Marines make a home near Fallujah

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer | Friday, April 2, 2004 11:11 PM PST ∞

FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- After just two weeks at their new base at the edge of Fallujah, the Marines who recently replaced the Army in this town have already seen their share of bloodshed and boredom, heroism and hard work.

They've lost one friend and fellow Marine killed by gunfire, they are temporarily missing more than a dozen who were wounded, and they have been spared by nightly attacks with mortars and rockets.

And this week, they were gripped by news footage of four U.S. security contractors being burned and torn apart about two miles away, ostensibly by some of the townspeople whose hearts and minds they are supposed to win in the six months the Marines have left here.

But even surrounded by violence and with little time between combat patrols and perimeter guard, sleep and starting all over again, the men of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment seem to have accepted the routines of the guerrilla war in Iraq and continue making Camp Baharia as much like home as possible.

"This is like Club Med compared to what we expected," said Steven Skoggins, 21, of Oklahoma, who waited for his turn for a computer at the "Internet Bunker" ---- the Internet cafe and phone center that the Army built and the Marines have been improving since they arrived. "I can do seven months of this standing on my head."

The bunker is a stuccoed brick building on a finger jutting out into the man-made lake of this sprawling, 2-square-mile base that was once a resort for Saddam Hussein's sons known as "Dreamland" to residents of Fallujah.

Staff Sgt. Doug Bouma, 33, of Menifee runs the cafe. He said it is no wonder why Dreamland's Internet cafe is probably the most popular spot on base after the chow hall.

"It's a getaway," said Bouma in his little room at the back of the bustling communication center. "This is their only chance to connect with home."

Even late at night nearly every one of the 38 computers and 10 "Internet protocol" phones are in use.

Marines sign in and wait their turn outside where Bouma and his crew have built railings and benches and have reinforced the structure with sandbags to protect against mortars.

On one recent moonlit night, Pfc. Dustin Chesbro, 20, of Silvercreek, N.Y., called out a series of four-digit numbers.

A half-dozen Marines left their small cliques of buddies in the dark and filed inside.

They filed past the front desk, which was crowded with a pot of hot coffee, a Bible and a sign that warned: "No grenades allowed in Internet Bunker," and sat in front of laptop computers.

Music from Los Angeles and San Diego stations streamed over the Internet into the two computer rooms.

"It's a little taste of home," Bouma said with a proud air. "A couple hundred smiling faces leave this place every day."

Troops say staying connected takes the edge off being in a place like Fallujah.

"It makes it a lot easier to be here," said Lance Cpl. Joshua Breland, 19, of Lufkin, Texas. "It makes it not so bad."

In the time they've had since the Army left, the Marines have added porches, benches and decks to their "hooches" ---- small two- or three-room cottages clustered in little neighborhoods around the lake.

Before they left, the soldiers handed down loads of luxury items such as TV sets, radios, coffee makers and microwave ovens. And in only two weeks, the Marines have already accumulated enough stuff to crowd carports and back yards.

It looks like suburbia ---- except that Humvees fill the driveways and the only toys in the yard are usually real machine guns and ammunition.

For all the Camp Baharia's creature comforts, however, the Marines say they can never forget they are fighting a war just on the other side of the base's high walls.

Friday morning the camp was shaken awake by mortars that struck along one of the walls. Patrols saturated the surrounding highways and farmland looking for the shooters.

But by midday, and again at dusk, the mortars were striking again, even closer to one of the Marines' neighborhoods.

To counter the attacks and connect with the locals, Marines say they leave the gates on at least one, often two patrols a day.

After getting only a few hours of sleep after an all-night patrol, Staff Sgt. Jason Powell sat on his porch overlooking the lake Friday morning.

Powell, 26, of Osceola, Iowa, said that during the day he was walking around villages shaking hands with friendly Iraqis and handing out supplies to teachers at a local school. By that night, he was hunting down insurgents in the dark.

"In some places it seems like people really like us," he said. "In town, though, they wave and smile but you don't know. They seem a little shadier in town."

Lance Cpl. Nickolas Bogert, who was promoted to corporal Friday, said the tough reality of the world "outside the wire" in Fallujah was something he did not expect.

"The quality of life is a lot better than last year," he said, comparing the suburban living with his experience during the invasion of Iraq when he and other Marines usually slept in foxholes.

"But this is sneakier ---- not army against army," Bogert said just before he was made corporal Friday. "It's like we're hunting guys in the cracks.

"It's just a different kind of warfare," he said. "It's different here this time. It's a different war."

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are traveling with Camp Pendleton Marines as they return to Iraq. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.