Blackhawk UH-60 Lomo
Thursday, 24 August 2006 | 109 readers so far
I’ve never experienced anything like the helicopter ride I took over northern Iraq recently. I felt as if I was trapped inside the devil’s hair dryer the entire time. We flew over endless barrens randomly interspersed with signs of a hardscrabble life below. The picture here shows one of the greenest areas we flew over. All life is clustered around the water sources.
Amazingly, I saw shepherds and sheep out in the middle of places that looked completely barren of any life. I don’t know what they were surviving on. There must have been hidden water I could not see. People manage to eke out an existence in some environments that are incredibly daunting. Everytime we flew over children, they waved. The adults are much more cautious.
