Joel Rawson, executuve editor of the Providence Journal, and John Freidah, staff photographer, are on assignment in Iraq to cover the 173 Long Range Surveillance Detachment of the Rhode Island National Guard

04:22 PM EDT on Sunday, May 8, 2005

BY JOEL RAWSON
Journal Executive Editor

Kuwait, May 4

The first impression of Kuwait is dust, fine dust hanging in the air, making it look like a dull rainy day in New England.

Visibility is maybe two miles. You can look straight at the pale sun and not blink. You can smell the dry dust.

The Hilton is a luxury beach resort. We tested our equipment on the beach at a cloth pavilion with a carpet laid on the sand and low wooden tables and large sofas.

Next door, a super tanker was tied up at a mile-long loading pier, indistinct in the dust haze. John Freidah knows what he is doing, full of energy, but the equipment didn't work.

At night, we dined at an outdoor buffet on the hotel terrace. Tables were set with white cloths and candles.

All kinds of people were there. Some families. Young men and women with children. Couples. Kuwaitis in their lightweight white robes. But mostly men in their thirties and forties, going out to the war, or coming back.

One of the cloth pavilions on the beach was set up as a little movie theater with small red plastic chairs for the kids.

Shrek was projected on the hotel wall.

Kuwait, May 5

On the first C-130 we took, the number 2 engine overheated on takeoff. The pilots shut the engine down and brought it back and got another one.

The airplane was an E model built in 1963, according to the loadmaster. He pointed out metal patches in the cargo deck covering bullet holes from the Vietnam War. He said they would like to get the new J model that the Rhode Island Guard is flying. The crew was regular Air Force out of Ramstein, Germany.

A dust storm hit while we were on the ground in Kuwait, the air brown from blowing dust. From the air you could not see the ground for the dust.

On the plane were a major going up to join a general's staff, a three-man Army Reserve public affairs crew going to Iraq to shoot video for Reserve units' hometown TV stations, a bunch of embassy people, contract workers and a couple of journalists.

Baghdad, May 5

At 6:30 in the evening when the plane landed, the air was cool, the sky clear. The airport tarmac was divided by concrete walls made of blocks like huge Jersey barriers.

Dozens of soldiers waited in clusters.

You could tell the ones coming out. They were the ones lying down on the asphalt or sitting with their backs to the walls. The people going out were dusty and looked at you vacantly, like you were dog food. The people coming in were clean and full of dazed bustle.

The officer who picked us up at the airport is Captain Brus of the Estonian Army. He said Estonia has a population of about 1.5 million and an army of 20,000. They have sent a light infantry platoon to Iraq, according to Brus. That would be about 40 men. They are attached to a U.S. armored division.

Their soldiers rotate every six months. Ours rotate after a year.

Baghdad to Forward Operating Base Danger, May 6-7

The helicopter ride up at night was spectacular. The Army UH-60 helicopters picked us up in Baghdad in the dark -- large, noisy and windy, but hardly seen until we were right up to them. Our crew chief threw people and baggage in until the machine was full, and then we took off.

We flew out over Baghdad low and fast, the city lit up from horizon to horizon, almost no vehicles moving on the streets and highways. The lights are definitely back on in Baghdad. Outside the city, the helicopter went lower. You could see houses going by and look into the lit doorways.

While our helicopter refueled at Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the crew chief took the passengers off and we stood around in the dark on the gravel. We asked what our flight altitude was, and he told us. It was low. We asked what altitude the helicopters fly at in daylight, and he said they used to fly real low, but a general got scared and now they just fly low.

He wasn't too happy about it, saying it made them better targets.

Tikrit, May 7

We slept this morning in one of Saddam's palaces -- one we are told was built for his mother. It is sited up on a bluff overlooking the Tigris River. The building goes on for a couple of blocks, three stories high, the exterior made of sandstone. Inside, everything is made of marble veneer and gold gilt, with crystal chandeliers all over the place. It makes the Breakers in Newport look like a cheap summer house.

The United States Army lives here now, a symbol of power's change. This is headquarters for the 42nd Infantry Division. Humvees are parked outside, sand-bagged watchposts look out over the river, and rolls of concertina wire are everywhere.

Saddam's own palace is nearby (he had a bunch all over the country). It was bombed on the first night of the war and looks wrecked from the outside.

4th IRAQI ARMY DIVISION TRAINING FACILITY, May 7

U.S. contractors train Iraqi police recruits in urban fighting, teaching them how to go into a building.

One of the trainers is from Kansas City and resigned from the police force there to come to Iraq after 9-11. He says he had never been in the military and he wanted to do something. He plans to spend a couple of years here. He says his first name is Jeremy; no last names please.

This is a pretty good bunch of recruits, he says, better than the last bunch. They are from the Samarra area, new graduates of the Iraq police academy, finishing up their training with a two-week combat course. One of the recruits asks in English what we are doing. Newspaper, he is told. He says they have been there five days.

Another of the U.S. trainers calls an interpreter over and tells the recruits to quit smoking on their bathroom breaks: one more man gets caught smoking, and he'll cut the breaks to two minutes.

He yells, the interpreter yells, and the recruits just stare at him.