A month ago, I had never been on a helicopter, much less a Chinook ferrying a couple dozen U.S. soldiers on their way to raid an insurgent neighborhood. Last week, I got to do it all over again -- except this time most of the soldiers squeezed onto the Chinook with me spoke a foreign language and were relatively new to their job as privates in the Iraqi Army. Cool, I thought as we flew a couple hundred feet above the city of Mahmudiyah 20 miles south of Baghdad in the middle of the night, I was getting tired of normal air assaults -- this is a nice twist. During the flight, the jundi next to me, as the Iraqi soldiers are called, kept trying to tell me something. But between my inability to speak Arabic and the roar of the engine, I couldn't make out what he was saying, so I just nodded and smiled. Now I wonder just what it was he yelling. Perhaps: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! AHH!"

(Photo: I took this picture during my embed last week as Iraqi and U.S. soldiers conducted an early-morning air assault raid on an impoverished neighborhood 20 miles south of Baghdad. As we passed by this house, a boy walked out of the gate and smiled at me. He was eager to have his photo taken, so I snapped one. I walked down the road a bit and then turned around. I saw his two sisters (or perhaps cousins) -- one with curly hair wincing at the morning sun, and the other peering over the wall. They didn't seem worried at all that dozens of uniformed men with assault rifles were walking past their home. I snapped another shot and kept walking. Later I realized how glad I was that I took the picture -- I think it captures in color what I will always remember of Iraq in my mind).

I should mention here that I've learned a couple things about going on air assault missions that I wish I had known the first time I ran headstrong into the belly of Chinook. The first thing is: Make sure you assert your bodily position when you sit on the benches that line either side of the Chinook's interior. If you don't, you'll get squeezed at the hips and knees like a little kid sitting between two large adults in the back seat of a Geo Metro during a five-hour ride. I would even go so far as to suggest a Larry Craig-like "wide stance" -- in this case, an appropriate measure. The second thing I learned: Use your earplugs.

After we landed, I followed the Iraqi and U.S troops out the back of the Chinook. I think during my last air assault mission there were two skinny ramps that I could barely see in the dark that led us from the Chinook to the ground. This time, there was just a drop-off. Somehow, I made it out OK. But, ironically, less than a minute after de-boarding, as I tried to jog-walk my way further up the line of soldiers (didn't like the idea of being last in line), I stumbled over a rock and fell on my hands and knees. Stupid media guy, I'm sure everyone thought. To be fair, for the second air assault mission in a row, no one gave me night-vision goggles. Later, back at the American base, I wondered if the unmanned drones that hover over troops during these missions - and give live video feeds to commanders safely out of harm's way of - might have captured my tumble. I could just imagine everyone seeing a small blurb on the screen take an obvious fall. Stupid media guy, I'm sure they all thought.

Then started the house-raiding. I was a little disappointed during my last raid to find out that our target was really just a rural neighborhood with a house every half a mile or so. I wanted to be in the streets - knocking down doors and turning corners and taking cover behind bullet-ridden walls. During this mission, we got to take on a legitimate neighborhood, but the pace was just as slow and monotonous. Apparently some "punk," as the American soldiers described him to me, took a pot shot at one of the helicopters before it landed. But that was it. For some reason, the half a dozen or so Shiite Muslim militia members in the neighborhood didn't want to put up a fight against the 174 Iraqi troops and 88 night-vision-goggles-armed U.S. soldiers that stormed into their neighborhood unannounced.

After a few hours, my shoulders started to grow tired under the weight of my flak jacket
(The body armor isn't light - but not as heavy as the ones the U.S. troops wear. The previous day, some of the jundis mocked my flak jacket, saying it was no good, and making hand motions indicating that, if ever I was to be shot, my death would be imminent. I felt good about that.). So I sat down on the ground with my back against a wall. It happened to be the same wall where about three or four men who had been gathered up from the homes and held for questioning were also sitting, about six feet away. There wasn't any danger since everyone was calm and the unofficial detainees were well-guarded, but I should have thought it through a little more: After a few minutes of resting, I stood up, my backpack scraping against the wall. A jundi standing less than 10 feet away seemed startled, and out of the corner of my eye I'm sure I saw him raise his gun a couple inches. After he realized that I wasn't a detainee trying to make a suicidal break for it, he relaxed. I was more careful where I sat after that.

As the night turned to dawn, I started to take some pictures. I suddenly realized how surreal this all was. I was standing in the middle of an impoverished Iraqi neighborhood, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers carrying out (rather uneventful and subdued) house raids around me, and the Middle Eastern sun rising. I'm glad I signed up for this, I thought.