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TROOPS
TURN DESERT HELLHOLE INTO HOME
By JONATHAN FOREMAN with the V Corps
March 11, 2003
As a group of reporters prepared to set out for Camp Virginia in the endless desert between Kuwait City and Iraq, a Fifth Army Corps officer warned them: "It will be like the worst camping trip you ever went on."
Camp Virginia is one of four huge transit camps in the desert named after the states directly affected by the 9/11 attacks.
Once there, the reporters were issued gas masks and NBCs - nuclear, biological and chemical suit - and, against the rumbling noise of hundreds of generators, were given their assignments.
Next stop, the 54th Engineers Battalion, 50 miles from the Iraqi border - a long, bumpy ride deeper into the desert
Battalion members are combat engineers. Their job is to clear the way for advancing tanks and infantry by breaking through fortifications, cutting channels through minefields and bridging broken roads and rivers. For defensive positions they dig trenches, build berms of sand and lay mines.
Their HQ company is based in a lonely huddle of tents in the middle of a flat, biscuit-colored desert. There are no dunes, no cactuses or weeds, indeed no signs of life at all apart from the military vehicles that drive by, the helicopters that pass overhead, and clumps of vehicles and tents silhouetted on the horizon.
Dust covers everything and everyone, and even threatens the equipment inside the Tactical Operations Center. It's bad enough most days, but when sandstorms kick up, there's no place to hide. And there are no showers. The men - and women - try to keep clean with baby wipes.
"It's hard," said Specialist Mary Burral. But, she confided, "I managed to sneak away to my tent and bathe using a rubber tub." She discovered that it takes 21/2 bottles of water to wash her hair.
Still, she said, "I can't wait to take a shower."
In the morning, the men pour bottled water over their heads before shaving in the mirror on the side of a Humvee. They have to shave because if they don't, their gas masks - everyone carries a gas mask at all times - won't form a solid seal on their face.
There are no cooking facilities. For morning and evening chow, buckets of heated-up rations are trucked in from bigger camps. For lunch, there are MREs (meals ready to eat), but few feel hungry in the midday heat, especially when the wind comes up and they can taste the dust.
But after dark, it can be spectacular. When the night sky is clear, the stars are wonderfully bright. Strangely, after just a short time, this camp has begun to feel like home to the troops. And Kuwait City, with its McDonald's and minarets and shiny shopping malls, seems like the other side of the world rather than just 70 miles away.