Hot Potato

Right before leaving for a recent East Coast work trip a fellow reporter asked where I was headed.
"North Carolina," I said.
"Enjoy yourself," he said.
"I'll do my best," I said.
"Oh, you will, it's beautiful this time of year," he said in all seriousness.

No doubt much of North Carolina is. Jacksonville, however...oh, no, the other Jacksonville. This sprawling coastal North Carolina town was the destination of a recent assignment on which Joeja and I were sent by our paper and the view from our "Quality" Inn hotel room says it all: a McDonalds, a Shell station and a Pawnshop. When we asked the desk clerk to recommend a good restaurant she eagerly gave us directions to a street that had an Applebees and an Outback Steakhouse. But we weren't there for Jacksonville, we were there for 80 Idaho Marines who had landed at nearby Camp Lejeune after seven months in Iraq.

In five days, covering two states and a district, we got a crash course in military life. We quickly learned terms like VBIEDS (vehicle borne improvised explosive devices - car bombs), racks (beds), hootches (living quarters) and cammies (camouflage uniforms). Despite being a couple of shaggy-haired reporters, we were warmly received by Marines who had seen fierce fighting and their friends killed and maimed and were really just dying to get home (they had about a week of "demoblilization" in N.C., during which they packed up and took classes on how to reintegrate into civilian life).

Camp Lejeune, Eastern Bloc architecture excluded, is beautiful. Heavily wooded with piney swamps and beaches it actually has a large conservation mission, bombing ranges mixed with bald eagle and manatee habitat. Jacksonville's a little different - endless wide highways lined with big box stores and check cashing businesses.

There was one scenic highlight in Jacksonville: As Joeja and I were entering the lobby of our hotel a vision stepped out of the elevator. He looked like the guru of Nascar 'necks. He had a flowing gray mullet, two large tattoos on his forearms, a hat that said "Git 'er done" and a shirt that said, no joking, "Git 'er Done" superimposed over a Confederate flag. I wanted to shake the man's hand, piss on a Chevy with him and grab a few warm Hamms in his double wide.

From N.C. it was on to D.C., the original destination of our trip. There we hooked up with an injured Marine from Star, Id. (about 30 minutes from Boise) on whom we are doing a (with luck) year-long project. He is rehabbing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, learning how to use his prosthetic leg after losing his right leg below the knee when an explosion ripped apart his tank in Iraq. He just turned 21, making him the same age as my little brother.

Spending time in the amputee wing of Walter Reed was incredible. Nearly everyone who walks or rolls by you is missing one or several limbs, some missing so much you wonder how they survived (and if some of them maybe wish they had not). By the standards of Walter Reed, our guy was somewhat lucky. When I was in the physical therapy room a man missing both legs rolled by. When he did a joking salute to someone in the room I noticed his right arm was rubber.

Whatever disagreements I may have with the military it still is a great leveler, especially among badly wounded troops. Our man, a country boy from a town of less than 2,000 with five black people (really) is best friends with another leg amputee,— a black man from Manhattan named Jamel.

Bottom line: several thousand company dollars and a lot of faith from my bosses means this better be the story of my life. No pressure.