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Just got back from Iraq. I woke up this morning in my own bed for the first time in two weeks. I've been sleeping in tents, hotels; even what I think may have been one of Saddam Hussein's brothels. But this morning I woke up in Los Angeles. I fumble around the house, make some coffee… I'm jet-lagged from having just flown around the world, and basically spent the night in my new house staring at the ceiling. For some reason, even though its 6 a.m., I turn on the TV to the Fox News channel. While I was sleeping, another bomb went off in Baghdad.
This one was a large one. It killed 21 Iraqis and two Americans. However, this time as I watch the news unfurl, something feels different. This time I recognize the street. About 48 hours earlier I had been in the exact spot where this large bomb just exploded. I had slept only a half-mile from the point of detonation. In the morning I had been driven past it in a convoy of Humvees by several young machine gun wielding American soldiers. They were bringing my friend Glenn Humplik and me to our ride, which on this day, ridiculously, happened to be a Blackhawk helicopter. They had me wearing a camouflaged flak jacket and helmet. We drove quickly down this street in Baghdad, at the time taking what seemed like unnecessary precautions. A small plastic bag sat on the road, the Humvee swerved to avoid it and immediately the soldier in front of me radioed in to someone... "Package on road." We got to our Blackhawk helicopter, flew to the Baghdad International airport and were whisked out of the country on a military C-130 transport plane.
Now, only a short time later, here I was watching that street from the other side of the world. There was smoke, fire, mangled car wreckage, tanks, and… bodies. The young American troops on the television were running, and frantically directing traffic… Those troops who you can't really see on TV under the sunglasses and helmets and equipment… Some of those very soldiers I was watching, I may have just met. I had eaten dinner, joked with, and spent a great deal of time with them. When they are right in front of you, not on the TV, helmets off and excited, they appear surprisingly young. You would think it would give one perspective. But having met all of these young men and women in some ways made what I was watching on television more difficult to grasp. But let's start at the beginning. What the hell was I doing in Iraq in the first place?
About a year ago I contacted the USO. I wanted to go overseas and visit with the troops. I wasn't at first sure why. I think I was more curious than anything else. Many of my comedic idols had done the same. Having just finished reading several books on Jack Paar, an early host of The Tonight Show, I learned that PAAR had spent his time in the military performing for troops in Guadalcanal, providing much needed laughter to men fighting in World War II. I also had what one could describe as a military background. My father was a Captain in the Canadian Army, he drove tanks… or maybe it was just "the tank". I'm not really sure how many they have up there in the Canadian army. Regardless, I grew up on an army base. My father was away for sometimes year-long tours, serving with the U.N. as a peacekeeper both in Vietnam and Cyprus. I remembered what it was like to be separated in a military family. The more I read about Jack Paar, and Bob Hope and others, the more I became curious about how the USO worked. So on a whim I contacted them and they sent me to Kosovo.
I traveled to several different bases, doing what is referred to as a "handshake tour" meeting with thousands of soldiers in the region. To say the least, it was a very positive experience that I wanted to commit to again.
So this time, the intinerary included several American military bases, in five different Middle Eastern and African countries, including Iraq. We flew commercial, on KLM to Amsterdam. After a four-hour layover I boarded Gulf Air to our first stop in Bahrain, a country that borders Saudi Arabia. Everybody on the plane was decked in robes and traditional headdresses. A plane full of Sheiks. Thing were starting to get weird.
I have to admit, that apart from supporting the troops (which I feel is important), a big part of the reason I like doing these tours is you really get to see some parts of the world you would otherwise probably never go. We were scheduled to visit Bahrain, then Abu Dhabi in The United Arab Emirates, then on to Djibouti in Africa, then Kuwait, and finally Iraq. After nearly 24 hours in airports and airplanes, my friend Glenn Humplik and I hobbled off the plane into the other side of the world. Our USO escort Tracy greeted us along with some military personnel and we were shuttled to hotel. Here we would spend our first night in Bahrain.
Bahrain is, in a sense, the Las Vegas of The Middle East. Muslims say that a black cloud hangs over Bahrain that Allah cannot see through. Because of this, alcohol is allowed. (It is prohibited in most Muslim countries). Apparently they found a loophole in the Koran. It is a city filled with Saudi Arabian Sheiks who essentially come to party... I assumed I was walking into a world unlike any I had ever seen. As different as everything was, whenever I travel I am consistently disappointed at how western the world is becoming. Within minutes of landing at the airport, I had got to choose my first Middle Eastern dining and cultural experience. I walked into a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of course my choices were between this, a Dairy Queen, a McDonalds, and Cinnabon. Dejectedly I ordered a three-piece chicken combo. I'd flown halfway around the globe to eat western fast food. It kind of took a bit of the zip out of the where-the-hell-am-I-ness of it all. But it also kind of made you think... do these people really hate us? They certainly don't seem to mind the seven herbs and spices.
The next day we woke up early, and the tour began. For the next two weeks, we were scheduled to live on several U.S. bases. I was there to visit with the soldiers, hang out, get some classified tours, sit in some cool airplanes and helicopters, have some beers with the soldiers, (beer is available on some U.S. bases in non-combat zones) take some pictures, sign some autographs, goof around and try to get some laughs.
After an impromptu stand-up performance at a local military school, we returned to the base and ate in the mess hall with about 1000 soldiers. The base in Bahrain is one of several jumping-off points to Iraq, so many of them had either just returned, or were just about to go to Baghdad. I remember from Kosovo being surprised at how young all of these soldiers seemed. It was no different here. After hanging out with them all day you notice yourself sometimes referring to them as "kids". It's kind of a surprising realization; the troops on television just appear older. But after spending a day talking with them about skateboarding, and Grand Theft Auto… You realize that many of them are barely out of their teens.
The thing you instantly are aware of is that they are all very very happy to see you. As I was led around the base, they would come running up to shake my hand, to thank me for coming to visit. To be honest, it throws you a bit. I'm kinda thinking, "what are you thanking me for, you guys are risking your lives over here!" It's as if these soldiers have an underlying anxiety that perhaps what they are doing over there is forgotten in America. It's as if the mere presence of someone they recognize from back home does much more for their morale than any of us could understand. On a daily basis, an officer would approach, and in an almost ceremonial manner present me with a coin of excellence. These unique brass coins marked with units insignia are awarded to soldiers for excellent behavior. You may or may not have heard… But minus a few Razzies, which I'm quite proud of… I'm not someone who gets many awards. I wanted to say to the General, or the Sgt. Major… Give this coin to someone who deserves it… Have you got the right guy? But they would insist that what we were doing was a great help to the soldiers. You could sense that they were right. You could see it in the troops faces. They smiled and laughed twice as hard as any joke deserved. For a performer, it's a side benefit that makes these trips very worthwhile. You leave, thinking you're much funnier than you actually are.
All of them wanted to talk about other USO tours and you could tell it had been the highlight of that week for them. "When Bruce Willis was here he bought us all beers! Are you gonna buy us all beers?" Or… "I got Robin William's autograph!" Every soldier had a pocket digital camera and everybody wanted pictures. They are all on e-mail with their families… even in Baghdad. In one of Saddam Hussein's palaces they had set up an Internet room for the soldiers, and every base has an Internet tent with a dozen or so computers on-line. With modern communication it is clear that war has changed for the soldier. Even just ten years ago during The Gulf War, they were sending letters with regular mail, there was no e-mail access on the bases. Now they can send photos and e-mail back and forth daily. Clearly these tours give them something fun and positive to talk about. One British officer, with whom I chatted with in the lobby of the Baghdad international airport, tried to explain to me that every day over there can start to feel like Groundhog Day. Every 24 hours are exactly the same - same job, same tasks. Just a minor variation can be a really big deal, and these tours positively affect morale long after they end.
For the record, I didn't pick up the beer tab for the1000 soldiers like Bruce Willis did. He makes a lot more money than me… (Like I have to tell ya that). But Glenn and I did get wasted in Djibouti. We stayed up drinking and smoking a traditional hookah-pipe with about 300 guys till about 3 in the morning. They even let me take a leak on a helicopter!
So this was the beginning of the tour. We went from base to base, country to country. We slept in tents and were given the complete classified tour of these bases. It was pretty cool getting to sit in a U2 spy plane, a rarely-seen vehicle than can reach over 70 000 feet and the pilot wears a space suit. We got were shown the control room of the remote controlled Predator aircraft. We got to sit on some bombed out jet hangers that the U.S, had destroyed during the Gulf war in Kuwait. It was all pretty amazing.
One day in Djibouti Africa, we drove off the base where literally dozens of starving children surrounded our car, begging us not for money… but for water. This was a curveball that I wasn't expecting on the trip. It was a kind of poverty… (Or perhaps poverty is not the correct word) it was the kind of despair that I have never seen. To be honest, it is really an entire article in itself. When you have 15 starving kids tugging on your shirt, with tears running down their faces, looking in your eyes and desperately screaming the word "water"… the only English word they know… It changes you. Especially when you don't have any water in the car. It was so overwhelming that at one point I began to cry. Embarrassed I walked out into the desert and wiped my eyes where nobody could see. We drove back to the base that day in guilty silence. The whole thing was pretty eye opening. The next morning before we caught our C-130 to Kuwait, I asked our military escort to fill the truck with cases of bottled water. We drove back down the same road and gave it all away to the kids. Although it made me feel a little better about denying them the day before, I'm afraid it probably won't make a difference in the long run. I wanted to stay in Africa longer, and I will go back someday. But we had to go to Iraq.
It was clear from talking to most of the guys that Iraq was really where this war was happening. Although the air bases we were at were directly involved, either as a place for refueling jets to take off and land. Or as a jumping off point for troops. It was clear that the soldiers knew that the guys in Iraq were the ones under fire. Everybody would ask where we had been? How long had we been over here? Usually when the guys in Kuwait or Bahrain or Djibouti heard that we were going to Iraq… you could tell they were surprised. It really isn't a joke. As much as we had gotten used to being in the Middle East and eating hummus and shawarma for dinner, it was clear that Iraq was a different level. It was clear from talking to the soldiers that that place should not be taken lightly.
We flew into Kuwait; we were getting closer to the war zone, you could sense it. It's a hard thing to put your finger on, but it seemed the tone of the soldiers was more serious the closer we got to the Iraqi border. As you drove past buildings the Iraqis had bombed in the previous Gulf War, a sense of reality kicked in. I wanted to take some pictures so we pulled over in the desert. We now had to travel in convoys of three vehicles for security. We had two armed MP's in our car at all times. As I snapped some pictures of charred bombed out buildings, I turned around and was surprised to see our escorts had their guns drawn. One of them said to me, "Don't walk any further please, stay near the car." I asked "Why, are there land mines." "No he said, we just don't know who's over there. See those sheep, they have an owner nearby… he could be a hostile." I thought for a second he was joking. When I realized he wasn't, for the first time on the trip I felt unsafe. The policy in Kuwait was to drive in non-military vehicles in civilian clothes. The idea was that it would draw less attention to you as being military, making you less of a target. I wondered if the four drawn M-16's might have been a bit of a tip off.
The next day we woke up around seven a.m. and drove to the airport. We boarded a C-130, this one was flying into Iraq. Throughout the tour the pilots had Glenn and I sit up in the cockpit. We would throw on the headsets and joke and carry on. On this trip into an official war-zone the mood seemed noticeably more serious. Before we took off I heard the word "defensive measures… check" It perked me up as I hadn't heard that before. "What are defensive measures?" I asked with an equal blend of curiosity and nervousness. "Well the two guys in the back are watching the ground from the windows, if we see a plume of smoke on the desert, that's a missile being launched at us… We have a method of trying to evade it." I asked how it worked… "I'm afraid that's classified," he said… again without irony.
Once we got in the air however, things began to lighten up a bit. The pilot got on the headset… "So I loved you in Joe Dirt." I respond, "Uhh I wasn't in that one, that was David Spade." And all the guy's start laughing, "I've been waiting to do that all day!" It's moments like this that make one pause. You're flying over the Iraqi desert into Baghdad with reserves from the Illinois National Guard. Your above Iraq laughing and talking about regular ????, like Joe Dirt and Road Trip, and American Idol, and Jackass, and Freddy Got Fingered for crying out loud. And it hits you that these young enlisted men and women are just regular young MTV-watching folks. They are ordinary young American's fulfilling an extraordinary duty. It's the regular-kid-next-door-I-pod-blaring-Christina Aguilera side of the American soldier that you don't often see at home. Relatability is a surprise that makes what they do that much more amazing. And you find yourself feeling proud to be defended by them.
We landed in Iraq and over the next three days lived a whirlwind of exhilarating and profound moments. Flying through Baghdad in a Blackhawk with machine gunners hanging out the windows. Walking through one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces amazed at it grandiosity of marble and gold only to be informed that this is in fact "the maids quarters"… and that the actual palace is… "That big one up on the hill". One young soldier showed me his metal breastplate from his flak jacket. There was a bullet lodged in it. Only a few days before he had been knocked 15 feet when he was shot in the vest by an enemy AK-47. The forced knocked the wind out of him, and he lay on the ground assuming he was dead. Now only a few days later he was back at work, in the line-up at the mess hall, waiting for his Salisbury steak and beans. As a reminder he hangs the metal breastplate in his tent beside his bed.
You find yourself on these tours living moments you never would have expected. In Nasseriah, the place of the famous Jessica Lynch rescue, we climbed to the top of the Ziggurat. This architectural treasure is actually on the Tillil Airbase at the edge of that city. It turns out this pyramid is actually the second oldest man made structure on the planet, built over 2000 years before Christ. It is the birthplace of Abraham and the ruins of his home are visible nearby. You are in the Garden of Eden… The actual Garden Of Eden! There are no tour buses, there isn't an entrance fee, and you are there by yourself. We climbed to the top and in the distance across the dry desert plains we can see a humvee driving towards us. Two air force guards hop out, seemingly sight-seeing themselves. As they climb the long ancient staircase towards us the younger of the two recognizes Glenn and I. His eyes widen with confusion having not heard we were in town. "Holy Crap! Tom Green?! What the hell are you doing here?" Here in the cradle of civilization , I looked back at him and the other soldier, and told them… "We're here to say thanks."
_________________
Just got back from Iraq. I woke up this morning in my own bed for the first time in two weeks. I've been sleeping in tents, hotels; even what I think may have been one of Saddam Hussein's brothels. But this morning I woke up in Los Angeles. I fumble around the house, make some coffee… I'm jet-lagged from having just flown around the world, and basically spent the night in my new house staring at the ceiling. For some reason, even though its 6 a.m., I turn on the TV to the Fox News channel. While I was sleeping, another bomb went off in Baghdad.
This one was a large one. It killed 21 Iraqis and two Americans. However, this time as I watch the news unfurl, something feels different. This time I recognize the street. About 48 hours earlier I had been in the exact spot where this large bomb just exploded. I had slept only a half-mile from the point of detonation. In the morning I had been driven past it in a convoy of Humvees by several young machine gun wielding American soldiers. They were bringing my friend Glenn Humplik and me to our ride, which on this day, ridiculously, happened to be a Blackhawk helicopter. They had me wearing a camouflaged flak jacket and helmet. We drove quickly down this street in Baghdad, at the time taking what seemed like unnecessary precautions. A small plastic bag sat on the road, the Humvee swerved to avoid it and immediately the soldier in front of me radioed in to someone... "Package on road." We got to our Blackhawk helicopter, flew to the Baghdad International airport and were whisked out of the country on a military C-130 transport plane.
Now, only a short time later, here I was watching that street from the other side of the world. There was smoke, fire, mangled car wreckage, tanks, and… bodies. The young American troops on the television were running, and frantically directing traffic… Those troops who you can't really see on TV under the sunglasses and helmets and equipment… Some of those very soldiers I was watching, I may have just met. I had eaten dinner, joked with, and spent a great deal of time with them. When they are right in front of you, not on the TV, helmets off and excited, they appear surprisingly young. You would think it would give one perspective. But having met all of these young men and women in some ways made what I was watching on television more difficult to grasp. But let's start at the beginning. What the hell was I doing in Iraq in the first place?
About a year ago I contacted the USO. I wanted to go overseas and visit with the troops. I wasn't at first sure why. I think I was more curious than anything else. Many of my comedic idols had done the same. Having just finished reading several books on Jack Paar, an early host of The Tonight Show, I learned that PAAR had spent his time in the military performing for troops in Guadalcanal, providing much needed laughter to men fighting in World War II. I also had what one could describe as a military background. My father was a Captain in the Canadian Army, he drove tanks… or maybe it was just "the tank". I'm not really sure how many they have up there in the Canadian army. Regardless, I grew up on an army base. My father was away for sometimes year-long tours, serving with the U.N. as a peacekeeper both in Vietnam and Cyprus. I remembered what it was like to be separated in a military family. The more I read about Jack Paar, and Bob Hope and others, the more I became curious about how the USO worked. So on a whim I contacted them and they sent me to Kosovo.
I traveled to several different bases, doing what is referred to as a "handshake tour" meeting with thousands of soldiers in the region. To say the least, it was a very positive experience that I wanted to commit to again.
So this time, the intinerary included several American military bases, in five different Middle Eastern and African countries, including Iraq. We flew commercial, on KLM to Amsterdam. After a four-hour layover I boarded Gulf Air to our first stop in Bahrain, a country that borders Saudi Arabia. Everybody on the plane was decked in robes and traditional headdresses. A plane full of Sheiks. Thing were starting to get weird.
I have to admit, that apart from supporting the troops (which I feel is important), a big part of the reason I like doing these tours is you really get to see some parts of the world you would otherwise probably never go. We were scheduled to visit Bahrain, then Abu Dhabi in The United Arab Emirates, then on to Djibouti in Africa, then Kuwait, and finally Iraq. After nearly 24 hours in airports and airplanes, my friend Glenn Humplik and I hobbled off the plane into the other side of the world. Our USO escort Tracy greeted us along with some military personnel and we were shuttled to hotel. Here we would spend our first night in Bahrain.
Bahrain is, in a sense, the Las Vegas of The Middle East. Muslims say that a black cloud hangs over Bahrain that Allah cannot see through. Because of this, alcohol is allowed. (It is prohibited in most Muslim countries). Apparently they found a loophole in the Koran. It is a city filled with Saudi Arabian Sheiks who essentially come to party... I assumed I was walking into a world unlike any I had ever seen. As different as everything was, whenever I travel I am consistently disappointed at how western the world is becoming. Within minutes of landing at the airport, I had got to choose my first Middle Eastern dining and cultural experience. I walked into a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of course my choices were between this, a Dairy Queen, a McDonalds, and Cinnabon. Dejectedly I ordered a three-piece chicken combo. I'd flown halfway around the globe to eat western fast food. It kind of took a bit of the zip out of the where-the-hell-am-I-ness of it all. But it also kind of made you think... do these people really hate us? They certainly don't seem to mind the seven herbs and spices.
The next day we woke up early, and the tour began. For the next two weeks, we were scheduled to live on several U.S. bases. I was there to visit with the soldiers, hang out, get some classified tours, sit in some cool airplanes and helicopters, have some beers with the soldiers, (beer is available on some U.S. bases in non-combat zones) take some pictures, sign some autographs, goof around and try to get some laughs.
After an impromptu stand-up performance at a local military school, we returned to the base and ate in the mess hall with about 1000 soldiers. The base in Bahrain is one of several jumping-off points to Iraq, so many of them had either just returned, or were just about to go to Baghdad. I remember from Kosovo being surprised at how young all of these soldiers seemed. It was no different here. After hanging out with them all day you notice yourself sometimes referring to them as "kids". It's kind of a surprising realization; the troops on television just appear older. But after spending a day talking with them about skateboarding, and Grand Theft Auto… You realize that many of them are barely out of their teens.
The thing you instantly are aware of is that they are all very very happy to see you. As I was led around the base, they would come running up to shake my hand, to thank me for coming to visit. To be honest, it throws you a bit. I'm kinda thinking, "what are you thanking me for, you guys are risking your lives over here!" It's as if these soldiers have an underlying anxiety that perhaps what they are doing over there is forgotten in America. It's as if the mere presence of someone they recognize from back home does much more for their morale than any of us could understand. On a daily basis, an officer would approach, and in an almost ceremonial manner present me with a coin of excellence. These unique brass coins marked with units insignia are awarded to soldiers for excellent behavior. You may or may not have heard… But minus a few Razzies, which I'm quite proud of… I'm not someone who gets many awards. I wanted to say to the General, or the Sgt. Major… Give this coin to someone who deserves it… Have you got the right guy? But they would insist that what we were doing was a great help to the soldiers. You could sense that they were right. You could see it in the troops faces. They smiled and laughed twice as hard as any joke deserved. For a performer, it's a side benefit that makes these trips very worthwhile. You leave, thinking you're much funnier than you actually are.
All of them wanted to talk about other USO tours and you could tell it had been the highlight of that week for them. "When Bruce Willis was here he bought us all beers! Are you gonna buy us all beers?" Or… "I got Robin William's autograph!" Every soldier had a pocket digital camera and everybody wanted pictures. They are all on e-mail with their families… even in Baghdad. In one of Saddam Hussein's palaces they had set up an Internet room for the soldiers, and every base has an Internet tent with a dozen or so computers on-line. With modern communication it is clear that war has changed for the soldier. Even just ten years ago during The Gulf War, they were sending letters with regular mail, there was no e-mail access on the bases. Now they can send photos and e-mail back and forth daily. Clearly these tours give them something fun and positive to talk about. One British officer, with whom I chatted with in the lobby of the Baghdad international airport, tried to explain to me that every day over there can start to feel like Groundhog Day. Every 24 hours are exactly the same - same job, same tasks. Just a minor variation can be a really big deal, and these tours positively affect morale long after they end.
For the record, I didn't pick up the beer tab for the1000 soldiers like Bruce Willis did. He makes a lot more money than me… (Like I have to tell ya that). But Glenn and I did get wasted in Djibouti. We stayed up drinking and smoking a traditional hookah-pipe with about 300 guys till about 3 in the morning. They even let me take a leak on a helicopter!
So this was the beginning of the tour. We went from base to base, country to country. We slept in tents and were given the complete classified tour of these bases. It was pretty cool getting to sit in a U2 spy plane, a rarely-seen vehicle than can reach over 70 000 feet and the pilot wears a space suit. We got were shown the control room of the remote controlled Predator aircraft. We got to sit on some bombed out jet hangers that the U.S, had destroyed during the Gulf war in Kuwait. It was all pretty amazing.
One day in Djibouti Africa, we drove off the base where literally dozens of starving children surrounded our car, begging us not for money… but for water. This was a curveball that I wasn't expecting on the trip. It was a kind of poverty… (Or perhaps poverty is not the correct word) it was the kind of despair that I have never seen. To be honest, it is really an entire article in itself. When you have 15 starving kids tugging on your shirt, with tears running down their faces, looking in your eyes and desperately screaming the word "water"… the only English word they know… It changes you. Especially when you don't have any water in the car. It was so overwhelming that at one point I began to cry. Embarrassed I walked out into the desert and wiped my eyes where nobody could see. We drove back to the base that day in guilty silence. The whole thing was pretty eye opening. The next morning before we caught our C-130 to Kuwait, I asked our military escort to fill the truck with cases of bottled water. We drove back down the same road and gave it all away to the kids. Although it made me feel a little better about denying them the day before, I'm afraid it probably won't make a difference in the long run. I wanted to stay in Africa longer, and I will go back someday. But we had to go to Iraq.
It was clear from talking to most of the guys that Iraq was really where this war was happening. Although the air bases we were at were directly involved, either as a place for refueling jets to take off and land. Or as a jumping off point for troops. It was clear that the soldiers knew that the guys in Iraq were the ones under fire. Everybody would ask where we had been? How long had we been over here? Usually when the guys in Kuwait or Bahrain or Djibouti heard that we were going to Iraq… you could tell they were surprised. It really isn't a joke. As much as we had gotten used to being in the Middle East and eating hummus and shawarma for dinner, it was clear that Iraq was a different level. It was clear from talking to the soldiers that that place should not be taken lightly.
We flew into Kuwait; we were getting closer to the war zone, you could sense it. It's a hard thing to put your finger on, but it seemed the tone of the soldiers was more serious the closer we got to the Iraqi border. As you drove past buildings the Iraqis had bombed in the previous Gulf War, a sense of reality kicked in. I wanted to take some pictures so we pulled over in the desert. We now had to travel in convoys of three vehicles for security. We had two armed MP's in our car at all times. As I snapped some pictures of charred bombed out buildings, I turned around and was surprised to see our escorts had their guns drawn. One of them said to me, "Don't walk any further please, stay near the car." I asked "Why, are there land mines." "No he said, we just don't know who's over there. See those sheep, they have an owner nearby… he could be a hostile." I thought for a second he was joking. When I realized he wasn't, for the first time on the trip I felt unsafe. The policy in Kuwait was to drive in non-military vehicles in civilian clothes. The idea was that it would draw less attention to you as being military, making you less of a target. I wondered if the four drawn M-16's might have been a bit of a tip off.
The next day we woke up around seven a.m. and drove to the airport. We boarded a C-130, this one was flying into Iraq. Throughout the tour the pilots had Glenn and I sit up in the cockpit. We would throw on the headsets and joke and carry on. On this trip into an official war-zone the mood seemed noticeably more serious. Before we took off I heard the word "defensive measures… check" It perked me up as I hadn't heard that before. "What are defensive measures?" I asked with an equal blend of curiosity and nervousness. "Well the two guys in the back are watching the ground from the windows, if we see a plume of smoke on the desert, that's a missile being launched at us… We have a method of trying to evade it." I asked how it worked… "I'm afraid that's classified," he said… again without irony.
Once we got in the air however, things began to lighten up a bit. The pilot got on the headset… "So I loved you in Joe Dirt." I respond, "Uhh I wasn't in that one, that was David Spade." And all the guy's start laughing, "I've been waiting to do that all day!" It's moments like this that make one pause. You're flying over the Iraqi desert into Baghdad with reserves from the Illinois National Guard. Your above Iraq laughing and talking about regular ????, like Joe Dirt and Road Trip, and American Idol, and Jackass, and Freddy Got Fingered for crying out loud. And it hits you that these young enlisted men and women are just regular young MTV-watching folks. They are ordinary young American's fulfilling an extraordinary duty. It's the regular-kid-next-door-I-pod-blaring-Christina Aguilera side of the American soldier that you don't often see at home. Relatability is a surprise that makes what they do that much more amazing. And you find yourself feeling proud to be defended by them.
We landed in Iraq and over the next three days lived a whirlwind of exhilarating and profound moments. Flying through Baghdad in a Blackhawk with machine gunners hanging out the windows. Walking through one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces amazed at it grandiosity of marble and gold only to be informed that this is in fact "the maids quarters"… and that the actual palace is… "That big one up on the hill". One young soldier showed me his metal breastplate from his flak jacket. There was a bullet lodged in it. Only a few days before he had been knocked 15 feet when he was shot in the vest by an enemy AK-47. The forced knocked the wind out of him, and he lay on the ground assuming he was dead. Now only a few days later he was back at work, in the line-up at the mess hall, waiting for his Salisbury steak and beans. As a reminder he hangs the metal breastplate in his tent beside his bed.
You find yourself on these tours living moments you never would have expected. In Nasseriah, the place of the famous Jessica Lynch rescue, we climbed to the top of the Ziggurat. This architectural treasure is actually on the Tillil Airbase at the edge of that city. It turns out this pyramid is actually the second oldest man made structure on the planet, built over 2000 years before Christ. It is the birthplace of Abraham and the ruins of his home are visible nearby. You are in the Garden of Eden… The actual Garden Of Eden! There are no tour buses, there isn't an entrance fee, and you are there by yourself. We climbed to the top and in the distance across the dry desert plains we can see a humvee driving towards us. Two air force guards hop out, seemingly sight-seeing themselves. As they climb the long ancient staircase towards us the younger of the two recognizes Glenn and I. His eyes widen with confusion having not heard we were in town. "Holy Crap! Tom Green?! What the hell are you doing here?" Here in the cradle of civilization , I looked back at him and the other soldier, and told them… "We're here to say thanks."
_________________
