Freedom Radio in Iraq, soundtrack to a war, goes quiet

And those hijinks, according to broadcast quality control officer Sgt. Don Dees, catch and hold listeners’ attention for the serious and important stuff: The on-air announcement of Osama bin Laden’s assassination, reminders about base protocol and Arabic phrases, taped messages from spouses back home, somber bulletins about troop deaths.

“Some of us more advanced in rank and age sometimes bristle at [Prickel and Townsend’s] methodology, but their intent is to reach their target audience, and they know where the line is,” says Dees, 43, who hails from Woodbridge. “Generally speaking, military broadcasters can’t pull off a two-person show. That requires chemistry, mutual understanding, teamwork and balance. But they remained friends between deployments, and at the beginning I knew I had something in them that was unexpected and very, very likely to succeed.”

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(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.

Service members listen on the remaining 38 bases in the country. Iraqis post requests and comments on the station’s Facebook page:

I started listening to this station about 4 years ago and it’s literally the best thing i’ve ever heard, I can honestly say i might cry at midnight

you will be missed dearly.

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has said his first exposure to Muddy Waters and Little Richard in 1950s England was via the American Forces Network out of Germany. Prickel and Townsend fantasize that, in 20 years, an Iraqi rock star might fondly remember the American tunes on Freedom Radio.

They and their fellow hosts aspired to reach past hard realities — 100,000-plus Iraqi civilians and American troops wounded or dead, $3 billion-plus spent — and offer distraction, entertainment, remembrance and positive messages over 93.3 MHz on the FM dial.

Townsend, who returns home to Arkansas next month, has reenlisted with the Army for another six years, predicts he’ll be sent to Afghanistan eventually and wonders whether he’ll be on the last broadcasting team there, too. Prickel is leaving the Army to be a video journalist at his hometown CBS affiliate in Indianapolis.

“We’re 10 minutes away from never saying another word,” Townsend says as midnight approaches. The Freedom Radio staffers — some awake since 0400 hours — gather in the studio for the final countdown.

“To be part of that apparatus that provides that morale boost — I will always remember being here with you guys and being together for the final moments of our broadcast,” Dees says on the air after Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” plays.

With four minutes to go, Townsend cues Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” which listeners voted should close out the soundtrack of the war in Iraq.

And at exactly 0000 hours, the microphones go dead and Porky Pig’s voice squeaks a loony sign-off over the airwaves: “That’s all, folks.”