|
North of Nasiriyah, South of Baghdad
An Online Report from a U.S. Marine Command Post
NPR's Steve Inskeep hitches a ride aboard a U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter, headed to a forward command post in the desert south of Baghdad.
Photo: NPR News
|
The Marine Corps helicopters ferrying Inskeep to the forward command center flew very low to the ground -- sometimes 300 feet or less -- to minimize the chance that enemy troops would be able to sight and perhaps target the helicopter from long range. Above, a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, the second of two choppers Inskeep hitched a ride with, ferrying supplies and personnel from Kuwait to positions deep within Iraq.
Photo: Steve Inskeep, NPR News
|
"I remember thinking that we had just jumped back in time several hundred years, and marveled that only that morning I woke up in a comfortable, modern Sheraton hotel in Saigon... then I corrected myself. I'd been in Kuwait City, of course."
NPR's Steve Inskeep
|
Inskeep's new home, a camp site in the desert at the command post of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Photo: Steve Inskeep, NPR News
|
This essay was filed for npr.org by NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep, with U.S. Marines somewhere in the desert south of Baghdad.
April 6, 2003 -- This is the command post of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a group of 2,300 Marines who've been given responsibility for securing -- and for all practical purposes, governing -- a chunk of south-central Iraq. We hope and expect to watch them do their jobs for a while...
The war seems -- seems -- nearly over as I write this. But if you think about it, everybody always knew that the United States could defeat the Iraqi army. Fast or slow, easily or with difficulty, we didn't know -- but we knew they could defeat the Iraqis.
The real, unanswered question is what comes after: Do Iraqi civilians love the Americans, or hate them? Will they accept the U.S. presence, however grudgingly, or will they resist it violently? We may get some early answers here. The Marines say this is a military mission, and not the beginning of civil governance of Iraq. But the local police stations and Ba'ath Party headquarters are empty, leaving no one else to run the area.
We've been asked not to name the command post, but I can safely say that it's well north of the city of Nasiriyah, and south of Baghdad. I'll add that it's between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in a region that is dotted by the ruins of 10 ancient cities. In normal times, Babylon would be a short drive from here, as would the ancient ruins of the city of Ur.
Several reporters flew here on Palm Sunday in a Marine transport helicopter, a big CH-53, which we shared with some pallets of cargo and a giant gray tank of fuel. There was a 50-caliber machine gun jutting out of a window on each side, and a gunner to man them as we skimmed over the desert. The copter flies low, maybe as low as 300 feet, so that an enemy won't see it coming from a great distance away.
When the chopper turns, you are looking straight out an open window at the sand and the scrub. I was sitting next to one of the gunners, and as we crossed the border into Iraq he tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to cover my ears. Then he pointed his gun downward and opened fire, blasting half a dozen rounds into the desert sand. The gunner on the other side fired half a dozen rounds too. In the open helicopter, with the rotors roaring, it was too noisy to ask the gunners what they were doing, but I don't think anything was down there. I think they were either testing the guns to make sure they were clear, or else just performing some kind of ritual as they moved into a war zone....
The two Marines kept an eye on the desert as it slid away below them, but they relaxed a little too. One of them had a digital camera, and leaned out the window to take pictures. The landscape below was quiet. I saw a bus and some other traffic, possibly civilian traffic, as we passed over the six-lane highway that leads toward Baghdad.
We changed helicopters at an airbase in the desert, a massive complex of tents and helicopters that didn't exist two weeks ago. Beyond the military green, you couldn't see anything but sand, and every footstep raised a cloud of dust.
When I arrived there were three older men sitting on a box, two of them with Wilford Brimley moustaches. They were caked in sand. They could have been old men sitting around the cracker barrel at the corner store. I asked them where we were, and they hesitated a moment, and pointed to a red sign with the name. I'm not sure they remembered without the sign -- and after I waited for half an hour for our next ride to arrive, I didn't remember either.
We flew on, and the desert turned to marshland. We passed a lake so large it looked like the ocean, then flew over palm trees that stretched for miles, spaced out along the ground as if by a gardener. It reminded me of Florida. Perhaps it would remind others of Vietnam.
Sometimes you could see a cluster of mud-walled houses among the trees. Occasionally we passed over a ruined, roofless house... Who knows what happened there. But it is known that Saddam Hussein waged a brutal campaign against the "marsh Arabs," the inhabitants of this land, who have always been hard for him to control.
I remember thinking that we had just jumped back in time several hundred years, and marveled that only that morning I woke up in a comfortable, modern Sheraton hotel in Saigon... then I corrected myself. I'd been in Kuwait City, of course.
We continued past the marshland and landed at the base where we'll be staying for a certain number of... days, weeks, who knows? The trees were gone now. There was nothing but a little desert scrub. We pitched our tents in the dirt.
In Depth
 Hear NPR reports by Steve Inskeep.
NPR News Coverage of the War in Iraq
|
