Top Left: Our chow-hall cooks are mostly from India, and the American food they prepare tastes like, well, like it was cooked by people who don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like. My most recent (and happy) discovery is that they also prepare Indian food, so I’ve started to opt for that.
Bottom Left: The M240B fires several hundred rounds per minute, and you try to walk the rounds right up to the target. It’s more difficult than you’d think, because the Humvee is moving and bouncing around. We practiced in an area called the Najaf Sea. The sand is mixed with tiny seashells everywhere you walk, and there’s water ten meters underground.
Top Right: In Najaf there are vendors who sell decorative strands of flowers. I’ve seen the flowers on cars, and some soldiers have bought them to decorate with. They’re a strange sight in a city where the ground outside every home is a place to dump trash.
Bottom Right: There’s always an Iraqi interpreter with us wherever we go (from left, Major Scott, me, and our interpreter at a construction project in the village of Suq Shalan). Interpreters are critical to our success in Iraq. They and their families endure continual threats against their lives, But many of them feel that by helping us they are serving their country.
Bottom Left: The M240B fires several hundred rounds per minute, and you try to walk the rounds right up to the target. It’s more difficult than you’d think, because the Humvee is moving and bouncing around. We practiced in an area called the Najaf Sea. The sand is mixed with tiny seashells everywhere you walk, and there’s water ten meters underground.
Top Right: In Najaf there are vendors who sell decorative strands of flowers. I’ve seen the flowers on cars, and some soldiers have bought them to decorate with. They’re a strange sight in a city where the ground outside every home is a place to dump trash.
Bottom Right: There’s always an Iraqi interpreter with us wherever we go (from left, Major Scott, me, and our interpreter at a construction project in the village of Suq Shalan). Interpreters are critical to our success in Iraq. They and their families endure continual threats against their lives, But many of them feel that by helping us they are serving their country.
Texas Monthly March 2006
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