I approached him and confessed that that would be me; in response, he offered a sloppy salute and informed me that his name was "Carl Smith… PFC Smith, Eighteenth Transportation Battalion," and explained he would be my chauffeur for the drive up to Baghdad.

I spent a moment doing the senior officer thing, asking Smith a few shallow, innocuous questions, as he did his respectful subordinate thing, offering brief, perfunctory replies. The senior officer is expected to show a personal interest in his or her subordinates, regardless of how temporary or ephemeral the relationship. On the surface, this translates as concern, and establishes rapport. But neither has it escaped my notice that the normal nature of these inquiries- married status, hometown, family, that kind of thing-correspond to exactly the data an officer needs to know for a next-of-kin letter.

Anyway, Carl Smith. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, and he informed me that he was thirty-two, yes, a little damned old for his rank, divorced-damned happy about that-an Alabamian-damned proud of that-and, like many of his peers, in a fit of angered idealism had rushed into an Army recruiter's station the day after September 11-a decision he now looked back on as damned impetuous.

He appeared unusually fit for a transportation guy, but probably Carl had a lot of free time to spend in the weight room. Booze is prohibited for soldiers inside the war zone, and Arab women aren't turned on by Christian men. When all else fails, you turn to the worst vice: exercise.

He led me to a dust-coated humvee; I threw my duffel in the back, climbed into the passenger seat, and off we went at a good clip. Military humvees, incidentally, aren't the gaudy gas munchers that are so la-di-da among Hollywood's spoiled and beautiful. They're diesel for one thing, but also they're more primitive and entirely lacking in bling, such as sound muffling, air-conditioning, or entertainment systems of any form, with seats that are ergonomic atrocities. But as our Chinese friends say, a thousand sins can be overcome by one great virtue; I was relieved to see the one accessory that counts in these parts, the newest up-to-date armor.

We drove out of the airport-Smith flashed his military ID to clear us through the checkpoint-then moved at high speed along a black tarmac road for about an hour, connecting with a military convoy headed north, up the infamous Highway 8, to Iraq.

This convoy was a long mixture of fuel tankers, heavy trucks loaded with large green containers, flatbeds carrying replacement Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and, interspersed among these vulnerable noncombatant vehicles, an Armored Cavalry troop with tanks and Bradleys to chase the Indians away.

Carl informed me, "We'll hang at the end. Don't get no better than that."

"Fooled me. We're getting all the dust and fumes."

"Yeah… well the IEDs-the roadside explosives-usually they target the front or middle of convoys. Causes a traffic jam with stationary targets to shoot at." He added, "Dust or shrapnel? You're the colonel."

"Which is worse?"

He smiled agreeably, and tossed me goggles for my eyes and a green rag that I tied around my nose and mouth, cowboy style.

Fortunately, Carl Smith proved to be the untalkative type, though- less fortunately-not the silent type. He spent nearly the whole trip whistling country tunes-like many backcountry southern males, he had perfected a loud and penetrating whistle-while I alternated between nodding off, studying the contents of my legal case, sticking my fingers in my ears, and wishing I had a gun to pop this guy, or myself. I hate country music.

Around midafternoon, he handed me lunch; having slept through the meal on the plane, I was lightheaded with hunger. The meal was an Army MRE-Meal, Ready-to-Eat-proof that the Army has a sense of humor, despite what you hear.

One bite, and I remembered what I don't miss about being a field soldier.

Anyway, the drive lasted about thirteen hours, and, aside from passing through one large city early in the trip, for the most part we traveled through terrain that could charitably be described as monotonous and awful-flat desert, a balance between beauty and cruelty, until we were deep inside Iraq proper, at which point we saw more frequent signs of life: palm trees, shabby buildings, caved-in huts, wrecked and abandoned cars on the roadside, and sometimes, in the distance, a remote village presumably built around a well or an oasis, or a Taco Bell. Just kidding about that last one. But why would anybody live here?

I was reminded of those desolate little American towns in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and where once there was a reason for them to exist in such remote and inhospitable settings-gold mines, or borax, or Pony Express stops-they had long since become abandoned, sweltering white elephants. Some have become picturesque ghost towns with tumbleweeds billowing through the streets, though a few still are populated by quirky, eccentric folk-loners, flakes, and hermits-exiles from the hurly-burly of American life, or perhaps perps hiding out from the cops. But what were the people in these isolated little Iraqi villages like?

I could not fathom the gap between people who live like this and the typical young American soldier who would experience a monumental fit were he deprived of his PlayStation, cell phone, chat rooms, cable TV, and fast food. Indeed, all of these things now existed here, on the military bases, and soldiers returning from a day battling insurgents spend their evenings e-mailing their families and one-and-onlys, playing video games, and browsing porn, which is, I suppose, as healthy a mixture as any to put it behind you and get your head straight.

The Vietnam warriors of my father's generation also maintained their connections to their former lives, to the American lifestyle, to what the Army euphemistically terms "creature comforts." Their adversaries lived in jungles and tunnels, exposed to the elements and surviving on rice and raw fish, even as helicopters swooped into the American base camps loaded with cold Budweiser, Playboy magazines, pizza, and Bob Hope with alluring ladies in miniskirts, all good reminders of what they were fighting for.

One way to win an insurgency is to melt into the environment and culture-to go native-and beat the locals at their own game. This, of course, just has never been the American way. We rearrange the culture and environment to suit us.

Indeed, the day was coming when this highway would be chock-a-block with fast-food places, minimalls, and Days Inns for the hungry, tired traveler, with the obligatory Koran tucked inside the bedside table, a prayer rug at the foot of the bed, and an arrow pointing at Mecca carved on the bedpost. This, I guess, was what the insurgents were fighting against, just as Hitler, Tojo, Mao, and Stalin had fought against it before them. Good luck. The carpetbaggers are here and change is around the corner. Probably someday their grandchildren would look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Occasionally we saw long convoys of slow-moving American military vehicles headed where we had just left, toward Kuwait, and behind them, crawling in long impatient lines, Iraqi cars, buses, and trucks, no doubt entertaining unkind thoughts about their occupiers. Passing a military convoy in this country is nearly as perilous as jaywalking in New York City.

His incessant whistling aside, Smith remained almost supernaturally alert, robotically scanning the roadsides for anything that looked out of place or even innocuously suspicious-dead animals, or wayward barrels, or broken-down cars; the usual costumes for roadside bombs. Whenever he saw something he didn't like, he jerked the humvee off the road to stay on the safe side, bumping and grinding through a few hundred yards of sand.