The following comes from an email I sent on May 2, 2003 to friends and family.

To be honest, it doesn't feel like I have done a helluva lot of work since the war started. But let me elaborate.

I am going to cut through the first 6 weeks of my deployment and say that it involved mostly travel and classes about civil affairs and other Marine survival and fighting elements. The last two weeks have been the most productive and there is much more to talk about (laugh at).

Three nights ago I returned after an eight-day road trip through southern Iraq, which is the area of operations for the Marine Corps over the past few weeks. We started out by convoying from Camp Commando (our home base in Kuwait) to Camp Coyote (also in Kuwait). We waited forever to catch a series of C130 airplanes to fly into an airfield dubbed "Chesty" in lower Iraq. When I say "forever" I actually mean about 6 hours. However, when you factor in a strong, hot wind that blows sand into every crack and crevice, the timeframe becomes "forever".

For those of you unfamiliar with a C130, they are the workhorses of the USMC airfreight. Let me give you a clue on how strong these vessels are. First, you can fit about three Humvees loaded with gear on it and as many Marines that you can stuff in and around the vehicles. On ours we had one humvee with a trailer holding a large generator and a large air palette of our bags and gear. There were about 25 Marines in the front part of the plane (and since there were no SEATS on this plane, we were spralled out over more gear and any empty space on the deck. No in-flight movie, no hot towels, no seat belts. Just a sphere of dread surrounding us all as we clutched to anything to brace us for the takeoff and landing.

Oh, did I mention that the plane was taking off of a SAND runway. No pavement. No concrete. Just the same sand that was blasting us in the face an hour earlier. They are the stallions of the skies.

So we land in Iraq. To be honest I would be hard pressed to find the area on any map. All I know is that the first step I took made me feel like I was walking on the moon. The sand in Iraq is as fine as talcum powder and every steps creates a "poof" that you would see an astronaut make from the Apollo missions. For a moment I was transported back to childhood memories of playing "Chris Reese, Space Voyager" in my backyard. Then I smelled the exhaust fumes and heard the whine of the engines and realized I was still on the runway. I could tell the flight crew was very annoyed with me at that moment even though I couldn't see their faces behind their helmets and goggles. I moved along.

The next day we left our staging area for our final destination of Ad Diwaniyah. This was the point in which I would leave my civil affairs assessment team and pick up work with the commanding officer. We ended up staying an extra few days at this place to get it set up for the full array of assessments before moving on to the next town.

What exactly was my job? As a photographer of course! In Diwaniyah, I shot a photo of an Iraqi man who was on the new police roster. As it turns out, he was a member of the Ba'ath party and most likely a member of the Saddam Fedayeen. On three occasions, our Marines had come across him and were suspicious. On the second occurrence I was also present and snapped a picture of him as he was walking towards us. We were on high alert and were ready to fire on him and his associate if it came down to it. Why, you may ask? It is because the police are still armed with AK-47s and he had his positioned for easy access. Had he even lifted a finger towards it, there could have been a 'situation'.

Now you know why we call this place either the "Old West" or "Indian Country."

Fortunately, my pic landed in the right hands and this man was flagged. He will likely be forced to resign from the police force, give up his weapon(s) and become a target of continual surveillance in the near future.

The next city we visited was An Najaf. This town was somewhat different from Diwaniyah, but it is difficult to say how. We also visited Karbala and Al Hillah as well in the next two days. You are probably wondering what life is like for the Iraqi people in these places - how do they live, what are the people like, and do they like Americans? Let me start by saying that every location had a different vibe coming off of it. Furthermore, anything I write about is only scratching the surface and could be interpreted as only one small slice of the greater pie that exists in each community.

Many of you had received my reports from Peru. I mentioned how dirty the cities could be and how rough it was in some areas. Even the nice places had some sketchy elements to them. Iraq, from my perspective in the towns I mentioned, is far worse off.

Most towns have no electricity, little running water, and only a part-time security force that ranges from militia-like formations of men to the Iraqi equivalent of neighborhood watch. These people seem to have plenty of food (due largely in part to Saddam actually storing reserves of food throughout the country in expectation of a major conflict). All of the public schools in the country have been closed for the year. Many of these facilities have been ransacked and looted.

Speaking of which... Hospitals. I visited my first Iraqi hospital during my first full day of this trip. It was the former "Saddam General Hospital" in Ad Diwaniyah. The workers have since struck out the word "Saddam" like they have done all over the country. I don't want to describe the scene in to much detail here, but rest assured that if I would have fallen down the steps and broken my leg at that exact moment, I would not have let a doctor touch me. I would have rather amputated my own leg with my pocketknife and applied a tourniquet. It may have been less of a mess than what I witnessed. When I am back in the states, I may describe the scene in all of its lurid details.

Spending a night at An Najaf was relatively uneventful once you take away the swarm of flies that exist and the sound of gunfire at night. Honestly, out of the two I find the flies more of a nuisance and certainly more hazardous to my health. Why? Well, first you must realize that our toilets existed as a hole cut in plywood overtop of half of a 50 gallon drum. You also need to understand that the flies are so thick that with a single swat of your hat, we could easily count a handful of casualties.

Karbala was relatively uneventful and I saw very little of the town. Our trip continued in Hillah which many westerners will know it better by its Biblical name: Babylon. We drove by the Euphrates and saw in the distance the Wall of Babylon and a huge palace on top of the hill at Babylon. Next week I expect to make another drive in that direction and hope that we can get to walk the grounds and see the ancient site. The palace is currently the headquarters for a 3-star Marine general commanding us in the southern Iraq region.

Our trip back to Kuwait was mostly uneventful, except to note that we were tagging along in a 40-vehicle convoy from Diwaniyah to Camp Commando. The entire trip took us about 14 hours, and considering the conditions again qualify as "forever". The most notable element of the entire drive was the border crossing back into Kuwait. Let me try and paint the picture for you.

Iraq has nothing. When you drive on the major highways, which are about the only modern devices the country could boast, you see nothing on the sides of the road. Occasionally you will see a bombed out tank from the first Gulf War. There are no streetlights, no convenience stores, and surprisingly no gas stations. All you see on both sides of the road is sand and small towns of mud brick construction. As Kuwait approaches you see a certain aura glowing in the distance. As soon as you cross over you immediately see the streets are lit, the road constructed of better asphalt and concrete (and the lanes are painted too!) and every so often a place to stop and stretch your legs and refuel your tank. It's not exactly like driving into Vegas at night, but it is a close second, relatively speaking of course.

In ten years I fully expect to see all of the modern elements to a booming commercial tourist trap. I want to see cheap hotels, gaudy knick-knacks for sale, and fountain drinks at the local 7-11s. I am basically expecting an Iraqi version of "South of the Border" off of I-95. As I drove around these cities, the people were hopeful and certainly not afraid to come out. If someone with good intentions can come forth and set up a capitalistic endeavor to help communities invest in themselves and sell their history for tourism, I would be the first to come back here. I will gladly spend my American dollars on a day spa that sits at the base of Babylon along a newly dredged Euphrates. I look forward to sitting in a restaurant in Karbala viewing the Muslim pilgrims coming and going. But I will eat there only if the hygiene level can come up to a level where they do not clean their foods and utensils in irrigation ditches as they do now. I already dream about driving through southwest Iraq and seeing not dry, unusable lands, but a newly refreshed landscape of green and blossoms after we allow the dammed up water to flow back into the region.

I am a perpetual optimist, and even in a time like this, I can't help but see the enormous potential with the country and its people. I urge all of you to read about the country PRIOR to Saddam's regime and reflect upon how things could change again. We did a good thing here, and we still have a lot of work to continue. But in the end I expect to hand the keys back to the people and know that when we return we will be tourists with visas and not fighters with weapons.

SSgt Christopher Reese
4th Civil Affairs Group
reesecd@imefdf.usmc.mil
rockyblues@hotmail.com

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Regarding the operations of the Civil Affairs Group:

Typically, civil affairs operations involve advising and assisting civilian authorities in their relationship with military organizations, providing recommendations to the landing force commander regarding a course of action that will promote cooperation and support from the citizenry and government of a host country. Types of operations include care and control of refugees, evacuees and displaced persons; emergency evacuation of U. S. civilian and military personnel and citizens of other friendly nations; disaster relief; population and resource control; public health; and civil affairs intelligence.

The fundamental purpose of civil affairs operations in the area of refugees, evacuees and or displaced persons is to control the movement and activity of such persons to prevent their interference with landing force operations and obtain local acceptance and support of the mission of the landing force.

In the area of public health, the mission of civil affairs personnel is to conserve civilian health and provide at least minimum standards of medical care for civilians.