The name was in honor of a famous WWII battle, and was meant to infect us with the courage of those who had defended the front in the Libyan desert seventy years before. But the base itself reminded me, more than anything else, of a Zen garden: an open box of sand raked by truck wheels and helicopter blades, which stirred up a sandstorm during takeoffs and landings. The following conclusion appears on the first page of the diary I kept while in country. I wrote it on December 23, two hours after our arrival, sitting on my pack, still not sure where I was supposed to bunk: “Arrived at FOB. We’re in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing.” Ninth Company, Tenth Alpini Regiment was deployed on a rectangular island just under 1,000 feet long and just over 150 feet wide. The perimeter, punctuated by guard towers, was surrounded not by sea but by clouds of barbed wire and other protective barriers that obstructed the view and created the unpleasant sensation of being under siege. To the west stood a mountain, its sharp ridge a woman’s profile, like Monte Circeo, but completely devoid of vegetation.
