RAMADI, Iraq — After a long day searching homes in suffocating Iraqi heat, Lance Cpl. Mike Young saw a most surprising source of relief _ a sprawling Wal-Mart had appeared in the distance.
"No joke _ looking through the haze I thought I saw a Wal-Mart. I said to myself, 'I bet they got some cold water in there,'" Young said, recalling a mission last year in a rural area west of Baghdad.
He contemplated running over to fetch water for fellow Marines who were "staggering like dead men." Three of them had collapsed in the heat.
Young soon stirred from his heat-induced hallucination and returned to the struggle of enduring summertime in Iraq.
Daytime temperatures in the Iraqi summer usually range from a low of about 105 degrees Fahrenheit to about 125. Though most bases have added air conditioning, grunts must still venture out to man their posts or patrol steaming streets under an unrelenting sun.
What they are doing is exactly the same as the important work being done by the 101st fighting keyboarders.