Balad, Iraq - Any time you can get on an earlier flight when traveling with the military, it's generally a good idea to say yes. You never know when a sand storm will kick up out of nowhere or flights will be canceled for one reason or another.

Hanging out in a military PAX terminal (that's what they call passengers) is not the worst spot in the world to spend hours but it's not O'Hare either. No frozen yogurt shops, no DVD rental places, no book stores to leaf through magazines even though you have no intention of buying anything, no displays of model airplanes to gawk at because you've got nothing better to do. And there are no Chili's restaurants, either.

But there are free bottles of water and Meals Ready to Eat. And a large screen TV tuned to Armed Forces Network.

So when I checked in at 6:30 a.m. for a flight from Balad to Baghdad and was told I could get on an earlier flight I thought - Bonus! It was too late to get my duffel bags on the baggage pallet but I said that's OK if it gets me to my destination sooner. So things are going swell, we take a long bus ride out to the C-130 cargo plane (so long, in fact, I wondered if we were driving to Baghdad), I watch my duffel bags get loaded on to a pallet, we walk up the ramp, sit cheek to cheek in the stuffy, dark plane, figure out the seat belt system and get ready. Then we wait. And wait.

We waited some more. Finally one of the loadmasters tells us we can't take off because the crew doesn't have a gas card to refuel for the return trip. A gas card. Those are his words. I'm thinking - no one has a Mobil card in their wallet? A Speedy Rewards card? Even a Mastercard? Now I'm all for government oversight on the billions of dollars being spent here every month but what kind of war are we running here if flight crews can't just put their fuel on a tab like at any decent bar on Milwaukee's south side?

The loadmasters were nice about it. They said they were trying to rustle up a gas card and while they did that we could unhitch our uncomfortable seat belts, hoist our body-armor-wearing selves from the red canvas seats, squeeze past the pallets of bags and walk around on the tarmac. I elected to read a magazine with my head lamp. It didn't cheer me up though. I'm currently a bit behind in Sports Illustrated issues and the one I pulled out of my bag sported Eli Manning on the cover exalting in his win over the Green Bay Packers which now seems like ages ago. Well, actually it seems like six weeks ago. Back when most of us thought Brett Favre would come back for another season.

After an hour or so, the loadmaster told us that we could go back to the PAX terminal so we grabbed our gear and walked out into the sunshine to wait for buses. We spent another couple hours in the terminal which have the cleanest bathrooms I have seen in all the military airports I've passed through. We couldn't leave the terminal because we could be called for our flight at any minute. I was hungry so I ate some unsalted trail mix heavy in sunflower seeds and drank water. I still have the strawberry Pop Tart I nabbed from a Marines break room on the second day of my trip figuring I'll have to be really ravenous to eat that in sort of a "break this glass to consume this mushy Pop Tart in an emergency" situation.

Then we were told we were leaving. But it wasn't the original plane.

By this time I didn't really care whether the original flight crew would ever find a gas card or have to take up a collection to pay for the fuel. I was finally getting on my way. First, though, we waited on the tarmac behind the different C-130 while a forklift driver deposited a large iron cask - I'm guessing it was about 5 feet across - on the plane. It looked like something Homer Simpson could accidentally tip over, gleaming green liquid seeping out. So we squeezed past the nuclear waste canister (I'm being melodramatic, it probably wasn't spent fuel rods) to get to the seats, buckled in, waited some more and finally took off.

All for a 15 minute flight.

Command Base Speicher - An article in Stars and Stripes a few days ago caught my attention. It was about a Pew Center study, I think it was written by the Associated Press, which showed that the war in Iraq has become a faint, if not non-existent, blip on the radar screens of most Americans.

The study found that a majority of folks in the U.S. don't know that the American death toll is close to 4,000; it also showed the economy, presidential politics and other topics are higher on the list of concerns than Iraq and Afghanistan. And the study noted that media coverage of the war has dropped sharply with the number of embedded reporters way down compared to the start and the first couple years of the war. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to note the correlation.

None of this surprises me. I'm sure the line on the bar chart will swing upward briefly this week as many media outlets including mine focus on the 5th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. But then it will likely swing downward again and fade from the thoughts of those who don't have a loved one serving here.

I don't have any special insights into the reasons why. Are Americans tired of the war after five years? Do they have short attention spans? Is it more interesting to follow March Madness? Is Brett Favre's retirement more important than the Iraq casualty list? I'm not opining one way or the other. It's just something I'm bringing up.

All I can do is write stories about some of the Wisconsinites working and putting their lives at risk in Iraq and hope that people back in Wisconsin will take a few minutes from filling out their NCAA brackets to read about the sacrifices their fellow Cheeseheads are making over here.

That's my hope. It's also my hope that Wisconsin makes it to the Final Four.

Command Base Speicher - The vagaries of traveling with the military being what they are, I've had the pleasure of taking up temporary residence here since Friday evening when the convoy I was on traveled here from their home at Camp Anaconda. The Wisconsin National Guard unit I'm visiting and writing about - Echo Troop, 105th Cavalry - provides security to the many convoys traveling from the large air base at Balad to pretty much all points of the compass.

It was supposed to be a quick trip - up and back in several hours. I brought my knapsack with a small amount of toiletries, flashlight, Carmex, Green Bay Packer sweatshirt, glasses, a magazine (the March edition of Outside, the one with Jack Johnson on the cover) and a strawberry Pop Tart I've toted around for a couple weeks ever since I was with the Milwaukee Marines in Anbar Province. It's not the frosted kind so I'm guessing it's still in good shape. Plus the things I need to do my job - notebooks, pens, digital voice recorder, camera, extra batteries and memory cards.

But the weather got bad, either foggy or really windy, and we're still here. Which isn't bad. I have a bunk with an actual mattress, the chow here is pretty good and the water in the shower trailer is hot. So I'm set.

Downsides: rationing my Q-Tip supply, drying off from showers with wads of paper towels, remembering I forgot to pack hand cream, and quickly reaching the conclusion that this month's Outside magazine is boring.

I've passed the last couple of days here hanging out with the Wisconsin National Guard soldiers, interviewing them and taking their pictures, playing a movie trivia game with them while we waited in humvees in the huge parking lot where the convoys stage, and watching to see which of them can throw a small rock the farthest.

I've also read the last few days of Stars and Stripes, tried not to think of the fact that I've worn the same clothes - jeans, black fleece jacket and MKE T-shirt (chosen for this trip because it's black and doesn't show the grime, not to advertise the Journal Sentinel's free weekly newspaper though I guess I'm plugging it by writing this in a blog) - since last Thursday, watching college basketball while eating lunch in the chow hall, writing the first half of my story about the convoy so I've got a head start when I get back to my lap top at Camp Anaconda, and starting a list of things I must do when I return to Milwaukee in a couple of weeks. (Drink a Margarita is No. 3)

Also, I've been wiling the time by writing out this blog posting in my notebook because my time limit on the computer at the rec center is 30 minutes.

Camp Anaconda - There aren't many Vietnam veterans still serving in the Wisconsin National Guard but one of them is here in Iraq 39 years after he first arrived in a war zone.

Sgt. 1^st Class James Wintermute turned 59 on Tuesday. His fellow soldiers helped him celebrate by building a campfire and grilling steaks and hamburgers.

He was 19 when he received his draft notice in the mail in 1968. "I thought ‘Gee if I join I can pick my own job.'" So Wintermute, a father of two daughters and two teenage grandchildren, joined the Army and picked avionics. He was stationed at Vinh Long air base in southern Vietnam repairing radios on Huey and Cobra helicopters.

Sometimes he went on fire support missions to fix radios out in the field. On one occasion, Wintermute and a Huey crew were sitting in a field most of a day waiting for a call from soldiers to move them to another location. But by 5 p.m., the agreed upon time to leave the site, they still hadn't heard from the patrol and decided to take off.

"We weren't 75 feet up in the air when four mortar rounds hit right where we were," Wintermute said this afternoon in a small tool shed next to the truck maintenance bay. He was injured only once - when he cut his hand opening a soda can, Wintermute joked.

Wintermute spent almost eight years on active duty and then was out for several years until joining the Wisconsin National Guard in 1982. Though mortars land in Camp Anaconda it's different from the mortars Wintermute remembers falling at the small base in Vietnam where he was stationed. Mortars here in Iraq often come in ones, twos or threes. Not so in ‘Nam.

"Back in Vietnam we were mortared four, five times a month and they would mortar the heck out of us. It was easier to hide in the jungle, it's harder to hide in the desert."

He works in maintenance here in Iraq, helping repair the humvees and other armored vehicles driven hundreds of thousands of miles by Echo Troop of the 105^th Cavalry.

Wintermute, who works at Felton Electric in Jefferson, would like to return to Vietnam as a tourist. He knows the once war-torn country is a far different place now. And he's not sure whether Iraq, given the same amount of time, will end up as peaceful as Vietnam.

"The Iraqi people have always been led by some sort of dictator whether it's a king or prince or president. I'm praying this works but deep down I don't know."

Habbaniyah, Iraq - It felt strange watching CNN yesterday evening broadcast from its studio in Atlanta a story about five American soldiers killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad, a relatively short helicopter ride away from here - the information bouncing from Iraq back to the U.S. before returning here in the blink of an eye.

Some of the Marines and soldiers in the dining hall where several televisions are tuned to whatever is on the Armed Forces Network - CNN, college basketball games on ESPN, that lame Charlie Sheen sitcom - stopped to watch when the map of Iraq came on the screen followed by the announcement that five of their own had died.

The soldiers were on a foot patrol in a market in a Baghdad neighborhood. Their killer walked up to them and most likely detonated an explosives-laden vest or belt. That's all it took for five families back home to hear their doorbells ring and see uniformed men standing outside waiting to tell them horrible news.

I've gone on half a dozen foot patrols with Fox Company Marines in the last week here in Anbar Province and I was surprised at how friendly Iraqis are in this area that not too long ago was a hotbed of terrorism and sectarian violence. They willingly talk to Marines and freely give their opinions, they wave, smile and sometimes invite them in to their homes or businesses for small glasses of sweet tea. On previous visits to Iraq, the mood of the people I came in contact with through Wisconsin military units was predominantly sullen, hostile and fearful.

So it felt odd to walk in the streets and stand outside shops in the middle of the day writing in a notebook and taking photos of Milwaukee Marines and not worry about something bad happening. Nor did I get the feeling that we could stay in one spot for only a few minutes before running the risk of becoming targets.

Despite high profile incidents like yesterday's suicide bombing, Iraq is a much safer place. Violence is way down and residents seem to be going about their lives without worrying for their safety as much as they did before.

I wondered if the five soldiers killed by the suicide bomber felt the same way - that they, too, saw a more peaceful Iraq and were encouraged by the progress this country is making. I wondered if that was their opinion right up to the moment when a human bomb walked close to them and blew up.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - Like many in Fox Company, Sgt. Josie Billington had to leave his civilian job behind when his unit was mobilized for a second tour of Iraq. Unfortunately for Billington, his job won't exist when he returns home.

Billington, 24, realized his dream of becoming a commercial pilot when he was hired by Skyway Airlines. With a year under his seat belt at Skyway, Billington planned on working at the small regional airline until he had enough seniority to make captain and then hoped to move to a larger airline.

But in late January, while he was waiting to leave a Marine training camp in Twentynine Palms, Calif. for his second trip to Iraq, he got a text message from his wife. Midwest Airlines was cutting Skyway loose and all Skyway employees were out of jobs. Making things more difficult for Billington was the fact that unlike other workers, such as baggage handlers and flight attendants, pilots were not getting severance pay.

"I'm done. There's no severance package for the pilots and I wasn't there for the job fairs. I'm stuck," Billington said this afternoon.

When Billington and the rest of Fox Company return to Wisconsin in late summer, he said he hopes to interview with other airlines though he said it's unlikely he'll be able to stay in Wisconsin. The 2002 Mayville High School graduate who missed his graduation ceremony to go to Marine boot camp hopes to find a commercial pilot job in the Midwest.

"It's too bad it closed. It was a great company. Midwest Airlines is losing a gem," said Billington.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - It took Cpl. Matt Laudon a year and a half to apply for medical school including studying and taking the difficult entrance exam. And he got the happy news of his acceptance at the Medical College of Wisconsin in December 2006.

But when classes began last August, Laudon wasn't there. He was getting ready for his second deployment to Iraq. So he got a one-year deferment. But he's not sure if he'll be back from Iraq in time when medical school starts on the second Monday of August. If he's not there on the first day, he can't attend the next school year and he might have to start the application process over.

"It's iffy right now. Hopefully they'll extend my leave of absence. If they don't I'll have to go through the whole process again including taking the MCAT," said Laudon, referring to the medical school entrance exam.

Laudon, 27, works as a lab technician at Aurora Consolidated Lab in Milwaukee and left for Marine boot camp one week after earning his bachelor's of science in medical technology at UWM in 2003. The Pulaski High School grad had thought about medical school since he was in the 5^th grade "but after we got back from Iraq (on his first deployment) I was more determined."

He hopes to study emergency medicine because he likes the uncertainty and excitement. Laudon took the Marines combat lifesaver course and on his last tour tended to Marines and Iraqi civilians injured in fire fights and explosions. This tour has been much more quiet and peaceful in Anbar Province and Laudon spends his days working with Iraqi police as a mentor.

As for medical school "I can only try over again. It's the hassle of getting accepted again that I really don't want to go through," he said.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - Everybody back home in cold Wisconsin enduring the winter that's acting like a drunken party guest who just won't leave even after you turn the lights on and call them a cab - please take the following blog post in the spirit that's intended. Don't construe this as whining about the weather. I'm not whining. I'm griping.

It's been awhile since I was in a sand storm. And the sand storm that blew through a few days ago really wasn't that bad. I knew it wasn't bad because I could still see buildings in the distance though it was like looking at them through a glass of beer.

The wind howls during sand storms and military flights are canceled because everything turns so darn opaque.

The sunsets in Iraq during sand storms - which are simply really windy days - are pretty in a way. The sky glows bright yellow. Like a nasty case of jaundice. That's assuming you can open your eyes with all the dust and grit blowing around.

Fortunately I bought a pair of goggles at the Army surplus store on Wisconsin Ave. a few years ago before a trip to Iraq. Because when the sand gets in your eyes which are already sticking to soft contact lenses, it can smart. At this very moment my goggles are sitting on my kitchen table where I placed them so I wouldn't forget to pack them in my duffel bag for this trip.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - Sgt. Ryan Zenoni visited his brother a few days ago. Even though both are Marines and both are in Iraq it's not easy to hook up with a family member serving over here unless you happen to be in the same unit.

The military, when it can, tries to arrange family meetings. But the logistics can be difficult so Zenoni was pumped to visit his older brother, Dean, at Camp Fallujah. They hadn't seen each other for a year and a half.

"The first thing I did was give him a big hug. He's a master sergeant so he has a lot of seniority on me. He told me what he was doing, I told him what I was doing," Zenoni said while riding in the back of a MRAP armored vehicle on the way to a weapons sweep near Lake Habbaniyah.

Zenoni, 26, is from Pewaukee, graduated from Hartland Arrowhead High School in 2000 and is on his second deployment with Milwaukee-based Fox Company of 2^nd Battalion, 24^th Marines. His 32-year-old brother serves with a light armor unit and plans to make the Marines a career.

Zenoni, a supervisor for UPS at the Elm Grove plant, was influenced by his brother's decision to join the Marines. "If I hadn't met him I'd probably have gone in the Army. But seeing him in his uniform and hearing him talk about how tough it was in the Marines did it for me."

The Zenoni brothers spent a few hours together before Ryan had to return to the base in Habbaniyah. Before they parted they snapped photos and e-mailed them to their family so their parents could see the reunion.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - Yes, Iraq is 8,000-plus miles from Lambeau Field. Yes, Cheeseheads serving here know the tragic news. Brett Favre’s retirement announcement spread quickly through the ranks of Milwaukee-based Fox Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines.

Here’s some of the reaction from battle-hardened, tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners Marines/Packer fans who were blubbering like Vikings fans who just ran out of chardonnay at their tailgate party.
 
OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh. But there were quite a few stunned people here in Anbar Province once the news began filtering in at roughly 7:15 p.m. Iraq time Tuesday.
 
Maj. Jeff Strey, a 1982 Green Bay Southwest High School grad: "I’m in mourning right now. I was surprised because someone told me they thought he was coming back, and I was looking forward to seeing him play this year. I said, ‘We should be flying the flags at half-mast right now.’ "
 
Strey, who lives in Madison, got his first e-mail from his best friend back home around 7:15 p.m. just as he was returning from dinner and then got a flood of more e-mails, including one from his wife, who said he was the first she thought about when the news broke.

Strey managed to go to Lambeau for the last regular-season game, against the Lions, while home on leave before shipping out to Iraq.

"Favre has been playing for 17 years, and I’ve been in the Marines for 18," Strey said. "If he’s hanging it up, I probably should, too."
 
Lance Cpl. Jeff Ahlborn, 23, is from Chicago but has been a Packers fan all of his life because his dad is one, too. His dad has season tickets and Ahlborn remembers watching the Packers play at County Stadium as well as on the Frozen Tundra.
 
"Somebody in my platoon just told me," Ahlborn said. "I’m a season ticket holder, so I’m pretty angry right now. It’s still a while before the preseason, so he can change his mind." He watched the NFC championship game on TV in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where his unit was finishing training.
 
Ahlborn, who was waiting to go out on a foot patrol, said that if the Packers had gone to the Super Bowl and won this year, he planned to get a tattoo on his rib cage of Favre throwing a grenade. Ahlborn was thinking along the lines of a skeleton wearing a No. 4 jersey with a death mask hurling a grenade. His rib cage is still unblemished.

"I was planning on going to every home game next season." When told he’ll have to watch Aaron Rogers taking snaps, Ahlborn said "Oh, geez."
 
Sgt. Dave Neukirchen, 30, of Wisconsin Rapids, and Lance Cpl. Jason Altmann, 20, of Milladore, were still in denial. Sitting next to each other on a cot in a room where Headquarters Platoon bunks this afternoon they were having none of it.
 
Neukirchen: "It’s all lies. It’s a myth."
 
Altmann: "He pulled the same thing last year. He’ll be back for another Super Bowl ring."
 
Neukirchen: "There’s no one to replace him. He’s not going to retire. We didn’t get to see his last season (because the Marines were training for Iraq), so he’s got to come back. I hope he reads this and I hope he feels punked by a bunch of Marines."
 
Altmann was a toddler when Favre pulled on a green-and-gold jersey for the first time.

Sgt. Ryan Zenoni walks in. When told that Favre is retiring Zenoni looks crestfallen: "What? Oh, I can’t talk." 

Habbinayah, Iraq - I'll never complain about Porta Johns again.

At least not after using WAG bags. What's a WAG bag? It's not a bad invention, actually. In the acronym-happy military, it stands for Waste Alleviation and Gel system. It's for places where there is no running water or portable toilets. Like Command Outpost 569, where I spent a day and night with members of Fox Company's 2nd Platoon.

The larger bag is fitted over a flimsy plastic frame with a toilet seat that folds down. Inside the bag are white pellets of some sort that absorb whatever ends up in the WAG bag. When you're done, the bag is tied up and sealed in the smaller bag and the whole thing is deposited in a garbage can outside the command outpost building. It's the one with WAG BAG spray painted in black on the side.

Habbaniyah, Iraq - I know why so many people in the military smoke. It's all the waiting around. There are plenty of other vices to occupy one's time but nicotine seems to be the top choice among service members in Iraq.

I can tell you it's not just bullets, flashlights, ear plugs and other gear that's taking up residence in all those pockets and pouches on military uniforms - which look sort of like a cross between Batman's utility belt and Pancho Villa's bandoliers - it's also packs of smokes and cans of chew.

Every waiting area I've passed through has seats (often broken by the folks ignoring the signs that say don't put your heavy gear and combat boots on them), a television showing DVDs that run heavily toward the action genre or tuned to Fox News, and shelves of books. I've spent a lot of time waiting recently but so far haven't started smoking. It's early in the trip, though.

The free books are usually tattered paperbacks that run the gamut from Robin Cook thrillers to Star Trek novels to mysteries. Apparently I'm also traveling a few steps behind the path of a Belva Plain and Maeve Binchy fan. Every book shelf I looked at while waiting for convoys and flights on this trip offered tomes by Plain and Binchy. Considering the age (young) and gender (male) of the majority of military passing through the waiting areas, I can only guess why the romance novels aren't flying off the shelves.

It's not easy to get anywhere in Iraq. It's better than Afghanistan where the notion of a highway system is probably 50 years in the future. At least Iraq has roads, courtesy of Saddam Hussein's public works projects. It's just that traveling many places is such a dicey proposition that the military and U.S. civilians working here are forced to go by air, by convoy and by what's known as the Rhino.

I rode the Rhino from a base near the airport to the Green Zone a few days ago. It didn't look like a rhinoceros; it looked like a school bus on steroids. We left late at night to travel the mean streets of Baghdad though the streets didn't look too menacing considering there's a night-time curfew for private vehicles in Iraq's capital. But then IEDs aren't painted bright yellow with a flag sticking out announcing themselves as improvised explosive devices so I can understand the precaution.

While I often ignore the safety briefing on flights since I long ago figured out how to buckle a seat belt and know that my seat cushion can be used as a flotation device in the event of a water landing, I did listen attentively when the armed guard on my Rhino talked about what to do if the bus is on fire and how to quickly get the heck out of the vehicle. I also noted that from my vantage point toward the front of the Rhino, I would be pretty much the last person to be able to flee a burning bus. Maybe that's why it was the only seat left when I slouched on. The guard didn't have to yell "Shotgun!" to sit in the front passenger seat; somehow all the passengers knew they didn't want to sit up front. Though considering the weaponry, the guard could have yelled "M-4! And 9 Mil!"