Apr. 4--BALAD, Iraq - As the Halliburton Co. employees' plane landed at Camp Anaconda, insurgents launched a rocket attack on this U.S. military base.

Hurried away from the airstrip, the new Halliburton recruits stared as a "dust devil" -- think mini-tornado -- swept through the camp in a 20-foot-high swirl of sand and grit.

And as the 43 new arrivals gathered for their evening muster, under a sky awash with stars, the sirens wailed again. A rocket had landed inside the camp, injuring two soldiers.

The first day on the job is always the hardest.

Spurred by financial need and patriotic fervor, thousands of Americans have signed on with Houston-based Halliburton to drive trucks, wash clothes and cook meals for U.S. troops in what is still very much a war zone.

Their lives are a mix of tedium and terror. Hours are long -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week -- the work unglamorous, the danger real.

Twelve Halliburton employees and subcontractors have been killed in attacks to date, while another 39 have been wounded. Just last week, four civilian contractors for a North Carolina firm were killed in an ambush in Fallujah. Their burned bodies were then dragged through the streets, and two were strung up on a bridge.

But Halliburton is offering top dollar at a time when blue collar jobs are scarce stateside.

"I was laid off in October," said Gene Chaney, a 39-year-old electrician from Mount Enterprise. Employers were interviewing, but they weren't ready to hire.

Chaney has a wife and three children. "There was no hesitation," he said. Chaney is now working in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

Chaney is one of the 24,000 workers Halliburton has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. Under a 10-year, $4.5 billion contract with the Pentagon, the company is responsible for housing, feeding and caring for U.S. troops. The firm also has a second contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to repair Iraq's dilapidated energy infrastructure.

By outsourcing the more mundane logistical chores to Halliburton, the Pentagon was able to free up soldiers to concentrate on fighting and other military tasks.

The company's performance has been controversial. Critics have complained Halliburton subsidiary KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, was slow to deploy personnel into the country's hot spots, forcing U.S. troops to make do without toilets, showers and hot meals. They have accused the company of overcharging the government and failing to keep a lid on costs.

Halliburton says its assignment has been enormous. Over the past year, the company has served up 40 million meals, washed 1 million bundles of laundry and collected 53 million cubic feet of trash.

And it's all done by civilian workers who are screened in Houston and then sign up for a one-year stint. Many hope to parlay the assignment into a multi-year deployment.

Many of the new recruits have had military experience. Veronica Harris, for example, served as a medic in Korea.

A former television producer and Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman -- her luggage easily identifiable in Baghdad customs by its bright pink boas -- Harris was on her way to Mosul, where she will likely plan dances, operate a weight room and help manage a "Morale, Welfare and Recreation" facility for American soldiers.

Harris left three sons, ages 11, 8 and 2, back home in Haughton, La. Their father had just returned home from a yearlong deployment with the National Guard to Iraq. Now it was mom's turn.

The Halliburton job gave Harris a chance to show her support for the U.S. military. And as for her boys: "They're getting to do all the guy things I wouldn't let them do, like paint-ball guns and dirt bikes."

Boiler plumber Niels Tolpo's co-workers thought he was crazy to leave a good job and government pension to go off to Iraq, where he'll be working on water purification projects.

Tolpo had worked at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's high security prison in Woodville. "You're in danger a lot," the 35-year-old Beaumont man said. He prefers the dangers of Iraq to the dangers of a prison yard.

Besides, Tolpo wanted a life change. He had never been overseas. He didn't hold a passport. And he wanted to travel.

He may be disappointed. Tolpo, who was headed to Camp Victory near the Baghdad Airport, won't be allowed to leave the base unless his duties send him on the road.

For many of the others on the plane, the 19-mile circumference of Camp Anaconda will be home for a year. The famous spiral minaret at Samarra, built in the ninth century, is just a few miles up the road. Few will ever see it.

As the workers' charter plane reaches the air space over Camp Anaconda, a logistics center and airbase about 50 miles north of Baghdad, the plane circles and dives for a quick landing -- necessary to avoid a possible strike from a shoulder-launched missile.

On the ground, they're greeted by Tadeusz Kowalski, Halliburton's head of human resources. He's wearing a flak vest and carrying a Kevlar helmet.

"We have just been under attack," Kowalski says in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. "We've had a few mortars come in just off to our right. Yesterday, we had a suicide bomber at the north gate. We've had mortar attacks. We've had shots."

The news is disquieting, but the new arrivals remain calm. They are whisked away in buses for their first lesson in U.S.-Iraqi relations.

The Iraqis -- or in military parlance, LNs for "local nationals" -- are "not your friends," security chief Scott Metzdorf warned them. "You keep a working relationship with them. That's it."

Some Iraqis who have been screened by the military have access to the camp, providing much-wanted services such as installation of satellite dishes. Day laborers are hired each day at the gate, although they must be guarded at all times by a soldier armed with an M-16 rifle.

After an orientation, the workers are assigned living quarters. At least initially, they'll sleep on cots, seven to a tent. The tents are air-conditioned and lined with sandbags. Eventually, the workers will move to hard-sided quarters, complete with toilets, showers and real beds.

Air conditioning is welcome. Daytime highs already are hitting the upper 80s. Soon temperatures will reach 140 degrees or more.

That evening, the new workers gather outside for their 8 p.m. meeting, or muster. The camp is dark. Street lights are a luxury for some future date here. Workers point out Venus and Orion and hunt for the North Star in the clear Iraqi sky. Then insurgents launch another attack.

The workers scramble for the nearest bunker, sort of an upside-down, concrete U. They remain mostly quiet, listening to the confusing chatter of military radios and fidgeting in vests and helmets.

A rocket, the workers would later learn, had landed near an outdoor movie theater.

The new arrivals had been warned about these possibilities and tried to take the attacks in stride. "Pretty much, that's what they told us," said Royal Yost, of Springfield, Ill. "From what you hear on the news, this happens every day."

In the confusion and darkness, some of the new workers had been unable to find their protective gear. Others had left their vests and helmets in their tents. Their new Halliburton bosses give them an earful. Vests and helmets must go wherever they do.

The next day, company tanker truck drivers or "tanker yankers" line up their vehicles, preparing for a five-hour run to supply fuel to Camp Webster, near the town of Al-Asad. Along the way, they can expect children to pelt their vehicles with stones, virtually a daily occurrence. It could have been worse.

The day before, a truck in a military convoy making its way up to Anaconda from Baghdad had struck a roadside bomb. The driver was slightly injured, the truck's windshield smashed.

Steve Daniel of Weatherford drove an Albertson's truck for 23 years. One week in Iraq, he's made just one trip to Camp Webster. Two other convoys had been canceled. The truckers drive only in daylight. They stay close together and, whenever possible, try to drive in the center of the road, the better to avoid any ambushes from the side of the road.

The truckers have been taught not to allow any unknown motorists to pull up alongside: "You try as best you can to run them off into the ditch," Daniel said. "You just put it in high gear and get out of there as fast as you can.

"It's bad enough in Houston and Dallas without somebody trying to drive up alongside you and shoot you," he said.

A truck driver here earns about $80,000, income-tax free. That's two or even three times what many of these drivers can earn back home.

Gerald Tiner, a 30-year-old truck driver from Palestine now working in Tikrit, just couldn't pass up a chance to pay off his mortgage within a year. "We'll be a lot better off financially," Tiner said. "I'll be 31 and have my house paid for."

Before leaving on their road trip, most of the truckers had eaten at one of the camp's four cafeterias, all run by Halliburton.

Halliburton's television commercials airing in the United States show very American-looking workers serving up chow to U.S. troops. The reality, at least at Anaconda, is that virtually all of the food servers are foreign nationals -- Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis -- although their managers are frequently Americans.

They serve up middle-America style food -- biscuits and gravy, chicken-fried steak and a surprisingly tasty concoction called chili mac.

Halliburton has been embroiled in a controversy over its food service work, accused of charging the government for more meals than it actually served. Pentagon auditors are combing through the books at all of the company's cafeterias in Iraq and Kuwait.

Halliburton employees also operate a swimming pool, an exercise gym and a recreation hall where soldiers -- and off-duty contractors -- can watch movies, play cards or listen to music.

These facilities give them a place to reduce that stress from being outside the fence all day, said Ericka Harris, a recreation facility supervisor at the camp.

No alcohol is allowed here, but the company's recreation workers do host dances.

Harris tried to organize a mid-week dance here last month, but those plans had to be scrubbed when the D.J. pulled tower guard duty.

Soldiers appreciate a bit of coddling.

Watching a video at the recreation hall, Field Artillery Specialist Erick Myers of Rantoul, Ill., said the thought of relaxing in front of the television can help get a soldier through a four-hour guard duty. You have something to look forward to, he said.

Halliburton's recreation services sparked a controversy on Capitol Hill when a former employee displayed the embroidered towels the soldiers use when working out. The towels, which Democrats charged cost far more than regular ones, feature the KBR logo.

Soldiers at Camp Anaconda are still using bright blue towels emblazoned with the KBR logo, although Halliburton has ordered new ones. Company officials said the military had authorized the purchase of the new towels.

While their jobs may lack glitz or prestige, Halliburton workers at Anaconda have a strong sense they're making a contribution.

"If I'm here cooking (for the soldiers), they can focus on what they need to focus on," said Felicia Gannon, a food service manager from Fuquay-Varina, N.C.

When Gannon was planning to come to Iraq she told her family "I was coming to get Saddam.

"When they caught him, I said: 'I couldn't catch him, but I fed the soldiers who did." "

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