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Reporter’s Notebook: A FOB-tastic place

FOB LOYALTY, Iraq – Ask the soldiers, sailors and airmen who live here about the place and more than one of them will probably tell you that it’s FOB-tastic.

Photographer James J. Lee and I couldn’t agree more.

We arrived at Forward Operating Base Loyalty, in east Baghdad just south of Sadr City, after about six weeks in Iraq, and we were very pleasantly surprised.

Here we have our own rooms and real beds, and everything is close to everything else. There are showers, flush toilets, a dining facility that constantly serves food, an indoor pool, a sauna, a gym that could rival those back in the States, laundry service, paved sidewalks and concrete buildings. Granted some were so badly damaged at the beginning of the war that they’re hardly used (this compound used to house Saddam’s intelligence folks), but who’s complaining?

Life here is pretty good But it wasn’t always this way.

Soldiers who’ve been here awhile told us that FOB Loyalty used to get hit by mortars practically every day. Its residents had to wear their full battle rattle everywhere. Some guys used to skip dinner because they didn’t want to go through the trouble.

Soldiers never did PT outside. It was just too dangerous.

The attacks stopped about a month ago, when the soldiers fired back and killed some of the guys who were shooting the mortars.

After seeing how some soldiers live, without showers, without working toilets, without hot meals, without heat, without so many of the things we often take for granted, I definitely appreciate FOB Loyalty – or any place where we can safely rest our heads.