Some things I forgot to bring with me on my first embed last week:

• A sleeping bag
• Soap
• Laundry powder
• A flashlight
• Ballistic eyewear

I came very close to forgetting to bring hard shoes as well, but remembered them at the very last minute. This led, in turn, to my first, though hardly last, Embarrassing Newbie Moment. At the house rented by the New York Times in Kabul, I discovered, the night before I was to ship off to Kandahar, and then to the U.S. base at Arghandab, that I had left the tag on my Timberlands. Because I couldn't tear through the string and couldn't find a sharp object anywhere nearby, I had to troop down to the kitchen for a knife.

"New boots?" asked one of my battle-hardened colleagues.

"Uh, yes."

"Didn't get a chance to break them in beforehand?"

"Uh. No."

This conversation occurred several hours after Lynsey Addario, the war photographer, saw me in my navy-blue summer-weight blazer and cried, "You're not bringing that on your embed, are you?" I do not include this on my list of embarrassing moments because even I knew enough not to bring a blazer -- a nice one, that is -- to a war zone. I was the city slicker at the OK Corral. My colleagues, to their great credit, did not snicker, and kitted me out with sleeping bag, soap, helmet, and flak jacket.

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Now, after two days cooling my heels at the Kandahar Airfield and five days in the Operational Coordination Center District-Arghandab (OCCD-Arghandab), I am far wiser in the ways of embed culture. I have stopped turning around to flush the latrine. I have learned how to buckle my helmet. I have developed a minor slouch. I have not exactly broken in my Tims, but I have learned to ignore the chafe marks on my ankles. I still miss my 400-thread-count sheets, but I have learned to wrestle myself to sleep in my sleeping bag. I have vaulted 7-foot-high mud walls while on patrol. I like it here.

My new home has, you will have noticed, a very odd name. Though it is the home of the 2-508 Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, the base is also the seat of district government, which is to say District Governor Haji Abdul Jabar and, very occasionally, representatives of several national ministries. (It is now the done thing to put the Afghan government forward, even in matters of nomenclature, whatever the substantive reality.) The base also hosts elements of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. There is much "synching up" of Afghan and U.S. forces, though no member of either group speaks the language of the other. Interactions of even the most basic kind are made possible by interpreters, known as "terps."  I have, however, enjoyed a very pleasant lunch at the invitation of the district governor without feeling the need to speak.

A valley located just a few kilometers to the north of Kandahar, Arghandab has for centuries funneled invaders into this strategic city. Whoever controls Arghandab controls Kandahar, it is said; that's what the 82nd Airborne is doing here. Kandahar itself is a dust bowl, but Arghandab is Edenic. OCCD-Arghandab is located along the lower slopes of steep bare hills that rise into jagged cliffs; below, all is green. Pomegranate orchards line the eastern bank of the Arghandab River, vineyards the west. From the inside, the orchards look like a Renoir -- wavy brown trunks in a dappled green sea. On a patrol yesterday afternoon, we crossed through the orchards and suddenly emerged at a broad meadow, or really a delta, stretching off to the river. Water rushed underneath the high, mud-brick wall of a village into a rivulet dispersing in the meadow. The sun sparkled overhead. Little kids waved. Etc.

I recognize that the lyric mode is not usually used to evoke the embed experience. I'm sure if someone was shooting at us I wouldn't have noticed the many shades of green. But Arghandab isn't Marjah. The Taliban here don't stand and fight; they set improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and get out of the way. The soldiers of 2-508 almost never encounter the enemy; but last week one was killed, and three injured, by an IED on the more volatile western side of the district, near the village of Kuhak. What is picturesque for my photographer and me is terribly frustrating for the troops.

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