TIME ZONES : An Hour With Newcomers to the Combat Zone
Two 'Private Fuzzies,' Diverted on Their Way to War
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 18, 2007; Page A22
FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq
Photos
Time Zones A series of occasional stories and pictures looking at life in foreign countries through the prism of time. |
An explosion in the distance broke the silence in tent MC-01 just after 9 a.m.
"IED?" Pvt. Ryan Tozour asked his friend sitting astride the next cot, referring to an improvised explosive device, or bomb.
"I never heard an IED before," Pvt. Stephen Daniel replied. He leaned forward and spat tobacco juice into a Gatorade bottle, just inches from his rifle. "I only saw a video," part of a briefing a few days before when he and Tozour got to Iraq.
The two privates, artillerymen, had been together since basic training in July, and they had reached this small, dusty base outside Baqubah in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, the night before purely by accident. The helicopter ferrying them to their unit made a quick stop here, and when they got off to let some other passengers out, other soldiers grabbed their bags and jogged away.
"We were yelling, 'No!' " Daniel explained. "By the time we got clear to where they could hear us," he paused, then lifted his arm slowly, mimicking a helicopter taking off.
They slept here last night, in this dark, cavernous tent, where plywood covers the ground and the furniture consists of about 60 green canvas cots. Dust, sand and gravel are everywhere.
Their unit, a battalion in the 1st Cavalry Division, has been in Iraq since October. Nobody has told them what job they'll be doing here, but they don't think there is much artillery in this war, and they expect to be used as infantry.
"They call us Private Fuzzies," said Daniel, 22, because they have no rank tabs on their uniforms -- just a soft Velcro patch where an insignia would go if they had one. "Our drill sergeant used to say, 'You'll be in Iraq in 90 days.' We'd say, 'You're crazy.' Guess it wasn't too crazy."
They had eaten breakfast at the dining hall nearby and now had nothing to do but wait. They rehashed rumors, worried that the helicopter mix-up meant they would now have to fly in daylight. They argued about where and what kind of helicopters had crashed in Iraq recently.
"When you're not here yet, you're like obsessed with here," Daniel said. "You're like looking at blogs and looking online. And then you get here, and it gets old within a day. You halfway don't want to go. But it's why you joined, so it's cool. Maybe time will go faster if you're getting shot at."
