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So it's no surprise that her troops now call her Mom and have figured out that the way to improve her mood is to ply her with Skittles. Only about 10% of the meals ready to eat (MREs) contain Laura's favorite treat, so her staff hoards them for use whenever they have to deliver bad news. She has been impressed at how comfortable her camp has been. "Much nicer than the cesspool they have put Jim in," she notes. She shares a tent with 65 of her troops, discovering to her surprise how loudly some men snore. They all sleep in their uniforms or stripped down to T shirts; there are separate showers and latrines for men and women. For the first two weeks at Laura's Camp Victory there were no dining facilities, and the food was all trucked in. But one night last week the new mess hall opened with a celebratory dinner of suspicious-looking lobster tail and baked potatoes. "It's cold," Laura says, "but it's lobster and a lot better than what we have been eating"--and far better than what lies ahead.
Jim has an edge in knowing what to expect, having already done a tour through the war on terrorism's other front: Afghanistan. He remembers the frustration he felt last March when he walked into the Emergency Operations Center at Fort Campbell and listened in on a battle occurring at that moment across the world: the early stages of Operation Anaconda. The soldiers of the division's 3rd Brigade had walked into a hornet's nest and clearly did not have the firepower they needed. By the end of the day, the division commander had ordered Jim and the rest of his battalion to pack their aircraft and head to Afghanistan. Ninety-six hours later, all his aircraft had been taken apart, loaded onto cargo planes and shipped out. The added firepower quickly turned the tide of the battle. "The al-Qaeda were used to seeing Apaches one or two at a time," Jim recalls. "Now they were facing an entire battalion of 24 aircraft. There was no place they could hide or regroup."
The fighting was vicious. One of Jim's Apaches was brought down by enemy fire; both pilots were too badly injured to get out, and the chopper was likely to explode. Unable to land nearby, Jim had his helicopter hover over the crash site. He then jumped to the ground, injuring his back but not badly enough to prevent him from pulling both pilots from the downed helicopter and staying with them until a medical evacuation team arrived.
Only months after finishing that tour, Jim was deployed again, this time to Kuwait. He has had weeks to get his men and his aircraft ready, whereas Laura's battalion is still assembling aircraft and preparing to move to a newly built camp closer to the action but farther away from hot meals and telephones. Signs that the battle is approaching multiply by the day: the electrified fence along the border has tank doorways cut through it. The U.N. border observers are pulling out, and civilian officials are pulling back. At the various base camps, soldiers can wait in line at the PX for two hours just to buy razor blades and batteries. Wild dogs roam the perimeter of the camps, keeping the rats at bay. And the sandstorms are like a shroud that stings; taking a shower is a waste of time since you're filthy again in five minutes.