Wheels-up tomorrow: thanks for the war memories

Leaving Iraq Sunday for Amman, Jordan.

Then a London layover, then on to D.C. to the McClatchy bureau for two days of debriefings and turning in expense accounts. Still figuring out how to describe "bribes" in a way that passes muster with the bean-counters. But they're used to folks returning from war zones, so I'm sure they'll recognize that some expenses, like an "exit visa" (there ain't an official one), are tough to get receipts for.

I thought the month I spent in Bosnia during the civil war in '93 had been the conflict that most touched my heart. It still ranks way up there, but the nearly six weeks I've spent in Iraq has now become the most moving war experience under my Kevlar and body armor.

(The 13 months in Vietnam were different because I was a participant, not just an observer.)

I don't want to go Kim Basinger on you. At her '98 Oscar acceptance speech she gushed: "I just want to thank everybody I've ever met in my entire life!"

But a lot of folks deserve mention for how they helped make this tour the most moving of my career.

In no special order:

My family and friends whose e-mails have kept me in the loop, made me laugh, made me cry, made me horny and reminded me of why I came here and why I'm coming back.

Roy Gutman, foreign editor, Mark Seibel, online editor, John Walcott, Washington bureau chief (and my editor in a previous incarnation at a news magazine), weekend editor Frank Greve and other D.C. McClatchy folks for letting me come here, editing my stuff to get it into McClatchy shape and providing the Mother Ship support that any correspondent in the field needs so much.

Joe Kieta, our former editor, and Hank Vander Veen, our publisher, who gave a thumbs-up to my war correspondent dream, though they both knew it would mean a lot of adjustments till I got back.

Our reporters and editors in the newsroom who've survived two psychic earthquakes since I've been over here and still kept putting out strong newspapers and Web stories.

The blonde pony-tailed door-gunner in Col. Dave Paschal's Black Hawk who twice turned away from her M-50 to show me how to buckle the three straps to hold me in so I wouldn't wind up on the desert sands without a parachute. How'd THAT taste? The big ol' doofus war correspondent had to get help from a purdy young soldier?! Actually, it tasted mighty good because she did it quietly and quickly so not too many people noticed. And as we dismounted at the Kirkuk air base, she turned, pointed with her gloved finger at my long chopper blade-blown Oakland Raiders hair (silver and black) and gave me a smile and a thumbs-up. Hooah!

Deborah Parker, a KBR employee, who went way out of her way to walk me to a general's press briefing at Camp Prosperity in Baghdad; I was lost, and she took me through the pristine kitchen (handing me a white paper cook's hat to wear through the premises, per regs) and then pointed me right to the press room. She didn't have to do that, but she did.

Staff Sergeant Tim Pfeiffer, and his unnamed E-6 counterpart with the 583rd MP Detachment at Camp Victory. Yesterday, after I broke the rules and went onto the main floor to interview some of the 1,215 military folks who'd just re-upped in the biggest reenlistment ceremony ever, I lost my Marine escort and all the other media types. Had no idea how to get the 3 klicks to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet Kev, our security guy, and Haider, our driver. Two nice GIs walked me back near the PX where I found the military police office next door. The E-6 behind the window started to tell me where to catch a bus, then just radioed Tim. He drove me, told yarns about growing up in Portsmouth, Ohio, gave me a chilled bottle of water and deposited me near the Ugandans' checkpoint; there, a nice sergeant from Arkansas walked me through the CP and delivered me to Kev.

The Public Affairs staff of the 1st Combat Brigade Team, 10th Mountain Division, in Kirkuk. I wound up with them after missing one flight to Mosul because our huge and heavy MRAP had to pull security on two other of the armored rigs that got mired in sand and mud; then the next day, an Air Force flight up north was abruptly canceled, for no reason a non-Air Force person could decipher. Maj. Sean Wilson, Capt. Bruce Drake, Staff Sgt. Margaret Nelson and Specialists Luke Allen and Jason Jordan then proceeded to make my embed for the next nine days totally successful. If you've seen 'Full Metal Jacket,' Stanley Kubrick's classic about Marine boot camp and Vietnam, you've seen how one military public affairs shop operated. The Kirkuk shop was 180 degrees different and better. Their whole aim was to get me to the people and situations where I could determine the truth myself. They didn't propagandize--they helped. And one reason is that all of 'em have, at one time or another in their careers, been in the s--t. They've dodged rounds fired in anger, and they bring that life-or-death experience to how they treat reporters. Or at least how they treated me. The stories you'll be reading about that brigade could simply not have happened without 'em. Plus they're all funny as hell.

Col. David Paschal, the brigade commander and their boss, let me hang out with him for two full days. Again, that access let me make the calls on what I was experiencing. He's a force of nature, as I hope my profile of him explains, and his soldiers are lucky to have him as their leader. Thanks, sir, for not giving ME a headlock and a noogie.

Capt. Tom Doukakos, with whom I had a revealing headphone talk while we sat in the MRAP for six hours; like Capt. Drake, he's a Mustang, a former enlisted man-turned officer. Among many other topics, he gave me the goods on Alaska, where he spent seven years, and I think that's where my son Nao's next great national park adventure is gonna be--after he climbs Mount Whitney in August.

Sergeants First Class Keven Duncan and Andrew Hay, from Fort Worth and Oshkosh, Wis., respectively. They let me tag along, first, on a patrol through Dibis, in northern Iraq, with their outfits--a platoon from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Field Artillery; and Alpha Company of the 1st Brigade, Special Troop Battalion, who let me ride in their Buffalo while they searched the roads for IEDs. Both these guys--one black big city guy, one white small town guy--represent the best of the Army's noncommissioned officers, who, in turn, make the U.S. Army the best in the world.

The other Western and Iraqi correspondents here who, unlike, say, the blankheads in the White House press corps (in which I've had to be a pool member a half-dozen times), actually go out of their way to help one another. It's a tight, small but open fraternity and sorority in this war zone, and although they like nothing better than to beat the competition, they behave as ladies and gentlemen toward one another--and even to a Six-Week Wonder outsider like me.

Our two bureau security guards, Paul (whom you've read about in these pixels) and Kev, a Yorkshireman I wish I could spend a lot more time with.

Leila Fadel, Baghdad bureau chief; Hannah Allam, Cairo bureau chief; and Nancy Youssef, Pentagon correspondent. In my decades of committing journalism, I've met a helluva lot of good and great reporters. These three all rank in the 'great' category. Call me sexist, but I give 'em the highest compliment I can pay a reporter: they're studs.

Our bureau drivers: Dhiyaa, Haider, Hussein, Razaq, Suhaib, Wahab. Dozens of times over the past month (when I was in Baghdad and not in the field) each of these men has driven either the armored Mercedes or our chase car when I went out to do a story. They ain't chauffeurs--they're part of our security team that ensures whatever reporter is riding in the backseat gets to and from where she or he wants to go in one piece. They've been RPG'ed, taken small-arms fire (a euphemism if there ever was one--those rounds can kill an elephant) and kept their journalists out of hostage situations. They do it quietly, with skill and calm. And they're all nice guys.

Hammad, Hussein, Jenan, Laith, Omar and Sahar. Our Baghdad reporters. These are the people I'll talk most about when I get back to America. They must lead two lives to help bring the truth of what's happening in their country to the Sun-Star and McClatchy's 29 other dailies and Web outlets. One life occurs here at the bureau, where they help bumbling newbies like me better understand Iraqi politics, society, Islam and all manner of other subjects. I can't count the times they've saved me from mistakes, and any I've made have been my own doing. The other life they lead is their 'normal' one--if you can call lying about your job, taking a different route to and from work every day, sleeping on their roofs because there's no power, pursuing careers far different from the ones they held before the U.S. invasion--if you can call that 'normal.' They have become my friends, brothers, sisters and heroes.

Ruba, Omar's niece, who painted me three beautiful pictures of flowers and made me a perfect snowflake cut out of paper.

And to you: Our Sun-Star newspaper and Web site audience. Thank you for reading my stories and blogs. I know you don't agree with all my takes, but I think you know they've come from my honest efforts to report what I have found here.

I'm eagerly looking forward to returning to Merced and the Sun-Star. I'd also like to come back to Iraq someday--don't know how, don't know when. I do know this war will be going on for a long, long time.

One of the most famous and popular poems among Arab speakers is called "The Will to Live." It was written in the 1930s by a Tunisian named Abu Al Qassim Al Shabi while Morocco was under French colonial rule. Nearly every literate adult Iraqi can recite its first lines:

'If people want life
The night should go
And the shackles should break.
Their destiny should respond.'

Inshallah.