Hunter Army Airfield, Ga. — EACH time he receives the order to fly a Black Hawk helicopter over Iraq, U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Hector Echevarria tidies up the personal effects he leaves behind.
Echevarria has completed two yearlong tours of Iraq since 2003, and he is planning a third. He has helped clean out a dead soldier's messy room before. If he is shot down, "messy" is not how he wants to be remembered.
"People don't remember you for how you go into a situation," Echevarria said. "They remember how you went out."
Perfectionism and fatalism are two traits common in Army helicopter pilots, and both are being sharpened here on this bustling airfield, where hundreds of soldiers, pilots and crew members from the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade are preparing to deploy to Iraq, perhaps by mid-May.
They are packing sand-colored shipping containers, queuing up for new battle gear and hustling from office to office, fulfilling the military's insatiable appetite for paperwork.
Helicopter pilots are fitting in last-minute training flights, with veterans like Echevarria warning the new ones to take their training seriously -- because the next time it will probably be real.
The mood is businesslike, and seasoned with a disquieting new reality: The skies of Iraq, which were once relatively safe for American helicopters, have suddenly become riskier.
"Each time we go over there it seems like the situation is progressively worse," Echevarria said.
Echevarria is one of 22 pilots in his company who will fly 10 Black Hawks in Iraq. The versatile helicopters are known as the workhorses of the U.S. military, and they have come to play a vital role in the war. The $5.9-million machines can carry as many as 11 combat troops, and with every flight, they avoid Iraq's treacherous roads, where improvised bombs remain the No. 1 killer of Americans.
Since January, eight U.S. helicopters have been downed in Iraq, most of them after taking enemy fire, and insurgents have claimed in recent Web postings that they are specifically targeting helicopters. Some news reports have suggested that they have access to a more sophisticated arsenal of shoulder-fired missiles, but military officials are debating whether insurgents have better weapons -- or whether they have simply become better at using their old ones.
