Credit:

"Good Morning Vietnam," you remember, was a movie about an airman/disc-jockey named Adrian Cronauer. Adrian Cronauer is a real person who is an acquaintance and occassional lunch-date of mine. He does not look like Robin Williams. He looks, by his own description, like Robert Bork.

Adrian is a lawyer with the Department of Defense whose specialty is working with the governments of North Korea and the Vietnam trying to locate the remains of military personnel who are still listed as "Missing in Action." This is a very worthy effort, and Adrian is a very worthy guy.

I've never asked Cronauer if he really started his radio show with "Goooooood Morning, Vietnam" as Robin Williams does in the movie, but we will stipulate - for the next four months or so - that he did.

A former Member of Congress from Minnesota (a Democratic Member of Congress) and current friend and colleague named Gerry Sikorsky suggested the title of these Travelogues in an e-mail.

Both Cronauer and Sikorsky get full credit for the title. The content - for better or worse - is my responsibility.

When I was in basic training in beautiful downtown Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina there were two groups of people who loved to terrify me: The soldiers at the JFK Special Warfare school - the Green Berets - and the 82nd Airborne.

As a young soldier I would, on occasion, have to stand guard duty and worry about remembering my Second General Order (which I couldn't remember then and so have no capacity to remember now).

While I was standing guard over some pile of rocks at two in the morning, a squad of budding Special Forces or 82nd Airborne troopers would jump out with their faces all covered in green paint and scream and yell and make me want to drop my weapon and run like hell on the theory that the pile of rocks I was guarding was not, in the end, all that important to me and if they wanted those rocks that badly then they should have them.

I may have mentioned in the past that I was not the best soldier who ever donned the uniform. I have mentioned this facts to both privates and generals here in Baghdad. The do not look surprised at this information.

In basic training you do a lot of running in formation. The drill sergeant calls cadence which is in a sing-song manner. Drill sergeants are scary people even if they don't put green paint on their faces. And, if they sang those stupid songs when they were not in front of young, frightened privates but instead in a bar with, say, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne � well, you can fill in the blanks.

But they DO sing those stupid songs so that we can double-time in synchronicity. Synchronicity is not a word, by the way, one hears that often in the barracks during basic training. Nevertheless, one of the chants was:

Airborne (and the basic trainees respond) Airborne!
Ranger � Ranger!
All the way � All the Way!
All the way � All the Way!
Up the hill .. Up the Hill!
DOWN the hill � DOWN the Hill!
All the way � All the Way!
All the way � All the Way!
Airborne � Airborne!
Airborne � Airborne!

Creativity, as you can see, is not a strict requirement when double-timing basic trainees.

The 82nd Airborne Division is a bunch of paratroopers. They jump out of airplanes and then land on the ground and then kill people. That is their job. And they, over the past almost 90 years, have proven to be extremely proficient.

The 82nd is deployed over here and controls about a third of the surface area of Iraq. It is commanded by Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr.

A Major General has two stars. Even though a Major outranks a Lieutenant, a Lieutenant General has three stars. I once read why this was so, but I forget now and it's not important to the story as there are no three star generals in it.

I had arrived, as you remember, via helicopter and was just a little shaky for the price of it.

My contact, the Public Affairs Officer (PAO), Major Neil Harper was there to greet me. He asked, with no little concern, if I had eaten. I had not, so after I dropped off my very manly Orvis leather shoulder bag and my small overnight duffel, took off my Kevlar helmet and my ceramic plated vest, we hiked over to the mess hall.

Life in The Green Zone is not terrible by any stretch of the imagination. Life at Division Headquarters at the 82nd is, by comparison, pretty rough.

This is the indoor plumbing:

It is the indoor plumbing for everyone because there is no running water in the main building nor in any of the many outbuildings which serve as dormitories and/or office space.

The dormitories are rooms about 25 feet square and, at least the one I was in, housed 12 men in six bunkbeds.

I have circled the spot where I laid my little head to sleep. There were other bunk beds you can't see. And other barracks which looked just the same.

There are common showers (men and women have alternating hours) which are at the far end of a dirt and gravel road.

Brushing one's teeth is done with a bottle of water because the shower water (and the water in the sinks) is not potable.

There is not enough light in the office areas, there is not enough heat in the dormitories.

What there is, is unit pride.

I heard, I'll bet a dozen times, "When the 82nd leaves this place it will be squared away. Just like always."

And not from officers trying to impress the visiting goofball from Baghdad. From enlisted men and women as well.

Unit pride runs deep here in the 82nd. You see it in every soldier, in everything they do.

Meanwhile, I slept in that bed with exactly that amount of bedclothes, plus a blanket someone lent me. I slept in my clothes and used my little blue flashlight for an evening stroll to the porta-potty - although I doubt anyone in the entire history of the 82nd Airborne Division from Alvin York on up ever called it a "porta-potty."

The next morning I awoke before Major Harper (who had come into bed well after I had). I wasn't sure how the whole shower thing worked, so I just took my wash kit and a towel, grabbed a bottle of water from the stash outside the front door of our building, and washed my face and shaved in the water which was - this will be a surprise - ice cold.

This did not stop a parade of young soldiers from taking showers - without comment, much less complaint.

As I was already dressed, I simply dropped off my wash kit and walked toward the mess hall which, at 6:45 had been open for 15 minutes.

I heard three loud BOOMs! Followed by multiple sustained bursts of gunfire. I looked around for a place to hide, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to what sounded to me like the Battle of the Bulge going on RIGHT OVER THERE!

It turned out someone had fired some rockets in the general direction of a unit guarding a gate. The unit fired in the direction of the rocket fire, but neither side had hit anything.

Just another morning at the 82nd.

The HQ looked like this in a light early morning fog:

Shortly after nine Major Harper invited me to attend a briefing the staff was putting on for Major General Swannack. It takes too long to say "Major General Swannack" so he is simply referred to as "The CG" - the commanding general.

Generals and Admirals are different from other people in the military. They have stars on their shoulders or their collars or their hats or somewhere. The other people don't.

There is never any confusion about who is who when a general is in the room. Colonels - even though they are but one rank below - are no where near a General. A TWO star General, like Swannack, is but a half step from a diety.

I, as a civilian, am, of course, unmoved by these long-held military considerations.

The briefing was a long, long, long list of civil affairs projects which were planned, underway, or completed in the area of responsibility (AOR) of the 82nd.

In an Associated Press article a couple of weeks ago, Hamza Hendawi wrote about General Swannack visiting with a local leader:

Swannack, a veteran of the conflicts in Bosnia, Haiti and Panama, wanted to know why the Haditha station, built next to a dam on the Euphrates, was producing only 90 megawatts rather than its capacity of more than 600 megawatts.

On Wednesday, Swannack's day was almost entirely taken up by exactly such tasks - the visit to Haditha and a ceremony earlier that launched a trucking company that's expected to create 500 new jobs for truckers ferrying supplies for U.S. forces.

Soldiers in 2003 must be administrators, governors, engineers, and cheerleaders. And kill the enemy when required.

After the briefing, with everyone standing at attention (I was standing, but not at attention. I was wearing a Coalition Provisional Authority sweatshirt, blue button down cotton shirt, khaki slacks and my desert army boots) General Swannack turned around, looked at me, stuck out his hand and said hello.

I wanted to say, "Good morning General Swannack. I'm Rich Galen up from Baghdad to spend a day with Major Harper to help him generate and distribute news about what the 82nd is doing back to home town America."

What I said was, "P0o9ijyrwry3#%(*_ojpoi-9t7';lknb&edg-)=+."

Guess what? Two stars fell on my head, too.

Major Harper took me on a little tour which included a building which has been named the "J-DAM Palace" because it had been hit on the head by a Joint Direct Attack Munition - a smart bomb.

And here's what it looks like from the inside:

This is what psychologists like to call "an attention-getting device."

This was the day of the annual Texas-Texas A&M football game and any organization the size of the 82nd was likely to have representatives from both.

At lunch my table got into a discussion of the game and one soldier was teasing another who, as it happened, was an Aggie.

"Hey, tell us again about the bonfire you had," said the first kid.

"Didn't have a bonfire," said the A&M alum into his coffee cup.

"Why not?"

"Damned wood got wet."

This evoked projectile-tear-level-laughter, complete with soldiers collapsing on each other's shoulders and heavy pounding on the table: An Aggie, stationed in the Iraqi desert, couldn't light a bonfire on the night before the Texas game because his wood was wet.

A few of these kids are going to be badly hurt. One or two may be killed. They are never without their weapons - even in the mess hall.

But, in the 82nd you get to laugh. Smart, healthy young Americans are sharing a very good joke.

I, of course, left in tears.

That night I was supposed to catch a helicopter back to the BIAP from whence I would be rescued and brought back to the Green Zone.

The flight was supposed to be at 1800 (6:00 pm) and we were to report for manifest check (called, "show-time") at 1730 (5:30 pm).

Major Harper asked his First Sergeant to accompany me and make sure I made the flight.

First Sergeants are, at least in the 82nd, all called by the same name: "Top" as in top sergeant. When passing a First Sergeant one does not say, "Good morning, First Sergeant."

One says, "Hey, Top."

I loved saying that. I even said it to, I think, privates and spec-4's. They didn't seem to mind. Military people are used to civilians calling them by a wrong rank or title.

I was to fly with a number of others - some going on rest and relaxation (R&R) leave, some whose enlistments have ended, one Captain going to visit some of his unit which is stationed elsewhere, and one Chief Warrant Officer, Mr. Cook, who was going home for emergency leave because his mom had fallen very ill.

Mr. Cook is a 25-year veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police and was a large man. If I were a prisoner, I would not be comforted by seeing Mr. Cook come through the door.

Mr. Cook is not his real name because he is in a Military Intelligence outfit and his name is none of our business.

Warrant Officers are called: "Mister so-and-so" as opposed to, for example, Captain so-and-so. The short hand for a Chief Warrant Officer is simply, "Chief."

After some four hours of delays we were told the helicopter was grounded by bad weather at its departure point and there would be no flight that Saturday night.

There were no flights on Sunday, so that meant the next flight out would be Monday night and there was no guarantee of that, either.

Chief Cook pulled me aside and said he was going to try to arrange for his company in Baghdad to send a convoy to pick him up. If I'd like, he'd take me along.

This is the 82nd. You help a buddy, even if the buddy is nothing more than some middle-aged civilian you've spent four cold hours with waiting for a helicopter.

The First Sergeant refused my pleas that he take off on the grounds he was given a mission by the Major.

This is the 82nd. You don't leave your post.

He walked me back to the Division HQ and I invited myself in for another night at Casa Cold Water.

Major Harper was kind enough to pretend he was glad I was staying. We stopped into the mess hall for what is known as "late chow." At the 82nd it runs from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am; at the Palace in Baghdad late chow is known as "midnight chow" and goes from 10:00 pm until 2:00 am.

I borrowed the same blanket. Slept in the same clothes.

This is the 82nd. No one goes to sleep hungry. No one has any less than anyone else.

There isn't all that much at the 82nd, but I was honored they permitted me to share what they had.

Be safe.

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