Sen. Jack Reed shares the holiday with home-state troops and finds poignant meaning in the traditional chocolate treat.

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, March 29, 2005

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

ALI AL SALEM AIR BASE, Kuwait -- It is Easter night in a tent in the desert on the Arabian Peninsula and, amazingly, the chocolate egg is here.

It is an unimposing Easter egg -- half an egg, actually --

manufactured on Long Island, gaily wrapped in colored tin foil, and shipped by the zillion to Iraq. This exact egg has been everywhere on Sen. Jack Reed's marathon, five-day journey to the theater of war.

But here is a distressing new wrinkle on the egg after a late, freshly microwaved dinner of ham and chicken with a Rhode Island Air National Guard unit stationed here. Others in Reed's traveling party take the egg casually after feasting on them all over Iraq. But the eyes of Richard Fieldhouse, a young Foreign Service officer in Kuwait, fall greedily upon the cache of eggs at the party for the 143rd Airlift Wing. There are no chocolate eggs at the American Embassy in Kuwait City.

"That sums up the entire problem in Iraq!" Reed declares later in mock triumph. "The State Department has nothing!" he continues, laughing. "Not only are they understaffed, but they don't have any chocolate Easter eggs at a time when the troops throughout the theater have all the chocolate they can eat!"

Reed was only half joking about this fresh clue to bolster his fear of the next potential crisis for the American enterprise in Iraq.

At the very moment that the military has found its stride -- finally well-supplied with armored Humvees, sound tactics and heartening battlefield victories -- Reed argues that the key civilian leg of the effort is hobbled by insufficient resources.

The Democrat worries that the momentum from January's elections and military progress is in danger of stalling, which could anger the populace, revive the insurgents and jeopardize the whole operation.

The American civil authorities, he says, are starved for the means to rebuild homes in Fallujah; to assist in the wobbly new government's political spadework with Iraq's competing ethnic groups; and, yes, to boost the morale of short-handed U.S. civilians who are 5,000 miles from home and family on a holiday.

Hence the senator's humorous rant on the egg, which comes, appropriately, as Reed breaks bread with members of the 143rd, an important cog in the wartime supply distribution network.

Most of the members are on their third or fourth 60-day rotation. These 30 men and women of the Rhode Island Air National Guard's 143rd Airlift Wing arrived in Kuwait Feb. 16 and are scheduled to return home April 10.

The 143rd and units like it fly across the theater of war, to Baghdad and Mosul in the north and other cities in Iraq, to Al Udied Air Base in Qatar and other staging areas in the region.

They carry supplies, equipment, matériel. "Water. We move tons and tons of bottled water," said Marine Col. Michael G. Cheston.

The chocolate Easter eggs are just one illustration of the sometimes-awesome, sometimes-absurd miracle of Uncle Sam's warfare logistics. On Good Friday, the eggs were nowhere in sight. Suddenly, at lunchtime on Saturday, chocolate eggs were showing up in mess halls from Baghhad to Al Balad Air Base, 60 miles north; from the Marine camp near battle-torn Fallujah in the west to the battling precincts of Mosul in the north.

And the 143rd moves people in and out of the theater. "They say look at the eyes of the troops. Guys that are getting out -- you can tell," said Lt. Col. Vinnie Rizzo, a leader of the airlift wing.

As the mission is described in a billboard on the base: "Boots on the ground. Get them in. Support them. Get them out."

The wing also flies the first of the C-130Js, the nation's newest big transport, to deploy in Iraq, and therein lies a story.

The aircraft is dubbed "King of the Road," after Elizabeth King, Reed's traveling aide and, back in Washington, the defense specialist who helped Reed win the "J" for the Rhode Island Air National Guard.

So when King walks into the tent for supper, there are many hugs and joshing references to the King of the Road.

The airmen have unit shoulder patches to share with the visitors.

One of the most clever patches uses a trick of cartooning to yield hidden meaning worthy of this desert clime. It pictures a C-130 with a twist: its tail coils skyward, scorpion-like. Then study the shadow it casts on the sand and -- presto! -- it's a camel's.

Over the scene flies its title "Art's Old Dogs." They would be the six-man flight crew of Maj. Art Floru of Woonsocket, three of them Vietnam vets: the flight engineer, Staff Master Sgt. Dave Prefontaine, and the liftmasters, Staff Master Sgt. Larry Muniec and Master Sgt. Howard Sargent.

Crowning the seal is the number 276, the astonishing number of aggregate years in the service that the Old Dogs represent.

Another patch commemorates a rhyming pair of Rhode Island institutions, "Mobsters and Lobsters."

When supper is done, and King has finished snapping pictures of Reed with his constituents, it's time for what is almost a closing ritual for Reed's visits to the troops.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you have to stay awake at night," Reed announces to the group of perhaps two dozen left in the tent at the end of the Easter dinner visit.

"And what better way," he begins, pausing for comic effect and raising high the brown-and-pink bag that is already familiar to a few laughing and cheering airmen.

"Than with Dunkin' Donuts coffee," he concludes, heaving out the ceremonial first pitch to the crowd. Cheers and laughter all around. Reed and King dispense the dregs of what three nights ago had been a duffle bag full of coffee.

It is a gift that Reed brings to Rhode Island troops around the world, superficially modest but intrinsically rich in hometown sentiment and in tribute for service to country.

There is a lingering round of hugs and goodbyes and mutual "Thank-yous" and "Safe trips." The members of the 143rd go off to their barracks for bed, and Reed's small party boards the embassy van for the hour-long ride from the desert air field to its hotel in Kuwait City and the long journey home to the United States.

But not before pocketing a hoard of the chocolate Easter eggs for the road.