In addition to rugby, he wrestled and acted as the social chair of Tiger Inn, a notoriously rowdy club, while at the same time studying with historian Sean Wilentz and researching a thesis on a Confederate ancestor in Tennessee. A "big, beefy rugger player from Chattanooga" - in the words of his writing professor, John McPhee - Rawlings was the kind of romantic enthusiast that I remember emulating when I attended Princeton in the early '90s. It's even harder to try to bridge the gulf between Rawlings's language - this war's now-familiar lexicon of "flaks" and "mortar pits" and scouts who disappear in a "fine red mist" - and what I know of his life as a history major at Princeton University, where he graduated in 2004. It's hard to tell whether he's reassuring himself or me. People have been stripping parts from it." "That vehicle looked a lot better when we first towed it in. On the other hand, as we drive back to his headquarters, we pass another unit's RG-31: Its engine compartment and four-foot-tall front tires are gone the ballistic windows in its cab and armored bed are spiderwebbed from an IED attack that wounded two. Part of the Pentagon's spending has paid for specially armored trucks - such as the RG-31 we've been inspecting - designed to protect his soldiers from IED blasts. Rawlings isn't supposed to worry this much. I'd stay till 4 in the morning, whatever it took, listening to my guys out on patrol until I was sure they'd made it home okay." "When I first started," Rawlings shouts as the dryer revs up for a demonstration, "I used to sit by the radio 14 hours a day. It's Rawlings's job to make sure they don't get blown up trying. It's their job to find the bombs that the insurgents plant. It doesn't help that Rawlings's soldiers - with whom I am embedded - are the leading edge of a $6.1 billion Pentagon effort to win the war against roadside bombings in Iraq. The shrapnel Rawlings mentions is an all-too-likely possibility, considering the 25,000 improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that have been aimed at American troops since the war in Iraq began, severing limbs and crushing the skulls of U.S. Neither do I, given that I'm going to be riding in one of these minesweeping trucks tomorrow. Maybe if Rawlings mounted some fire retardant next to the gas can, it would powder in a blast? Render the fuel inert? And then act as a fire retardant for the whole thing? "That's not too bad," the Asymmetric Warfare Man declares, gaining momentum. He taps its exposed gas can, and continues. "This gas can, okay, it sits right here?" The Asymmetric Warfare Man squats beside the dryer, which resembles a lawn mower engine bolted to a jet turbine bolted to an elbow of air-conditioning duct. "You've been wanting to since Day One of the war. He's here to help the Army combat unconventional weapons by inventing contraptions such as the dryer, which is supposed to blow dirt off of buried bombs. A retired officer, he has his web belt cinched so tight that it acts as a corset, flaring out his rib cage. The Asymmetric Warfare Man - who has what I can only hope is an irrational fear that if I use his name, insurgents will go to America and hunt down his family - bites his lip. "What happens if hit with shrapnel?" he asks the Asymmetric Warfare Group man. But he'd like to make sure that this step is really necessary. His brow furrows, his comic-book square chin dips with respectful curiosity. In such situations, Rawlings - who is 6-2, 230 pounds - resembles an offensive lineman who has been asked to dance ballet. NATE RAWLINGS IS STANDING IN THE CAMP LIBERTY MOTOR POOL, just west of Baghdad, trying to figure out why a NASCAR track dryer should be welded to one of his minesweeping trucks.
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