Legal Village

Parking lots, old movies and long queues for buses

Posted 7/04/2008 by Ben Hallman

I’m beginning to think it's the Army’s plan to shuttle me from parking lot to parking lot so that when they actually deposit me in a war zone, I’m grateful.

I’ve been up since 5 am, when I had to muster for roll-call for my flight to BIOP — Baghdad International Airport. After several more counting exercises (the US Army loves to count), I find myself on a bus with a group of soldiers headed to a Kuwaiti airstrip. There, we load into the back of a Japanese C-130 and after a supremely uncomfortable flight (I’ll never complain about the middle seat on a commercial jet again), land in Baghdad.

I’d hoped to take a helicopter over to the Green Zone from the airport but all the seats were booked for the day. After a two-hour wait in the heat for a shuttle bus that is supposed to run every two hours, I’m in another parking lot, waiting once again for an appointed time - 8pm - so I can 'manifest' for a midnight ride on the 'rhino' bus to the Green Zone.

In the meantime, I continue to live on the Army dole. My orders (yes, I have orders) give me access to the DFAC and MWR tents (dining hall and recreation tent, respectively). I meet a freelance reporter in Kuwait who has been embedded for the past seven months. He’s followed an army unit around the world - a decent way to make a living, he says, because it only costs him his time.

My orders give me the same privilege until mid-June. If I don’t make tonight’s bus, perhaps I’ll just bounce around from base to base for the next three months, subsisting on dining hall grub and old movies or reruns of sporting events on the Armed Forces Network.