Flashback 3

Ahh! FOB living. I had almost forgotten all of the glorious smells, colors, and textures that make life on a forward operating base such a rich and valuable experience. The mixed gravel in three fun sizes. The dehydration urine-color charts. The deceptively cheerfully-colored latrines. The faded murals from past deployed units on the concrete force-protection barriers. The communal showers. The honey-wagon. The gradually deteriorating hescos. The barracks tent with its refrigerator-level air conditioning. Bunk bed sleeping. The mattress with the hole in it. The DFAC chicken wings. The abandoned flip-flops. The office-chairs inside the ancient sad-sand-bagged bunkers. The razor wire covered in sparrows and plastic bags. The Marines jogging in 110-degree heat. The smoking gazebos. The swagger of the Special Forces guys. The swagger of the contractors who just dress like they are SF. The need for sunglasses at 6.00 am.

I forgot this last thing on our first morning at Camp Manion. I stepped out of the tent ready to face the new day and grab some chow, only to have the day slap my retinas, forcing a comically abrupt 180 degree turn right back inside to get my shades. Don’t leave home without them. Breakfast was quite subdued. The four of us were all still a bit hung over after the late afternoon Osprey flight in to Al-Taqaddam.

Camp Manion is a base within the much larger, Iraqi-controlled, Al-Taqaddam Air Base. Camp Manion's footprint takes up a small corner of the base here, providing working space and housing for the Marines of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command (SP-MAGTF-CR-CC). Too many acronyms (TMA). For the last half-decade the Marines and Special Forces operators have been working and training with the Iraqis to defeat ISIS. That has gone quite well.

Camp Manion is named after 1st Lt. Travis Manion, who posthumously earned a silver star for helping wounded Marines during a sniper attack on a combined Iraqi and US patrol in nearby Fallujah. It was his second tour in Iraq.

Today we were slated to get out on a road movement around the base perimeter with the quick response force (QRF) Marines, possibly with a bit of a dismounted patrol thrown in. Right after breakfast though we were all just itching to get out, meet some Marines and do some drawing. Wouldn’t you know it, not a Marine in sight in the concrete blast walls surrounding the M-ATVs with their USMC stencils. So we just got drawing anyway. I took up a position in the gun turret of one of the M-ATVs just drawing the overall shape and positions of things, with the hopes that as the Marines got ready to roll out, I might be able to add in the M240 gunner. It was barely 7.00 am and I could already feel the sun burning the back of my neck.

As you can tell by the final sketch below I didn’t quite get my positioning right. Practice makes perfect.

We are here in Iraq working as field artists on behalf of the National Museum of the Marine Corps (NMMC) in Quantico, Virginia. We had been chasing the possibility of creating live art of Marines in Syria for the last two years. That plan changed the day before yesterday with the announcement of the limitation of access of any and all personnel into Syria. To call this a disappointment would be a massive understatement, but we are determined to make art of Marines regardless, and to not lose hope that Syria situation may yet change.

There are four of us. Two Marines and two civilians (two teams with one of each). Two youngies and two oldies. The civilians being the oldies. The plan was for us to spread out into Iraq and Syria over the next couple of weeks and illustrate the lives of USMC personnel in the field, now we’ll just see how things go. Artist team One is made up of the experienced, esteemed, and gentlemanly illustrator Victor Juhasz, and SSgt. Elize McKelvey a repro-graphics Marine at the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia. In team Two, I am playing the role of the old curmudgeonly Scottish/Canadian artist, accompanying Captain CJ Baumann, a Marine logistics officer at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. We all have real jobs, that are really nothing like what we are doing today.

After a break to inhale a bottle or two of water I smarten up and sketch in the shade. Opening the door of an M-ATV armored vehicle reveals a lovely still-life of military-readiness. There lies the helmet, Kevlar, ammunition and even a LAW rocket. No M4 though, because the Marines are never parted from them. Every Marine a rifleman, 24/7 here in Iraq. But, everything else a QRF Marine needs, all ready to throw on and use if needs must in a hurry. I killed the last half hour before the patrol was due to roll out sketching this scene.

Any type of road movement in a war zone comes with an inherent set of risks. The relative fragility of armored vehicle convoys are an obvious opportunity for insurgents or the generally disgruntled to kill and maim. The last road convoy I was on in Afghanistan the MRAP immediately ahead of the one I rode in was targeted by an IED. Thanks to the resilience of the MRAP everyone survived, but the moment and the immediate aftermath of the attack still are imprinted like engraved steel on the inside of my skull.

The smell of the diesel. The weight of the thick steel doors. The confined movement. The constricting weight of the borrowed Kevlar and body armor. The squawk of the comms. I am back there like it was yesterday. I just draw instead of fretting.

The three-vehicle convoy rolls out through the gates of Camp Manion with its smattering of artists sprinkled throughout the vehicles. The temperature is somewhere over 100 degrees. Tucked behind the driver, I try sketching Cpl. Joseph Baca, the Marine in the passenger seat, and the legs of LCpl. Nathan Flores, the M240 gunner in the turret. It doesn’t go very well. I love to draw anywhere though, so I accept every wobbly line, as part of the artistic ambiance and mix my bouncing squiggles with the sweat running down my forearm - till the paper starts to dissolve. I use my hanky under my forearm to try to slow disaster. I never leave the house without my trusty handkerchief. There is air conditioning on the M-ATV list of available options, but only on the fancier models apparently.

Having traversed the northwestern edge of Al-Taqaddam Airbase we come to rest just off a main hardball roadway. The odd civilian vehicle drives by. To our immediate south is a graveyard of eight Iraqi Ilyushin Il-28s. The Il-28 is a twin-jet bomber, likely purchased by Saddam from the Soviets way back in the day. Thousands were produced by Russia between 1950 and 1980. China also built them. These look like their flying days are done. They look like they would be great fun to sketch if I could get a little time outside the wire without the entourage. Some chance! My wife would kill me just for thinking it.

The foot patrol heads out northwards through some abandoned and burned out buildings in the bone-bleaching sun, and the artists tag along snapping pictures and sketching. There is not much in the way of combat spacing from the Marines so I assume that this close to base there is no great danger. I watch where I walk carefully regardless. Lots of expended munitions of all types are scattered around on the desert floor. It is a lovely day - if you were on Venus. Should have brought a blanket for a picnic.

The town of Habbaniyah sits on a bend in the Euphrates, between a huge drainage canal from nearby lake Habbaniyah and the meandering river itself. The Marines group on the ridge for a while, all staring out over Habbaniyah. They look a little like they are posing for a painting. SSgt. Elize McKelvey is out there sketching it big time. After way too long in the midday sun the foot patrol makes its way back for the vehicles. I am very pleased to see my bottle of warm water when we get back.

The M-ATV has a suspension like that of a school bus running on its rims, so every piece of gravel makes my drawing arm jump around the sketchpad. When the convoy turns onto a rough dirt road, I pack it in.

One of the views I consider a classic ‘journalists-eye-view’ is right up the turret-gunners trouser leg. This would be a futile live sketch on this trip, so I start to shoot all of the photography I might need to make the view happen later today. Conditions are so cramped that I have to tile the imagined turret area as we roll along. So I shoot a lot of pictures hoping that they will combine into something. (See below for final render)

Our next stop is south of the base on the eastern shore of the lake. Lake Habbaniyah looks like a piece of white glass in the heat. There are a line of long-abandoned holiday villas on the shore. I dismount into the oven, and try sketching LCpl. Nathan Flores from the outside. Cpl. Flores looks hot up there. There is a plethora of expended munitions littering the hill, so I just draw from where I stand. The wind is blowing, and I am sketching standing up. In tough conditions, or when I don’t know how long I have, I concentrate on getting the small details I can correct and proportional, figuring the overall image can look after itself. I have maybe 15 minutes before the patrol rolls on again. I capture just enough.

On the run back to base it is possible that I take a small nap and miss something important. I blame it on the jet lag (possibly), but it could just as easily be the heat (maybe), but more likely my age (definitely). If nothing else the QRF patrol has given all of us artists first-hand experience of what it is going to be like to operate in this heat. Lots of naps will be the answer. Thank goodness we didn’t come in the summer.