By Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times  And so it begins. My ninth trip into Afghanistan, a captivating country where I’ve now spent about two years of my life.  These trips are never easy, before, during or after. A lot of time is spent fighting through a logistical nightmare just to get to a place from where you have a better than average chance of not coming back alive.  Afghanistan is the first place I was ever shot at, the only place I’ve ever traveled around in disguise (dyed hair, full beard, traditional shalwar kameez and prayer cap), and the place that somehow lures me back time and time again.  It’s a place of unbelievable extremes. I’ve spent my coldest nights there sleeping in the elements in the dead of winter. And the hottest days, such a stretch in 2006 when a meat thermometer placed in direct sunlight read “baked ham” and pegged itself at 140 degrees.  It’s a place of unforgettable kindness where Afghans living in extreme poverty give you their last piece of bread. Others, staring through you with cold, angry eyes, would prefer you meet a violent end.  Traveling there is often an exercise to see just what you can endure, physically and mentally.  This trip is strictly to be embedded with the military. Usually I split my time between military and civilian stories but a big buildup of troops in southern Afghanistan had the focus of our reporting centered there. Most often, my trips there are with Times staff writer David Zucchino. We first met in Kabul in January 2002 and have experienced the excitement, the danger and the boredom that each trip holds in unequal measures.  He’s beaten me a thousand times at horseshoes on some remote base while we were waiting on a mission. And I’ve left him deflated during marathon rummy games played on top of MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) boxes. Our duo has been dubbed Strawman and Dirtdog — among other monikers — but most recently, Scoop and the Papparazzi.  The latter nicknames came from soldiers we were embedded with this summer in some of the toughest territory in Afghanistan — Kandahar province’s Arghandab Valley.  To get to this place, let’s backtrack a bit. It all starts with visa applications and filling out a stream of embed paperwork for the U.S. military. This is a weeks-long endeavor that begins long before you step on a plane.  But once you do, it goes something like this:  A 16-hour flight to Dubai. Another flight to Kabul. A trip to a U.S. base to pick up embed ID cards which are usually never asked for again. A flight south to Kandahar, the main base in the south. A helicopter ride to a smaller base. And finally, two armored convoy rides until, phew, you are there. That’s as concise as it can be written, leaving out hours of waiting, lugging pounds of gear, and the variety of hassles along the way that always seem to conspire against you getting where you are supposed to be.  And where I am supposed to be is with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division under the command of Lt. Jordan Ritenour. He looks no older than 18, yet he leads men into the fray every day. His men gently tease him, asking him if he made sure to get a permission note from his parents before he goes out on patrol. He takes it all in stride.  Zucchino and I go on several patrols with them. These patrols are on foot and the feeling is one of vulnerability. Even though I am traveling with heavily armed men, the threat comes mostly from remotely triggered roadside bombs. They are pervasive, maiming and killing indiscriminately. It’s roulette really and each step could be your last.  On one midday patrol, the sun is scorching down on the troops as they walk a dusty rural road. The sky is deep blue and the only noise is footfalls on gravel. Suddenly, shockingly, the silence is shattered with a boom that reverberates in my chest. A cloud of smoke erupts just ahead. An IED has hit the patrol. I shoot a few frames immediately and then run toward the front of the column, as does a medic.  I see another soldier radioing about the attack, preparing to call in a “9-line” which would dispatch a medevac helicopter within minutes for the wounded. I stop to shoot the scene there and then continue forward a few more yards.  A thick white cloud of smoke and dust obscures the road in front of me but in an instant soldiers come rushing back in my direction.  The bomb had narrowly missed but was powerful enough to knock the nearest soldiers to the ground. They were all right, but one was in a bit of shock and had hearing loss. He kept trying to bark out orders for a proper response, which unbeknown to him, was already being handled. The medic studied his pupils, asked him questions, and conducted a quick field examination to check his injuries.  The rest of the patrol was furious and went searching the nearby wooded area for the trigger man. He was, of course, no where to be found. And Urmel, the bomb-sniffing attack dog that led our patrol, was quick to point out where the bomb WAS shortly AFTER the attack. Thanks Urmel!  Soldiers banged on the door of a nearby compound and questioned a frail old man to see if he knew of Taliban fighters in the area. He looked bewildered. He was a simple man in a rural farming area coming face to face with irate American service members. He had zero information to share with them and they decided it was best to return to base.  They walked through farm fields, broke through mud walls and took indirect routes all in a effort to keep from being hit again. This bomb only came close, but the situation could easily have been like what is reported so often these days. ‘An American service member was killed in southern Afghanistan today by a roadside bomb….’  Twice on the return march roadside bombs could be heard exploding in the distance. Another billowing cloud of smoke. Another moment of terror for somebody. It’s enough to keep you on edge.  Everyone, including Urmel, who is thoroughly unaware of his olfactory shortcomings on the patrol, is excited to rest upon returning to base. Within minutes, he is racked out on my bunk, which is situated directly under one of several air-conditioning units in the room. During the day, all of the units collectively blow hot air, but at night the conditions could best be described as arctic. There seems to be no middle ground. The soldiers prefer to freeze at night in equal proportion to how hot they are during the day.  Urmel’s immovable, so I work around him on the cot to upload my photographs onto the computer. A selection of best are sent back to the office in Los Angeles via portable satellite link. They accompany a story that ran the next day under the heading “A bomb, followed by breakfast.”  Zucchino and I spend a couple more days with the platoon. We watch members of an explosives detonation unit scratch their heads over a 1,000-pound Soviet bomb half-buried in a local cemetery. Then we hike through pomegranate groves and grape orchards with them as they locate and detonate a daisy-chain of homemade bombs hidden in a mud wall. When one of the soldiers shouts “Fire in the hole!” to warn of an impending detonation, Urmel whimpers and flinches. He knows what the phrase means.  We leave Arghandab the same way we came in — ground convoys through treacherous terrain, helicopter rides from dusty landing zones, and long treks on foot, hauling our gear in blistering heat. It’s all so that we can fight our way to our next embed and, ultimately, gear up for the long struggle to make our way back home, until the next trip.  See more of Loomis’ work here.
Times photographer Rick Loomis writes about his recent trip to Afghanistan. A place he's visited nine times for the Los Angeles Times. He gives a behind the scenes look at what it takes to cover the news in such a dangerous environment.