Part of a continuing series about the life of an embedded reporter in Iraq.

FALLUJAH, IRAQ — I was eager to leave Baghdad and embed with the Second Marine Division in Fallujah, but due to bad weather — and then a sandstorm — I ended up getting stuck another two nights at the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad. I had more company this time, though; Toby Sullivan from the Anchorage Press and AP photographer Jacob Silberberg were also stranded, trying to get out to units they were scheduled to embed with.

Sullivan is an interesting story in himself. A quiet guy with a big, bushy moustache who works as commercial fisherman in Alaska during the summer, he freelances for the paper over the winter, and this was his second long trip to Iraq for the Press. He was trying to head out west near the Syrian border to spend a couple months with the Marines, while Silberberg was going to Ramadi to cover the action in al Anbar province.

By the third night, the weather had cleared, we were on standby and there weren’t too many people waiting at the Washington Landing Zone to fly out. Some time after midnight, we heard the distant “thwack!” of choppers approaching, and we gathered our gear and headed out to the helipad. I muscled to the front of the line and to my surprise, managed to get on, but since they were going to different places, Sullivan and Silberberg remained stuck.

Sullivan had predicted that once I landed in Fallujah, no one would be able to tell me where the “media tent” was and I might have to improvise. While he was right about no one having heard of a “media...

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