Word: sandstorms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...seem important in peacetime, but in wartime such lines grow fuzzy and indistinct compared with the bold line that separates life and death, and this was the line where they chose to make their stand, their professional codes of conduct be damned. When one is lost in a sandstorm, deafened by artillery and surrounded by primal cries of agony, an ethical lapse can be a moral leap...
Charlie Rock company's patch of desert has been quiet for 24 hours when First Sergeant William Mitchell hears something on the radio. His face stiffens with the information. He leans out of the wind into his half-track, wincing at the sandstorm whipping around his face from the rear. He grabs his M-4 assault rifle and halfway out of the track's back door yells at his master gunner, Sergeant Robert Jones, "You need to call HQ right now and tell them we have 10 men, 200 meters to the north, with AKs and RPGs." Jones jumps...
...tents were miserable, and the weather even worse. One day, the shamal winds stirred up a huge sandstorm. With gusts to 60 m.p.h., we could hear Marines pounding the loosening tent stakes back into the ground. Despite their efforts, one tent was blown over, scattering all the medical equipment...
...commanders' hopes to quickly open the climactic battle for Baghdad were delayed by the intensity of Iraqi resistance and a blinding sandstorm that stalled the advance of U.S. forces. The coalition's thinly defended nearly 300-mile supply line became the target of strikes by Iraqi irregulars...
...travel with U.S. troops but opted in the end to work from Baghdad, where he has recorded the sights--the rubble of damaged buildings, the bomb victims in hospital wards--of a city under withering attack. The severe weather that has hampered allied troops has also hit Baghdad. "The sandstorm was the most amazing sight," says Nachtwey. "It looked like the prelude to an apocalypse...