Just back from a night of deliveries, we saw the sun rise over Camp Victory in 2007.
The shortest piece on this week’s “This American Life” episode is the one I can’t get out of my head.
It’s an interview with Oregon National Guard Specialist Lindsay Freeland. She part of a convoy unit, one that drives around Iraq late at night to make deliveries to forward operating bases.
I embedded with a convoy National Guard unit a while back, riding along in the passenger seat of a gun truck. I took Tom Lasseter‘s advice seriously: “Don’t be the dead weight.” So I took photos and notes, turned the lights on and off, did what I was asked and asked about what I was doing. We ate breakfast after returning from missions, slept during the day, showered in the afternoons — the weird schedule all but guaranteed hot water! — and prepped for work at dusk.
It was hard for American journalists to travel in Iraq at the time, so I felt lucky to have embedded into one of the best (and only) options available to experience the country. It was always dark, always a designated route and fueled with baggies of candy and energy drinks, but I got a closer view than my hotel room offerec. Driving seems like the ultimate in easy tasks, but it was harrowing, and made riskier by its tendency to feel familiar. The unit was still reeling from a few recent deaths on the road, and a policy shift that required them to travel in Iraqi traffic instead of taking over the road. With that one memo, everything they knew about how to stay safe on the road was obsolete.
Of course, that was two years ago. Within weeks of leaving Iraq, I was out of date. News happens quickly and dramatically there, and the political, military and social situations roll along with it. Freeland’s interview sticks with me because even now, the Iraq she sees now is exactly what I remember.
