crunch of thick gravel beneath my hiking boots.
Kuwait City’s brightly lit skyline fades here to the drab scenery of tents, Humvees and combat uniforms. Once again, the night is still and dark, save the glow of stars.
This is my sixth trip to Iraq, my fourth as a reporter embedded with the U.S. Army. There’s something to be said for experience - I know now how to navigate through the military side of the Baghdad airport and make my way into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where all journalists must get their credentials.
But the practical knowledge doesn’t ease the anxiety of descending into war. Iraq, after all, is about uncertainty.
It is a land where you think little of the mundane and in moments of silence, you contemplate mortality. You think of all that is precious to you and put things in perspective. And you learn to be patient.
The flight we are booked on has been canceled. We wait all night long for another. It has been 13 hours since we left the comfort of our hotel room and we have so far traveled only a few miles from downtown Kuwait City. The wait is unnerving. It’s that feeling you get when you sit in a dentist’s office, waiting to have a tooth pulled.
Photojournalist Louie Favorite and I board a bus along with two dozen men in uniform. Some are going to Iraq for the first time.
On the radio, a commentator rambles on about the rise of extremist Islam.
We take out our helmets and bulletproof vests from our bags. We have to wear them on the C-130 propeller plane that will take us into the violent Iraqi capitol.
I haven’t worn my gear since last April, when I returned home with a Charlie Company, a Gainesville-based infantry company in the 48th Brigade Combat Team. I spent almost seven months with the 48th, covering Georgia’s citizen soldiers at war.
I am returning now to document another Georgia Army National Guard unit: Company H, 121st Infantry, based at Fort Gillem. Company H has been waging its war in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq, since it arrived in the country last August.
With dawn approaching, the plane takes off, heading north into unfriendly skies.
“It’s 3:30 in the morning. Do you know where your children are,” jokes one soldier. The ups and downs of the C-130 add to the knots already in our stomachs.
And then, with a thud, we arrive. I am back in the land between the two rivers, called so for the Tigris and Euphrates. And with that thud, the anticipation turns to a strange sort of excitement: the thrill of being back in a country I have observed since 2002 mixed with the fear of lurking danger.
I have watched Iraq go through seismic changes. Along the way, I met so many Iraqis and later, soldiers who came to fight America’s war. Iraq stirs memories. Love and hatred. Smiles and tears. Beauty and wretchedness. I hope on this trip, I will return home with many more.
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