Posted on 04/14/2003 6:36:59 PM PDT by 11th_VA
BAGHDAD, Iraq ---- For the U.S. Marines who've been fighting their way through Iraq, home has been wherever they hunker down for the night.
It's been dusty roadsides in the heat and muddy fields in the cold.
And since they burst into Baghdad last week, for some, home has been graveyards, landfills and rooftops.
On Saturday, troops from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment packed up midmorning and moved from a gravel pit they were just getting fond of, across the slums of Saddam City, to what was left of an industrial supply yard that was recently looted and mostly destroyed.
It isn't pretty, but for now they're making it home.
A fixer-upper
When the Marines from Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base arrived in the complex in amphibious assault vehicles Saturday, they chased away the last of the looters who were still busy striping the yard of anything useful.
Most of the stragglers escaped with something: a water heater, some tiles, a chair.
Once it was cleared of looters, the Marines took full stock of their new base and their gung-ho shriveled. The complex was a complete wreck, and their silence bespoke their disappointment.
"This is a health hazard," said battalion Sgt. Major Jose Martinez, pointing out shards of metal, broken glass and leaking batteries in a weed-filled yard. "But we checked two other sites and this, believe it or not, this was the best."
Doors, fixtures and toilets were broken or gone. Glass was shattered and floors were flooded. Broken building materials, from pipes to tiles, concrete blocks and steel bars, lay scattered and heaped with paper and other rubbish.
"I already miss my little patch of grass," Lt. Eli Vasquez, 26, of Corpus Christi, Texas, said of the stony, uneven swath of weeds where he and other Lima Company Marines had spent the last three nights.
But it didn't take long for Vasquez and the other Marines to do an about-face.
As they were trained to do on the battlefield, they worked with what they had and gave the junk their best. Within hours, the camp was transformed.
Warehouses, filled with what even poor Iraqi squatters didn't want, were treasure troves for the Marines.
They swept trash and glass from warehouses, revealing spaces to build on.
Marines fitted broken seat-less chair frames with cardboard and foam and topped concrete blocks with tin planks for benches.
Navy corpsman Jim Ruiz, 39, of El Cajon went to work digging holes in a grassy yard to make a field latrine like none the troops had seen.
He found a porcelain urinal and placed it over a hole he covered with a wire grate.
"I don't want to have the best thing I did in this war be building the (toilet), but I'm pretty proud of this one," Ruiz said.
Ruiz and some helpers built four stalls with pieces of wooden fencing and siding. In each one, he topped a chair frame with a plastic toilet seat. A wooden ammunition crate placed in a field had been about the best they've had since the war started.
Stalls and a seat ---- a little privacy and comfort ---- were something they hadn't had in a long time
"I think someone should do a story about all the ways a Marine will build a crapper," said Col. John Toolan, the new commander of Regimental Combat Team One, when he dropped by to check on troops Sunday morning. "Marines don't mess around."
Indeed.
Down the drain
After not washing for at least a month, Marines said their bodies were getting a little funky. Even local Iraqis have offered some troops bars of soap instead of cigarettes to show their appreciation.
So Saturday the Marines focused their energy on building showers once security and defenses were put in place.
"We know she works," said then Staff Sgt. John Donahoo, 32, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as he tightened a shower head onto a pipe fixture that he used to tap into a water line. "We're just making her perdy."
Donahoo was later promoted to gunnery sergeant in the camp.
He and Gunnery Sgt. Jerry Yates, of Columbus, Ohio, rigged a deluxe shower over a bathtub for their "trackers" ---- the Marine reservists from Virginia who drove the infantry in amphibious tractors from Kuwait to Baghdad.
"We've been scrounging like this the whole way," he said. "My guys are gonna love this."
And they did, as did the infantry, who built their own version Sunday.
Cpl. Matthew Huber, 27, of Michigan and his cohorts pieced together sections of old scaffolding and affixed sheets of stainless steel to create six shower stalls for Lima Company.
They hung camp shower bags above floors of tile that they pieced together to make a drain and leeching system.
"Five gallons a Marine," Huber said, proudly displaying the towel rack soap dishes that he and his buddies had made.
"I ain't never seen anything like this in the field," said Cpl. Armando Garcia, after taking his first shower in about five weeks. "This is good to go."
Shelter from the storm
While the Marines' temporary home was not perfect ---- they still took sniper fire from the surrounding neighborhood and at least one firefight erupted near where some Marines were sleeping early Sunday morning ---- its roofs and walls gave Marines some room to spread out and relax between combat patrols through the city.
Gunnery Sgt. Wayne Hertz, 36, of Bismark, N.D., and his team scavenged enough bricks, tiles and crates to build the "Gunny's Club" ---- a set of seats and couches set on a tile floor around tables topped with construction road signs. The decor was "Iraqi-industrial," they said.
"When they have to, Marines can make anything happen," Hertz said, as he watched Lance Cpl. Brandon Jamison drag some more tiles around to complete the floor.
"We're making our penthouse," said Sgt. Craig Finger, 32, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as men from his platoon cleaned out the last corners of a warehouse and began stringing clothes lines where they planned to dry socks and underwear once they could tap into the adjacent water line.
"You gotta pimp it out," he said as a few of his men passed by with some old wire bed frames. "We make do."
Marines said the construction projects gave them a good break from the stresses of their patrols into the nearby streets, where dozens of Marines from other units have been killed and wounded in the last two days.
The frequent rattle of machine guns nearby never let them forget the danger that surrounded them.
Rolls of concertina wire and concrete blocks for barricades were their biggest finds Saturday.
Placing sentries and establishing roving patrols came before comfort. And snipers built stands from where they could pick off enemy on the many rooftops and windows in the surrounding neighborhood before they took showers or built places to rest within.
"This is not a happy place," said Cpl. Brandon Hart, 22, of Chicago, as he watched a fellow Marine bash away with a sledgehammer at a warehouse wall hammer.
"We're trying to make a hole in the wall so we can get the hell out of the building if we have to," he said. "We're still a long way from home."
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I don't care what the Army claims, those MRE's will constipate you for a week. But when you gotta go, that ammo crate is priceless in the field.
Now that is toughness!
"Lucky Lady"
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