Embedded With the 101st Airborne

"EDITORS NOTE: AP writer Ryan Lenz is embedded with the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq and will be filing periodic reports on life in that unit.

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THURSDAY, Dec. 8, 5:20 a.m. local.

BEIJI, Iraq.

The darkness. It struck me first about this place even through the flames from gas flares at an oil refinery on the horizon that dazzle the sky outside Beiji in a burst of orange.

The darkness penetrates everything at Forward Operating Base Summerall, where the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade has deployed. I'm told you get used to it, but my eyes haven't adjusted yet.

Gunfire broke the early morning silence just a moment ago. Before that, loudspeakers just outside the camp's wires bellowed a call to prayer. Soldiers working in the largely Sunni Salah ad Din province say they can set watches by it.

It took an overwhelming five days after leaving New York to arrive here. Two nights in a Kuwait City hotel room, waiting for transportation that never came. Two nights on a stained nylon cot at the Convention Center in downtown Baghdad, waiting again."
MyWay

We await your reports.