FORWARD OPERATING BASE PROSPERITY, Iraq — “It’s 81 degrees in beautiful downtown Baghdad. Six oh five on your clock on Fun Fact Friday. I’m Prickel.”
“And I’m Townsend. Thanks for falling into extended formation this morning.”
(Dan Zak/WASHINGTON POST) - The on-air broadcast staff of Freedom Radio gathers in the studio in a Saddam-era bunker for the final hour of transmission.
(Dan Zak/WASHINGTON POST) - Freedom Radio morning host Sgt. Jay Townsend adjusts the volume levels in the studio of the U.S. military's FM frequency, which has broadcast since Dec. 2003.
An apricot sunrise burns through the gray haze over Baghdad, which wakes up Friday to the jocular baritones of two staff sergeants in a ramshackle, mostly disassembled sound booth in a squat, Saddam-era bunker on a dusty side street of the Green Zone.
“Prickel is over at the weather desk.”
“Before I get into the weather, I wanna point this out: We have blotch.”
“Baghdad, you are not cloudy, you are not partly cloudy. You have blotch.”
“It’s just a blotch on the radar. That’s the weather. Gonna get up to 106 today. It’s gonna be a hot one.”
It’s 100 days before the deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal , and Baghdad-based Freedom Radio — after nearly eight years of broadcasting talk and music to service members and Iraqis — terminates its live transmission at midnight and cedes the airwaves to military satellite signals from Europe and Afghanistan. Sgts. Adam Prickel, 29, and Jay Townsend, 30, have tag-teamed their Freedom Radio show, “Morning P-T,” since December — doing the weather, jazzing up military announcements, taking requests for top-40 hits and golden oldies, smudging the conservative brass with their ribald humor.
“What’s the most important physical trait a woman can possess? According to a magazine: a pretty face. You have to be able to look her in the face.”
“That can be fixed by a coupla drinks and turning the lights off.”
“Coming up here shortly we’ll have an interview with Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, deputy commanding general for operations for U.S. forces in Iraq, and his adviser.”
“Hopefully they weren’t listening to what we were just talking about.”
The duo cues Cee Lo Green’s “[Bleep] You.”
Every war has a soundtrack. This one has rolled and blundered along to Green Day and Toby Keith, Britney Spears and Linkin Park, and most recently Adele and Daughtry and “Lighters” featuring Eminem and Bruno Mars. One constant of modern warfare since 1942 has been the American Forces Radio and Television Service Network, a communications arm of the Defense Department that broadcasts to 175 countries and U.S. territories and is now headquartered at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County.
And at the end of a rotating line of enlisted broadcasters in operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn is the 206th Broadcast Operations Detachment out of Grand Prairie, Tex. It includes on-air talent Prickel and Townsend, who met on military-journalist deployments during the 2007 surge, and the hosts who follow them (Sgt. Brad Ruffin, 42, of the “Midday Getaway” at 1000 hours and Capt. Chris McNair, 44, of the “Afternoon Express” at 1400 hours).
There has been funny business: An on-air deconstruction of Britney Spears’s anatomy and behavior, a sermon about feminism and the emasculation of the American male, a discussion about the familial roles played by Joey and Uncle Jesse on the ’90s sitcom “Full House.”
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