SOMEWHERE NEAR IRAQ - It is so surreal here.

Patriot missiles, docked in their heavy launchers, watch the horizon for counterstrikes. We have trained and retrained and retrained for the inevitable SCUD launch.

It is indelibly engrained into my mind. The different sirens, wailing out warning in their own language. A long continuous scream echoes throughout the camp, a wordless cry of incoming.

And from inaction comes frenzy.

We scatter to grab our gear, chaotic in the reality, no longer a drill; our smooth ballet of preparedness loses its elegance, and we trip and grab blindly, racing toward the bunkers.

Ninety seconds. That is the time it takes from warning to strike.

A minute and a half to get everything together and make it to some kind of cover.

Now the first move is to close your eyes, stop breathing and get your mask on in nine seconds.

Nine seconds in the Kuwaiti heat.

Within minutes, the sweat is cours­ing down your face, pooling by your chin.

Nine seconds, and then, as before, grab everything and find cover.

Once safely crammed into the rein­forced tunnels that the army has pro­vided us as bunkers, we begin to dress in the protective clothing.

The contrived protection is a mere concrete shell covered in sandbags, open at either end to the desert and sky.

The nuclear, biological, chemical suits immediately raise the body tem­perature by 10 degrees. This is com­pounded by running in the sand, breathing through the mask like through a straw.

We have eight minutes to get fully dressed, and then we wait. The sirens bawl, and we sit, knees touching with our backs to the cool concrete walls.

We stare at the gray roof, inches from our heads. No one speaks, wait­ing to hear the all clear.

Or waiting to die.
It is a morbid moment.

The counsel of the inanimate voice finds us in our warren; there are four or five soldiers between myself and the outside, and with a thought removed from myself, I casually wonder at what would happen if one of the gods' lightning bolts impacted nearby.

Would the shock wave tear us apart?

Would we be incinerated by the resulting destructive force, buried in the chamber like Egyptian pharaohs, mummified in our protective suits?

And so we stare and wait and catch our breath, listening to the rhythm of our own frightened hearts and the cadence of our respiration.

The day following the pre­emptive strike proceeded with rigid unease.

Like cats, we jumped at every sound, spinning in our tracks. Directly across from our tent was the Air Defense Alarm, which would ignite any time a missile was launched anywhere in the region.

As a result, we barely would return from one alarm before scurrying out for the next. Tempers flared and work was done with half thought, all minds trained on the skies.

Siren after siren erupted into the quiet, sending us racing like mice caught in the kitchen at daybreak.

With each alert, we linger in our masks and listen for news.

The first couple of launches streamed through the clouds toward Kuwait City. Accounts were limited, but we assumed that the patriots had intercepted them.

Then came the humbling news of an impact, albeit, not of a SCUD, but a weapon had impacted just outside of Camp Commando.

We had inspected the camp a few weeks earlier, and while it remained the height of prepared­ness, the encroaching desert silence gave us an overwhelming sense of peace.

Now I could only wonder at the news.

Were there casualties?

Had I seen a life walking through the camp without con­cern, now disintegrated by the impact of concentrated violence?

Fortunately, hours later, news was put out that the missile had not struck anything vital, and that no soldier or civilian was harmed.

Launch after launch, and we began to steel ourselves to the inevitability of the ritual: alarm, react, run, wait. Count your friends, count your rounds and measure your breaths until the quiet of acceptance takes over your being and you seek nor­malcy within the anarchy.

As the first 24 hours dis­solved away, and we collapsed into a fitful sleep, our dreams were studded by the sound of rotors coursing overhead and interrupted in horrified gasps as we mistook the sound of jets for incoming artillery.

And the jets did come. Scores of them, bombers hidden by night, flew north on missions of destruction. The Iraqis likely huddled in their beds, just as we did, with the fated knowledge that there was nothing we could do to stop the fiery breath of those machines of bedlam and turmoil.

I fill a quasi-role as an intelligence officer, listening multiple times a day to the French, British, American and Dutch radio stations: BBC, Amsterdam and Parisian news, as well as the Voice of America.

It allows me to filter the dogma and propaganda from both camps and to boil it down into a comprehensive morsel of sound bites for my commander and for my soldiers.

We know we sit on the razor blade's edge of public opinion, and yet it is something we can­not concentrate on, not while Saddam ignores the Geneva Convention and we are fixed in perpetual motion.

Work is continuous, and the strain is heavy. Sleep is occa­sional and erratic, but we remain vigilant and prepared.

Things will remain terse and pressured until the day that I set foot on home soil, down a deep glass of single malt scotch, and take a long, long, hot shower, scraping off months of grime with a hammer and chisel.

Bulletin Notes: Eric Lombardini accepted a position with the Army Vet Corps after graduating from Penn's Vet school, and prior to deployment had been stationed at Fort Polk, LA in charge of a Veterinary Detachment whose purpose is to conduct a mission including: military working dog health, food inspection, civil affairs, bioterrorism (most weapoized diseases are zoonotic--jump from aniemals to humans), and a significant humanitarian mission.