Sometimes stories come real easy. And sometimes they don’t. After all, words have limitations. If I could write a sentence that told you exactly what it’s like to sit out in the Riley County sun and watch the U.S. Army run through detainee operations training, and if these soldiers could explain exactly what it’s like to carry out the real mission in Iraq, well, what would be the point of living?

And that’s where the story starts. Sometimes journalists get themselves into funny situations. Scratch that. Sometimes people get themselves in funny situations. Funny in the peculiar, or funny in the unexpected sense.

Tuesday was one of those situations.

“Welcome to beautiful scenic Camp Funston,” Sgt. Ken McCooey said, as I stepped off the bus at Fort Riley, tucked away somewhere along the edge of the Flint Hills.

I was here to embed into a Military Transition Team – they call them MiTTs here. These teams – made up of 10-12 people – have the difficult mission of traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan and training the Iraqi and Afghani militaries. They’re half-coach, half-humanitarian, and always a soldier.

They’ll train 60 days at Camp Funston, get 15 days leave and then ship out to Iraq or Afghanistan. They’ll stay for a year.

On Wednesday, I watched a MiTT team search for a person of interest in a mock Iraqi village. Locals from nearby communities were role players, playing Iraqi soldiers or citizens. Essentially, they try to make it as real as possible.

It all makes sports seem pretty trivial, silly even. Sports take over our minds, they take over our hearts, even our souls sometimes.

Funny thing is, sports are never far from the surface. Sit in on a briefing, and you’ll hear instructors refer to certain scenarios as “slam dunks” — safe and easy – and others as “foul balls” — not so safe and not so easy.

But analogies aside, this stuff is real.

But the soldiers talk sports too.

Major Brian Rau, a native of the area around Tampa, Fla., wants to talk about triathalon training. He’s serious about it. After being stationed at Fort Leavenworth, he participated in his first triathalon earlier this year in Lawrence. He’s just shy of 40 years old.

He says his goal is to work himself into great shape while he’s in Iraq.

There’s not much else to do for recreation.

“I’ll be ready for tri-training when I get back.”

*****

After the training was finished, and after Rau’s MiTT went through their initial critique, another soldier looked over in my direction.

“So you’re from Kansas State?” he said.

“No, KU.”

“Oh. I love it that KU has a better football team than K-State right now,” he added.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”

“I’m from Texas,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of K-State.”

“Me neither.”

“Well nice talking to you,” he said, walking off. “Maybe I’ll see you in a year when I get back.”

Count on it brother.

— — Edited by Arthur Hur