Troops get Beer!!!

[RT21]

AGHDAD -- It looks almost like a college dorm room, decorated in the classic early frat guy motif, with two messy beds, Red Man and Copenhagen on the table, tubs of weightlifting supplements, and the Sistine Chapel of testosterone -- a collage of almost-naked women covering most of a wall. There's a fridge, an Xbox and three dudes watching MTV. Yeah, a normal college dorm.

Only, it's Iraqi MTV, and there's body armor under the entertainment center, weapon clips on the floor, an M-4 rifle on one of the beds, another leaning up against the wall. The three guys are part of a colonel's security detail, and they spend most days outside the wire of Camp Falcon. Any of them probably could kill you with one of the girlie magazines lying around. In between critiquing the videos, they're talking about the hottest topic on this forward operating base in south Baghdad: the Super Bowl and the two beers.



Courtesy of Justin Carmack and U.S. Army
A Michigan native and Detroit fan, Sgt. Kyle Slucter is spreading Lions pride throughout the Middle East.
All sorts of rumors have sprung up here since the Army announced that each soldier in Iraq would get two beers -- and two beers only -- during Super Bowl XLIII, a rare break from the no-alcohol-in-a-war-zone policy. While people at home fixate about the game, troops in Iraq talk about the beer. Is it good? Will they actually get it? Where is this beer hidden? One whisper has it with the ammo. These guys, who are members of the hard-charging 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, joke about staging a midnight commando raid. Covert ops, baby. One says he's going to mix the beer with an energy drink, a Baghdad Jagerbomb. The anticipation is palpable.

"I already got a plan," Staff Sgt. Rick Valencia cracks. "I'm shotgunning 'em."

The other guys laugh.

"If you drink 'em too slow, they're gonna go to waste," Valencia says. "You gotta take 'em straight to the head." When he's not chillaxing, Valencia is an experienced, respected noncommissioned officer, a member of the exclusive Audie Murphy Club, named after the Medal of Honor winner.

From his bed, Sgt. Kyle Slucter asks what kind of beer they'll be getting.

"Budweiser," Valencia and fellow Staff Sgt. Jason Cosby call out in unison.

"When we were out on a mission, the general was in town, and I asked his aide," Valencia explains.

"I heard they ordered 9,000 cases," Cosby says.

"King of Beers," Valencia says.

"I don't care if it was Milwaukee's Best," Slucter says.

"Or Blue Ribbon," Cosby says.

Then the *****cat Dolls come on the television, and everyone gets quiet.


A history of war, told through the eyes of its beverages

This has been a war of uppers. A coffee drink sold on all the bases in Iraq is called MOAC: Mother of All Coffees. It has enough caffeine in each cup to power the crew of a battleship. There's no decaf in plain sight in the chow hall, just two pots marked "Strong" and "Light." Energy drinks are a way of life. The Humvees and armored trucks rolling through the dusty Forward Operating Base Falcon early this Sunday morning, passing concrete blast walls and two stray dogs, are packed with troopers whose opinion of an impending mission, so the chatter goes, can be measured with astonishing accuracy by seeing what they drink before leaving. Coffee means a walk in the park. Rip It means a little more serious. If they're pounding Monster, they're expecting a Hollywood action movie. "The Vietnam era guys had hookers, booze and drugs," one Falcon resident says. "We have coffee."



Courtesy of Justin Carmack and U.S. Army
Staff Sgt. Rick Valencia, left, and Slucter get a little extra fuel from caffeine.
For most of the war, Camp Falcon needed to be hyper-alert. The place has been a magnet for mortar and rocket attacks, the neighborhoods outside the walls a swamp of sectarian violence. But in the past months, thanks to an agreement to hand over many operations to the Iraqis, and the costly but effective surge, the days and nights have been as calm as they've been in years. Life inside gets more garrisonized every day. Mealtimes feel like the ones back home, with omelet chefs, a carving station and, naturally, big televisions showing cable news and sporting events. The gym has packed treadmills, and the dusty sports field has flag football. Karaoke nights are a regular feature of the base's social scene. There is no tension in the air, and that means one thing:

Beer.

For the first time here, a beverage will help them unwind rather than jack them up. This small break from the normal routine has been received by the soldiers, as you might imagine, as if they'd been told the newest front of the war on terror was South Padre Island. For a change, the entire camp is anticipating something other than combat, or going home, or shipping out to Afghanistan.

Camp Falcon has Super Bowl fever.


A much-needed release

Behind the door stenciled "Platoon Sergeant," the biggest Steelers fan on post is nearly frothing at the mouth. If the game doesn't start soon, Sgt. 1st Class Randy Williams is going to explode. "I've been nervous since the last game," he says. The soldiers who serve under him at the 1st Battalion-22nd Infantry Regiment are giving him tons of grief. It's a Sunday, and everybody's hanging out, having a good time. The tales are flying. "It's what guys who are in Iraq do," Sgt. Brett Bussell says. "Tell stories about growing up and their family."

Much of the talk is about the upcoming game, of course. Williams, a 38-year-old burly, bald Army lifer, announces he wants a winter home in the Pittsburgh area when he retires. Bussell rolls his eyes. "See what I mean?" he says.

"Don't ever say anything bad about the Steelers," Spec. Scott Stone says.

"I hope they win," Bussell says.

"Me, too," Stone says.

"If they don't, the rest of this rotation will be horrible," Bussell says.



Courtesy of Justin Carmack and U.S. Army
Sgt. 1st Class Randy Williams keeps a close watch on the NFL standings ... and the playoff progress of his beloved Steelers.

This game is a much-needed release for Williams and his staff, who are in charge of all communications for the regiment. It's a vital job -- people can die if they don't do it right -- and there is seldom a breather. "It's rough working 24-7, 365," Williams says. "It gets monotonous."

In most offices, they'd be The Man. Here, they're POGs (short for "person other than grunt" and pronounced like the Irish rock band). That's what the combat troops call the dudes who work behind desks. It's not meant to be nice. There are small signs that these guys know the stereotype. For instance, the flavor-of-the-month video game on post right now is "Call of Duty 4," a combat shoot 'em up. When the guys who go outside the wire talk about the game, they laugh at getting smoked by 12-year-old kids playing online. (During one game, soldiers list the greatest hits of things they've told children over the headset, such as "Carry your little a-- to school" and "Isn't this rated M for mature?") When guys who sit behind a desk talk about it, there's some slightly self-conscious bragging, as if being good at a soldier video game validates that they are, in fact, soldiers. "That's what we do every day," Bussell says. "It makes it easy to kick the s--- out of a bunch of 12-year-olds."

The truth is, though, these guys work harder than just about anyone you know. Not leaving the post takes away most danger but also takes away the accompanying adrenaline rush, making every day seem almost exactly the same, the drab perimeter of the small base closing in. Everything is sandy brown -- the guard towers, the walls, the desert, the clothes, the tents, the buildings, the Humvees and the tanks and the trucks, even the sky sometimes, all the way out to the horizon. A soldier can go stir-crazy on one of these bases. They need this Super Bowl and these beers. They need 'em badly. For a few hours, they'll be someplace else, someplace familiar. The taste of the beer and the sounds of the game will take them there.

"You have a time to disconnect yourself," Williams says.

"Maybe daydream," Bussell says. "A feeling of not being away from home and family for so long."

Amazing how something so simple can energize so many people. The menu already has been e-mailed around the base. Sports-bar food: chicken wings, pizza, jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, beer-battered onion rings. And, of course, the two cold ones. They've heard one of their higher-ups will make everyone sign for the beers, make them drink them inside the dining building and turn in the cans afterward. No funny business. Doesn't matter.

"You wanna see some s---," Bussell says, "go to the chow hall when all the beer s--- goes down. It's gonna be wild. ... It's gonna be f---ing crazy."

"We already got people saying, 'How can we get a beer bong in there?'" Stone says.

"We got so much equipment here," Bussell says, "we could make a helluva beer bong."

Stone reminds everyone he has a big day coming up. His tour is almost up. "I'm gonna go home in two weeks," he says. "I'll drink then."

"Screw you," another soldier spits out.

Williams has been listening. He says he's not going to have the beers. Too focused on the game. The tension is killing him. "It's gonna be a long week," he says.

[The_Blur]

The simplest things sometimes really do make the biggest difference. The people serving under Old Glory should be so happy. :flag2:

[Milk 1027]

Glad to seem them catch a break every now and then.

[RT21]

Originally Posted by Milk 1027

Glad to see them catch a break every now and then.

True. I was there during Elf-one/Desert Storm/Shield..."Near Beer" they called it. Yum/Yuck. Was not fun. I'm sure irpq11 had a worse time, but still. Glad they let them have a blast there where it's a crime to drink.

[TFord]

Its a beautiful thing, I know that they'll appreciate it.