Sunday call

We connect in the strangest places.

David called Sunday morning while my husband and I were hiking on trail in Harriman State Park, about 35 miles north of New York City. It was lucky that we were near the top of the trail because cell service is spotty in the park.

Craig and I huddled over his cell phone on a mountain trail canopied by oaks, maples and tulip trees, trying to catch each word. I brazenly hushed other hikers as they walked by (later apologizing.) fearing we would lose the connection.

He is fine. His unit is in brigade reserve, meaning they are not currently in the thick of the house-to-house action in Baquobah, but they are called in as needed, and when they’re not called, they sit around in his three-Stryker platoon on the edges of town. He is in command of 21 men.

Sometimes they keep the residents from leaving town. The newspapers are saying that’s to keep the insurgents and Al Qaeda fighters from slipping away, but there are also residents who want to go out for daily shopping or personal errands and then come back, and that’s a problem while the fighting is going on.

His other missions include escorting two loads of humanitarian supplies – food, water, medicines -- to people in Baquobah. One, organized by the Iraqi police, was chaotic; the other, organized by the Army, was less so. In one of those missions, he worked with Audrey, one of his ROTC classmates from GW-Georgetown who is an MP (military police office) working with the Iraqi police.

He also helped escort the Stryker ambulance that carried out the wounded and dead when a Bradley tank was upended by an IED. There was a quite a firefight, he said, before they could get away.

To me, he sounded tense and tired, but he said he is happy with his assignment. He asked for bath wipes, because it’s hot and dusty and they sweat a lot. Even though their tents are air conditioned, the daytime temperatures remain about 100 degrees F. He said he drinks about eight to 10 liters of water a day, sweating out most of that.

He asked what was new here, and I find it hard to say something that doesn’t seem trivial. So we talked briefly about Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge drivers $8 to drive in downtown Manhattan (his reaction was generally negative.) He asked for a download of a Jon Stewart show and news about the war. I promised to send him a “subway” copy of the “Transformers” movie as soon as it shows up in the merchandise of sidewalk vendors.

As we talked with in the near idyllic Eastern woodlands of Harriman State Park, the only sound disrupting the wind and birdsong was the distant thunder of artillery at West Point or its nearby Army base, both just about 10 miles from the park.

For us, reminders of the war are never far away.