LANDING IN BAGHDAD

It didn’t remind me, at all, of landing in Vietnam in 1968. This time, it was pure fun! It was just after sun up and I was seated for my second landing, in the bombardier’s window, at Sergei’s feet. Ever since I’d moved into position, we’d been crossing the burnt-umber colored desert. There had been no delineation of the border painted on the sand as I’d half expected. As used as we are to seeing maps of Iraq on television, you think someone at CNN might’ve painted a white line.

I did have a sighting of bomb craters—I was used to seeing those from helicopters in Vietnam so I recognized them immediately. They look very much like the craters on the moon. Craters are craters, when you think about it, no matter what the object which creates them—just bowl shaped indentations. Meanwhile the heavy Ilyushin 76 slid along over the desert in the morning light. As we moved, as if on a smooth pane of glass above the sand, I looked for signs of life but found none.

Sergei, the navigator, was busy with his charts. It occurred to me at some point that he was actually rather frantic. Unbeknownst to me, at that time, Anatoly the Captain was unable to reach American authorities on the ground. He had descended into the cargo bay to find John Connell to see what contacts John had in Iraq. As it turns out John had the phone number for CENTCOM Headquarters in Kuwait which, turned out to be of little help. It ended up being an old pre-war Iraq radio frequency that eventually found the voice that gave us the co-ordinates for the airport and permission to land.

Sergei became quite elated as soon as we had a visual sighting of Baghdad airport. He leaned forward and pointed several times to landmarks that I could understand even in his thick Ukrainian accent. "Tigris! Euphrates!"

The names brought me right back to school, to the study of geography—one of my favorite subjects. Perhaps it was my burning desire to see the places I saw on maps and in those well-worn schoolbooks, which has allowed me to travel to so many parts of the world. And now, here I am, a camera in my lap, feeling as excited as a schoolboy flying over Baghdad, and across the Euphrates River, for the first time.

Immediately, my elation is brought into check. The plane banks around to the left and we quickly descend down to the runway and there immediately on our right is one of Saddam Hussein’s gigantic palaces—as ostentatious and out of place as a building can be! It looks like a giant mega-hotel complete with a man-made lake—a conglomeration you might expect in Orlando but not Iraq.

Welcome to Baghdad!

The airport is nearly empty except for a line of dust-covered Iraq Airlines passenger jets parked uselessly in a neat row. We taxi up to a huge hanger where a lone U.S. Soldier waves us in with his red paddles. He's our greeting committee--he and a lone photographer behind him snapping a picture.

Iraq--it seems like such a lonely place.

Posted by Tony at May 26, 2003 09:10 AM