Cerveza en el desierto iraquí.
 DINING & WINE |
| Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert By DEXTER FILKINS Published: June 27, 2007 |
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WE'D walked together down a road lined with craters. Walked slowly, of course. Looking for wires, animal carcasses, that sort of thing. The telltale signs of hidden bombs. It was a sweltering Iraqi morning, with the mist of the Euphrates infiltrating our lungs. Later on, the captain regaled me with stories. We were both from Florida. His best tale concerned a tactic his men had devised to search Iraqi villages. A blond woman was in the unit he led, and all she had to do upon entering an Iraqi village was stand atop a Bradley fighting vehicle and pull off her helmet, letting her golden locks tumble to her shoulders. Within minutes — blond hair being a thing of fascination in Iraq — much of the male population would be gathered round the Bradley. The Americans would then quietly search the village for guns. Worked every time, the captain said. We had a great laugh. The talk turned to beer. If you could just get us a couple of cans, the captain said. He looked longingly at me. The captain hadn't had a drink since he had arrived in Iraq, he said; none of his troops had. General Order No. 1, as it is called, decrees, among other things, that no American soldier shall consume alcohol in a war zone. Alone in the Iraqi desert, cold beer is something soldiers dream about. Traveling around Iraq was still easy in 2003; so was buying alcohol. A couple of nights later, with a case of Carlsberg in the trunk, a photographer and I drove at high speed across the black Iraqi desert and pulled into the base. The captain came out to meet us. We'd put the beer in a black garbage bag. He cradled the sack like treasure. "Oh, you guys are great," the captain said, hustling it away. "Anything you want. Anything." I never saw the captain after that. My only regret is that I didn't share one of those beers with him. |
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