Dispatches From Iraq: A Bird's Eye View

FOX News ^ | July 26, 2007 | Michael Yon

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Michael Yon is an independent journalist and former Green Beret who was embedded in Iraq for nine months in 2005. He has returned to Iraq for 2007 to continue reporting on the war. Here is a portion of his latest dispatch exclusively for FOXNews.com.

A Tactical Operations Center (TOC) is the headquarters for a unit. Company-level TOCs are the smallest I have seen. A typical infantry company has about a hundred or more soldiers. The commander will normally be a captain. A company-level TOC often consists of a radio and a map, and one person on duty 24/7. It might have a coffee maker, too.

In fact, there is a company TOC at the other end of the tent in which I now reside with a company called C-52. C-52 is a small company with only 54 men. They all live in this tent with a huge amount of weapons, and great combat experience to back them up.

Units in Iraq that aren’t fighting much seem more intent on keeping their TOCs top-secret. I’ve seen exceptions, but as a general rule, access seems to increase with action, and in the case of 3-2 SBCT, embedded journalists are given full access 24/7.

Click here to read the full dispatch from Michael Yon in Iraq.

Journalists actually are given more access than they possibly can handle. They can stay all day and night, coming and going as suits their needs. They can go off on missions, and then come back to watch from the TOC as missiles and bombs splash across the television screen just like on those History Channel shows. Only here, a few seconds later the TOC rattles from the blasts.

So I walked into the TOC at about 0320 that Saturday morning, and there was a video feed