The Rhino is a 13-ton military personnel transport vehicle with heavy armor on the top, bottom and sides, designed to withstand RPG and IED fire. In the past two weeks, there has been some insurgency activity on Route Irish. The tension in the holding tank for our transport is palpable, even among the officers who have done this dozens of times before. Dead and injured civilians are a bad PR move, and they are heavily invested in our security.

We are told that sometimes the Rhino doesn’t roll until 3 or 4 AM, even given an 11 PM manifest. They sweep the road with an electronic IED locator, take aerial photographs of the area, and also “mix it up” according to previous Rhino deployments as far as departure times. According to one officer I spoke with about the strategy, “The one thing you don’t want to do is develop a pattern of behavior.”

Once at Camp Striker, we will sleep (or not) in a tent city, and then catch a 7 AM flight to Amman, Jordan out of Baghdad International. It is a one and a half hour flight whose departure is also not without the possibility of trouble Elements of the insurgency have been known to interrupt planes taking off from and flying into Baghdad.

One real knockout for me was the surprise arrival of a soldier from Exeter, New Hampshire named Suzanne Tetrault, a sunny, wonderful woman who came out to the Rhino holding area at this late hour to wish us well and to thank us for our humble contribution to our troops’ morale. I cannot believe she took the time to do this, but she did.

At 12:30, an officer barked that we were ready to deploy, and to put on flak jackets and helmets. There is a sign at the holding area which invokes the stateside restaurant sign that reads “No shirt, no shoes, service,” only in this case it reads, “No flak jacket, no helmet, no Rhino.”

Our convoy is as follows: two up-armored Humvees, Rhino #1, two up-armored Humvees, Rhino #2, two up-armored Humvees, Rhino #3, two up-armored Humvees, Rhino #4, and two up-armored Humvees bringing up the rear. Eleven vehicles on the ground along with a Blackhawk helicopter escort in the air. Our detail leader told us that if we run into any enemy fire that stops the Rhino, that the chopper can land in three to five minutes to evacuate any injured.

He also said that the Rhino can survive most IED explosions, and that he had seen been aboard one that detonated an IED during a previous convoy. The front end popped up, slammed back down and kept rolling. His speech went something like this: “The Rhino rolls until it can’t roll anymore. If it becomes disabled, another Rhino will come to pick you up. You’ll know it’s us. There are three escape hatches; on the side, in the rear and on the roof. The levers on the roof hatch go to the side, and the hatch opens to the front of the vehicle. It is not a gun turret, it is not an observation post. I don’t need any hyper motivated individuals popping the hatch to act as a spotter or to return fire. The safest place to be is in the Rhino.”

The most surprising thing about the Rhino ride from the International Zone along Route Irish was the traffic. It was thick as a morning commute. There were dozens of military vehicles, eighteen-wheelers, and other heavy machinery coming from the other direction as our convoy zigzagged through a series of Jersey barriers that made Route Irish into a slalom course.

At times we were flying down the road, and then there were moments when the convoy stopped altogether. We were so buried in the middle of it we couldn’t see what the holdup was.

Each Humvee is equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun and men who know how to operate them. Facing seven of them along with highly trained and mobile small arms fire would require a tremendous organizational effort on the part of the enemy. The intimidation and readiness our teams display are the reason these personnel transports aren’t attacked as often as they might be.

I believe the US Army saved our lives that night, because if they didn’t display that unerring professionalism on every Rhino run, then every Rhino run would be at greater risk. Heroism isn’t always about a single dramatic event. Though it’s harder to see than a nail-biter rescue, daily commitment to excellence as displayed by the Rhino team operating out of Camp Striker is as great an act of heroism as any.

After the half-hour ride we were hurried off the Rhino to be processed for a tent assignment. It was done without fanfare or farewell, or even a chance to thank the soldiers who as part of their bargain with Uncle Sam had defacto pledged to risk their lives bringing ten civilian musicians out of the International Zone.

We were processed at Camp Striker’s front office building, a cozy wooden structure, austere, but heated nicely against the forty degree chill of Iraq’s winter nights. We were given a blanket and a tent assignment. K3.

The soldier handling the paperwork was a smart, efficient, and serious young man, I’d guess to be about thirty years old. His left hand was missing, and I can pretty fairly guess how it happened, and how he came back to where it happened when he could easily have gotten out. He wanted to continue to help, and brave warrior that he is, he had the guts to take the desk job.

Each tent held about twenty cots, some with a two-inch thick mattress, some without. The cots were okay, but I was disappointed and a bit angry for our soldiers that they weren’t being issued good wool blankets. The blankets were very thin and very poor quality. This time of year it gets cold and uncomfortable in Iraq, and it’s really troubling that military hardware is so high a priority relative to the basic creature comforts for the people doing the fighting.

We were driven to Baghdad International Airport the next morning, having played soldier for a day. We had trudged in the weird, silvery gray metallic mud that forms in a desert after a rain, we had tossed and turned in a bony cot under a thin blanket, and we had risen before the sun. Big deal. Our fighting men and women do that every day.

I’m back home in Portsmouth now. I’ve spent the evening with a dear friend, and I’ve debriefed a bit. I’ve seen so much, and I understand so little. I know that war is hell, and I also know that Iraq is not a lost cause. Would that we had respectfully enlisted support in our effort, but perhaps it’s not too late even for that. I am hopeful for Iraq. I have to be. I love her people.

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