Army News, news from Iraq, - Army Times

Life on the ‘frontier’

Iskandiriyah, Iraq — March 18, 2006

Army Times photographer J. Lee and I are with soldiers at Forward Operating Base Iskan, which can only be described as an industrial hazmat nightmare.

Before I go any further, I need to point out that improvements are on the way, but here are some highlights.

The base is located just outside this city, about 35 miles south of Baghdad, on the grounds of a dilapidated power plant that was built by the Russians sometime in the last decade, as far as anyone knows. The Marines were the first to arrive here after the invasion three years ago and as U.S. bases go, I believe it has seen the fewest number of improvements of any FOB since then.

“The Iraqi standard of living just blows my mind,” one young officer said as he was giving us a tour, ironically though, because he, too, is living here.

We drove past rotting piles of burning garbage, snapped lamp poles, stacks of waterlogged crates, oversized spools of cable, fat pipes, skinny tubes and random, enormous steel and concrete structures, presumably spare power plant parts, strewn about like discarded toys belonging to a giant.

Dozens of high-tension wires buzz ominously and loudly over barracks areas and on streets that soldiers use to walk to and from the chow hall.

“We’re definitely exposed here. No doubt. The medic’s writing us all a letter for our medical profiles,” one soldier offered casually, apparently resigned to the hazards of living this military life.

In some areas, putrid pools of smelly, unidentified muck and crude oil collects at the gutters and the acrid plumes of nasty yellow fumes coming from two of the four smokestacks float high overhead in horizontal lines, dispersing somewhere south of the base … unless the wind dies or blows it somewhere else.

“It makes it kind of interesting sometimes, depending on which way the wind is blowing,” the tour-guide soldier said.

I haven’t seen every base in Iraq, but I’ve seen quite a few and my heart immediately went out to the soldiers living here because it seemed as if three years after the invasion, with so many improvements made everywhere else, that this base had been forgotten and soldiers kept getting stationed here anyway.

The gym is old, sad and in a leaky, moldy tent where everything is covered with dust and only one of the treadmill machines works. There is no central recreational area, save for the small day rooms each company has devised. And the billeting area for transient soldiers, such as the engineers who come here to build things and improve the electricity, is in an open warehouse where the lights never go out and pigeons fly overhead, leaving their droppings from above, as only birds can do.

All that said, after spending a week here I have to say that in its own way it is cozy, precisely because it is home to close to 1,000 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division. It is the soldiers who make the difference.

A lot of improvements already have been made and more are on the way, as early as April 1, when a well-known contractor is supposed to be arriving with a small army of workers.

The base was almost completely unprotected when the 1st Battalion, 67th Armor, arrived here in December. Now there are blast walls and concertina wire around the entire perimeter, lights and improved observation posts. New tents are up and electricity is being installed. A new recreational tent is taking shape and the new chow hall, brought over from the now closed Camp Dogwood a few miles away, has eliminated what had been about a 10 percent incidence of gastrointestinal problems when soldiers were eating at the old facility or from a mobile field kitchen.

In fact, the food being prepared by contractor Tamimi is excellent and there’s no better evidence of that than the enthusiasm of the happy, hungry young soldiers who eat there. On Sundays, there is a brunch from 9 a.m. to noon. It is quite civilized.

The biodegradable sandbags and tents placed by the Marines three years ago are almost gone and trailers with real toilets, flush toilets, are on the way, as are more containerized housing units.

“We expected after three years for the infrastructure to be better. It’s life on the frontier. This is the condition we found it in and we’re working every day to improve that,” the battalion’s command sergeant major Command Sgt. Maj. Ernest Barnett told me.

And I believe him … so do most soldiers I talk to.

“We like it here. Nobody bothers us,” a young soldier said.

Battalion commander Lt. Col. Pat Donahoe has ordered Reveille played every morning, and Retreat to Colors every evening, both followed by the division song.

There’s a small, soldier-run post exchange and a basketball hoop that had been in pieces was welded together and is now being used.

Last night, approaching the base by boat after tagging along for a patrol on the Euphrates River, I saw the brightly lit power plant and I thought to myself … “ah, home sweet home.”