Jelly Doughnuts at the Hotel California

Corporal Steve Wardrobe holds up a globe of freshly sugared fried dough, and uses a syringe from his combat medical kit to inject it with raspberry jam. There's no better cure for a rough day out on patrol, he has learned out here in the wilds of Afghanistan's Helmand province, than a fresh jelly doughnut. "These go down well with the lads," he says. The lads, in this instance, being the medics of D-company, 2nd Battalion of Britain's Parachute Regiment, stationed here at Forward Operating Base Zeebrugge —and the few groupies who have caught on that the medical center is good for more than an aspirin or treatment for a stomach ailment.

"We are so wrecked when we get back from patrol that it does a world of good to kick back and eat a doughnut — it's almost like normal life," says Private Matt Collins, as he fries a fresh batch in an empty artillery can. The makeshift stove is fueled with wood salvaged from packing crates. Bread rolls stuffed with canned cheese and chilies are laid out on a stretcher to rise. The flour is sifted through a mosquito net. Once the doughnuts are done the bread rolls will be next; they are closed in a metal box that once held illumination rounds and placed over the smoldering embers.

But the medics' homemaking ingenuity is not confined to the "kitchen". The open ground between the bunkers and their sleeping quarters has been turned into a veritable apres-combat lounge. Faux leather car seats, taken out of a van that was turned into an ambulance, are lashed to empty missile containers. A coffee table made from a slab of concrete balanced on artillery boxes is appointed with an i-Pod and speakers. A parachute, rescued from an airdrop of food supplies and stretched over a frame of scavenged bamboo provides welcome shade in the 42-degree centigrade heat. Perched on a ledge overlooking a curve in the Helmand River, Lance Corporal Glenn McAllister whittles sturdy mugs out of green plastic mortar round cases. If it weren't for the guns, the occasional boom of an outgoing mortar round, and the Taliban forces surrounding Zeebrugge, the setting would almost seem like a beachside bar — without the beer. "All we need now is some sand," muses Collins. "Maybe we should push down to the river and get some exclusive beachfront property."

This particular Sunday is to be a day of rest. The men have just returned from a 13-hour patrol that began at 1 a.m. with a difficult trudge through waterlogged fields, and ended under the blazing sun, searching a compound for a weapons cache. Besides, says Wardrobe, "We didn't get a Saturday night out, so we have to make up for it somehow."

The men of D-Company have to make up for a lot of things. They would love nothing more than the company of women, but have to make do with images taped to the barrack walls. So isolated is their base — the Taliban control part of the road between Zeebrugge and battlegroup headquarters —that they depend on helicopter drops for everything from food to entertainment. And when the helicopters don't come, they have to make do with whatever they have. Today they relax, bare-chested, in shorts. They wander around in plastic sandals and listen to the Police and the Eagles. "Hotel California," with its iconic line, "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave," has special meaning for the men waiting to get out on R&R. A promised helicopter ride back to headquarters didn't come today; perhaps it will come tomorrow.

For those in the know, the medical team's culinary skills are legendary in a camp where razzing on the cooks is a popular pastime. Collins, however, is careful to defend them — especially since his own efforts are dependent on their goodwill and pantry supplies. "For what they have got to work with, they do a good job," he says. "But we've been here nearly two months, so it gets to be a little too much of the same thing."