This was how it started:
It went on for two pages. Some items were obvious (“Undershirt, 1”), others worrying (“Boots, Mark Left Boot With Blood Type/Social Security Number, 1 pair”). Many items were simply baffling. What, for example, was a “MOPP Suit,” and why did we need gloves in the desert? I also didn’t like the sound of the “M291 Chemical Decon. Kit in M-40 Carrier,” or, for that matter, the “M-40 Series Field Protective Mask W/Filter.” The second section of the list, entitled “Items In Backpack,” was worse than the first: What the hell was an “Entrenching Tool W/Carrier”? And why did I need a “Bivvy Sack,” “Camelback,” and “Canteens W/Covers and NBC Caps”? What were NBC caps? Were they for cameramen? For a second I wondered if the Pentagon had mistakenly sent me the foreign language version of the list. Then another thought struck me: Where would I buy all this stuff in West Hollywood?
It was then I noticed the most terrifying item in the entire document. It was number four from the top, under the “Items To Be Worn” section. I looked again, but there was no mistake. “Underwear, 1 pair,” it said. Yes—I was being sent to war, in one of the hottest countries on earth, for weeks if not months, and I was expected to take one pair of underwear with me. For a moment I felt pity for the unlucky garment that would be chosen to accompany me to Iraq. By the time we reached Baghdad, I concluded, it would be a biological weapon in its own right.
By Monday afternoon I had booked a ticket to Kuwait via London. I would leave Los Angeles on Saturday, March 1. The foreign desk, feeling sorry for me, had let me fly “premium economy” on Virgin Atlantic. I had also made an appointment with the visa department of the Kuwait embassy, for 9:00 A.M. the following Monday. “What’s the purpose of your visit to our country?” the official had asked through a nearly impenetrable Arab accent. I almost said “preemptive invasion,” but thought better of being a smartass. No one, I suspect, likes a smartass in a Gulf emirate. “Business,” I declared instead. Fletcher, meanwhile, arranged for me to get an armful of inoculations at the News International medical center, which was opposite The Times. He also said I could pick up a flak jacket, Kevlar helmet, and Arab-made Thuraya satellite phone when I came into the office. The only thing I had to do before leaving Los Angeles was buy the items on the Pentagon’s list—and pack them. But where could I buy a MOPP suit? I decided to start with a camping shop. Unfortunately, I knew of only one: The North Face, which, if I remembered correctly, was on Rodeo Drive.
I climbed into the jeep and headed west.
My war, it seemed, would start in Beverly Hills.
I stood in front of a full-length mirror wearing a canary yellow, down-stuffed Gore-Tex jacket with a fur-trimmed hood. Behind me was a twenty-foot-high indoor waterfall made entirely from glass, with a North Face logo etched onto it. The rest of the shop had been contrived to look like the inside of a cave: Intrepid Beverly Hills shoppers were greeted with a wall of fake volcanic rock beyond the front door. It wasn’t so much a shop as a Hollywood film set, a miniature retail Disneyland. Outside, on the street, there were more props: Range Rovers and Hummers; Tahoes and Expeditions. These days we experience the outdoors through our consumer purchases. Apart from me, of course. Apart from the idiot embed, drafting himself into the Marines.
“Yo—that’s bad-ass,” said a tall black man who was flicking through a nearby rack with gold-flecked fingers. I looked down at the $399 price tag on the jacket. “Yes, it’s very nice,” I concluded. “But I’m not quite sure it suits my purposes.” I furtively pulled the Pentagon’s list out of my back pocket: “Gore-Tex jacket, 1” it said. In brackets it advised: “Muted Desert Colors.” I glanced up at the giant, fluorescent-yellow Michelin man in the mirror. He didn’t look very muted. If yellow is the color of sand, I wondered, does that make yellow a desert color? Then I felt a slap on my back. It was my fellow shopper. “Ain’t no purpose if you ain’t lookin’ good,” he advised. “With that jacket, you’ll be beatin’ off the ladies with a stick.”
He had a point. In Iraq, however, I feared the stick would belong to the Marines, and that the jacket, not to mention me, would be on the wrong end of it. I took the coat off and put it back on the rack. Beverly Hills, I feared, wasn’t the ideal place to prepare for war. After all, the last time the 90210 zip code had seen any fighting was in 1847, when the Mexicans were cornered by the Americans at the Cahuenga Capitulation. There hadn’t been much need for combat supplies since. Lamborghini parts and luxury dog spas, yes; gas masks and MOPP suits, no.
My trip to The North Face wasn’t entirely wasted, however. I managed to find an arctic sleeping bag, some hiking trousers, and a vented khaki shirt. I even bought a jacket, opting for a black Gore-Tex shell with a zip-in windproof fleece instead of the puffy yellow one that made me look like Ali G. Of the seventy-three items on the Pentagon’s list, I had crossed off four. Whatever a MOPP suit was, The North Face didn’t have one. “A what suit?” asked the butch female sales assistant. “You want something for mopping?” I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. For some reason I was too embarrassed to tell her about the whole embedding thing. This being Beverly Hills, I feared I might get an antiwar or anti-Bush lecture. And I wasn’t in the mood. “I’ll just pay for these,” I said, dumping an armful of aggressively branded merchandise on the counter. Before I signed the credit card receipt, I asked if she knew of any other camping gear suppliers. She told me to try Xtreme 19 on Sunset Boulevard.
I felt apprehensive as walked back to the jeep: Xtreme 19 sounded a lot more serious than The North Face, and I didn’t want to be exposed as a camping fraud. In fact, I was a camping virgin: I had never slept rough, or toasted a marshmallow over an open fire, in my entire life. What’s more, I had never wanted to. I like carpets, central heating, and goose-down covers. Screw the outdoors.
As the jeep bumped into the Xtreme 19 parking lot, I practiced my game face. As a reporter, I was used to faking knowledge on any number of subjects. Surely, I thought, I could do it with camping. I went to pieces, however, when I saw the kayaks and backpacks in the window display. They gave me a flashback to the Cub Scouts, which my mother had forced me to join when I was a boy. I had hated Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s organization with a passion from the second I was manhandled into a stupid brown-and-green uniform, complete with its yellow neckerchief fastened with a red “woggle.” Even as a ten-year-old, in 1985, I knew a woggle could never be cool. I wanted to look like David Hasselhoff. Why couldn’t they give me a black leather jacket, a Pontiac Firebird, and a pair of aviator shades? Every Friday my fellow Cub Scouts seemed to have amassed a new set of sew-on buttons, in reward for their knot-tying skills, cycling proficiency, or ability to jump over logs. I personally couldn’t see the point. The Cub Scout leaders took an immediate dislike to the puny ginger kid who kept asking if he could opt out of pledging his duty to God, because he was an atheist. He distracted the other children, they said, and affected Scout morale. That was because I wanted to be at home, doing something constructive, like eating ice cream or watching The Muppet Show. Eventually my mother gave up. Her son, it seemed, was not interested in the great British outdoors, the discipline and camaraderie of a pseudo-paramilitary organization, or, for that matter, the Cub Scout Law. In her darker moments my mum must have wondered if her son was destined to become a loser. I doubt she ever thought there was much risk of him joining the U.S. Marines.