By BILL NEMITZ
MaineToday Media, Inc. Sunday, April 8, 2007

The questions have echoed in my head since photographer Shawn Ouellette and I took off from Boston on Wednesday, bound for Iraq. For weeks, as we prepared for a trip -- his first and my third -- to this war zone, more than a few people have looked at us quizzically and asked, "Why?"

The answer is simple: Because, day in and day out, Maine history is being made here.

In the four years since it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom without a doubt has evolved into a major chapter, if not a turning point, in world history.

But closer to home, it's become the story of hundreds of men and women from York to Aroostook counties who come to this place halfway around the world because their sense of duty leaves them no choice. Maybe you're related to one. Undoubtedly by now, you know one.

It was that story that drew photographer Greg Rec and me here twice in 2004 to embed with the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion in Mosul. And now, as the war enters its fifth year, the stories of two other units with strong Maine ties beckon once again.

One is the Army Reserve's 399th Combat Support Hospital, which includes some 45 doctors, nurses and support personnel from all over Maine. This week, Shawn and I will visit with a 399th detachment stationed at Camp Speicher in Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad.

The other is a company from the Maine Army National Guard serving with the 1-121 Field Artillery Battalion at Camp Navistar on the Iraq-Kuwait border. Their mission: to provide security for convoys heading into and out of Iraq.

So what are we doing in Baghdad? Good question.

A few years ago, a pair of journalists from Maine could fly to Kuwait, hop aboard a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane and just like that find themselves in Mosul, about 250 miles north of Baghdad. Today, like so many things in this war, it's no longer that simple.

Hence, after landing in Kuwait on Wednesday, Ouellette and I spent two days and one night at Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait, waiting for a pair of seats to open up on a C-130 to Baghdad International Airport.

Then came another day at Camp Stryker, adjacent the Baghdad airport, waiting for a middle-of-the-night convoy of "Rhinos" (think armored Winnebagos with two dozen seats) to take us into the city's heavily fortified Green Zone. After arriving, we waited several more hours to get our press credentials.

"The longer we stay here, the more complicated things get," mused a young Army specialist who met us after a blessedly uneventful ride along one of the world's most dangerous stretches of highway. "That's what happens with the military."

Already, it's been a trip filled with vivid images.

Approaching Ali Al Salem, a beehive of soldiers coming into and out of the Iraqi theater, it's not just the row upon endless row of sandblasted billeting tents that catches the eye. It's also the lighted golden McDonald's arches that rise high into the sky above the desert.

Inside the air base's flight terminal, soldiers and civilians alike stare blankly at the flat-screen monitor listing the transports to Balad, Mosul, Tall Afar, Baghdad ... Sometimes you get lucky -- and sometimes you don't.

"I've been here for six days!" protested one soldier as yet another flight to Baghdad was declared full. "Am I ever going to get out of here?"

Not everyone is so anxious to head north. Just before dawn Friday, about a hundred active-duty soldiers filled a cavernous staging tent for the bus ride out to the airstrip and a C-130 bound for Baghdad. Some read dog-eared paperbacks, others tapped quietly on their laptops, others slept sitting up.

And one young soldier wept. His head in his hands, his shoulders shaking, he sobbed quietly for several minutes for reasons known only to him. A death in the family? A broken marriage? A lost comrade? Or was it simply the crushing weight of what lay ahead?

Nobody asked. And he didn't tell.

And so, fellow Mainers, here we go again.

Over the next two weeks, we'll do our best to bring this war home to you -- and in the process bring you closer to your relatives, friends and neighbors who might otherwise disappear into the daily ebb and flow of Multi-National Force Iraq.

We'll tell these stories because, even as the debate rages over how best to end this war, we owe this much to Maine's citizen soldiers.

At the same time, we owe it to generations who will look back on this troubled time and wonder how it intruded on a state that calls itself Vacationland.

Late last week, an e-mail arrived from Capt. Rebecca Scheible, the public affairs officer for the 399th Combat Support Hospital who's been helping to lay the groundwork for our visit.

"We are prepared, and on the edges of our seats," Scheible wrote.

We know the feeling.