USO Blog: Baghdad. Day one..
My memory of our last hours in Kuwait is very thin and I didn't write about it to my family. Here's all I have left in my head...
After our show in Kuwait, we went into a large gymnasium and signed autographs for perhaps two hours. I guess it was about one in the morning when we got back to our rooms. We were offered midnight chow but I just wanted to go to sleep. I don't think we slept very long before it was time to get on some buses back to the Kuwait airport. This time, on the ride back, I was realized that we had a pretty heavy miliary escort. Humvees with heavy machine guns on top, manned by very armed people wearing things that covered their faces drove in front and behind us and stopped traffic for us at each intersection. We got back to Kuwait airport and re-boarded our C17. This time someone else was a guest in the cockpit, so Dino and I just road in the back and felt the giant air-whale lumber up and then back down with us in it. The flight was less than an hour and it seemed crazy to go the small distance in this massive plane. But the alternative was to load all the show gear onto trucks and drive them in a convoy through the south of Iraq into Baghdad. yeah. It's funny how distance means different things in different places.
We arrived in Baghdad Airport. This is the fist time I became aware that I was really inside of THE WAR.
We were put on buses and driven out of the airport. Very completely different than Kuwait. Barbed wire, more guns, some very rubbly piles of concrete, either from old combat damage or the general pushing around, rebuilding and destruction of steel-enforced concrete piles that goes on in Iraq.
We drove out of the airport and into Baghdad. It was Dino and I and a lot of the Army band. The bus we were on had curtains and little TVs throughout it. The Clint Eastwood movie "In the Line of Fire" was playing. Dino and I were sitting and giggling, making fun of somebody on the tour. I don't remember which of the country Western singers it was. At one point, we drew back the curtain on our window and said "Oh, yeah. Look. It's Baghdad. Oldest culture in the world and center of earth's greatest current conflict." and then closed it and went back to gossipping and giggling as everyone else just kept zoning out to Clint Eastwood and John Malovitch.
We checked into the billet hotel which used to be one of Saddam's palace. He had a bunch of palaces all over the city. They all look about the same. Very boring inelegant construction. Very "luxury" orieinted. Kind of like the Mc'mansions that some professional athletes live in. This is one of them from the air. I don't know if it's the one we stayed in...
Okay I'm going to stop here right now for two reasons...
1. I'm posting this from a plane that is about to land (internet on a plane!!!)
2. This is a really boring part of the trip. I'm keeping it in because it gives valuable context to the trip, what it felt like to arrive here. But the next part of the story, our first "FOB-hop" is incredible and i want to give it it's own entry. So I'll post that later today.
LCK
Posted by Louie in on March 26, 2009 | Comments [ 1 ]
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I´m from portugal and i love your work.