Moleskine notebooks and Reporting for Generation Kill by Evan Wright:

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Shortly after I arrived at Camp Mathilda, the northern Kuwait encampment which housed my assigned subject, the Marine Corps' First Reconnaissance battalion, I was told by the commander to hand over my satellite phone. This was a relief. If I had no satellite phone, I would be unable to talk to my editor. My editor wouldn't be able to ask for a story, and I wouldn't have to explain that my computer was broken. I would just take notes, and write the stories when I returned to civilization.

I would spend nearly two months with the battalion. On previous jobs I had always carried either cheapo spiral notebooks purchased from 7/11 or long, thin reporter's notebooks. Sometimes, I carried legal pads. It wasn't until I started writing in Moleskine books--which I had scoffed at as a frilly, overpriced "Frappucino notebooks" when my sister gave them to for Christmas--that I began to notice their advantages. The spiral books would always become crushed when I carried them in my pocket. The spirals would get bent, and the pages would fall out. The Moleskine notebook was stitch-bound, and fairly indestructible, which got high points from me as we crossed the line into Iraq and entered combat.

For the invasion, all of us were issued chemical warfare protection suits. Those of us in the lead would wear ours for nearly three weeks. On top of these bulky suits, we wore Kevlar flak vests, which had pouches in front and back for sliding in heavy ceramic plates designed to stop a 7.62 millimeter rifle round. On my left leg at all times I carried a strap-on pouch for holding a gas mask and atropine injectors (to be used in event of exposure to nerve agents). For the first couple of days of the invasion, we also wore high rubber boots (impermeable, we were told, to chemicals) on top of our shoes. With the standard issue helmet (mine purchased at an Army surplus shop in West Los Angeles), the entire get-up weighed some 40 pounds. The humvees were cramped, and often we had to jump in and out of them, scramble up or down the earthen berms that crisscross Iraq or dive into any adjacent hole for cover when taking mortar, rocket or machine gun fire.

From a reporting-standpoint all of this posed difficulties. My suit had only one small pocket. For all the deficiencies one encounters with the military, the shoulder pocket on Marine Corps-issue chemical protective suits is ingenious. It's a small single pocket on the upper left sleeve, just below shoulder and tilted at the ideal angle for stowing things in it with your right hand. It was just large enough to hold a single Moleskine notebook.

A Moleskine notebook comes with an elastic band woven in the cover, which can be snapped around it to keep it from opening. When I first noticed this, I thought the elastic band was useless. I quickly learned you can slip a pen into the book--leaving it at whatever page you are on--and squeeze the book shut around it. This way you always have your pen when you grab your notebook. Since the notebook is so incredibly sturdy, you can crush it around the pen on a different page each time you use it, and it will not fall apart.

All of this might seem obsessive, or like some sort of lame attempt at product-placement for the makers of Moleskine (I have received no compensation from them; nor do I own stock in the company), but if you're going into combat this becomes important.

Since I was often getting shot at in Iraq, I appreciated the ease with which I could shove the notebook and pen into my pocket, take cover, and retrieve them again when I had a chance to write stuff down.

As I filled the notebooks I loaded them into a small knapsack, which I kept slung around my arm. If the vehicle got hit, or I did, I hoped the notebooks would survive.

I began to think more keenly about the survivability of my notebooks after we were ambushed at Al Gharraf. Our humvee was shot up pretty badly as we raced through the town. Then, after we cleared the town, our vehicle became stuck in the tar and quicksand common in that part of Iraq called "sabka." While still taking sporadic enemy fire, the Marines I was with were ordered to abandon the humvee and destroy the radios inside with a thermite grenade. (Later, they freed the vehicle and avoided having to destroy it.)

After diving from the vehicle, I knelt in a nearby ditch, clutching my knapsack filled with my notepads. Marines a few feet in front of me were firing suppressive machine gun rounds into the city. I was glad that the notebooks I had, unlike a computer, wouldn't just go blank. They could be dropped, kicked, even shot, blown up or burned and fragments of them might survive.

One of the paradoxes of combat I became aware of then was the recognition that even as I became more focused on the presence of death, my senses felt more alive than ever. My hearing felt sharper. Colors were brighter. Details seemed to stand out in high relief. I experienced an intense drive to record everything. Writing had never before taken on such urgency.

That night, as others during the next few weeks, I would dig a hole in the ground to sleep in. Called a "ranger grave" the hole is just that, a shallow grave. In theory it provides some protection from flying shrapnel in event of an artillery or rocket attack. Inside the grave, I would crawl into my bivvy sack--a small tent about the size of a body bag, which is employed to keep bugs and dust out--and continue writing notes. I would use a small flashlight with a red lens over it to keep white light from leaking out and revealing my position to potential snipers. Typically, we would only get a couple hours each night to lie in our ranger graves and sleep. I often burned up much of that time scribbling.

Much of the urgency I felt sprang from the fact that I was the only civilian in this front-line unit recording their assault into Iraq.

What eventually became Generation Kill was gathered in this manner, stored in the notebooks stuffed in the knapsack slung on my arm. I'm not saying I couldn't have written those notes without the extra-fancy Moleskine notebooks given to me as a gift before I left. (Eventually, I filled the Molskines and had to scavenge notepads from a partially destroyed office building in Baghdad.) But I did come to respect the importance of paper on the battlefield. It often felt as if my very life depended on it.

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Evan Wright, Generation Kill, USA, army, Iraq, CIA, war, combat, soldiers, Penguin Books, books