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Humor sometimes the better part of valor

Editor's note: Mike Taibbi and John Zito recently returned from Iraq, where they reported two more installments in their series, "On the Line." Another installment is set to air this week. If you missed any of their reports or blogs so far, you can find them all here.

It began in the desert with Daisy. Taking up the two back seats of a Humvee, Mike Taibbi and I rambled back to base at Ft. Irwin, Calif. Riding in the front seats and manning the gun turret were three soldiers with the 2-69 Armored Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division. We had just wrapped up a day of shooting as they trained for their upcoming deployment to Iraq. 

If you’ve spent time in a Humvee, or any military vehicle, then you’re familiar with the “net.”  It’s the radio network units use to communicate in the field. The net crackles like a trucker's C.B. with seemingly hundreds of voices, all speaking military jargon, spewing tons of directives, orders and responses -- it's near impossible for virgin civilian ears to comprehend. But listen long enough and the chatter begins to make some sense.

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The no-headlines war

Editor's note: This is a story you have to see to believe, and you will, tonight, as Mike continues his reporting from Iraq as part of the broadcast's 'On the Line' series.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Babil Province, Iraq -- I looked up at the cold, starlit sky and saw I was bedded down beneath the handle of the Big Dipper. It made me smile to see something so familiar, because nothing else about the night was. 

In a convoy of Bradley tanks and Humvees, producer John Zito and cameraman Bill Angellucci and I had been returning with an infantry company from a frustrating raid on a suspected al-Qaida stronghold in Diyala Province only to run into a nest of IEDs -- the dreaded improvised explosive devices that have become one of the signatures of this protracted war. One explosive had been touched off by Zito’s Humvee, and another, a huge one, literally blew the track off the 37-ton Bradley tank that was next in line, disabling it completely and blocking the narrow dirt road that was our way home. Amazingly there were no casualties or serious injuries, though a piece of flying shrapnel sliced the cheek of one of the Humvee gunners. When help had been summoned, those support vehicles ran into more IEDs -- we counted seven in all and were told later there'd been at least a dozen -- and the decision was made to stay put, keep a rotating watch of soldiers for protection, and wait for daylight when the rescue could resume. 

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Final goodbyes for the 3rd ID

Capt. Pancho Perez-Cruz took a moment to reflect for us. In a few minutes he would take off for Iraq by way of Kuwait, at age 30 already a veteran tank company commander with two tours under his belt. "Last night I was thinking," he said, "what would I say to my guys? Should we do a prayer, or not?" He said he knew many of his soldiers were nervous, and that he knew from experience what that feeling was like, especially for the rookies. "It's fear of the unknown, but it's all right to have that: that means you're living. That means you're alive."

They did the prayer. "We come to you today, Lord, a little nervous, a little scared," Pancho's first lieutenant intoned. "Lord, look afer our families, and give us the strength we need to do our jobs. Keep us all safe so we can all come home, amen." Pancho spoke to his men, huddled close around him. "Keep your head in the game, stay together, stay tight, and we'll be all right. Hoo-ahh?" As one they answered, "Hoo-ahh!"

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'On the Line' with the 3rd ID

It’s been repeated many times: even the best battle plans never survive the first shot fired. That maxim has never been more true than in the Iraq war. It applies to the troops fighting there, and to the journalists covering them. The art of reporting this war is always changing for NBC News as we continually adapt to new -– usually violent -- realities in Iraq. Now, as the war moves into its fifth year, we add another approach to our coverage with a series called, "On the Line."

The series began on Feb. 16, when correspondent Mike Taibbi reported from the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, Calif., where we found the men and women of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division gearing up for a third deployment to Iraq -- a deployment pushed up three months by President Bush’s so-called "surge" plan to bring some stability to the mean streets of Baghdad. Mike introduced you to Capt. Alex "Pancho" Perez-Cruz, a tank company commander from El Paso, Texas, fiercely devoted to his men and the mission in Iraq. Alex seems to shrug off the American public’s flagging support for the war. He told us, "The way I deal with it... is we sacrifice. We're the ones doing the hard work, and from our perspective it's worth it." And he doesn’t buy the "support the troops, not the war" line. For him the two are inseparable. "The war" is what "the troops" do. It’s their job. To indict it is to give a failing grade to what Capt. Perez-Cruz does for a living; he takes it personally.

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Our new series 'On the Line'

I remember March 19, 2003, the day the Iraq war started. As one of the correspondents in the NBC team heading into Iraq from Jordan, we were perched on the border and waiting for a secure enough opening to begin the race along Highway 10 to Baghdad. Once there, a few days later, we watched in those early weeks as looting and chaos battered the Saddam-less city while the U.S. occupation began to take shape. We drove around freely, worried mostly about avoiding the crossfire generated by the bandits and looters who all seemed armed and eager to shoot; there were stories everywhere.

Now, with the war about to begin its fifth year, those early days and weeks might as well have happened in a different country, so profoundly have the internal dynamics of Iraq and the war changed. NBC News continues to get great reporting from Richard Engel and our other colleagues who have either been embedded with U.S. military units or have risked venturing away from our workspace to find and report stories. One recent example, Robert Bazell, with his gripping reports on emergency medical treatment in the war zone.

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