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Anxious GIs
April 2, 2003 (The edited, published version of this story is here.)

The men and women of the 54th Engineer battalion struck camp and moved to another bleak spot in the desert on Monday.

It was almost identical to the last campsite, except the flat sand was a little softer under a gravelly surface (and therefore harder to drive on) and you could see even further in the distance.

The endless sightlines made it a more secure location; nevertheless the troops dug fighting positions and kept watches in shifts, a harsh wind blowing dust in their eyes and into the crevices of freshly cleaned weapons.

You never know how long you're going to stay in any one place in an army at war, but the news reports and rumor made it sound like the unit would be sitting around for a while.

It was a prospect that made no-one happy.

Everyone here knows that the fastest way home is through Bagdhad. And they all want to get home to their loved ones.

"I just want to get the job done and get home" is the phrase you hear over and over again.

Then, out of the blue - at least as far as the ordinary grunt is concerned - the order came to start striking camp at dawn..

So just as speedily as they went up the command tents came down.

In the gray morning chill, cots were folded up and tied to the side of vehicles, trash was buried, rucksacks and sleeping bags were squared away. The TCs - the track commanders who stand in the turrets of APCs, Humvees and 5-ton trucks test fired their .50 Cal heavy machine guns and M19 Grenade launchers.

Soon the 54th was back on the road again. They'd only been in camp for 12 hours.

Now, they are in convoy to embark on a new mission, one that involves considerable danger.

From where their convoy now sits, by the side of a road, you can see the flashes of anti-aircraft artillery, a fire glowing red at another point of the compass, and the lights of what looks like a small city at another. And you can hear the deep rumble of bombs going off.

"It might have been nice to stay a day or two in the last Alpha Alpha (assembly area) and deal with some maintenance issues. But the faster we get in there and kick their asses, the faster we go home." Says Sgt Nate Tatum, 27 of Las Vegas.

And the prospect of action has a curative effect on morale.

"It's when you're sitting around in camp that you really miss your family" Tatum explains. Like most of the soldiers here Tatum is married. He has a wife and son at home, and a baby on the way.

Sitting in camp NCOs and Sergeants were constantly asked by the men if mail would be arriving along with resupply of MREs and water. No one in the 54th has received any mail since before the war began - and because the army mail has been hopelessly mishandled, most have heard nothing from home in over a month.

There was still no sign of any of the expected letters and care packages when the 54th and its accompanying units rumbled out into the desert. The battalion is prepared for attacks by fedayeen guerillas and it's prepared if the Iraqis decide to "slime" them with chemical weapons.

Nevertheless, as 1st Lieutenant Colin Raymond, 23, of Pittsburgh PA says,

"I'm starting to feel a little bit nervous. It's while you're waiting that you start to get nervous, and this part of the war is the most dangerous time for us."

Continued Raymond, a West Pointer who is the son of a veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam, "Tomorrow might be the most dangerous day of your life, it might change it for ever, it might end it." "But we're movin forward and accomplishing our mission and if everything goes right we'll be home soon."