Wednesday, April 12, 2006

IEDs for Breakfast


Last week I sat in a dungeon, smoked, and played guitar with soldiers from 1-32 CAV. At least that is what the soldiers in the town of Muqdidiyah call their under ground barracks on the old Iraqi Army base near the Iranian border. Removed from the sound of Bradley armored vehicles and the occasional incoming morter and rockets, I listened to Spc. Brian Ahern and Spc. Josh Somma sing a song they wrote called, I Eat IEDs for Breakfast. It was a good song and I thought about how heavily those nasty little devices IED’s or Improvised Explosive Devices weigh on every soldier’s mind. Any time I’ve been with a line unit here, it seems that evil acroynm crops up in almost every conversation. Soldiers talk about the ones they’ve found and the ones that have found them. They simply call this being “blown up.” On some of the bases I’ve heard the booms, seen the dust clouds rising in the distances and listened to the radio reports of the latest blast. Many of missions soldiers go on these days are about finding IEDs, or stopping them, or preventing them from being placed on the roads. In fact, one of the missions we went on in Muqdadiyah was called “concrete ops” filling one of the many holes in the road, created by an IED the night before, with concrete in hopes of keeping insurgents from placing another in the same location. Pictures of the damn things in their many forms were even posted on the Morale, Wellfare and Recreation (MWR) Center wall.
I’ve ridden the roads of Iraq in Humvees, Bradleys, and armored trucks with these men and admit that after each outing I’ve been physically and mentally depleted, having scanned every piece of roadside debris, telling myself I should just relax, whatever is going to happen is going to happen, nothing I can do about it, but still craining to see the little slice of road sometimes visible from the back seat and tensing every muscle whenever our vehicle passed over a pot hole.
Yet these men go out day and night, every day, if not unfazed, at least resolved to completing their missions with a dedication to each other that reaches far beyond the politics of war. Then, when the day’s mission is done, they return to their respective dungeons, smoke and write songs about IEDs.
Gina and I are currently in Taji, doing a story about a new method of distributing supplies around Iraq that requires less trucks and less soldiers to travel these roads. For the past few days we’ve been enjoying the comforts of hotel like rooms, ice-cream in the chow hall and we even went to Salsa night we’re we found more fun than we could have ever expected in a war zone. You can find Gina’s salsa night and other blogs here at Tales from the Sandbox.
Family and friends will be glad to know that we’re reaching the end of our time here and next weekend we will board a plane that will take high above those threats and deliver us home. Still, I won’t forget that there are still soldiers out there who’s homes for now are tents, and metal containers and dungeon like rooms. Soldiers who are filling and dodging potholes on the roads of Iraq.