Good piece...read the whole thing.
The crews bought lunch at an outdoor Burger King stand -- the receipt cheerfully reads, ``Welcome to Iraq,'' -- and eat while sitting in a circle on the tarmac near their vehicles. After reloading, they taxied back to the runway, waited their turn and dashed again into the sky.
Below, the afternoon sun cast long shadows as boys played soccer in a dirt field, shepherds waved from near muddy brown water canals, and a house flashed by with a satellite dish atop. Just one sight catches the crews' attention.
A man is standing in the back of a moving pickup truck. Sgt. Knieriemen swivels the machine gun at him as the helicopters pass over. The truck drove on, the man did not move, and the gunners didn't fire.
Within 18 minutes of leaving Baghdad, the helicopters are back at Camp Anaconda and safely on the ground. This time, there were few tense moments in half day's worth of flying.
In Iraq, that's never something to take for granted.
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