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Many comforts, but still a war

Apr-14-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

Two reporters One reporter and one photographer from this newspaper are in Mosul to cover units from Maine that are part of Task Force Olympia.

[Link to Full Article]
Bill Nemitz

MOSUL, Iraq — Camp Marez, as military bases go, is anything but primitive. It has satellite television, Internet cafes and a dining hall the size of an airport hangar with more than enough catered food to please the 500-plus palates of the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion.

It has an equally cavernous physical-fitness facility, complete with dozens of state-of-the-art weight machines, an aerobics room and a rubber-surfaced basketball court. A large movie theater will open in the coming weeks.

But Camp Marez also has, outside every building, clusters of "C bunkers" - 7-foot tunnels of reinforced concrete that fill up fast when the mortar shells start falling.

Four times on Easter Sunday, the C bunkers were crouching-room-only. A dozen or so 60-millimeter shells were launched on the hour from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. by unseen insurgents outside the sprawling camp's perimeter. They caused one minor injury to a worker from Kellogg, Brown & Root, the company contracted by the Pentagon to provide quality-of-life amenities to U.S. troops in Iraq.


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