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| James Matise/U.S. Army |
| A chronicle of the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division, who are expected to be among the first to seize Baghdad. |
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| Kentucky New Era via Associated Press |
| Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in a commercial airliner awaiting takeoff from Fort Campbell, Ky., for Camp New Jersey, Kuwait. |
AMP NEW JERSEY, Kuwait, March 1 — In their desert camouflage uniforms of light beige and brown, the soldiers on the Fort Campbell airfield were clothed for weather in the Persian Gulf, not the cold, damp night air of a Kentucky winter. A thick coat of fog had dropped onto the Army base. For an instant as they filed in a long, single line onto their jet, the soldiers formed silhouettes against the murky glow of fog-shrouded runway lights.
It was near midnight on Thursday, and the 101st Airborne Division — the Screaming Eagles — was beginning its flight from Kentucky to the deserts of Kuwait, a distance of some 7,000 miles.
For even one person such a trip would be a giant leap. For the 19,000 soldiers of the 101st, it is an industrial-strength operation that began on Wednesday and was expected to continue through Tuesday.
A reporter from The New York Times traveled with one planeload of soldiers from the 101st, providing, in effect, an ant's view of the anthill, a glimpse of the capacity for war and an informal tote of the human costs that go along with threatening to wage it.
As part of the United States buildup for a possible invasion of Iraq, some 200,000 American soldiers are in the Persian Gulf region. In an armed conflict, military planners expect that soldiers from the 101st will be among those leading the ground campaign to seize Baghdad. The 101st can attack from the air and drop troops into position by helicopter.
Right now, however, the troops appear to be arriving well in advance of any action since most of their equipment, including 250 or so helicopters, is still at sea and not expected to arrive for several days. Then everything must be unpacked from 1,900 cargo containers. The helicopters, for instance, were shrink-wrapped in plastic for the voyage.
The soldiers who might wage war from those helicopters had their own travel needs, including an extra pair of socks at the commissary, a last-minute wedding by an accommodating judge or chaplain and vaccinations administered in a hangar just before boarding the jet.
On the flight that left late Thursday night, more than a few were watching the clock: one compensation for going to a war zone is that up to $5,339 a month in pay becomes tax-free. If the soldiers arrived before the calendar turned from February to March, all of their February earnings would be tax-exempt.
They know, however, that the Army cannot be rushed, a lesson that was taught again and again over the next 47 hours. "It's not like going to Nashville and getting on the plane," said Lt. Col. James Larsen, the deputy operations officer for the 101st.
Hour 1: 'Chalk 19' Is Formed
At 1 p.m. Thursday the soldiers finish their goodbyes to family and friends. Although they are hours from departure, they will be sequestered until they board the plane. During earlier troop deployments — including the war in 1991 that drove the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait — many families stayed with the soldiers until the final minutes, adding a ragged emotional edge to the leave-taking because the departure times dragged on for hours past the schedule. Now once the families are gone, the soldiers draw the weapons — M-4 carbines for everyone, sidearms and Berber knives for some — that they will carry until they come home.
Then they pile their duffle bags and rucksacks in a parking lot. Their gear is loaded onto a truck with "Chalk 19" marked on the back in white chalk. For mass deployments, the 101st moves in cohorts of soldiers and gear, each one given a chalk number, which will fill an airplane. Each chalk moves through stages: goodbye to the family, pick-up of weapons, loading of baggage onto the chalked truck, holding-time in a cafeteria, paperwork, inoculations. They are carried through those stages by buses.
Sgt. Henry DeGrace boards a bus and gazes down the line of seats, then yells: "I see some soft hats that have to go." As they deploy for combat, the soldiers are expected to be in their combat uniforms. That means Kevlar helmets must be worn. It also means that weapons are carried onto the buses and planes.
After the groups are formed, the bus rolls across a scale, followed by the truck with Chalk 19's baggage; the military calculates that each passenger represents 400 pounds of blood, sweat and gear. "Anybody been lying about their weight, we're going to find out right now," Sergeant DeGrace yells.
Hour 5: Paperwork, Prayers and Other Precautions
In a hangar soldiers swipe their identification cards through a digital reader; that puts them on the passenger manifest. They stand in lines to sign wills and forms granting power of attorney, to get shots they might have missed earlier and to update any paperwork to include new family members.
Scores of soldiers, perhaps hundreds, were married in the days before their deployment, Colonel Larsen said.
None of those weddings were performed by Maj. Len Kircher, a United Methodist chaplain flying with Chalk 19. "I don't do spur-of-the-moment jobs," he said.
Major Kircher developed his thinking during an earlier assignment at Fort Benning, Ga.
"I put up a sign in my office that said, `I don't marry privates, and I don't marry teenagers,' " he said. "When I was down at Fort Benning, you'd have these 19-year-old privates wanting to marry some disenfranchised 17-year-old they just met at the Columbus Mall." The teenagers are too young, he said, and the privates are too poor.
He was astounded by the flood of babies being born at Fort Campbell's community hospital, observing that it was not a boom inspired by the potential war. But he offered a prediction: "I can guarantee that when we come back, nine months from now there will be a lot more babies."
Hour 9: Food, No Water
The troops move from the hangar to another holding area. Along the way a detail opens crates of "Meals Ready to Eat," packaged food that lasts for years and includes a magnesium chip that will heat up the entree by adding a tablespoon of water. The soldiers are told to take three of these, plus some bottled water. It turns out that the water will come in handy for more than one reason: the plane chartered for Chalk 19 has lost its water supply in the lavatories.
As soon as that announcement is finished, a lengthy line forms outside the lone bathroom in the hangar.
It is not hard to find anxiety over the trip: the crisis with Iraq could end without a war, an outcome that most of the soldiers would welcome. But few have any desire for a long period of squatting inside tents in the desert, killing time during a prolonged diplomatic standoff. Specialist Charles Robbins, 23, of Knoxville, Tenn., said his wife, Emily, is four and a half months' pregnant with their first child, and he was not happy at the prospect of being away for the birth. But he did not resent being assigned to Iraq, even though he was not long back from Afghanistan.
"I feel this is our job; this is our duty," Specialist Robbins said.
"They can do it without me," interjected Specialist Jeff Wilkinson, 21, of Nacogdoches, Tex. He was on the verge of finishing his four-year enlistment and was ready to go to college when he learned that he was going to Kuwait. "It's called an involuntary extension."
Standing next to him, Sgt. Andrew Batovsky said he too resented having his enlistment extended. Sergeant Batovsky, 24, of Liverpool, N.Y., had entered the service when he was 18 and served in Afghanistan. "I was all set for community college," Sergeant Batovsky said. "Then they came out with this order."
Specialist Eric Budet, 28, from Springfield Gardens in Queens, N.Y., said he had been to Kosovo and the military life agreed with him. "I'm definitely going to re-enlist," he said.
Hour 11: 50 Planes
There are two ways to look at the 101st's deployment to Kuwait from Kentucky. On the one hand, it took 11 hours to go the first mile, basically across Fort Campbell from the baggage collection point to the airfield. On the other hand, inside of 24 hours the 101st division loaded 18 chartered airplanes with soldiers and sent them across the world.
Under an arrangement with the airline industry, the government can requisition commercial passenger jets for military purposes, paying the airlines for the use and a standard crew. Over the five-day deployment of the 101st, 50 separate aircraft will be used to bring the troops to the gulf region, Colonel Larsen said.
Chalk 19 was traveling on a
At Hour 18 when the plane stops for refueling at an Air Force base in Frankfurt, Capt. Tito Villanueva glances at his watch and sees that they are running short of time to reach Kuwait airspace for the February deadline that would mean the month of tax-free pay.
"We're going to be pushing it," Captain Villanueva said with a smile. "We may have to take over the plane and accelerate it. Maybe we should lighten the load — leave a few people behind."
"I am all about that," one soldier called out.
Before anyone can leave the plane in Frankfurt, Sergeant DeGrace tells the soldiers to leave their weapons behind. A team will stay to guard them. The soldiers who were recently given the smallpox inoculation are warned that if they are changing bandages, they must throw them only into a black-and-yellow container outside the gate.
Hour 27: Did Anyone Tell You Why You Are Here?
At the airport in Kuwait City, the passengers on the Chalk 19 flight are told to leave the plane, swipe their identification cards at a portable reader held by other soldiers in a sport utility vehicle and then immediately board a bus. They are not to stand outside talking or smoking.
The sense of menace had grown an hour earlier as the plane approached the airport. The cabin crew had turned off all the lights and had told soldiers sitting by the windows to pull down the shades so the jet could land in near darkness. The pilot tried to point out rows of oil wells on one side of the plane with controlled fires coming from their crowns, but it was too late to see them since the shades had already been pulled down.
One of the senior officers called back to Fort Campbell to report that Chalk 19 had arrived in Kuwait airspace on Feb. 28 at 11:30 p.m. No one argued the point.
A military briefer boarded and said the terrorist threat was high. He explained security precautions for traveling off base.
The buses dropped Chalk 19 at a holding tent the length of a football field, and several other soldiers gave briefings.
"Did anyone tell you the reason you are here?" one said.
"To kill," someone called out.
"War," another person shouted.
"Force protection," the briefer said, reminding the soldiers that they had to be ready to protect themselves to carry out their mission.
Hour 47: Camp New Jersey
The baggage followed the convoy of buses in two trucks to Camp New Jersey, the primitive camp where most of Chalk 19 will be stationed. They had nothing to see but the endless sand. They had little running water. So far, there was no telling how long they would sit and wait. Another military unit had just cleared out of Camp New Jersey before the 101st arrived; they moved deeper into the desert.
Sergeant DeGrace, the leader of Chalk 19, had brought his troops from Kentucky to the desert. "What a beautiful country," he declared to no one in particular. "I can see why we're here."
Hundreds of duffle bags and rucksacks were stacked on the ground. As the soldiers picked through them, the wind picked up, and dust rose in smoggy brown sheets, which whipped across men and women, bags and buses. The tents shuddered and held. Two soldiers moved across the horizon, silhouetted just as they had been 47 hours earlier, when they climbed into the jet in the damp fog of the Kentucky night.
In two grinding days across 7,000 miles, the foggy dew had been swapped for a hazy dust. The sense of place and perspective vanished. As the soldiers bent into the wind, in a world turned inside out, it was not possible to say if they were coming or going; only that they had arrived as promised.
