The Marine Karma in Karmah

Ralph Peters goes on patrol with a group of Marines in the Anbar community of Karmah. It is all sweat and dust and well run military maneuvers right up to the end.

...

SOAKED under our body armor, we move out. Headed back to Outpost Delta by an alternate route. The Marines never drop their tactical finesse, pulling off their perimeter security in perfect order.

We pause in another junkyard, going into a hasty defense to let the rear security elements close with us. It's a quiet morning and no shots have been fired - which is a good thing. Just months before, these alleys and barren fields belonged to al Qaeda and its former allies.

The heat triples the gravitational pull of the body armor. And our route leads us over a 7-foot wall with concertina wire offset behind it. First Sgt. Lanham takes the obstacle like an athlete. Following at a tactical interval, I do my best not to shame my fellow Army retirees.

The barking of the stray dogs sounds suspiciously like laughter.

As we re-enter the outpost, the first sergeant mutters, "Sir, I guarantee you that, if we hadn't been along, they wouldn't have gone over that wall. They were just testing us old guys."

As the Marines cleared their weapons, having fought nothing worse than the heat, it struck me that any day in Iraq when the high point of a Marine patrol is putting a journalist through an obstacle course is a very good day, indeed.

FOLLOWING an after-action review and 1st Sgt. Lanham's critique, it was finally time for breakfast. The powdered eggs tasted better than anything a Manhattan expense-account restaurant ever served.

They do like to test the old guys. I remember a battalion patrol in Vietnam that a general decided to join us on. Everyone was on their best behavior, but determined to give the old guy a workout. We did. However, unlike reporters, he could order a break in the march.