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Days in the dungeon

Ramadi, Iraq —Dec. 15, 2005

It’s called “the dungeon” and I can see why.

At the heavily fortified government center building here in Ramadi, where most of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, is camped out, there’s an area on the ground floor of the Alamo-like compound where we hunkered down on the day of the elections with Combined Anti-Armor Team Black.

Its thick concrete walls, cold cement floors and windowless rooms almost make you feel like you’re in one of Saddam’s interrogation chambers.

But the young Marines of CAAT Black didn’t let their dismal surroundings get to them. Instead, they turned it into the OK Corral … of a sort. You’d think they’d want to escape from their lives of guns and violence. But instead they seem to seek out more of it. This time, armed with AK47s, MP5 submachine guns and claymore mines, the Marines duked it out in the dungeon — at least in a virtual sense.

“You bastard, why didn’t you back me up?!” one of the Marines cried.

“You gotta stop getting shot!” another pleaded.

Sitting in a row four abreast, the Marines — and one Navy corpsman — furiously toggled their Sony Play Station Portable gaming devices, tied in with a local wireless network that let the four of them battle each other as insurgents or Navy SEALs with the game SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo. Hearing the shouts of glee and anguish in the hallway, some of us walked over to see what was going on. Soon, a small crowd of spectators built around the playful pugilists, egging them on to dirty tricks and dastardly deeds. At one point, we watched the screen as one of the SEALs placed a claymore mine next to the dead body of one of the terrorists. See, you can revive your teammate if you stand over his body and press a certain button. But this player made sure that could not happen.

Isn’t booby trapping dead bodies a violation of the Geneva Conventions? These Marines didn’t seem to care.

There’s something else about the dungeon that made hanging out there most of the day kinda interesting: the “moto wall.”

Just behind the couch where the Marines sat playing their PSPs, festooned upon the wall like a carnal collage was one of the most impressive collections of barely clad beauties I have ever seen. I’m not easily impressed by stuff like this, but I gotta tell you, whoever put this moto wall up — short for “motivational wall” — was an artisan or group of artisans that could have given Leonardo DaVinci a run for his money. Every hooch I’ve been in — whether Army or Marine — has one of these moto walls. But none assembled with the kind of care and intensity as this one in the dungeon.

“You look at that and you know what we’re really fighting for. It ain’t mom and apple pie, I’ll tell you,” one Marine said, as I stood looking at the wall, mouth agape.

And just to add a little context, I want to show you what our reporters’ ground rules are concerning such material: “Prohibited Articles: — Pornographic material. This includes, but is not limited to, sports, fitness, health or entertainment magazines that would contain pictures or persons in any stages of nudity, persons in swimming apparel, tank tops, various types of revealing athletic apparel and other types of revealing clothes.”

Thank goodness this must not apply to the Marines. Or if it does, no one bothers to enforce it. At least it reminds us what these boys are really fighting for and it helps make the long days in “the dungeon” more than bearable.