This is Your War II

The Spaces In Between

2009-01-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

I don't know how long I had been awake when the military chartered airline began it's decent over Shannon, Ireland.

This was my third landing in Shannon, each time coming back from the Middle East, the first time was Kuwait in 2002, the second, on my way home for leave from Iraq in October of 2005. This, as far as I knew, last time was coming home from Iraq, January 9th, 2006.

The decent seemed always the same, as if Shannon, Ireland was frozen in time and space, never changing, never moving forward or backward, a place and time between Now and Then, Here and There.

Decending the airliner would sink into grey white clouds heavy with rain, the leading edge of the wing cutting through tendrels of the condensed moisture like knife edges, the flaps and slats moving up and down like blind hands. Cloud tops slipping away like half remembered thoughts. On into the cloud, patches of dark and light whipping by, the wing tip light winking in the distance, beads of water chasing themselves across the thick window.

Below the cloud layer, were green fields and srone houses linked by rain slicked roads. For me Ireland las like returning to Life after the bleak, drab colors of the Middle East.

In the terminal Soldiers crowed the small bar, eager for their first beer in months, the bar tenders serving them up as fast as they could. Various unit stickers, mostly Air Force and Navy squadrens, decorated the mirrors on the bar. Near by was a gift shop stocked with paperbacks and books about Ireland. Other shelfs held knick-nacks, racks of European football jerseys, and more shelfs of alcohol. Irish whiskey, beer, mead...

After the intial rush for the much desired, and in many ways, needed alcohol most of the Soldiers selected spots amongst the plastic benches to sit down to some serious drinking. In many ways this was a fore shadowing of events when we all were finally released after the formations and awards were given out, after we went Home. Some of us would dive into bottles and cans and not surface for months, maybe years. Maybe never.

The tide of booze would wash away the nightmares, or at least drown them long enough for us to get to sleep. It's an ignoble tradition as old as soldiering, as old as mankind itself.

But that's another story.

I sat in a cluster with Doc, Ski and Pooter - DeVore's Dirt Bags - Pooter had named our little band, later we would be included with another group, self named The Outcasts.

The Outcasts consisted of SGTs Z, Mitz, and my old number two from Team Mayhem, Agie.

Agie was guitly of the crime of choosing an MOS other than Infantry. He had started out on Active Duty as an ammunition handler at Ft Benning, handing out things that go BOOM to the Rangers. After joining the Guard he switched MOSs to Infantry.

Coming from the pouge world he was already seen as an outsider. I, myself, had taunted him one cold cloudless night waiting for transpo. We were all sitting clustered together like sheep attempting the losing battle of ignoring the penertrating cold, when I asked Agie how he liked being a Grunt. Later that year, as the company was moblizing for Iraq Agie fell prey to some kind of lung infection which further weakend his standing with us "old Grunts". That event was followed by him falling out during a freezing rain and snow soaked exercise at Ft Bliss. Three bad marks and he became unwanted in the platoon. When he ws assigned to my fire team in Iraq I didn't even want him. I didn't trust him. I was later to be proven wrong. Agie was steady, relibale, and trust worthy. He kept a cool head under fire and stress and served as the Ying to my Yang in Team Mayhem. And for that he will always have my loyalty.

SGT Mitz had come to the company after the Kuwait mission. A big tattooed guy with blunt features that hid his intellicence, his first mission with the company was on an Annule Training mission in Hawaii. There he fell out with an injury to his knee and was immideatly, and unfairly stuck with the unwanted label of "Shit Bag" which continued to follow him to Iraq where he was thrown into Headquarters platoon with all the other 'undesirables'.

Sgt Z had been in and out of C for Charlie Company since 1998. An outspoken NCO from New Jersey, former JAG corps Soldier whos time dated back to before the First Gulf War. Z could rub people the wrong way with his brassness, saying things that were not expected and, much of the time, not wanted to be heard. But he took a liking to me and me to him.

Assigned as a Team Leader to SSG Bull during the first part of the deployment at FT Bliss, Z was, in all honesty, out of his depth as and Infantry Team Leader. He tened to get overwhelmed at times of stress - information saturation I believe is what the fighter pilots call it. He would lock up in situations, one exercise involved a stuation where the Squad Leader, SSG Bull, was taken out by a sniper, leaving Z incharge. He had to supress the sniper, recover SSG Bull, and call for extract. Z had a total brain lock.

Later, I was gone on Emergancy Leave, in the aftermath of an ambush mission gone wrong, SFC Burt, 1st PLT's platoon sergeant - has he could only do - was taking rellish in smoking the platoons NCOs asked if anyone wanted to quit. For good or bad, SGT Z admited that he had had enough. On the spot Z was relieved of his Team Leader status and put into my Fire Team as a riflemen. He didn't lose any rank but was considered a private.

This set up a losing battle for us both in the end, though who came out worse is up for discussion. I'll leave that to you.

Assigned to my Fire Team I treated Z with the same respect I would anybody else. Maybe more.

1. He was an NCO, same as I, and I afforded him the same respect I would any other NCO placed under my command.

2. He had time and grade on me. I was still in high school when he was in the Army,duh.

3. He is a human being and might have made a mistake. Prehaps he was out of his depth as a combat leader but Z was, and is, a good Soldier. He had never done me wrong so why despise the man? Why seek to destroy him?

These ideals did not sit well with my Squad Leader, SSG Harvey, or the Bravo Team Leader, SGT Al.

The story of these two and my realtionship with them is the stuff of Greek Tragidies, truly. Both, at one time were considered very close friends of mine, the best of friends. I lived with SSG Harvey and his wife for a time, SGT Al I loved as brother, I looked to him as a young Soldier I could mentor, someone that could do the things I couldn't as a your man. He was my Anikin Skywalker, I was his Obi Wan Kanobi. He could bring blance to The Force, instead he tore it apart. And me with it. Al, and what happend between us is one of the reasons I have a very hard time trusting people today. Never let someone get close to you, less they put knife in your back.

Harvey and Al had an almost unnatural hatred for SGT Z. They wanted to destroy him and they wanted me to go along with their plan. I had other ideas.

Z ws mine, he was in my Fire Team and I refused to sabotage a member of my team. As long as he preformed as expected, as long has he did what I told/asked him to do and did not present a danger to the team, squad, platoon, and company then there was no reason to molest that member. If he didn't then all Hell would decend on him in the form of me. And only me.

So, I stood up for Z. As much as I could I shielded him from Harvey and Al.

Maybe I was wrong. Prehaps I should have followed what Harvey wanted me too, if I did things would have turned out much better for me in the end.

But I didn't.

Not to get on a high horse, but I did what I thought was right. I stood my ground as passively as I could have, I never disobeyed a lawful order from a higher ranking NCO. But I refused to compromise what I felt was right. What was fair. If I had... well... I don't think I would feel as good about myself as I do now.

Al, in particular, seemed to take sadistic joy in riding SGT Z, in telling him what to do, in reminding Z that he, AL, was a Team Leader and under his control. Mostly this happened when I was not around.

One inncodent comes immideatly to mind.

The battalion was ending it's training cycle at FT Bliss. We had started on Main Post Ft Bliss in 19 August 2004, later to move to tents in the lee of the Organ Mountains for a month, and finally to the Dona Ana training complex in New Mexico. There the battalion had the first hard shelters it had seen for nearly four months.

With the end of training and Christmas Leave coming up the battlion was allowed to drink nearly every night with the understanding that it would not effect the duty day.

After one of these nights I was taking a shower, washing way the nights partying, when CPL Sealor came into the shower tent.

"SGT D! You better get back to the barracks! SGT Al is going off on SGT Z and I think they are going to fight!"

I toweled off as quick as I could and threw on my DCUs, shower shoes on my feet, boots in one hand and wet towel over my shoulder. As I jogged up to my platoons building I saw Z coming out of the door, trash bag in hand and Al right after him, screaming at Z. Al turned to his left, door held open and aimed a kick at the near by trash can, over flowing with empty bottles and cans, refuge of the night before.

Z was already feet way before Al's foot connected with the can. Empty cans, green and brown beer bottles, exploded into the clear morning air landing with the glassy clinks and thumps of a recycling bin.

"What the FUCK is going on here!" I bellowed, ripping my towel off my shoulder. I have a loud deep voice and I think it was the last thing Al expected to hear that morning.

Al stood on the stoop, looking at the mess he made, " Well, I..."

"I fucking what!? SGT Al?"

"I told Z to clean up the barracks, to take the trash out and he didn't do it..."

"Isn't it your teams turn to take the trash out?"

"Well... Yes, but they went to the PX and..."

"And what?"

"So I told Z to and he said he would in a minute, but I told him to do it now and he said I don't have to listen to your your not my team leader. But he's nothing, his rank dosen't mean anything anymore..."

"Bullshit! That man has more time in grade than either of us! It's your teams duty to take out the trash today, not his! I'm his motherfucking team leader! If you have a problem you bring it to me! Not kick over trash cans like a baby!"

I stepped back, frustration at the last few months ebbing away from me, trying to stay rational, trying to salavage something from the wreckage that was coming out of this deployment.

God, I never thought I would be losing friends over this...

Over the months I had noticed a change in Al. Ever since he had been promoted to E-5 he had changed. Become more and more power hungry. Challenging my orders and ideas, becoming more and more brutal towards his team. Whats; going on here?

"You can't do that, Al. You can't bully someone into doing something, not one of my team members, not when I'm not around. If you have a problem with SGT Z bring it up to me. If we can't solve it then we got to SSG Harvey. But, not this way."

I walked up the steps to the barracks, shaking my head, bewildered. "What happened to you, man? You used to be my friend. Now I don't even know if I want you as a friend anymore."

I looked at Al, hard, seeing, really seeing, for the first time, his cruel hansome features, the way he took in everything as if he only really saw everything for the first time through his eyes. As if before, nothing really existed before he saw it.

Then he turned that gaze at me.

"Sometimes things change."

Things did change.

The tention increased between Harvey, Al and I.

I don't mention Harvey much beacuse he was like and absent father, more wraped up in his affaires than in his squads. Harvey is a used car sales men. No, really, he was once a car sales men. He knows the Game, he knows how to sell a product, mainly himself, but beyond the glitz and glamore he his nothing. As we say in in the Grunt world, "he's all show and no go". The only problem with that is Harvey keeps on showing, and showing, and showing. He is the ultiamate leech. He will rob from his lower enlisted to make himslef look better and never give anything back. And once he's done with you he will throw you under the bus in a heart beat.

For most of the major training operation at Dona Ana Harvey was absent. Either at some school or another, leaving me in charge of the squad. I planned and ran the missions, as the Alpha Team Leader should do when the squad leader is not there. I did my duty. When he was there most of the time the platoon sergeant didn't know where Harvey was. I took squad leader meetings in his absense, drew supplies, signed for equipment, all while Harvey was on the phone with his wife.

In the end he would show up, just when it mattered, just when the CO or 1SGT Storm was around, to say a few words and take all the credit.

If it sounds like I'm bitter, you bet your ass I am. I've waited years to say this.

The devide grew in the squad. Maybe the Soldiers didn't see it, though I bet they did. None of them are dumb.

The way I saw it was I took care of my Fire Team, my boys, and hopefully I could be their for the rest of the squad, meaning Bravo Team. I saw myself as the buffer between the power hungry and nearly sadistic Al and the self agrandizing SSG Harvey. I wouldn't indanger the mission, I would do what I was told, but to a point. If I felt it was morally wrong then I would refuse.

The Chinese have a term for this action, or non action, it's called wu wei. More accuratly it comes from Taoism meaning a non-action, or a perfect equilibrium with Tao, this is a detachment, or refinment.

Wu Wei was the path I followed during the training a Dona Ana, not suprising since I was reading a lot of Taoism during my time there. Maybe that seems stunning, a Soldier reading Tao in the face of combat, of killing and dying, but I believe that reading set me ahead of many Soldiers about to face the factor of their own death. I was ready to die. I knew in my soul that I probably would die in Iraq. I was ready.

The first week in Iraq things came to a head for 2nd Squad. SGT Z had had enough with Al. Since Christmas Leave SGT Z had been telling me about his hatred for SGT Al, and to tell you the truth I had felt his anger. I had tried as much as I could to keep them sperrated, to reduce the tention felt by both, the closer Iraq loomed the harder it became. The month spent in Kuwait, waiting to go North, I bunked next to Z. I was his sounding board for everything. His fears, his anger, his hurt. And I bounced things off him too. It was not all one sided.
Durning training Z had also become friends with SGT Mitz and Agie, that helped a lot too. He had those guys to talk to, not just me.
And to be honest, I was feeling the pressure as well. I had been excluded more and more from Al and Harvey. The people that should have been my peers had rejected me and me them. I turned more and more insular. I stared to guard my hate and rage, to store it for later use. I couldn't really turn to my Team and tell them what I was feeling, how do you tell your me that you have lost confidance in your Squad Leader and his shadow, or Bravo Team Leader?
Shit, I had Bravo Team Soldiers coming to me to talk about their problems with their own Team Leader!

Finally, in Iraq, SGT Z finally admitted that he wanted to kill AL. He was sick of it, sick of the taunting, and the bullshit, and the bullying. Hell, man, whether you bieve it or not, a man does have his limites, inside everyman their is a breaking point, a line he will not cross and after that... only God and that man can awnser. And Z had crossed his.
I'm just glad that hed didn't kill Al.

That's when Agie came into my team. Compitent, steady, cool headed Agie. The man I would become to rely on while I was running Team Mayhem.

It is a failing of mine to not have regonized Agie in all this time. He was the slient partner in all this Hell. His calm voice, his loyality. In the mitz of my hate he was the voice of reason, the man I could depend on. He was aloe vera to my heated sun burn. ( Have tried to think of an apt comparision for Agie, struggled and thought, and this, the latter, is the best I can come up with. He cooled my rage, his voiceand demenor.) We would talk of our wives, of our worries. When I learned that I had been selected to go on R&R with SGT Paris for four days in Quatar I told the Team that I finally had something to live for, Agie told me,"Hey,SGT D, You have lots to live for besides that."

That voice.

What a good man.

Soon after that Team Mayhem was disbanded.

I was moved to weapons squad where I stared my career as a ronin Soldier, though I didn't know it at the time.

Only after 22 June 2005 did it I truly become Ronin.

Masterless.

Fearless.

When I became the best Soldier I could be beacuse I was no longer afraid of Death.

Welcome to the Jungle

2008-02-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

My first patrol into C for Charlie Companies new sector was with the 3rd ID unit we were replacing. It was night, the streets empty, shops closed up, Night Dogs on the prowl. The wind was blowing from the west, warm and dry like memories of summer. The wind blew through the dark street, plastic bags floating and twisting in the air, balloons of memory in the breeze of time, catching on barbed wire and razor tips of concertina.

I remembered a shop, some kind of business, near our apartment in MT View, called METAPRO.
Our apartment was just a block or two from where Chris worked. I didn't like her walking to work, not because it was a bad neighborhood or because she was a lone woman - she was, is, six one and at the time out weighed me by ten pounds and was, honestly, stronger than I was - but because I didn't feel it was right for her to walk. Not when I could drive her. So if I arrived home from my night security job in Burlingame I would drive her. We would exit the apartment complex, ALICE FM out of The City on the radio, and past METAPRO.
"I wonder what they do there?" I asked one sunny Bay Area morning.
"Something to do with rubber balls. You know those big red rubber balls we used to play wall ball and Dodge Ball with?"
"Really?"
"Yeah, they inflate them and bounce them around the parking lot. There are some young guys and they sometimes lose the balls and they go bouncing into the street and they have to chase 'em."
She was getting into the story and becoming animated, her voice rising. I loved when that happened. I liked watching it, being a part of it, witness to it. It was so different from my normally reserved state. Her eyes would light up, her entire body seeming to come alive. It was one of the things I loved about her, one of the things I still love about her.
"But there is an older guy -"
"Yeah?" I was starting to get into it too. Seeing it in my head.
"Yeah. He's the pro. He never loses a ball. Just shakes his head and laughs at the young guys."

She was quite, somewhere in her own mind for a moment. I can't remember if this was after or before the abortion.
"On mornings when I walk to work they all come out and wave to me..."

Nobody was waving in this section of Iraq. No one was around to wave to us. This was the same AO we had conducted OPERATION DONKEY SHOW in. I wondered if anyone would wave to us here. The US wasn't much liked here. I was going to miss our old sector.
This new area was filled with 'lower income bracket' families. That is to say, they were poor. These were the people that lived in the dump in mud huts. Material for walls was scrounged from construction sites, cinder blocks, mud bricks, lumber. Lots of houses were built out of the surrounding dirt, held up by I don't know what. Mud packed with straw and I assume some kind of wood. The roofs were often domed, plastic sheeting showing around the edges and the ends of round, rough hune logs showing. Like all houses and buildings in Iraq they were surrounded by low walls. Either mud or tin containers that olive oil once came in. Brass colored boxes with 'The Cleopatra Vegetable Oil Company - A Product of Egypt' printed on them. All of them had tapped into the power supply, thin black wires dipping low between logs stood up on end. Most had TV antennas or satellite dishes like giant grey sunflowers in the yards.

I hated riding with another unit. Sitting in the back of the truck, nothing more than a strap hanger, like a beggar looking for a hand out. "Hey, can I get a ride, buddy?"
The crew I was with wasn't very talkative, I think the E-6 I was riding with thought I was throwing off his groove, judging him. I didn't even want to go on this patrol. It wasn't my patrol. I was the old annoying friend that comes over unannounced - the one you really don't like but are to polite to tell that you don't like anymore, that the friendship is over - the one that you make polite and meaningless conversation with, until he leaves.

The area is small but contains eight schools and at least four mosques of the Whabiest branch that come just short of open conflict with us. We were doing a dismounted patrol near one of them, checking buildings under construction for squatters, when we took fire. There are others that will argue the point but I believe we were sighted by people at the mosque and fired upon. One shot. It could have been in the air, I won't trust my memory to fill in the blanks enough. Memory is a notorious trickster and, more often than not fallible, but I have been around fire arms for a number of years and I know what a near shot sounds like. This one was close.

Our small patrol was dark. We had been using white light to check the buildings but after moving out it was all ambient light and starlight amplified by NODs. The patrol passed through a choke point, buildings on the right a wire fence on the left, ducking under low power lines and crunching over trash. There was a single light on, outside a mud hut to the left. From the roof of the building we checked I could see a woman dressed in a black abya moving around the fenced in yard. The smell of livestock heavy in the air. As we worked our way past, the LT, I, at least two other officers and an RTO, I raised my NODs and looked over the yard. I wanted to go into one of the houses, the mud huts, just to see how the people lived, how it was setup inside.
I once read that Virgos are always looking at structures, how they are built, how they join together. I don't know if I took that in subconsciously or if it is a trait of Virgos but I find myself looking at buildings often, trying to puzzle out how they are put together. The woman walked past us and into the light paying no attention to us at all. To her we were not even there, ghosts of the past or future, specters of her imagination that she would rather not take notice of. It's that way here with some people. Some watch us intently, children especially, others ignore us as much as possible.
There were gloves of bright blood splatter from her hands up to her elbows. I guessed she mush have been slaughtering one of the sheep that bleated from inside her yard. In the harsh light of the naked bulb the blood looked fake.

I don't like blood. It makes me remember things I'd rather not remember.

It was a humid October morning at FT Bragg. The air thick with moisture that seemed to gather around the lights along Ardennes in a hazy cloud. My PT shirt was already damp. The Task Force was gathered in the bowl of Towel Stadium for a 6 mile run. 1st Batt 325 AIR and attachments were assuming DRF-1 that day. DRF-1 was ready to go to war. One platoon of Delta Company, my company, was down at Heavy Drop Rig Site in The Cage and loaded with fuel, ammo, and MREs. Locked in and guarded around the clock in case we were called out to jump into an unknown country, on an unknown DZ, in the middle of the night. Lining up in company and battalion formations we stood waiting for the brigade commander to call us to attention and begin the run.
I had been talking to the Chaplin before the shooting started. At first I thought it was blanks. It sounded like blanks. The new brigade commander had come from Ranger Batt and I thought he was testing us. One paratrooper to my left front grabbed his ass and fell down. The man standing next to him turned, looking, when it sounded like he had been punched in the chest. He exhaled and brought both hands up before falling over. That was when I saw the red tracer round streak across the black sky. These were not blanks.
In confusion the entire assembled group dove to the ground in a ripple. Shots boomed across the field, for a moment I had the image of the unseen shooter walking across the dew wet grass calmly dispatching paratroopers laying on the ground with a shotgun. Then we were all up and running, running away from the shooting. I began laughing. Crazy laughter. It was funny but it wasn't, all at the same time. I remembered a passage from the book 'Starship Troopers' where they trained with blank and live rounds. One in every hundred rounds was live.
I eventually linked up with guys from my platoon, relieved that they were ok, reaffirming that I was ok. Behind one on the barracks buildings was a CCP. The wounded laying on the ground and medics working on them.
The human body holds an astonishing amount of blood.
One paratrooper lay on his back in a halo of thick blood, shot in the chest, two medics fighting to save him. Another sat leaning against the wall, the right side of his face gone, a PT shirt stuffed into the hole. The world showed, stopped, moved into jerky frames. I heard a pop in my ears and it felt like the air, cool and wet, flooded into my head. My vision grayed out and narrowed, I was sweating. All I could see was the blood. Dark red in the low light. One officer was killed that day and several paratroopers wounded.

The fence made a ninety degree turn to our right, pushing us to the right toward the street. I was in a low area, the officers talking about something when the shot sounded. An echoing pop reflected off the buildings. I had dropped to a knee in the damp sand. Half a second behind me everyone else dropped.
"Was that a shot?" Somebody asked.
"Yeah, it came from over by the mosque." My voice bounced as I ran in a crouch over to a low brick wall facing the mosque.
"I heard a voice yell out just before the shot. Somebody knows we’re here."
Nobody was listening to me. Whatever. Officers, never listen to their NCOs. The RTO slammed into the wall beside me. My rifle was already off SAFE and I was scanning for movements. My heart thumped but I was excited. I wanted to go after whoever shot. This was it. Looking over the ground between us and the mosque, searching for covered and concealed routes. LT Mac moved up to a small concrete building to our front. I wasn't about to let him be up there with out me so I moved up too, avoiding a large puddle, I didn't want my boots to get wet. The crazy things you worry about when getting shot at.
The 3rd ID LT radioed in for our trucks to move up and for nearby Bradley Fighting Vehicles to converge on our area. I could here them accelerating, a jet turbine whine, blocks away.
Edging up to the far side of the building I peeked around the corner.
Nothing. No movement no more shots. Minutes passed.
"Is that a car? What the fuck is that?"
I turned to see a car stopped on the street. I joined another Soldier, officer, EM, or NCO - I don't know and it didn't matter - moved up on the stopped car. I hit it with my rifle mounted laser. The other Soldier went up to the driver side as I circled around to the passenger side.
"Three, no, four women in the back. Two men."
"The driver says they have a pregnant woman. They are taking her to the hospital."
Sure enough, there was a young woman in the back, her belly swelling beneath the abaya she wore.
"Search the men. If they are clean, let 'em go."
With my flashlight I looked over the car, looking of obvious weapons, there were none. I open the passenger side door and a man in a white dish-dash got out. I patted him down quickly and came up with a thick wad or Iraqi denar.
"Hey, LT, this guy's got a big wad of cash on him," I called out.
"For doctor. For doctor." The man said, pointing to the woman in the back, holding his hands out like he had a huge belly like the woman.
"Any US dollars?"
"No. All Haji money. Says it's for the doctor."
"Ok."I gave it back to the man. He smiled.
"Let 'em go. She's about ready to pop." I called out, hoping the dark would mask my voice. It did. The men got back into the car and left.

The rest of the night was spent driving around, stopping at the local government run gas station and meeting the guards. Twists and turns down narrow streets, many of them smelling of sewage and clogged with trash. Night Dogs escorting us or barking form the sides of the road at the edge of our headlights.

Dawn was lighting the sky to the east as we rolled back to camp.

Veterans Day 2007

2007-11-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

I open the door to my apartment after working all night and am nearly bowled over by a grey and white blur. George the cat is doing his crazy homeless person act again, making a break for the great out doors and freedom. He bounds out the door, across the wet concrete, through some shrubs, and - claws exteneded - up a tree like a skilled lineman gaffing his way up a telephone pole.
"So, it's going to be that way, huh?"
George blinks once at me from the branches, looks away and meows.
He does every once and awhile, dashes out the door and up the tree, only to realize that he is not nearly as good getting down the trunk as he was getting up. The first few times I helped him down from the tightly woven branches and escorted him back into our apartment. However, it didn’t take me long to tire of his game.
"Well, you got your furry ass up there, you can get your furry ass back down."
Thus the waiting game begins.

Stepping inside the door, I drop my assault pack, grab a beer, and my American flag.
Today is Veteran’s Day.
I post the flag, shove the beer in an ACU cargo pocket, and give the flag a crisp salute before sitting down on the steps, soaking my ass. It rained all night and the everything is wet. Shrugging I crack open the beer and smile.
The can SNAP CRACKS, like a grenade fuse. Back in Iraq Doc and I would warn each other before we opened a can of soda, "Coke can!" That way neither of us would be caught off guard by the sound and avoid and startle response. Ever come fully awake from a dead sleep, heart thumping, pulse pounding, reaching for a weapon or rolling onto the floor, thinking somebody was about to frag your ass only to discover it was your roommate opening a warm can of Dr Pepper? It’s not fun.

Veteran’s Day.
Actually it’s Veterans Day, usually misprinted in advertisements and calenders as Veteran’s Day. It began as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, both falling on the 11th of November to celebrate the German’s signing of the Armistice ending World War I. Major hostilities ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. And to honor those men that served and died in that bloody, mud clogged war. The worlds first modern war. WWI saw the introduction of the machine gun, the airplane, tank, and chemical warfare. In the air there still existed a certain code of conduct, chivalry, if you will. On the ground no quarter was given. It was kill or be killed.
In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day to honor all who have served and died in any conflict.

I sit and listen to the rain fall drip off the leaves of the tree George is in. It’s Sunday morning, early and most of the city is still asleep. A light breeze blows a wafting mist through the courtyard, the streetlights look as if they are wrapped in cotton, diffused and warm. The air carries the faint smell of wood smoke.
You didn’t get many mornings like this in Iraq. If it rained the dust turned to clinging mud that stuck to it’s self, clumping on boots, growing heavier and heavier. Violently kicking your foot would launch the heavier chunks into the air and off your foot. The hallways of the barracks would be strune with irregular shaped balls of mud embedded with gravel.

Taking a sip of beer I notice a worm in a puddle, strugglng to get out, to keep from drowning, lengthening and compressing, searching for air.
"Shit."
I get up and pick the worm out of the puddle and place it on the wet earth near the edge of the grass so it can dig back in. Looking around I see another one and repeat the action. Soon I’m rescuing more and more of them.
"What are you looking at?" I ask George as he cooly watches me from his perch,"Shouldn’t you be thinking about how your going to get dow..." CRUNCH.
"FUCK!" I look at the concrete and lift my boot. A crushed snail, shattered shell and splattered guts.
"GodDAMN IT!"
Rage and guilt flow through me. I hate stepping on snails. I hate the fact that I’ve killed the little buggers on accident. There you are, a snail, pulling yourself along, your home on your back, and some big clumsy human comes along and steps on you.
"Fuck..." I look at the smashed thing and feel sad, tears come to my eyes and my throat tightens. Sitting back on the step I take a long pull off he can and consider all this. What I’m feeling.

Doc and I were in our room when Doc Spanky came in to get some advice from Doc about treating wounded. Doc Spanky was a replacement medic, filling in until Doc was able to go back out on patrol again after receiving a serious case of whiplash from and IED, the same one that killed Sara.
We called him Spanky since he was caught by his roommate masturbating, twice. Now, masturbating is no big deal in the Infantry, everyone does it, everyone knows everyone else does it. It’s part of life, like breathing or eating, but to be caught... Not once, but twice, meant that you were some kind of pervert.
I was on my laptop as Doc and Spanky were talking about administering morphine to wounded Soldiers.
"Well, what about Iraqis? Do you give it to them?" Spanky asked.
Before Doc could answer I interjected,"Fuck ‘em. Animals don’t feel pain the way we do."
"Yeah, fuck ‘em." Echoed Doc.
Spanky got up and left convinced, I’m sure, that this room was full of crazy men.

How do I go from that day, that comment, that vain of thought and feeling to this day, upset by stepping on a snail? Sometimes I wonder about my mental state, the kind of person I am, what I’ve become. What Iraq did to me, or maybe, what it show was really inside of me, just waiting in the shadows. The hardness, the unthinking animal rage in me, the complete lack of a soul and mercy. I can’t imagine my Grandfather, a man I deeply respect and wish to be like, ever saying,"Fuck ‘em. Animals don’t feel pain the way we do."

That’s when it all crashes in on me and I begin to cry. At first it’s a kind of growling screech in my chest, an ache like what I imagine a heart attack to be like, soon it’s climbing my throat, jaw tense, aching, trying to stay clenched, the eyes stinging like that first bite of CS gas when you remove your mask.

SLIDE SHOW: D in the body bag, the old man who’s arm I blew off, Rocket Man looking at me as he died, pleading for comfort, Captain Hill burning to death, wounded Iraqis and children, body parts, road ways slick with blood, shattered windshields and the cabs of trucks spray painted with warm blood, columns of greasy black smoke where a vehicle once was.

And I’m sobbing, hard wracking sobs, bone shaking.
I don’t know how long it goes on before I feel warm fur brush against my hand and jerk awake. George the cat walks in a tight circle in front of me and leaps into my lap and I hug him to my chest, feeling his warmth. He’s purring up a storm.
"I ahhh... I guess you got down ok, huh, buddy." He licks my nose and flicks his tail. He looks at me with cool yellow eyes and blinks before rubbing against my neck.
"Let’s go inside, huh, pal?"

Dreams

2007-06-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

The three of us had moved up the pine and scrub covered hill, dried leaves and pine boughs under our boots, the smell of the forest strong in our noises, to the edge of a trench line. This section looked unguarded and open.
Just below the ridge line, the military crest, was a machine gun nest firing down on the rest of the battalion, an MG-42. Keo, lugging the BAR that was nearly has tall as he was had called the type correct just by the sound.
Always trust Keo and his hearing. I had learned that months ago.
We three were all that was left of our squad. SSG Atkins, the squad leader, Keo, BAR gunner, PFC Arnold Duplantier, and myself. Everyone else was dead, torn apart by Teller mines on the approach, indirect 88 fire, or the evil ripping of MG-42 cross fire. Thank God the Krauts didn’t have any armor today.
"Lets go!" SSG Atkins shouted, shoving me into the open trench. I was just beginning to right myself when D crashed into me from above, "Sorry, Sgt D!"
It was just like him to say that in combat, apologizing for landing on someone while under fire.
"No problem, D." I smiled at him, at his young face. He had a wife and child back home. Keo and SSG A followed.
Atkins wiped the sweat off his face, mixing it with the loose dirt until it turned into mud.
"Look, we have to get that fuck’n MG taken out! No one is near it but us!"
"I got it sergeant! I’ll take point."
Atkins looked at Duplantier, hard, searching his face. "You sure, Arnold?"
"Yeah, I got a feeling about this," he shot a look up the trench line, "We’ll make it with me in the lead. Sgt DeVore can cover me from behind."
Atkins glanced at me,"Ok, it’s all yours."
D began duck walking up the trench, already intent on the mission when I stopped him and traded his M-1 with my Thompson. "Here, you might need this. If you need extra mags I’ll pass ‘em up to you."
"Thanks, Sgt D." He grinned at me and moved forward.

The three of us moved slowly, scraping the dirt walls of the trench, D covering the 12 with my Thompson, me with his M-1 cocked to the left front, SSG A watching over our heads and Keo watching the 6. Overhead German 88s crossed the sky with US 105s, the air ripped and torn by shells. Small arms fire and men yelling commands, sometimes screaming in pain in fear, echoed among the tall pine trees. All the noise seemed reflected down at us, at the war mad Earth from the overcast sky above.

D stopped us at the first turn in the trench, a right turn, and peeked around the corner.
"Fuck! Fuck! Grenade!"
It thumped into the far wall and landed on the freshly turned earth, smoking and sputtering, curls of wispy grey smoke trailing from it wooden handle. My eyes locked on it while D fired a quick burst from the Thompson.
Well, that’s it. All done here. I thought as the brim of my helmet crashed down on the bridge of my nose, eyes filling with tears from the impact, wet dirt filled my mouth and nostrils.
SSG Atkins lunged forward, pushing me to the ground, picked up the smoking grenade and side armed it back up the trench where it exploded with a glassy sound.
GO! GodDAMNIT!"
I pushed around D, still spitting dirt from my mouth, half able to see, Atkins on my left, shoulder to shoulder in the trench.

Two Fallshrmjagers lay in the center of the blast area, the scent of cordite and explosives strong. Both badly wounded, one with both legs gone, the other missing and arm. SSG A and I both fired, his carbine popping several times, my borrowed M-1 bucking against my shoulder, aiming at the man with his arm gone until the clip pinged out of the chamber.
"D, another clip! I’m out!"
I shoved it in and slammed the charging handle forward, chambering a fresh round. Looking back I saw both Keo and D. SSG A reloaded as well. Atkins and I had always been the better killers in the squad, ready to clean up the messes that the men either didn’t want to or couldn’t. As if being a killer was a good thing. Maybe it meant that Keo and D were better human beings than we were, more caring.

"Everyone OK?"
We all gave our status.
"Right, move out. We still have an MG to take out!"

At the last turn Atkins stopped us. D and I switched out weapons. Around the last corner was the MG-42, it crew intent on the onrushing Americans. Burst after burst tore into the Infantrymen coming up the slope, ripping shrubs and tree trucks into shreds. Fire from the American side was slowing as men died. Somewhere a 30 cal machine gun started up. I watched a incoming rounds tore at the front on the log bunker, the rounds thunking into the thick wood. The MG-42 AG directed his gunner to the 30 cal by patting his helmet. Three long bursts, like cloth being torn, and the American gun was out of action.

"Jesus Christ!" D looked at me. "We have to get the that bastard!"
SSG Atkins set Keo up over looking the gun emplacement, his BAR freshly loaded. D, SSG A, and I would throw grenades then rush in after Keo had sprayed down the area, to take care of any survivors.
The three of us pulled the pins on our grenades and looked into each others eyes, "Ready?! Throw!"

Three glassy sounding explosions followed,"Keo! FIRE!"
Keo dumped a full twenty round mag into the pit as the three of us rushed in firing. The Germans never knew what hit them. All were dead within seconds.
Coughing from the smoke I sat down hard against the splintered log all, pushing my helmet up and wiping sweat from my eyes. When I looked up D was there, smiling that smile at me. The one that told me it would all be ok.

I don't know if I believe in the power of dreams or not, if the dead talk to you through them, mostly I think that when you are dead you are just dead, but maybe... Maybe when you are dead you do back to the place you loved, to the place where your loved ones are. Maybe you watch out for them and talk to them sometimes.
I don't know.
But lastnight I had this dream as you have just read. I know that my good friend, my friend that I miss was there and we shared something and I take comfort from the dream. We are still comrads in arms, still lookinf out for each other, somehow, someway.

Getting Away with Murder

2007-06-11T03:49:00.000-07:00

(This started out a a concept post, I wondered what it would be like to try and ad some excitement to a post with the words from a song that often filled my head on patrol. I didn't know if readers would get it or not, but I think it turned out rather well. I wrote this hours after the event, as I did with most of my original posts in This is your War, trying to keep the events and feelings fresh, so they would be as real and immidate for the reader as they were for me.)

Somewhere beyond happiness and sadness
I need to calculate what creates my own madness
And I'm addicted to your punishment
And you’re the master, and I am waiting for disaster

The section met for the Patrol Brief in the upstairs conference room, dusty thread bare indoor/outdoor carpet, dented and scratched battleship gray filing cabinets labeled for the forms they contain. In the middle of the room are two long and narrow laminated press board tables, the kind you would see in the 'conference room' of a small construction business. The tables sit like and island in the center of the room, pushed together the tops permanently coated in a thin layer of dust. Streaks from fingers prints an entire hand print and the rings from coffee cups and Red Bull cans mar the surface, evidence for the existence of ghosts.
Arrayed around the tables are a ecliptic collection of chairs and stools. The wall, painted a flat chalky white like sheet rock. Smudges of dirt from sweaty uniforms and ragged tears pit the walls. Plywood boards with dirty memos pined to them, a large satellite of the sector tacked to another wall.
Taped to the inside of the door is the cover 2003 Time magazine that named the person of the American Soldier. Hand written in black ink on the lead Soldiers' body armor is the word 'Girl' in case some one had any doubts as to the sex of the Soldier, like I did the first time I saw the cover. After the brief I went back to my room to gather my gear and weapons.

I feel irrational, so confrontational
To tell the truth I am getting away with murder
It is impossible to never tell the truth
But the reality is I'm getting away with murder

Mac, my current gunner had fired a warning shot from his SAW at a blue van that broke into our convoy, between our truck and the last one. He fired one round from the automatic weapon into the vans right front fender. Karr passed the info up to the LT as we merged into traffic on Downfall, the early morning sun bright in our faces.

Getting away, getting away, getting away

The road was empty for a 100 meters in front of our trucks the traffic pushed away from us, giving us space and safety like a pressure wave.
This time of the morning the roads are lined with Iraqis on there way to work or school or where ever. They wait in small and large groups or singly for the vans that serve as public transportation here or friends or coworkers to pick them up.
Karr, Stew and me were talking about our insurgent game idea, trying to sell it to a video game company.
I feel comfortable with them. Karr the Oakland cop, and Stew a correctional officer for the state of California, both used to paying attention to their environment and watching for clues that will tell them what an individual or group of people plan on doing, especially if they have it in mind to cause death or damage.
We talk over the thrumming engine and scan the city, vehicles, and people without losing focus of our task. Like talking to your wife while still watching your favorite TV show.
Mac is young but he has learned fast, especially being a gunner, the one Soldier with the best over all view of theworld outside the confines of the HUMMVEE.

A group of Iraqis, mostly males, stood clustered together waving and gesturing at our trucks and the base of an over pass.
"What the fuck is this?" Karr muttered as the LT's truck passed into shadow a bar of shadow cast by the arch and back into the light, drifting to the right side of the road to stop. I followed.

"Hey, Mac! See if you can see into that hole!" Karr called up to the gunner as I slowed the truck down and edged over closer to the side of the road.
The AIF had placed IEDs in the same hole before. They like to do that.
"I can't see anything." Mac called down as we stopped.

The Iraqis were closing on our truck. Karr and Stew dismounted while I put the truck in PARK and popped my door.
SSG Coopers truck was just pulling under the overpass with his crew, including Doc, dismounting or already out.
I turned to look back at the other truck, I already had the feeling we shouldn't be stopping here. Something was wrong when word got passed up of an IED under the over pass.
Coopers people and vechile were right next to it.

"Let's GO! Get in!" I shouted back at Karr and Stew. I couldn't see them behind the bulk of the HUMMVEE. Mac was shouting back as well. Shooting a glance forward I saw the LT's truck pulling away.

Damn.

We need to go!

A wash of fear, cold as ice, spread from the center of my chest outward. Looking back I couldn't believe Cooper and his people were still outside their truck, almost milling around like they had all the time in the world.
The LT was giving orders over the truck mounted SINGARs - something about Cooper setting up a blocking position on the other side of the over pass and for me to follow the lead truck.
It was all distant, I heard the radio and logged the info in my head but it really didn't seem all that important. Foremost was getting the hell away before a black ball of smoke engulfed us all.

After what seemed like hours Stew and Karr piled into the truck, with it already in gear I floored the accelerator before the two Soldiers had even closed the doors. We thumped over the dirt median that separated the east west lanes through a gap torn in the guard rails. Cooper's people were loading up as we roared under the over pass and away form the danger.

I drink my drink and I don't even want to
I think my thoughts when I don't even need to
I never look back cause I don't even want to
And I don’t need to, because I'm getting away with murder

I parked the HUMMVEE cross ways, taking up as much as the three lanes as possible. Karr crossed over the guard rails and median into the east bound lane. Once Stew and I were on line we started moving forward, pushing the traffic back away from us.
About 100 meters down on the right was a larger break in the guard rails. Iraqi drivers were already turning around and seeking alternate routes, the vehicles often accompanied by shouts and the honking of horns.
Iraqis love to honk their horns. It drives me nuts. I hate it.

When I was a kid it was my job to open the gate to our driveway. My Aunt kept her horses on our property sometimes. Every time I would get out of the car or truck and my Dad was driving I would tense up waiting, knowing it was coming but knowing I couldn't stop it or help myself from jumping when he honked the horn . It happened all the time and I hated it. It always frightened me and I would start. Looking back I could see my Dad laughing in the cab which made me angry. Fear followed immediately by anger, good training for Iraq.

We set cones out at the end of the gap in the guard rail nearest us. We gave the Iraqis plenty of room to maneuver, the gap must be 20 to 30 meters wide. Instead they continued to make tight turns, hugging their side of the break like a feral cat that finds it's self against a wall and you between it and freedom. We stood in open, letting the driver see us, if they don't see anyone they will creep up - seeing just how far they can push us, how much they can get away with - even with cones out and a HUMMVEE parked in the middle of the road.

Every Arab male thinks his task is the most important, that he should be allowed to pass or he should be first in line. That cultural aspect is exactly what leads to warning shots and innocent - meaning stupid - drivers being shot and killed by US Soldiers. It always makes me laugh, and also angry, when people at Home throw out suggestions on how we should place check point and road blocks, like we are CAL TRANS paving a stretch of HWY 80.
All I can say is we do the best we can but that is never enough for the Iraqis, the media, Higher, and ignorant civilians that sharp shoot our actions from their living rooms and dens.
We could have miles of neon signs, hand out flyers 48hrs in advance - both of which would fail since many of the poor people cannot read, oh, I forgot the 9 year old kids that drive cars here - have orange cones, lights and sirens, and a clown with a dancing monkey in a little maroon vest and Fez and drivers would still run through it all, get shot at and say," But I didn't see you."
Nothing we do is ever good enough.
How about this,the rag heads - yeah, I just called 'em rag heads (notify the ACLU!) - adapt to the Soldiers that have been in their country for over two years. There is a novel concept. Pay attention to the guy with the guns.
It's just like Gilbert said one day," See, you get rid of Saddam and these people get all nimbly-bimbly."

SGTs Paris and Roscoe closed in and glassed the device with binos after Roscoe attempt at having an Iraqi take a picture of the IED with a digital camera failed. The Iraqi took the picture; he walked right up to the IED and snapped away but the quality was poor. Who needs Civil Affairs when you have Roscoe?
The two NCOs confirmed that it was in fact an IED and unassed the AO.

C for Charlie was notified and EOD was informed.
"Well," Karr said, reaching into the open window of the still running HUMMVEE and flicking the ignition switch to the OFF position,"We’re gonna be here for a while. Might as well turn this off."

At Karr's suggestion we set up two rolls of concertina wire, one in the west bound lain and one in the east one. I eyed the fronts of the cars and trucks as I jogged backward, shaking the coils of wire loose from each other, trying to see through the dirt and grim streaked windshields bright with the intense sun.
People were just starting to get upset at the cordon, I could see hands waving out windows, faces craning to see past the vehicles in front of them, some men children and women had exited their cars and stood in the lanes created by the lines of vehicle bodies. A steady stream were negotiating the turn in the median. I wondered if there was a VBIED out there, working its way forward or coming down one of the side streets.
The highway is elevated above the frontage road, a sloping wall of packed dun colored dirt. A VBIED could get close to us, not into out perimeter but close enough to do damage,maybe kill.

I feel irrational, so confrontational
To tell the truth I am getting away with murder
It is impossible to never tell the truth
But the reality is I'm getting away with murder

Stew and I covered each other on the way back to the truck. After a few cars poked their noses out from a frontage street behind us I decided to move the HUMMVEE to cover that approach.

Meanwhile Iraqis on foot continued to test our resolve. I watched several, mostly males, look at the wire, look at us, and continue toward the cordon. True we did not have enough wire or cones to block the frontage road off; even if we did they would have tried to pass by us on the side walk. Iraqi men do not like being told they cannot walk where they want to. Fortunately for us they are easily persuaded to find an alternate route. Others would see and hear us waving others off and still continue, as if they had special pass, they would be allowed through.
Surely the Americans will see I am on an important errand and cannot be concerned with security!
Think again. The threat of one of them being the trigger man for the IED or having more explosives strapped to his scrawny frame is to high. Then what happens if the IED goes off and blows Mr. Important away? We are the ones that will suffer for his death.

An hour had passed, the sun climbing higher in the sky and more traffic backing up. Between watching the side street I scanned the roof tops and lines of Iraqi vehicles with Karr’s M-14, watching for anything unusual in a country that is unusual.
First a white sedan took my notice. With us behind the bulk of the HUMMVEE for cover it was like we were not even there. Cars began to slowly roll towards us. The white car had crept up the shoulder, blinkers flashing - the Iraqis always turn on their blinkers when they seeus, unless the blinkers don't work or they don't have any - once it reached the front of the line it stopped. Or at least I thought it had. Every time I looked away it crept just a bit closer. Finally I layed the long rifle over the hood of the HUMMVEE and center my sights on the windshield.

"Two male passengers, front seat. Western dress," I yelled out to my guys.
"I can't see any movement in the back. Mac!"
"Yeah!"
"If that car rushes us and hits the wire, it's on. No. Fuck that. If it rushes us it's on period. Burn the barrel out on that 240. Everybody else, dump your mags into it."

I got a chorus of "Rogers".

Through the scope I watched the two men watch me."Come on, motherfucker, do something."
A wave of adrenaline flashed through me. It felt warm and pleasant, like an old friend. My vision tightened and cleared.
I imagined sending one of the 7.62mm M118 long range rounds through the windshield and watching it frost over.

When I was a young Paratrooper I would sneak beer bottles out of bars and strip clubs and wing them into the windshields of parked cars just because I liked the sound the glass made when it broke - and because it was kind of crazy. My buddies finally took to patting me down before allowing me outside.
I wondered if that's what the bullet striking the glass would sound like, if I could hear it over the report of the rifle. I moved the cross hairs over the driver’s chest and centered them there. With little flicks of my eye I could keep the cross hairs steady and still watch his face. I could see him getting increasingly agitated and I smiled. I steadied my breathing, finding the rhythm, blocking out the heat and radio and the weight of my gear, the pain in my lower back until only the driver and I remained in the world locked together through the scope. He began to shift and twist, taking hard drags on his cigarette.
"Little nervous are we?" I talked to him. "You see me watching you, huh?"

It's funny, every time I put my sights on somebody I never have the classic thought of
'Wow, this is a person and I'm ready to kill them.' I worry about making the shot. Hitting he target on my first round because that's all they are to me at that time, a target, just like any range. I must have fired a million blanks at people over the years, pulled the trigger over and over again on live humans, other US Soldiers, sometimes people I knew and I've never thought about it, never hesitated. It's only afterward that I think about it and that is not ever often. Here it's become like pointing the remote at the TV to change the channel.

Getting away, getting away, getting away
Getting away, getting away, getting away
Getting away, getting away, getting away

The driver flicked his smoke out the window and reached of the gear shift," Here we go!" I shouted.
Safeties clicked off. Slowly the car rolled forward and began to turn to our right. I tracked it until it was all the way through the gap in the median.
Minutes later there was a long burst of automatic weapons fire. It was close but difficult to pin point. All of us dropped to a knee and brought our weapons up. Stew, who hand moved next to me, ducked behind the open driver door of the HUMMVEE. I spun around and dropped, facing the direction that it sounded like the shots came from. Karr was already down and pointing his rifle in the same direction.

"Where did that come from? Anybody hit?" I yelled, scanning windows and roof tops. Nobody was hit, no whizzes or snaps, no splatters of bullets hitting the asphalt. On the other end of the cordon, Cooper's people were taking incoming rounds as well. Doc felt the concussion and saw a round strike in the dirt near him, lifting a puff of dust.

"It came from down the street! The building on the end!" Stew pointed down the side street we had been covering to a two storied home.
"There was a dude on the roof; I saw the muzzle flash and he ducked out of site."
I moved behind the door and propped the M-14 up between the door and the body of the truck. A quick scan of the street reviled Iraqis slowly coming back out on the street after taking cover. I shifted to the roof top. It was empty.
Karr passed up the report to the LT. As I continued to watch the roof.

There was a low structure near the center and palm trees covered the right side. EOD arrived and met with the LT. I watched the roof still, waiting. I wanted the shooter to comeback and try again. It was 250 to 300 meters, an easy shot with the M-14.
We are all sick of seeing no results form our actions. Nothing tangible has come of our time and effort, a stand up fight would be welcome; at least it would be something a release instead of this constant sniping and explosions.
I feel sorry for the guy we finally get our hands on.

EOD had dismounted their robot. It rolled on its rubber treads towards the overpass, its arms and camera mounted on a periscope bouncing and wobbling reminding me of the scene in 'Star Wars' where Luke's Uncle buys C-3P0 and R2-D2 from the Jawwas. The flute theme for the Ewoks started in my head as I watched the robot. Wrong music but what the hell.
I turned my attention back to the roof.

SHIT!
There he was!

The man was dressed in a blue and white striped shirt, thick back hair on his head. I warned the others and watched him as he moved around the roof. He didn't have anything in his hands and kept his arms at his side. He milled around, seeming to pause every now and again and look down the length of the street toward us. I eased the safety off with a click. I could already feel the shot. I wanted the shot. I felt like a starving man with a steak dinner place before him, mouth watering. I was locked behind the scope my figure hovering above the trigger. Come on, come on... I ached for it, yearned for the guy to bring up a weapon. He ducked into the shed on the roof. I waited, blocking out the rest of the world again concentrating on the shot.
The bullet knows where it is to supposed to go. It knows what it has to do; all I have to do is release it. The bullet will do the rest. My Zen of shooting.

Somewhere beyond happiness and sadness
I need to calculate what creates my own madness
And I'm addicted to your punishments
And I'm your master, and I am craving this disaster

The guy emerged, straightening up; the wall along the roof obscured everything from his mid chest down. I put the cross hairs on his breast bone. He looked down and his arms began to raise and come clear of the wall. He held something in his clasp hands, the motion to fast for me to identify what it was, reaching above his head, arms in an A framing his head. There was a white flash from his hands, a fluttering, and a white pigeon took flight, hanging in the air until it's wings caught the wind and it climbed up ward.

I feel irrational, so confrontational
To tell the truth I am getting away with murder
It is impossible to never tell the truth
But the reality is I'm getting away with murder

I exhaled and let the rifle dip, loosening my grip and snapping the safety back on
."The guy has pigeons. He has fucking birds on his roof, that's what he's doing up there."
"But I saw a muzzle flash and he ducked." Stew was next to me.
"Man, I'm not doubting you, Stew. You know me better than that. I have no doubt that you saw what you say you saw. But the guy has birds up there and I can't just shoot him."As much as I would like to, I thought.

Getting away, getting away, getting away

EOD pulled its little robot back and declared that what we had was in fact and IED.
Thanks, we knew that already.
They were going to blow the IED in place. Between, watching the roof and The Bird Man of Baghdad, we shooed Iraqis back into their homes and away from the street making explosion sounds and gestures with our hands. Most of them got the idea.
Karr was across the lane, next to the median, yelling at some kid in red shirt with really bad hair. The kid stood there, ignoring Karr and looking directly at him.
I rounded, frustrated and still fused with adrenaline.
"YOU!"I strode over toward the guard rail,"Yeah, Dumbass!" The kid looked at me.
"Get the FUCK out of here before you get fucking killed! Go on beat it! RUN motherfucker!" The kid turned and fled down the street.
"You're welcome for saving your miserable like you little bastard." My shouts followed him down the street.
"These people, man, all in a damn hurry to die."

The LT called over the net, ten minutes before the detonation. We speculated on whether or not the IED would blow the overpass up.
"Man, that would be cool. I gotta get my camera." Karr rummaged around in his gear as 3rd PLT cleared the overpass of cars and people.
At thirty seconds we got down behind the truck, those with cameras got them ready. I sat in the rear seat and watched through the window. At ten seconds a horn sounded and the charge went off with thump that traveled through the earth before the sound reached us.
A black cloud, and orange yellow flash at the center, erupted beneath the arch.
Ten minutes later we were packing up the wire and cones, getting ready to call it a day. I paused while loading the wire on the hood of the truck thinking about how close we had come, again. It shook me for a moment, fear clawing at me senses. I wondered how much more luck I had in my tank.

I feel irrational, so confrontational
To tell the truth I am getting away with murder
It is impossible to never tell the truth
But the reality is I'm getting away with murder

To Late

2007-05-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

Try, if you can to describe a loved one in his last hours of life. The light of Life in his eyes. The last moments that you saw him animated, sun filled hallway, the the tile gleaming under his booted feet. A man, a boy, a Soldier you have know for years. You know his wife, his daughter-remembering the day she was born and the happy look in his eyes - you know the trouble he has been through, with his wife with his father. Not knowing what to tell him, this young man with a family, since you don’t have any of those things but this Soldier looks up to you as a Leader, looking for help.

Like a son you have tried to help him, mentor him, sat for hours with him in a tower in Kuwait and listened to him, his worries and fears, his hopes and dreams. This boy was… This boy, this man… was all the mistakes you could have prevented as a youth. He was the Hope you once had. He could do It with the right advice, the right words. You loved him but you didn’t know it at the time, oh, maybe you did, but it wasn’t real… It wasn’t Real. Death could never touch us here. Not here, not standing in front of the 1SGT as his squad leader, defending your best Soldier, as he admitted why he spent a weekend in jail. “But get him away from the civlians, Top, and the man shines…”

He comes overe to your apartment and talks about his life, his wife, his daughter, his love, the light of his life. You drink beer with him as he folds laundry and never calls you by your first name because,”It wouldn’t be respectful, you know? I can’t call you Mike, Sgt D.” You cry infront of him, tell him that there is a great hole in your soul that needs to be filled but can’t be. You need Hope but it’s not there. He tells you to hold on that he loves you in the words that men cannot say to each other.

A year and half later, he is dead, his heart shattered by a sniper and you don’t know it yet, hoping it’s some IA or IP, but you have already heard the name over the radio. Duplaintier. Thinking you will see him back at Falcone so you can give him shit about being shot, but he’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

You will never see him laugh again, never sit with this little girl again and try to draw Spiderman for her again as the leadership of the squad tries to figure out the new hand and arm signals for LOA and SALT reports.

The last time you see him is in a black bodybag, intabation tube in his mouth, eyes glassed over, skin waxy, like a dead fish in the market. Touch his hair,cut short to the scalp like your own, expecting him to sit up and tell you it will all be ok, it was all a joke. He is still alive.
But the skin is cold, lifeless. and you think of that morning, the last time you saw him alive and wish you would have stopped, for one second, and asked him how how he was doing, how his Leave was.

Only now it’s to late.

Lost

2007-05-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

I had four Goddamn pages written, four fucking pages, and I just lost it all. All of it, thanks to my internet connection. Two hours of writing. I'm sorry.

I'm working on the day D was killed, I'm trying but it's diffcult. I can't seem to remeber things the right way. I keep 'interviewing' the people that were there but it's hard. Everything seems so confused and mixed up. There are blanks in my memory that I find hard to get over. What I want to do is go from the time the mission started to when I finally fell asleep that night at BIAP, try to give you a full feeling for the events of that day, in my own weak words. And I just lost it all.

I'm sorry, D.

Things to Teach

2007-04-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

The other day I found a plastic PX bag in the back of my closet. I was sorting through some gear and boots from Iraq and there, at the bottom of the pile, was this bag. The smell of dust and sweat hit me when I opened it. Inside were two pair of flight gloves and a little flashlight I had used in Iraq.
"Oh, so there you guys are!" I said out loud. Except for George the cat no one was around to hear me. George, like always, kept his opinion to himself.

I had been wondering where these items had gone for sometime now. I knew I had kept the items, the flashlight I had acquired from another units HUMMVEE that had been destroyed by and IED shortly after C for Charlie Company had arrived at Falcon. The vehicle had been towed into one of the camps motor pools and left. Located in the same motor pool was an internet cafe. I didn't like to use the cafe since the building always reeked of gasoline.
This night I was on my way out when the vehicle caught my eye. At this point I had not seen any damage done to an 1114, or any truck for that matter, up close. And I was looking for any useful parts I could scrounge for PROJECT MAYHEM. Being in the 82nd during the Clinton Era, when he gutted the military, had taught me to be... 'resourceful', if you will. That and it was dark and nobody was around.
I will admit to feeling a little guilty about my intentions, I didn't know if anybody had been killed or wounded in this blast. It crossed my mind that it may be bad luck to take stuff from a vehicle that had been hit, I could be passing on a jinx to my own truck and crew, you never know.
Standing there, in the shadows with the carcass of this truck, it struck me how sad it looked. For me somethings take on a life of their own, machines can have their own personalities, I know PROJECT MAYHEM sure did, so much so I used to talk to it when it was just me and the truck.

To me this blasted truck with it's hood and front tires gone, oil and engine fluids leaking from the engine block and pooling on the scared concrete like blood, looked like a great defeated beast of the savanna. Once proud and full of pride, now just a lifeless shell.
It didn't stop me from rummaging around inside of it, looking for useful items. Like the flashlight. Clipped to the visor above the TC seat it was perfect for reading maps at night with it's green lens and adjustable head. I would use it for the rest of the tour.
That's all I was able to pull off the truck before I was noticed by the motor pool NCOIC and melted away into the shadows.

After the light I pulled the gloves out of the bag. I ended up wearing three sets of gloves in Iraq, but the first pair I wore were the best. They fit my hands like a second skin, I could use my weapon with them on, load magazines, eat. No matter how hot it was I was never on patrol without a pair of gloves on.
This pair had lasted the longest and seen a lot of action, the green material was stiff with dirt and dust, stained with sweat. The leather on the palms and fingers had been nearly worn away. I put them on and flexed my hands. In an effort to prolong the life of the gloves I had had to sew, by hand, where the fabric and leather met on the thumb, middle, and ring finger of both pair, more than once.
One of the skills I have had to learn in the Army was sewing, gloves, patches and name tapes on to uniforms. I've become pretty good at it and have also discovered that sewing has a calming effect on me.

At the sink in my bathroom, keeping the gloves on, I turned on the water and began to wash the gloves. Dark black brown water curled down the drain, washing away months of sweat, dirt, and fear. over there I would wipe the sweat away from my face with the gloves until the material was dark with it, dirt and dust, smoke, the heat, the fear. These were the gloves I wore the day D was killed, the gloves I vomited into on that day, there in that room where D's body was, where I said goodbye to him.
I have been thinking about going back, back to Iraq. I know of units ready to go, units that need Soldiers. I have come so far since I was deployed way back in August 2004. So far that I have lost myself, lost the person that I was, the man that could laugh at things, the man that smiled and joked. Maybe if I go back, full circle I could find him again, push through the anger and hate and come back to the man I was. Maybe, over there, in a land I both hate and love, I could propelle myself through it all and come out the other side well and whole, find the answers I am looking for. The other option is to end it all, walk away physically.

During the winter I had imagined driving into the mountains, alone, going as far as my car could take me on some deserted road then walking up, past the tree line, into the snow covered granite and stunted pines. It would be cold but that would no longer matter. Once there I could find a quite place and spend the day remembering and thinking about the life I have lived. There would be others waiting for me on the other side, my mother and grandparents, D. I think they would be happy to see me, greet me and show me the way around. In my assault pack I would have a bottle of good whiskey, maybe a few beers and my favorite books. At sunset I would cross over to the other side, using whatever means I had. The winter snow would cover my body. I wouldn't be found until the spring thaw.

It would be a good death.

But I don't take that path. I might think about it but I don't do it. I am here, left with the living to tell the tail and bear witness to the loss. There is no going back, not now. Not ever. All that is left is to learn how to live with the person I have become and try to teach the lessons to a new generation.

Father and Son

2007-03-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday I met D's father. He was visiting C for Charlie Company, talking with Soldiers that had known his son, collecting email addresses and phone numbers, wanting pictures of his boy. SFC Anderson, my longtime friend and platoon sergeant, told me Arnold Sr was outside.
I stood inside the glass doors watching him talk to the company commander, unsure what exactly to do.
Conflicting emotions rose up inside, my chest filling a balloon of pain, throat tight. I felt rooted to the spot, gravity holding me down to the concrete floor. How do I tell this man what I know? What I feel? What I felt that day?
Images of D's gluey eyes, still half open, the intibation tube in his mouth, taped to his cheeks. The cold, waxy, feeling of his skin. A dark red spot of blood on the black rubberized fabric of the body bag. His bare chest...
Finally I drifted out the door and placed myself near D's father and watched. I wanted him to see me and come over, that would be easier than going up to him, fumbling for the right words, for any words.
Why can I say things in print that I can't say in words?
The CO finished his conversation with Mr Duplantier, a firm hand shake, and stepped away. He saw me and come over.
"Have you talked to him yet, Sgt DeVore?"
"Ahh... No, Sir."
He put a hand on my shoulder,"Go and see him. I know you and Dup were close." A look into my eyes."Go talk to him."
I nodded.

I talked to him, I heard D's voice and saw his mannerisms again. I told Mr Duplantier that I was his sons first team leader, that I had known him for years, that his son was a good Soldier. I told him that I would trade places with D if I could. Just so he could live. I also told him that if I ever had a son I would name him Arnold, after my good friend.
In the end he hugged me and told me all he wanted was for people not to forget his son.
"I think of him every day." I said.

I think it's time to write about 22 June 2005. Events are pointing to that, telling me I need to tell the story of what I saw and felt. To tell the truth of the events as I saw them. My memories are my own but they are all part of that day and if I'm the only one that can write about it, to be a witness, then that's my job.
It's the least I can do.

I've Waited a Longtime to Say This

2007-02-21T16:05:00.000-08:00

Through no fault of his own, one of my readers, brian posted this comment:

this is actually the second time i have read about arnold duplantier's death. Michael Yon wrote about it in this article: http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/walking-the-line-iv.htmboth his and your entries are moving and go straight to the heart. take care and good luck

Here I stand to set the record straight.

Michael Yon is full of shit.

He was not there the day Arnold Duplantier was killed. I know, because I was fucking there. There was no Goddanm Sergeant Major giving any kind of fucking Agincourt speech that day. You know why? Because I would have shot him in the fucking face and walked away to go and kill Arnold's real killer. Arnold was not killed on the fucking roof of the Al Rasheed hotel. He was fucking shot by a Goddamn sniper south of Baghdad while standing on the roof of a fucking miserable one story building while Iraqi and US leaders held a meeting in air conditioned comfort below. He and one of his Soldiers had been of the roof for six Goddamn hours without relief. True to his nature Arnold was going to wait one more fucking hour before seeking some comfort, some water, some shade, in the blazing heat of June in Baghdad.

Anyone that has a problem with this version can address it to me. If you were not there then shut the fuck up.

Paper Bag

2007-02-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

Kenny, the former Marine NCO, was back at group last night. Last time the group met it was just Joe Dunn, Dr Kay, Dr Robbins, and me. It was still a good group but without Kenny something felt odd. Dr Kay refers to the three of us as her 'core' of the group. Dr. Robbins has been introduced as an observer in the last few months, once Dr Kay had the groups ok, that is.
"Well... Is he just gonna sit back and take notes? I mean, I don't know about the rest of the guys, but I don't want to be some kind of Goddamn science experiment for some fuck'n intern." That was my concern.
"No, Mike," Dr Kay laughed," he will take part in the group. He's an actual M.D. that is going to go into private practice, however, so many doctors never think to even ask patients if they have military experience let alone PTSD. This is part of a program to help doctors become more aware that you guys are out there."
Joe Dunn has been with the group since the start. A crew chief on a Blackhawk helicopter in the California Army National Guard, he has been deployed to Bosnia where he witnessed the mass graves, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He faces yet another deployment to Iraq later this year.

Last night Kenny was doing most of the talking, discussing a few of the five hundred bodies he has to process through his graves registration center during his last tour. How does he know the exact number? He has a book where he wrote down every single name of ever single Soldier and Marine that passed into his care. Like anyone that has been to war and seen terrible things there are a few, more than a few, faces and names that stick out in his mind. A Marine Gunnery Sergeant that came in with an unexploded RPG lodged in his chest. The brother of a dead Soldier that Kenny had to physically restrain from seeing his brothers body. The dead Soldier that been blown apart by and IED.
"I had to...you know, put this guy together again. As best I could. When he came in there was just parts all shoved in a bag and I had to sort 'em out. The funny thing about it," Kenny laughed deep down in his chest, a quick hard laugh, like a punch to the stomach," not funny 'Ha,Ha' but strange, you know... Was, his fuck'n head was perfect. untouched... Well, except for being served from the body."
I was leaning forward, elbows on my knees, rocking back and forth in my chair, eyes squeezed shut, tight. Something in my inner ear had popped, filling my head with a high pitched ringing, like when you forget to put you ear plugs in on the qualification range and send that first round downrange.
"Well, shit...I couldn't let his fuck'n brother see the body like that. I mean, how bad would that fuck with your head?"
Kennys an older man, in his mid forties, a retired E-9 in the United States Marines. He's worked in the prison system. He's 'been there, done that' as the saying goes. A steady, caring man. If I was wasted I would want someone like him, I would want him, taking care of my body. He honored every man that came into his care.
"What I can't get over is how much the two brothers looked the same..."

Sometimes and active imagination is a good thing. It can take you away from boring situations, let you see wonderful places created by your mind, help you deal with things. The cures of an active imagination is it can make you see things, fill in the gaps to details that are not pleasant.I was imaging my own torn body. Then I was seeing my own ghosts. The bodies I had seen. My friend Arnold Duplantier.

After racing to the CAS, Doc working on SSG Cooper behind me in the truck, we wheeled him into the emergency entrance, his hand on the Kerl Lex bandage Doc had placed on his neck. Under that was the wound caused by the same sniper that had killed D.Doc was cool and professional, rattling off the type of wound sustained and how he had treated it to the doctors that were going to work on Cooper. Doc, 23 years old, directing M.D.s with years of training. That is my best friend.
I went into the room and, along with Doc, helped Cooper into an open bed, blood leaking from the bandage. I was pushed out soon afterward, in my blocky combat gear I was just in the way.
Hovering outside the room were the company commander, the XO, and 1SGT Welsh. I joined them, searching their eyes, ready, eager, to give my report of the action.The CO's eyes were watery, rimmed with red, his face tight with controlled emotion.
"Hey," I touched his arm," hey, Sir, it's ok. SSG Cooper is going to live. He's talking, shit, he was telling jokes on the way here."
He didn't even looked at me.
I turned to the XO, a heavy feeling of dread coming over me.
"Sir? What's going on?"
The XO looked at me, leaning in,"Duplantier is KIA."
"What?!" I didn't hear him correctly. No fucking way.
"Duplantier is dead, killed by the sniper."
All the life, all the strength in my body flooded out of me. "Oh God...no..." I folded in on myself, crumpling to the white marble floor, leaning against the wall. "Oh God... Ds dead. He's fucking dead..."
My throat tightened up, vision clouding over. I began to sob.
His wife... His daughter...

Back in group, I tried to push the memory out of my mind, the pictures. To shove the memory back into the dark place it resides, to not be taken by it. Just like in combat, when crazy things, memories, pictures, movie and book quotes, songs, would suddenly pop into my head at the most random times my head was suddenly filled with a song.

Meanwhile I'll hide my head
Here in this paper bag
Cause if I cant see you
Then you can't see me
And it'll be okay...

Good old Anna Nalick. I swear, I should get paid for the free advertisement I give her. The one CD I bought in Iraq that pretty much became my soundtrack. Gentle, powerful songs that infiltrated my mind. I interpreted her words into my own meaning, fitting the world I lived in, softening the horror I was seeing. Most guys listened to Rap or Rock, steel stringed guitars and thumping bass, lyrics filled with hate and rage. I had Anna Nalick, with the exception of Pappa Roach and their song, 'Getting Away with Murder', she was in my head most of the time.

Inside I was shaking, fighting for control. Old pain and rage filling me. I didn't need this. Not tonight. I was going to go to work after this. I was going work with my good friend Nathan, one of the two remaining people in my life I truly trusted anymore after Rachel left. Damnit.Fight it. Fight it.
This is what group does. Pulls memories out of the dark and into the light. Mostly it's good but not tonight.Hutled into myself, hiding my feelings, I concentrated on the song, mentally turning up the volume.

Some days I wade in the indigo
Singing that song on the radio
I blame these puddles on the rain
You know I gotta keep these cheeks dry today
Gotta keep my cheating strategy
And baby I'm gonna have it made...

Under the Weight of Your Wings

2007-02-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

Bars of pale winter sunlight poured through the small, thick, plastic windows as the airliner banked over the bay. The bars of sunlight, like spotlights over London during the days of The Blitz shifted and traversed the passenger compartment, highlighting faces and shoulders of passengers, creeping smoothly along the inside of the curved fuselage.

Since boarding the plane back in Atlanta I had kept my eye on an Middle Eastern looking, military aged ,male passenger sitting to my left front across the isle from me. Actually I was watching everyone but mostly him. He had noticed me at boarding time and gave me a weak smile. I looked at him coldly, assessing him as a threat. The man had sat down and attempted to ignore me as I told myself to calm down and relax. I was back in The World now. Still he attracted my attention, just short glances every now and again, and I attracted his attention. Of course sitting on a US passenger flight in my sun and sweat faded DCUs I was difficult not to notice.
Eighteen days ago I was on patrol in Baghdad.

Now I’m on board an American Airlines flight making it’s final approach into Boston. I looked out the window as the cool blue ocean drifted past below, the wake of a fishing boat cutting the water in a white, churning V, headed out to sea. Slowly the land drifted into sight, docks and wharfs, roads and neighborhoods.
She's down there. Waiting for me.
Rachel.

Rachel Simmons. A woman I had never met in person but was already half in love with. A woman that had come to mean so much to me since November 2005 when she had sent me the first message over My Space. A message I ignored for more than a few days but eventually felt compelled to answer. Something about her drew me to her. The simple yet telling photographs on her page, her standing at the rail of a deck in a red dress with little white flowers on it, back to the camera, looking over her left shoulder. The background an explosion of sunlight and green leaves. Like Life it’s self.

That was the picture that hooked me, one I would return to over and over again. The one I would see when I closed my eyes on patrol and thought about her. Her smile, the way her hair looked. I imagined how the air would have smelled of green living things, the wind making rushing sounds as it blew through the fluttering leaves, moving like they were alive. The wood of the deck would creak as it was walked over.

I shouldn’t have been daydreaming of Rachel on the street, not this close to the end of the tour but I was. I knew better than to be mentally masturbating on the street but I still did it. She had become a reason for me to go on, even if I didn’t want to admit it openly, even if I feared it more than I had ever feared Death. Making the choice to live was much harder than choosing to die. Dying was easy, living...Now that took guts.

It didn’t start out that way. At first I nearly resented her messages, her questions. Who the hell was this woman asking me questions about me and my life? Why? What was her motive? She’s a fucking PhD, why the hell would she want anything to do with a Grunt like me?
I suppose my reticence conveyed it’s self over the computer screen and she made it easier on me, sending me 20 Questions to answer. With every new message, slowly pulling me back from the dark, nearly comforting, embrace of Death. Making me think again...and feel. Yes, feel, damn it. Feel emotions again. Feel things I had thought where dead in my blackened heart, in the vacuum of my soul. Somewhere in that stygian dark, colder than the deeps of space it’s self there was a spark, one lonely point of light that grew brighter with every contact with her. I knew what it was but I resisted it. I didn’t need it here. That lonely light would only hurt me in the end, it would draw away energy that I needed, fuel I needed for my hate, for my Engine.
My Engine. The thing that had never let me down, the Thing that drove me, that allowed me to do the things I needed to do in war to survive. The cold, emotionless creature that had grown inside me, the relentless being that had rose inside of me. A wartime creature, distant and only impersonally attentive. A killing creature that fed off my rage and hate, and fear.

The Engine.
It worked when I could not. When I was to afraid to think or act, It examined and determined, It chose what to do, and finally, It acted.
All while I cowered inside.

It resented the bright star inside me. Like the creature It was, The Engine knew the warm speck of light was not needed here, not in Iraq, the home of Death.
The spark, the light, was hope.

Hope. Something I had thought had been crushed inside of me, drowned in a sea of blood and tears, riddled with holes by bullets and shrapnel.
Somewhere in the dark, over thousands of miles, half a world away, Rachel had lite that fire in me again. Hope.
I began wearing additional armor on patrol.

She and I began instant messaging. Hours and hours on the computer, typing away, talking about everything and anything. I would lose sleep just to talk to her, to read her words, to laugh and dream.

With the time difference her today was my yesterday, her morning my night. I would check my watch and get online, sign into IM and wait for her to get up. Waiting in ambush I called it, hoping she would sign in soon.
We teased each other, sending pictures back and forth. She would send me sexy photos that she called ‘Fluff’, the stuff of fantasies to a guy like me. But it was the intellectual part I was attracted to. A woman I could actually talk to. Not just have a physical desire for. That’s what mattered, that’s what ignited the spark in me. Through November, into December, and finally January.
New Year’s Day was my last combat patrol in Iraq. Rachel was in Boston, would be there for a month to wrap some things up at Harvard where she worked. We had spoke on the phone before she left California. I don’t remember much about the conversation, besides her being sick. I do know it took at least three phone calls to get her on the line. She saved the first message I ever left her on her cell phone.
Little things that mean a lot.

New Year’s Day I gunned, sitting up in the turret, waiting for a sniper’s bullet to end my fledgling hope. To end my dreams. Sometimes I think it would have been a kindness if my life had ended on that day.

The next day the first group of my company left Camp Falcon headed for BIAP and the first leg of the journey home. I was with it, hauling my assault pack and two duffle bags across the rock and puddle spotted heliport that I had arrived on the year before, sweating and grunting toward the big CH-47, it’s duel rotor blades thumping and popping in the dark Iraq night, through hot jet wash and the smell of the JP-8 jet fuel, the smell of kerosene lanterns and cook stoves on camping trips.

We spent a week at BIAP, waiting to leave, waiting for the rest of the company to arrive, sleeping in Bedouin tents with concert floors as rain poured down outside. It was cold then, in the 40's at night. I would walk to the AT&T phone centers and call Rachel, the air humid in the trailers with the faint smell of hot electronics and stale cigarettes. Over the miles, transferred over satellite and earth stations, over mountain tops and farms, cities and small towns, following cables laid across the ocean floor, our conversations sparked in the dark, traveled the many miles from the edge of space to each others ears.
After leaving the trailer one night I stopped outside and looked up at the night sky remembering an email Rachel had sent back in December. She had gone on a walk and was looking at the night sky, it was cold that night, high in the mountains of Northern California where her parents lived. Cold and clear, the stars hard, distant points of light. She thought of me.

There, in Iraq, I thought of her, my breath pluming in the cold air. A line of tracers split the sky, lancing up from some distant firefight, racing up from the Earth only to slow down and float in the dark sky before winking out.
A bright flash followed by a distant BOOM , like summer lightning, echoed across this ancient land. A land where the Sumerian culture had flourished, where Hammurabi and Nebuchadrezzar had ruled, a land that had been fought over thousands of times by Alexander and the Persians, the Arabs, the British, and us.
Well,it's all over for you now.

Back in the tent I sat on my cot, the shiny green nylon groaning and popping as it took my weight. She was on my mind more and more, the closer I got to going back to The World the more Rachel stayed in my mind. I would imagine meeting her and her parents, I wondered what they would think of me? What she would think of me? After all she was incredibly intelligent, a fucking brain scientist and I had failed out of one year of college, art college none the less.
Shaking my head I slipped on my head phones and, borrowing Ski’s MP3 player, found the Anna Nalick album and skipped to track 8 and pressed PLAY.

Under the weight of your wings
You are a god and whatever I want you to be
And I wonder if truly you are
Nearly as beautiful as I believe

This was my "Rachel Song", filled with wonder and hope. She had become The World to me, a place filled with light and goodness, another world away from this one I lived in , ruled by Death, soaked in blood and fear. Rachel would sometimes ask me about my future over instant message. I would get upset, say I didn’t want to think about it because I didn’t at the time. In Iraq, where you could very well be killed just going to chow, it didn’t pay to think about the next five years. Or the next five minutes. It was one mission at a time, one second after another. If I made plans for the future that meant I was open to all the bad things that could happen, Death would notice me and take my ass out. I had noticed a trend with the battalions KIAs, either they got it before they went home on leave or after they came back and had patched things up with loved ones. They had made plans. If you didn’t think about that, you just might make it. Strange but that was the way I felt. In combat you hold onto superstitions that make no sense, things that are totally irrational. You can’t explain it, it just is.

She became my secrete dream, my very private hope for a future. And I would imagine that she would help save me, help me with my recovery, if I could just get out of that terrible place. And she was beautiful. One of the most memorable pictures she sent me was a simple one.
Her in a ribbed black sweater, looking over her right shoulder at the camera, reddish hair spilling over the black material, half smile on her lips, and green eyes glowing. In the background was a red jacket hung on the back of a chair in what looked like a cabin in the mountains.

In my head
Your voice
You've got all that I need
And this make believe will get me through
Another lonely night

After all that had happened to me, the loss of my friend Arnold, the loss of my fire team and stasis, the ending of my marriage, all the compounded fear and death, the total nihilism I fully embraced she crept in and lit the lamp of hope.

Under the weight of your wings
Should ever we meet on your side of your stereo
I will pretend I know not of your thoughts
And even the way that they mirror my own
I'll take you away in the way that you take me and go where I go

I carried her inside of me constantly now. The day before Election Day my section had been detailed to pick up two Navy EOD personal, a male and female, and their two dogs from FOB Prosperity and take them on patrol with us. All that day I recorded images and descriptions in my head, hoping I would make it back alive so I could tell her how it felt that day with no civilian vehicles on the road, the streets filled with people, kids playing soccer in the lanes of Rout Downfall and Highlander. Daydreaming about her as I searched a parking lot for VBIEDs.

She could understand me, she had gone through her own personal hell. We both had scars but we also had understanding, I had learned that much over our long, hours long IM sessions. The night before Election Day in December I got maybe two hours of sleep. I expected to die the next day anyhow so I might as well spend my last few hours chatting with a woman I was very attracted too.

I didn’t die.

That night, over the internet, I told her about Rocket Man and my shame over walking away from him. I would tell her more about that terrible afternoon later, things I would never tell another human, ever.

The American Airlines flight bumped onto the runway, air brakes extending, flaps and slats lowered, the engines howling as the plane slowed, coming under control again.
"Ahhh, on behalf of American Airlines and this flight crew we would like to welcome you to Boston...In the future we hope you choose...," the pilots voice was smooth and calm, practice, as always.

Main Body One from 184 laid over in Shannon, Ireland on the way to the US. This was my third stop in Shannon, my third trip to that green beautiful island. Every time had been on a return trip from the Middle East. Strong memories of breaking the cloud cover, descending over the blue, cold North Atlantic. The island green and verdant, brick houses and streets wet with rain. So different from the muted colors of Iraq and Kuwait.

In Ireland I borrowed a friends cell phone and called Rachel, drunk on more than a few pints of Guinness. She was with a friend of hers and we didn’t talk long. I just wanted her to know I was in Ireland and safe. While I talked to her I played with a black stone candle holder, Celtic designs carved into it’s sides. A gift I had bought her. After the call I drank more beer and downed more than a few slugs of Irish whiskey from a bottle that was being passed around.

Through out the out possessing at FT Bliss Rachel was on my mind. I remember she was the first person I called after reconnecting my cell phone. Later that night, drunk again, I crawled between some empty bunks in the huge white tents the battalion had once occupied during it’s training and sobbed over my guilt of not helping Rocket Man. I poured out my sadness to her, letting her in more and more.

We spoke frequently over the next week. I would walk out of classes, under the pretense of using the bathroom to talk to her. Text messages took the place of Instant Messages. Every morning she was the first person on my mind, the first person I would talk to, sending a good morning text message.

It was already on my mind to go see her in Boston the night I had the fight with my Dad. He was in Hawaii with his wife, both were lending a hand since Donna’s daughter was having a baby. I knew about this plan at least a month in advance. Back in Iraq the idea didn’t bother me, I viewed it as tragically romantic in a way. I would return from fighting a war to nobody. No one would be at the airport waiting for me to step off the plane. How fitting considering how the last year had gone.
However, now, at Ft Bliss the idea, the way it felt to know I was going to be alone when I reached California, began to pull me under a black cloud of sadness. And anger. And resentment.
How could my father do this? Not be waiting to greet me, his only child, when he comes home from Iraq? I knew in the core of my being that nothing would stop me from being there is it was my child. Nothing.

Yet it all fit with his actions since Donna has come into his life. The man that I knew as a child is no longer there, or he never was really there in the first place. He has transformed into something else, changed to suit Donna’s needs and the hell with the rest of the family, including his son. Donna’s family is much more important to him than I, that was apparent, since he was in Hawaii and couldn’t understand my feelings.

"Well, what the hell do you want me to do, Michael? Get on a plane and come over there?"
The conversation had started out okay but had taken a turn for the worse once I brought this subject up, as I knew it would.

I had planned as well as I could before I called him from the tents. I knew to used ‘I’ statements and to avoid generalizations. ‘I feel this,’ I feel that...’ you know.
"Yes, Dad, that’s exactly what I want you to do. I would be there if my son was coming home from a war. NOTHING would stop me!" I was getting upset, tears were forming in my eyes and my voice was rasing in impotent rage and hurt.
My father doesn't love me.

The thought hit me like a physical blow. I felt sick. Shattered inside. I remembered the hot phone center on Camp Falcon, the air heavy with dust and sweat, when he told me that he had KNOWN that my wife was going to leave me before she did. He had known and didn’t warn me, never let on that anything like that was going to happen.
I called him a buddy fucker that day.
"That’s what we call a dude that doesn’t look out for his buddies, Dad. And your one."
And here it was happening again.

"Well, I can’t do that, Michael. Donna’s daughter needs help with the house now that the baby is here and we can’t afford another ticket."
"FUCK the cost of the ticket!" I was shouting now, drawing looks from the others around me. "You think I fucking care about the cost of a GodDAMN ticket?"
Doc took hold of my elbow,"Dude, people are looking at you, man. Be cool."
I shook his hand off, turning away to face the top bunk, my Dad’s voice buzzing in my ear.
"I know, I know...I’m a terrible father. You can swear and whine and cry at me later. Tell me how I have never done anything for you." His voice was mocking, condescending.
"No, that’s not it and you know it, Dad. You just don’t GET IT, do you? It’s just like when you knew Wendy was going to leave and you didn’t say a word, just waited for it to happen, knowing all the shit I was already going through..."
"GODdamnit! I did the right thing by not getting involved in tha..."
I hung up the phone and dropped it on the bed, buried my face in the top bunks mattress and sobbed, hard, once.
"I don’t get it, man."I said, turning to face Doc. "My own father doesn’t love me enough to be there when we get released. Why, man?"
Doc looked down and shook his head. "I dun know, dude. It’s fucked up. That’s all... Fuck it, man. Lets go get drunk."

I decided to go standing in the line to get my Travel Voucher looked at.
"Well, you could come to Boston instead. I’d like that. I could get you tickets right now."
"That would be okay...? I mean, I don’t want to inconvenience you... Your sure?"
"Yes."

The first thing I noticed coming off the plane was a seafood restaurant, LEGAL SEA FOODS, white letters on a red oval. Inside was a drawing of a smiling fish on a plate. I can’t say I was nervous, and yet I can’t say I was not. I was concerned that she wouldn’t be waiting for me. That I would be stuck in the airport.
I washed my face in the men’s room and looked at my reflection. Still slightly tanned from the Iraqi sun, crows feet radiating from my eyes from squinting on patrol. The slightly distant, detached look in my eyes. I hadn’t gotten used to that yet.
"Lets to it." The face said back to me, in my voice.

My chest was tight coming down the escalator, the baggage pick up area was empty. I hitched my assault pack up high on my shoulders and scanned that area again.
Well, maybe she's...
Just then Rachel stepped from behind a bank of TV screens displaying flight information, arrival, departures, numbers. She was wearing black leather boots with zippers up the inside of the leg, black tights, a pleated plaid skirt and a sweater. Slim and long limbed, like a runner or fashion model, angular face and straight hair that look soft to the touch. It would smell good too, like life and growing things. Sunlight.
Quick flashing eyes took in everything around her, the light of a powerful intelligence radiating from them.

She saw me and smiled, maybe a small wave, I don’t remember. I was to taken away, it had all come down to this moment with her. Here I was, alive, after all those months, hours, minutes, seconds never knowing if the next was the last, the fear wearing at you constantly. After hoping to live, to find something good, some place to rest. Since I joined the Army so long ago I have been looking for home. I still often say to my self I want to go home. When I say that I don’t mean home, like a house, where I live. It’s more than that. It’s warmth and comfort and understanding. It’s love and acceptance. Someplace where I can put my weapons down and take off the armor. It’s out there, somewhere. I just have to find it.

"Hello."
"Hi."
I looked Rachel in the eyes, looked at her clear skin, breathed in her sent. The tiny light burning inside me grew brighter and warmer as we stepped into each others arms. I felt her muscles, like braided steele under soft skin and drank in her smell. And for the first time in a year and a half felt the tight ball of fear and rage and hate that filled my chest loosen and begin to melt, just a bit.

Home.

We kissed.

Still Here

2007-01-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm still here. I'm just taking sometime to think about somethings, sort some stuff out, figure out what I should write about. As I have said, the Holidays were difficult for me but I got through it as best I could.
Recently, though, I have been feeling hopeless again, depressed, listless - all things I am working on. The good news is I will be taking some Leave soon. I plan to go see my Aunt and Uncle in Oregon, get out of Sacramento, away from my job and apartment, out into the woods and away from people. I hope it will help clear my head a bit, bring back a spark of life. Help me to write again.
Writing has been difficult for me. I honestly don't know what to write about much of the time. I start thinking about it and it just gets harder until the words just won't come out at all. Sometimes even facing the blank computer screen is enough to send me back to my bed or out of the apartment. Maybe I've broken that now, though. After all here I am writing again, maybe not great stuff but it's at least expressing myself again.
I suppose things will just have to get better, even if I have to make them.

End of the Year

2006-12-31T15:41:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas Eve I threw my wedding ring off the 14 July bridge and into the Tigris River. I was standing mid span the water, thick with silt and mud, drifted slowly past in a circle of light cast by a spotlight aimed at the water.
I was gunning that night so I wasn’t wearing my chest rig, just body armor to better fit in the turret, or jump out in the event of a rollover or the vehicle was burning and for some odd reason I had survived. I stood at the rail, helmet off, looking at the water, tapping the ring against the metal. The bridge had been recently repainted a green that looked like it belonged on a barn.
I had been thinking about doing this for awhile now, been meaning to do it, but kept on forgetting. Tonight was probably the last chance I would get to do this, my last trip to the IZ, so it was now or never. The fact that it was Christmas Eve really meant noting, nothing significant, no special meaning.
So I threw the ring, spinning and flashing in the floodlight, in and out of the shadows, twisting in the black like a cast off piece of space junk, until it plops into the muddy water and sinks out of sight.

Earlier that month Ski and Mark Pooter had moved in with Doc and I. We were four to a room now, all the enlisted, since our replacements from the 101st had shown up. I had been dreading the change in the living situations, not knowing if I would have to move into another room, be split up from my buddy Doc, who was going to end up sharing our room.
In the end it all worked out fine. Ski and I were in the rear half of the room, away from the door and near the window, with Doc and Pooter near the door. Ski and I had things set up rather well, two stacked footlockers served as our table for our laptops, bunk beds -Ski slept on the top bunk.
Looking back on it now the room seemed much more alive with the addition of Ski and Pooter, warmer, and that month was the happiest month I had in Iraq.

I’ve spent the last month wishing for a time machine to take me back to December of 2005, back to world I know, back to when all things seemed possible. All I had to do was survive. Just get home and everything would be easy. After all I had things to look forward to. I was already half in love it Rachel. Daily instant messaging sessions that lasted for hours.

I had a clean slate.

What a difference a year makes.

It’s been difficult to know what to write, or even to write at all. I don’t know what to call this lassitude that has been hanging onto me. Depression? If so how serious? Do I need to change my medication? Go into to the VA and see Dr Kay again, talk to Sandy about all this? I just don’t know. All I have are questions. What a miserable Goddamn month.

Rachel called me on Christmas Day. I had worked the night before and would be back at work in a few hours. She was at her sisters. Everyone had gone to her brother-in-laws grandparents but she didn’t. She has a had medical problems recently, spent and entier day in the ER a week or two ago. We were both depressed, she in physical pain, me emotional, and for a wonder this time I could actually speak to her without getting up set.
She says she still cares about me, still loves me even, wants to be part of my life, wants to be my friend but she dosen’t realize she is no longer in ‘the circle of trust’. She stopped being one of the few trusted people in my life the second she decided it was over between us. She is no longer ‘Us’. She has now become one of ‘Them’. I still hurt over the loss, I still miss her, but I no longer trust her.

New Years Eve last year C for Charlie Company ran it’s last raid. That was also the night 184 had it’s last man killed. Days before the battalion was supposed to start leaving Iraq, in my case less then seventy two hours left. Days and hours. What a fucking waste.
The raid started before midnight and wrapped up hours later. A the stroke of midnight, the new year, 2006, the Iraqis fired their weapons into the air, ribbions of red and green traces - first seeming to race towards the sky - then slowing, floating upward before finally winking out.
I left my truck and walked back to the truck Mark Pooter was driving and pulled open the door.
"Happy New Year, Mark," I stuck out my gloved hand.
"Happy New Year, Mike," his grip tight. He was just a shadow inside of a shadow.
"Lets hope 2006 is better than 05."

After the raid I didn’t get any sleep. It was back to Falcon and out on patrol with the rising sun, New Years Day and my last patrol. I was gunning. And, of course, the patrol was flagged down by some I.A. soldiers that need a mortar round blown up for them.
So I watched the sun rise over Route Downfall for the last time, trying to ignore the itching feeling I had that a sniper was going to put a new hole in my face any second. The next day I was on a CH-47 and on the way to BIAP and out of the war.

What a difference a year makes.

Nights Like These

2006-12-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

It's nights like this that I miss the war. Nights alone with to much time to think that I feel it calling to me. I miss the excitement of patrols and raids, especially the raids. Being the first man in the door, knowing you may die in the next few minutes, the next few seconds. Feeling that rush, every sense becomes sharper, vision tightens and becomes clearer like you are finally really seeing the world. Air passages open up, you no longer just breath the air you drink it in feeling your lungs turn it into energy for your body, the great machine that holds all that is you. The electricity that flows through your finger tips into your brain, touching your weapon, making it part of your arms and hands. One with your mind.
If I just look at something or someone and think die they die. The weapon fires on it's own sending the bullet to the target.

There were nights on patrol that I actually felt the city and it's people inside of me...Or maybe I was inside if it. Injected into the living organism that was Baghdad, racing through it's veins, feeling more than hearing the steady thump, thump, thump of the giant beasts heart beat. I was one with everything. All I had to do was close my eyes and feel the mood of the city. Tonight it wanted to kill us, kill me, tomorrow it was content to let us roam freely. Connected into The War, like a acolyte of Mars, the bloody remorseless god of war. Knowing when it was hungry for our blood, anybodies blood.
There was a time over there when I was completely in love with the War. With the killing and dying. The excitement, like a lover you know you shouldn't be with, knowing the lover will hurt you sooner or later but you just can't get enough, can't stop. That feeling you get just before and accident happens, the brief moment of clarity that suddenly opens up the Universe to you seconds before the cars collide. You know whats going to happen, you can see it but you are powerless to stop it.
I loved that feeling.
I wanted to eat the War, I wanted it inside me, to roll in it, wallow in the moment between Life and Death. I never wanted it to end.

Then it bit me, hard. D was killed and it became Real. All my gods turned against me, or showed their real faces. The War, Iraq it's self, and the master of them all Death. I was just one more sacrifice being lead up the temple steps where the priests with obsidian knives waited to cut out my still beating heart.
That's when I began to fear the War. To see Death for what it really is, a deal with the Devil. There is no escape, no bargains to be made. It doesn't care.

And yet, on nights like this I feel It calling to me through time and space. Wanting me back in it's arms, a long lost lover. And I want to go back. Back where things make sense, where life is lived on the razors edge, where the only thing that matters is coming back alive, not bills or work or the future. Only Now. The next breath you draw.

Nights like this I know that I broke my promise with The War to die there and It's angry with me over that. Sometimes i feel that the space I am supposed to occupy in the Universe has closed up but I'm still here. I escaped, somehow, a Cosmic mistake God over looked in the books only here, in The World, I am much harder to find, surrounded by the living.
Wondering why I lived and so many others did not.
I had nothing to lose and I wanted to die while others that wanted so desperately to live did not. It seems like a cruel joke.
I imagine God, like a black and white movie from the Fifties, white robes, white beard and flowing hair, his desk covered with scrolls and heavy bound leather books, the spines guiled in gold, ink well and feather pen as He does His work.
An angel comes in from off screen," It's that guy, Mike D, again."
"Him?" God says. "That's it! Kill him this time! He's way over due."
The angel exits, then He realises something, remembers something He forgot.
"No, wait! Not him! Kill somebody else!"

Almost a year that I have been back and I'm still searching for answers, looking for a reason to still be breathing. It was easier over there and I miss it.
I miss the War.
I still love the War, somewhere deep inside of me and I know that no matter what I do with my life, get married again, have a child, write a book, nothing else will affect me as much. Nothing else will mean as much to me as twelve months in combat ever did. The missions, the patrols, the rush.

I still miss the War.

I still love it.

And I still hate it.

The Two Georges

2006-12-21T15:37:00.001-08:00

I found George the cat at the local SPCA. It was a rainy, windy Friday, the sky the color of lead. In my jacket pocket I had a list of cats I wanted to look at, I had been checking the SPCA’s website for a week or two, looking for a potential friend. I needed something at home to keep me going, to keep me company since Rachel decided to end our relationship.
I needed something to take care of.
Before I went to Iraq I had a cat named Color. I had brought her home from work where somebody had abandoned her and her brother, later a third cat showed up, Color’s sister with nearly the same markings, long soft hair with streaks and blotches of orange and tan, like a turtle’s shell. The male cat was killed by a coyote so I decided to take Color home to live with Wendy and I. When Wendy decided that she just couldn't’t take staying in our marriage anymore and disappeared with most of my bank account, three guns of mine and my computer she took Color to the pound and I never saw my cat again.

The other female cat, I had named her Turtle, was still at work after two years. Still being fed by the guys, still being taken care of. I guess Turtle remembers me from before Iraq because I seem to be the only person she likes. She jumps up on my lap, lays down and proceeds to lick my hands for hours, her little tongue like sand paper. Sometimes I have to make her stop and I’m surprised not to see blood oozing from the spot she had been working on.
I like Turtle but she has been neigh feral for two years and I didn’t know how she would take suddenly becoming and indoor cat.

When I opened the door to the cat colony where where George was living one cat, a big grey and black tabby meowed and trotted over to me and began circling my legs, rubbing against me and purring, his tail held high. That was George the cat.

My first memory of George the terp was a few days after the Al Sadier hotel had been attacked by a VBIED. A dump truck packed with thousands of pounds of explosives. The blast had left a crater feet deep and yards wide, the kind left by a 500lbs bomb dropped by a fighter bomber. The explosion had blown out every window for blocks, stunned the American contractors living in the hotel, buckled the elevator doors, ripped doors off their hinges, and knock celing tiles loose in the hallways. There is video of the even on the Internet.
Haji loves to video tape his attacks. Crappy film quality, poor camera operation, oppressively loud religious music as a soundtrack, and always some asshole repeating, "Allah ackbar, Allah ackbar", until the target is hit. Then they go crazy.
Remember, Islam is a peaceful religion. If you believe that, I’ve got some swamp land to sell you.

C for Charlie had not been in country for long and we were still getting used to things, getting the feel for what the sector was like, what could kill us and what couldn't’t. It was late February and raining, the streets flooding with sewage, block long puddles of stinking black water.
Second platoon was at the Al Sadir, helping to secure the building. Days before that had taken part in a long range firefight, US Soldiers firing from the rooftop and empty hotel rooms, the Bad Guys from a nearby building. In the aftermath empty shell casings and drying pools of blood were found. No bodies.
Just like another war fought in a jungle halfway around the world from this war.

1st PLT stopped by the hotel to check on 2nd PLT and to have a look around, like tourists. To see what War looked like. Ii embarrasses me to write that.
George was our Terp that night. Terp, short for Interpreter. He was sitting outside the front entrance to the hotel with us, talking about how he wanted to go to America so he could go to a strip club.
I started asking him questions about Iraq and himself. If he was married? No. How old he was, 31. We were the same age, born months apart. I can’t remember who was born first.
Over the months, as the men of the company and the Terps worked together more and more we all became closer and more trusting. With the nearly insurmountable language barrier, not to mention the cultural barriers we had to trust these guys. Had to know what they were telling us was the truth. It wasn't always easy and we went though more than a few. Sometimes battalion would make use one of their Terps and you would get a bad feeling off of him, or her.

When they were working the Terps lived with us. They had their own room, ate with us, went to the PX with us, accompanied us on raids and patrols, helped evacuate wounded with us and, sometimes, died with us.
C for Charlie eventually ended up with four steady Terps, George, my friend, John, Big Show, and Julio.

John was 23, short, a little soft around the middle and wore glasses. He had learned English by running an Internet café for the Coalition then decided to make the big bucks and become a Terp.One night on Route Downfall John had helped evac wounded when the LT’s truck was hit. That was when John earned the respect of 1st PLT.
Big Show was in his late 20 and was getting married soon. John and George went to the wedding party where John got drunk on whiskey. Big Show’s name came from his striking resemblance, both face and build, to the WWF wrestler of the same name. Big Show’s English was very good, probably the best out of the four. Sometimes his Arabic was questionable.
For a while 1st PLT did mosque assessments on Mondays. Mosque Assessment Mondays I called them. Basically battalion would select a mosque in our sector and send us out to listen as the Imam gave his sermon over the PA.
This particular Monday we had Big Show with us. At one point he turned to the patrol leader and suggested that we get George or John next time since they were better at understanding what was being said.
"Well, what the fuck!," retorted the patrol leader,"You can speak Arabic right? Are you sure your even fuck’n Iraqi, Big Show?"
Every group needs to have a scammer, a mouthy skinny dude that can get you anything - at a price - the guy that is always looking for an angle, and usually finds one. Julio was that guy. The only Muslim in the group, all the others were Christians, skinny with droopy eyes and a drawn face, Julio could be any age between 20 and 30 years old. I never learned much about him, never really hung out with him because I never fully trusted him.

George, then, was 32, unmarried and, as he liked to point out had a degree in mathematics. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of The Bee Gees. During the 1990s he was served a stint in the Iraqi Army under good old Uncle Saddam. He was a member of the Baath Party, like all Iraqi students were at the time. With his education he was put into the Republican Guard, to teach math of all things. His only weapons training involved shooting a few rounds out of a pistol.
I would sit for hours in his room, sometimes Big Show was there, sometimes John, and we would talk about life in Iraq before the US came. The clubs and Discos that swelled with young men and women, dancing and drinking all night long.
The Discos were also full of Saddam's people. The big shots that would take over tables at the back of the room, like gangsters in movies do, eyeing the throng of undulating masses like sharks. Soon Saddam's thugs became a problem. Since they were pretty much untouchable they would take what they wanted, beat people up, arrest them, or simply kill them. Eventually word got back to the big man.
His people were causing problems so, instead of disciplining his people, Saddam shut the clubs down.
The idea of Baghdad being a party city fascinated me to no end. I know Baghdad had once been a vacation destination for Western tourists. Agatha Christie wrote many of her best selling novels while living there.
We talked about the corruption in the government under Saddam, the level - or lack thereof - of education. Teachers were so underpaid they made students pay to take classes. The primitive medical care in hospitals, bloodletting is still practiced in Iraq today. Power outages, failing infrastructure - all the money went to Saddam's palaces and his never ending quest for bigger and military equipment and weapons.
And the never ending fear living under Saddam's rule brought.

"Under Saddam... you always had to be careful of what you say. You never know who might be listening or if someone would turn you in."
George, John, and I were outside the barracks one night in between missions. John was smoking one of his Pine cigarettes, blowing smoke at the moths orbiting the lights like planets in a solar system.
"Under Saddam...,"John paused, his glasses flashing in the light, head cocked to the side the way it always did when he began to speak, like he was translating his words from Arabic to English in his head,"...Some people, not very smart people, used to believe that if you say bad things about Saddam he would show up, BOOM!, out of nowhere and take you away."
"Show up and take you away?" I asked.
George stepping back into the conversation that this point,"He mean...ahhh... show up out of thin air like vampire, like demon, you know?"
"I see...," I thought about it looking out at the HUMMVEEs in the gloom,"people really believed that? That he was that powerful, huh?"
That question launched John and George into an animated rapid fire exchange of Arabic accompanied but waving hands and arms flapping. Watching those two together was a never ending source of entertainment for me. The George and John Show. Arguments or heated disagreements would start in English then grow in volume and speed and finally break into a full blown Arabic verbal firefight.
One evening George, John, Gilbert, Doc and I were in the hallway outside my room, gathered around the meat freezers that held our water bottles. Gilbert was asking what, if anything, the red lights we saw in certain windows out in sector meant.
George glanced at John with sly smile, we locked eyes for a second and I knew he was about verbally slam John.
"Ahh...it means that John's mother is available for service." About two beats when by before John really understood what George has said before he began punching George in the shoulder, hard, and yelling at him in Arabic. Of course we Joes found this very funny and the comment was followed by a chorus of appreciative OOOoooo's and, "DAAAMN!"s.

After my wife left me and The Word got out George never brought it up but for one time. We were walking to the trucks for a mission when he stopped me, looking into my eyes and placing a hand on my shoulder,"You are OK?"
"Yeah, I'm OK."
"You are good man. You are my best American friend."

When I shot the old man George was there to reassure me when I thought I was going to go to jail for sure. The patrol was out in front of the CAS where we transported all our victims, US or Iraqi. The excitement was wearing off and I was starting to really realize just what it was I had done.
"George, I...I... Didn't want to shoot, man, but the fucking car wouldn't stop! I thought it was a Goddamn VBIED! Shit... I'm fucked."
He walked me away from the group of Soldiers, his arm around my shoulders. "You do the right thing. You are a good man. You were protecting us, how were you to know it was not Veebed? You don't. You did the right thing."

When I went home on leave in October I looked for things to bring back for my friends, George and John but was unable to find anything good enough. I discussed the problem with my Dad and step mom and settled on two Bibles since George and John were Christians. Both men were very moved by the gifts and what my Dad and Donna had written inside to each of them. I think John was near tears," Now I can pratice reading in English!"
After that George would ask how my parents were doing every time we met. Later he brought a gift for them, a porcelain ash tray set. The sides were adorned with delicately painted pink flowers, the glaze fading from pink around the lip to a pure white.
"See, it is very pretty, yes?" He asked opening the package so I could see.
"It's very pretty, my friend, very. Thank you." I didn't have the heart to tell him neither one of my parents smoked anymore.
"Tell your parents...Ahh, I wish them a happy and long life."
For Christmas my parents sent two books to George and John, coffee table books filled with glossy photos of the natural beauty of the US. Both went over very well.

I flew out of Camp Falcon on the 2nd of January 2006. I said goodbye to all the Terps we had worked with over the year, hugged John and Big Show, even hugged Julio. I wasn't looking forward to saying goodbye to George, leaving him behind to an uncertain future.
I never got to say goodbye to him though. He had been off the last few days, back with his family and was supposed to come back today. He didn't get back in time for me to see him. Another thing to feel guilty about.

I worry about my friend and wonder what he is going. I hope he got that easy job in the IZ he was talking about.
I hope he is still alive.
I miss my friend.

And I have become a Bee Gees fan.

Walls

2006-12-17T06:16:00.000-08:00

There’s a scene in the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ that is one of the most moving and emotionally true scenes that has ever come out of Hollywood.
Capt. John Miller is sitting with Pvt Ryan, Ryan is sitting on the steps of a building, his M-1 across his knees. Capt Miller is in a chair that could have been blown out of a café or a dinning room, nothing fancy.

Ryan is lamenting the fact that he cannot remember his brothers faces. Miller tells him to think of them in the context of a memory, a scene, as Capt Miller does with his own wife. Remembering her in the garden, pruning her rose bushes, wearing a pair of his old work gloves.
That’s when Ryan launches into his story, the last night he and all his brothers were together on the farm. He warms to it until finally he can barely contain himself with laughter.

But it’s not Ryan you should be watching.

As Ryan becomes more and more pulled into his memory, his story, Miller is steadily pulled further and further away, inside himself, retreating behind his emotional and mental walls. You can see it happen.
I can feel it happen. I’m right there with Capt Miller. Ryan’s emotional openness, his joy in recounting the story of his last night with his brothers, is someplace that Miller can no longer go. Not after what he has felt, all the men he has lost, everything he has seen. Everything he has done.

For a moment or two the walls crack and Miller actually smiles along with Ryan. But it dosen't last long.

The emotional numbness that comes out of nowhere, the defensive walls you have no control over, cutting you off from other people, people you are supposed to be close to, trust, be open with. Only it’s no longer possible and there is no way you can explain it to others, even if they wanted to listen. Which most of the time they don’t.

I don’t know how Tom Hanks was able to portray that emotional distance so perfectly, but he did which is a testament to his skills as an actor. His acting was good enough for me to recognize it and follow him behind his walls, behind mine.

War Story

2006-12-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

This post also appears in the excellent book "The Blog of War" by my good friend Matthew Currier Burden, Major, US Army (RET). I figured I would repost it here, with the original title and the Anna Nalick lyrics put back in, for those of you that haven't read the book and because I think it's one of my best pieces of writing.

Nearly two hours later the patrol was back at the scene, the only evidence of the drama that had unfolded there were the still bright puddles of blood and a few scraps of plastic from the battle dressings and Kerlix we had used.

Everything else was gone.

The blood soaked flannel shirt and T shirt I had cut off the man I was working on. His jeans, well, those had been carried off seconds after I had pull them off the man by a woman in a black abaya, the half empty water bottle, the car the men were riding in, blood splattered interior, the windows frosted and crazed by bullets, the door skins pocked marked with more strikes.

I shouldn't be surprised but I was. Iraq is like that. Every time I think that I have finally seen it all - seen everything that there possibly is to see - that my capacity to be shocked or amazed is over Iraq will show me something else. Just to prove me wrong.

The patrol was just into its first hour on the street, my first daylight patrol since returning from leave. I was in a good mood, happy to be back out on the street, images of the sun rising behind the gray clouds above the chow hall fresh in my mind. Rays of light spread across the sky like spokes on a wheel, the edges of the clouds burned a neon orange red. On the edge of the built up area kids were going to school, the girls dressed in white long sleeved shirts, bib type dark blue dresses reaching down to their ankles. The boys in white polo shirts and dark pants, backpacks slung over their shoulders, the girls pressing their books to their chests, arms akimbo. Just like school girls back in The World.
The boys yelled at our HUMMVEES as we rumbled by. Some strutting and looking hard at us, the younger ones holding out hands and shouting. "Mister! Mister! Chocolate!"The girls ducking their chins down but following us with their eyes. Some smiling shyly at the gunners. Ski, my gunner was throwing handfuls of Jolly Ranchers to some groups. "Only the ones that don't ask for anything." He thought for a minute,” And the cute girls...the rest of 'em can go fuck themselves."

Crossing a dirt and trash strewn open area between roads and houses, high tension towers above, Ski was the first one in the truck to hear the firing. "SHOTS! Off to the five o'clock, about three hundred meters!" The LT called up to the lead truck, SSG Bull and his crew. Bull's gunner, Rio, had heard them as well. Random shooting in nothing out of the ordinary in Iraq. The Iraqis like to shoot. They shoot into the air at weddings, birthdays, when the soccer team wins, when someone dies. Sometimes when they just feel like it. The IAs and IPs shoot when they are bored or scared or want to get through traffic jams. Whatever. The patrol thumped over the curb and on to the street when a second burst of fire ripped the air off to my right front. "Where THE FUCK is that coming from?" I wondered.

I didn't see anyone running but it sounded close. Through the HUMMVEE windshield I saw a metallic gray car lurch to a stop and three figures tumble out. Two men and a woman. The woman was wearing a red dress with large tropical looking flowers on it. I watched her stagger forward, like someone carrying a great weight on their shoulders. Bent at the waist she was clutching her are to her mid section. The two men were just behind her; one had his arms raised above his head, and the other lurched forward. The woman finally went to her knees then rolled onto her back. Like it was a signal for the two men they all stopped, the trailing one crumpled to the roadway, loose jointed, head bobbing, like a machine slowly breaking down.

By then the Soldiers in the two lead trucks were dismounted or in the process of doing so. I had just popped my door when the hated cry reached my ears. "MEEEEEDIC!"

Fuck. Here we fucking go, man.

"LET'S GO DOC! They need you up there!" Turing around in my seat I looked at our current medic. A 19 year old Asian kid from our Brigade. Our normal platoon medic and my roommate has been out of the game for a while with whiplash to his back and neck. The result of an IED that blew our female translators face off back in August. Doc A, my buddy had worked on her saving her life. I had seen him save other lives, I had seen Doc A bring people back from Death. He had worked on Iraqis and Soldiers, putting the pieces back together, elbow deep in blood, but Sara was just too much for him. He had seen to much, taken to much pain inside himself, looked too deep and long into Horror. Sara lived just under twenty four hours. The doctors had reconstructed her face with what was left of her feet but we all agreed that she had just given up. With both her feet gone and her face the way it was, I don't think she tried very hard to hold on.

Doc F was his replacement until Doc A got back on his feet again. Doc F, fresh from medic school at Ft Sam Houston and Charlie Med. Out from Camp Anaconda on a war safari, doing his time 'in the shit'. Well, he found it with us. Here the war is 24/7. It never goes away. And people get hurt in terrible ways.

I grabbed one of his bags, slinging it over my shoulder, M-4 in one hand, while Doc F shouldered his aid bag. "I'll go with him." I don't know why I wanted to go. I have seen the damage that bullets and shrapnel does to a human body. I had done some of the damaging myself. Running up with Doc, leaving him behind, I wondered what I was going to see and for a second, for one step, I hesitated. Do I really need more images of rent flesh, of people in pain to have dreams about? Those nastily little flashbacks that come at unexpected times? No, but it was too late to go turn back now.
The three people were close together, the two on the ground laying feet away from each other. throwing the aid bag to the ground I scanned over the people and stopped again. What I had thought was a woman in a red dress with flowers on it was actually a man in what had been an off white Dish-dasha, the Haji man dress that so many men wear. The red was blood, the flower pattern the white portions on the material. the blood was already specked with the dark bodies of flies that raised and fluttered like clouds.
Well, you’re fucked, I thought, turning to pull near security at the corner of the nearest HUMMVEE. The exhaust flashed warm across my face.
Glancing back one more time at the fellow in the flannel shirt, I watched a thick stream of blood spurt at least four inches out of his neck. There was already a pool of blood under the man's head, running down his arm, soaking his clothes. His pants were dark with it. The hot copper smell hung in the air mixed with the old locker room smell of sweat.

Shit.

I slung my rifle and tore my flight gloves off, no way I was getting those all fucked up in Haji blood. The words HEP A, B, and C flashed in my head. At the same time I was attempting to dig into my leg bag and aid pouch. The leg bag for a roll of Kerlix, the aid pouch for my latex gloves. I needed more hands. Finally I got the gloves on and began tearing at the wrapper of the Kerlix with my teeth when the smell hit me again and I realized I was going to have to put my hands in that mess. I gagged, saliva pooling in my mouth. God I was going to be sick. I tasted the hash browns and bacon I had eaten for breakfast again. Shit! I am NOT going to vomit. Get a hold of yourself, man.

I knelt down and pressed the white gauze to the guy’s neck. He was moaning and crying in Arabic. The roll of gauze was rapidly soaking up the dark blood still pumping out of the Iraqis neck. "DOC! I need you over here. This guy is shooting blood all over the fucking place!" Doc picked up and moved over to me. I scanned the man's body over, looking for more wet spots, more wounds. Right. This guy’s entire clothing was soaked and dark with blood. Coagulated chunks of blood had pooled in the wrinkles of his jeans, showing up bright against the dark material. I dry heaved again, old memories beat against the insides of my eyes like the dark wings of a trapped bird. Pull it TOGETHER! Get control! NOW!

"Doc hold this while I cut his shirt off. This dudes so covered in blood I can’t tell if he's hit anywhere else." I reached for my shears and felt and felt Doc's hand press down on mine. Letting go I pulled the shears free and reached for the edge of the guy’s shirt just as he spit out a mouth full of blood, splattering my knee and boots. I tasted bacon again and fought down the urge to puke once more. Puking on the wounded will defiantly not earn me any cool points.

Cutting his shirt away I pulled another roll of Kerlix out of my leg bag. At this point in the deployment I carried more medical gear than I did ammo. I wiped away the blood on his side and began counting holes. One, two, three, four, five... Wait, let me do that again. One, two, three... Five. Five holes in the side of this man's chest. Not big holes, not like you see in the movies, torn and gaping, just little innocent looking things no larger than a big zit. They weren't even bleeding. Little gouges in his skin, black purple, and beginning to swell. What was happening inside? He was breathing, gasping for air and talking.

I have seen sucking chest wounds before, the side with the deflated lung sunk in, the wounded struggling for air and in great pain.
Yet this guy had been shot six fucking times. Six times and was still moving around. Goddamn.
"Ahhh...Hey Doc, this fuckers got FIVE goddamn holes in his chest. You might want to look at this, man."
I looked at Doc F. He was working but he was overwhelmed, focusing on the still bleeding neck wound.
"Doc. Doc, look at me," my voice was calmer than I felt. Doc found my eyes.
"Hey! We need some more help over here!" Mac came running over and held the soaked Kerlix while Doc put an ACS bandage on the worst of the chest wounds, feeding the little latex hose into the hole.

The third Iraqi was wandering around. I snagged him.
"Hey! You’re his friend, right?"
The man looked blankly at me. I couldn't remember the Arabic word for friend.
"Look," I said pointing to the wounded man and making opening and closing motions with my hand, like a mouth,” talk to him, OK? Make sure he stays with us."
I was afraid of the guy going into shock, of fading out on me. Giving up. Fuck that. I was not going to let this son of a bitch dies on me. The man fired off rapid Arabic. There was a woman with in black abaya standing near by, crying and putting her hands to her face.
"Someone get her the fuck out of here!"
There were people everywhere. Soldiers, Iraqis, kids on bikes. Fuck, the entire city had turned out to watch the show. Better than what’s on TV. Life and death in your front fucking yard.
"Sgt D! Hold this!" Mac was digging for fresh roll of Kerlix. I replaced his hand on the guy’s neck just as he spit out another mouth full of blood. At the same time I felt a warm syrupy stream of blood splatter against my palm. And gagged again.
With the new roll placed I threw the old one away. It landed heavily in the dirt a few feet away. It sounded like a wet dish rag.

I began to cut the guys pants off, trying to cut through his leather belt with the Harley Davidson logo in the buckle. Blood was pooled in the low spots of the brass colored oval bringing the letters and the motorcycle into stark relief.

"Holdin' on to something
That's keepin'me from jumpin
'So afraid to go in alone
Holding up this fortress
With imaginary forces
Longing for a..."

Goddamn Anna Nalick song. I was singing it to myself. The weirdest shit goes through your head out here at these kind of moments. Lines from movies, images, memories that have nothing to do with the current situation. Sometimes you wonder if you’re losing it a bit... OK, more than just a bit.

"What if I fall
What if I don't
What if I never make it home
What if I bleed
What if I break
And I find that I can't take..."

I ended up just pulling the guys pants off, with his help. Shot six times and the guy is helping me talk his pants off. "Hey, dude, just lay back, OK?"
I flung them aside, noting the over large bill fold in his pocket. His ID would be in there. It turned my head back, doing a quick scan of his legs. When I looked back for the pants the woman in the abaya was making her way out of the press of Soldiers with the pants under her arm. Ah, well... Fuck it. He really didn't need them anyhow.

With wounded men, a wounded anybody, standard procedure is to cut EVERYTHING off the person. The Iraqi male I was helping to treat had knee length blue shorts on under his pants. They looked like soccer shorts or something to me. There was no visible blood on the shorts, no wet spots, unlike another Iraq that Doc A and I had treated on the shoulder of Route Downfall one evening.
That male had been hit by an IED - either an innocent bystander or the trigger man - my first sucking chest wound. he had pissed himself there was blood coming out of the end of his penis, staining his white under shorts. In the orange light of the setting sun the blood took on a rust color.

I tugged at the elastic waste band of the shorts. I was aware of the Muslim squeamishness toward nudity and I asked myself if I really wanted to see this guys junk. I decided to leave his shorts on him.

During the entire process, cutting clothes, trying to stop bleeding the man had been moaning and talking. I find it interesting, with wounded Iraqi children - little bodies with jagged chunks of metal in them, holes in their heads - I have never seen them cry. Instead they just look at you, expecting you to help them.
The adults, however, will roll and thrash around. Crying out, asking for water - one time an Iraqi that had been shot six times asked Doc A for juice - demanding treatment.

This guy kept pointing to his mouth and talking. "Look dude, I can't give you any water man." I kept telling him.
Finally Mac poured a little water into his mouth and discovered another wound.
"Holy shit! This guy was shot through the mouth! The bullet entered his mouth and came out the back of his neck! GodDAMN!"

We rolled him over and began strapping him to one of the plastic backboards that are strapped to every vehicle in the company. The boards are just a bit over six feet long and resemble surf boards. They were yellow until Keo and I spray painted them black. I left a yellow smiley face and a hippy looking flower on mine.

Four of us carried the man to my truck and I stayed with him to monitor his condition while Doc assisted with the Evac of the other man in the dish-dasha. He had been shot in the arm, chunks of flesh removed from his bicep. It turned out that their other friend, the guy that had been running around was shot in the arm as well. The last I had seen of him Sgt Agie was helping him put a field dressing on his arm. "Hey let me help you with that, dude."

I stood at my man's head looking into his eyes, trying to keep him with me. He was laid out across the wide body of the HUMMVEE, his head behind the driver's seat. I would be the one driving him to the CASH.
Clouds of flies, drawn by the smell of blood were thick on his chest. I tried to keep them off but was losing the battle. I watched his eyelids flutter and he began to gasp for air. His eyes closed.
"Hey...Hey!" I poked him in the forehead, hard. "Stay with me, motherfucker. You’re not fucking dying in my truck, ok?"
His eyes opened and focused, pupils big but not to bad.
"Good. That's right, look in my eyes, ok? It's you and me in this together, man. Hold on."
My Arabic was failing me. What was the goddamn word for hospital again? Did I know the word for hospital? I couldn't remember. Finally, after what felt like way to long, we loaded up and were on the way to the CASH up in the IZ, dodging snarled traffic. Doc F gave my man and IV in the back of a rolling and bumping HUMMVEE. Not bad.

In the end, we got both men to the CASH. The guy with the wound to the arm wasn't so bad after all. My guy, he lived. He's going to live too. He will spend a lot of time in the hospital but he will make it. I'm glad too, very glad, because next time that could be me.

22 August 2005

2006-12-02T00:58:00.000-08:00

Mondays at Camp Falcon Chicken Cor Don Bleu was served, either lunch or dinner. Doc and I used to keep close tabs on the time that meal was server. Ever other Monday it was lunch, the others, dinner. Doc and I had plans for those days, either one.

First you get in line after having your military ID checked by armed Soldiers," Yes, we are all Americans today." A duty which sucked since I was stuck on it more than once during September of '05.
Once in the chow hall you get your plastic plate and flat wear wrapped in clear plastic and choose your line. Fast food, burgers, grilled cheese, pizza that never quite tasted right or Main Course. Chicken Cor Don Bu.

Unless you were their you cannot understand the Chicken Cor Don Crack as Doc called it. The smell, the way it would steam when you cut it open with you white plastic fork... The breaded outside, like tiny loaves of bread, lovingly baked around a boneless shell of chicken, chucked and formed. Inside the tasty, zesty slice of ham soaking in melted white cheese... Heaven.

Doc would order two, then after dining on the meal, go up and get two more in a To-Go tray to enjoy later in our room, washed down with cold Dr Peppers. I did the same thing.

This Monday I was alone, walking to the chow hall with my M-4 slung over my shoulder, and in a good mood. My wife, Wendy had sent me a Dear John IM over Yahoo a week or two ago, but today I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, I would make it out of Iraq alive.
Clouds of slit dust plumed around my boots and I was smiling, the T walls surrounding the chow hall in site. Off in the distance, to the west there was an explosion. Nothing new. Explosions and gunfire were like sirens and traffic noise in The World. Something that is always there but you only half listen to. I thought it was another IED going off in another sector.

As I neared a rust colored CONEX box I heard an incoming round. Now, you don't really hear mortars as they fly in, invisible and deadly. You hear the THUNK as they leave the tube but after that it's a guessing game. It it going to hit 100M away or land on you?

This was different.

I have read and heard Vets talk about the sound of incoming shells, 105s, 155s, 88s, like a freight train coming into a station without breaks. A kind of scraping sound, Spc Ski later describer it as sounding like a sheet of plywood being dragged across a concrete wall.

No matter what it sounded like to those guys my animal brain has recorded that sound as meaning danger and I will never forget it as long as I live.

Well, I heard that sound and screamed, "INCOMING!" As I dove for the dirt, and for a second, frozen in time, I saw the round as it streaked in, Just a dark green blur against the washed out blue Middle Eastern sky. A moment frozen in time.

A rocket.

I built a model rocket with my Dad when I was in 6th Grade on our kitchen table. It was black, a two stage EASTES rocket, the body made out of cardboard, the fins balsa wood, nose cone made of plastic. A red and white striped colored parachute, the kind you built in middle school science class.

The rocket arched in , just missing the roof of the chow hall. I watched it come in and explode in the hallway created by the inverted 'T's, the walls that were there to protect us from just that type of explosion. Not a great fiery ball, like you see in the movies, but a black ball of smoke and over pressure waves that caused little ripples of dust on the ground. The shade cover, a kind of desert colored screen over the hallway rippled, stretched and tore with the impact.

Soldiers began running away, screaming in terror an fear. I picked myself up off the ground, my right elbow bruised from the impact of my rifle muzzle. Spitting dust from my mouth I thought,"Somebody should go and see if anyone was hurt or needed treatment."
I picked myself up and ran toward the scene. Well educated with WWII movies I worried about follow on rounds. Maybe this was just a marker round, to get the range, and there were 100 others due to come in minutes afterward.

Fuck it!

I coughed several times running through the zig-zag barriers, the kind you see at Disney Land, nearly gagging on the stench of cordite. Already men were yelling,"MEEDICC!" More than one 3rd ID Soldier shouldered me aside on the way out, fighting like cattle to get away. I pushed them aside as I stepped over the still smoking rocket body, dark green, wispy tendrils of blue-grey smoke drifting up from it. The body was dented and bent, unpainted metal showing where the paint was blown or scraped off. And into the bright sunlight.

It was hot that day, the sun, like always seemed to be set to a higher F-Stop, to bright, washing out colors, dulling them. In the sort span of
time there were already three men working on the wounded Soldier. Others, just escaping the chow hall jumped over the wounded man. I don't remember seeing a lot of personal weapons. Maybe they left them inside in their haste.
I took, maybe three or four steps into the T wall hallway before coming to a halt.

The Soldier was on his back, one leg gone above the knee, the other below. He was gutted from crotch to chest, his insides spilling out over his brown T shirt, pink and red, hard points of light shinning back at me from the wet spots. It looked like his stomach and chest had had a giant ice cream scoop taken to them. They were just...gone. There was a four to five inch gash on the left side of his head where the man's brains leaked out and pooled on the concrete flagstones. His eyes were open and the man's right hand, bent at the elbow, reached up toward the sky. Reaching for help. For a hand.

I froze.

Snapshots, like a slide show. His missing legs. Blown open torso, the blood looked dark against the brown of this T shirt -wondered how his DCU top got open so fast, must have been blown open - the hand reaching...And his open eyes. The eyes. I looked him in the eyes.

And he looked at me, he knew I was there.

Like in a movie a first aid bag appeared at my feet. I picked it up but couldn't get my figures to open the straps so I pulled my knife and cut the fucking thing open. Out exploded everything I would need. Chest bandages, field dressings ,IV bags and starter kits. It was all there. At this point thirteen years of knowledge, of training on how to save a life, being prepared for this moment... failed me.

A million hermit crabs might as well have come out of the bag and on the ground. Millions of pens, pots and pans, junk... It was all over the ground and I could do nothing.
'I' had fallen away. I was gone. I looked into this man's eyes, he FUCKING KNEW I was there!
"Don't let him die alone," I thought. "Go over and hold his hand and block the sun. Tell him it will be all right, that his pain is over. Don't let him die unloved!"

Somewhere a female was screaming, screaming like you have never heard and I thought,"Somebody shut that fucking bitch up! She's not helping!"

I was locked on this man's eyes. I could see his chest rising and falling. He was still alive somehow but his body was to stupid to know the brain was gone.

I don't know how long I stood there. Hours? Minutes? Days? Years? Sometimes I feel like I am still standing there, watching him watch me.

Instead I turned away. I walked away from that poor man. I let him, the guy we would later call Rocket Man, die all alone and by himself. After he looked me in the eye and silently pleaded for comfort and love.

Instead I dropped the bag and returned to my room where I sobbed like a child.

If I could go back ,for thirty seconds, and act like a Goddamn man I would hold is hand and tell him it was going to be OK. That he would not die alone. Instead I walked away.
The first person I saw was LT Col. Wood.
"He's dead, sir," I told him.
"I know," Col Wood said.
In late October LT COl. Wood, himself, would be dead. Killed by an IED. The highest ranking man killed in Iraq. My BC.

In a daze I stepped over the smoking rocket body, not really knowing where I was going, just going. Out of the crowd came Doc, pushing his way through, helmet less, weapon less, body armor on and medic bag slung over his shoulder. I grabbed him.
"DOC! It's no use man, he's fucking dead! Don't go in there!" I was trying to stop him from seeing what I had seen, he, of all people, didn't need to witness more horror.
I don't think he heard me or even knew who I was, since he twisted out of my grip and ran into the smoke and dust.

Now there were Soldiers every where, fire trucks, NCOs and officers giving commands, directing the flow of humanity like traffic cops. A young female black Soldier was sobbing,"Its' not fair! He was just going to chow!"
That pissed me off, broke through the haze that engulfed me. What the fuck does she think this is?! A Goddamn vacation?! Welcome to the war, Fobbit.
Those of us that leave the wire that go out there every damn day know what happens, what can happen to us and these fags that press their DCUs and work a normal work day have no idea what it's like.

Well, now they do.

Back in my room I sat shaking. A few of C for Charlie's men had been lightly wounded, pin pricks of shrapnel, enough to earn some Purple Hearts. In the days to come I would see those eyes and know I let that man die alone. By myself, in my room, I would sob. Not just for him but from me too, for everyone.
Eventually I learned that the woman I heard screaming, the one I wanted to," shut the fuck up," was the man's wife. They had gotten married in secret so the Army wouldn't separate them on deployment. They had gone to chow together and were leaving when her husband was blown up, right in front of her.

And I wanted her to shut the fuck up. Nice, Mike, nice.

Time is strange stuff, or maybe, what the mind does with time is what makes it seem strange. Looking back on it now, it feels like it was weeks after the event that the memorial was held for Rocket Man. Maybe it was a week, usually the memorials were hard on the heels of the event, at least it was that way in 184. Either way, the event, his death, and the memorial were far enough apart for the name to be created and stick.

Rocket Man.

Doc and I would later on talk about that day and that man using the name. Sometimes we would sing that God awful Elton John song and laugh, both of us knowing it was wrong, knowing we were going to go the Hell for it, along with all the other fucked up shit we did in Iraq. I was gallows humor. You laugh because your other options are limited.

You can't give into the horror because it will destroy you, you'll go mad from it all, become comatose. Then you die, or even worse, somebody else dies because of you. You can take it in and try to make sense of it only there is no making sense of it, it's just war and there is no answer. That road leads to madness as well. And depression, and numbing fear, you become a victim to the randomness of it all and war it the most random place in the universe.

You can give in to it all, lose hope and the will to fight, and suck start an M-4. Eat a bullet, paint the walls with your brains, whatever cute way you want to refer to killing yourself.
Or you can laugh at it all and make cruel, dark jokes. The kind you can never tell someone that wasn't there. The kind of jokes that make people think you are a monster when you tell them around the dinner table back in The World or after you have had to much to drink.

The last method is to hate. To take all the pain and horror and helplessness you feel and to turn it into Rage and Hate, to aim it all back out at everything and everyone, it becomes your weapon against the enemy, against the madness of it all. Powers you, fuels you, makes you stronger.
It also takes from you. Takes your humanity away a bit at a time, day by day. Like a drug it makes you pay for the power it gives you. And once you are home, it pushes people away, makes them fear you.
I chose the Rage Option, with a little humor on the side.

Doc got word that Rocket Man's memorial was happening on a hot overcast evening and came and got me. Woke me up from a dead sleep. It didn't matter.
So, Doc myself, and another Soldier went in search of it. We found it on the other side of Camp Falcon. We had missed almost all of. Soldiers were drifting away and we filtered in and were able to pick up one of the pamphlets describing the deceased life. As much as they can squeeze in on one sheet folded over once.

That's when I learned Rocket Man's name : Spc Hatim Siraj Kathiria, 23. Joined the Army months after immigrating to the US. Born in India he came to The United States looking for a better life.

I read this while standing in line, waiting to render a last salute to the man I had a brief but so intimate contact with. There is nothing else more personal and intimate than watching someone die. I carry him with me constantly, everyday, forever.

I reached up and tore the US flag patch off my uniform sleeve. I wanted to leave something to honor this man's service, his life. He didn't have to join the Army but he did. He wasn't even a fucking citizen.
And I hoped, that maybe, when all the coins and medals that were being left at the foot of Kathiria's field cross were finally shipped home to his family, they would see my flag patch, off my uniform, and understand that someone they never met, will never meet, shared their loss. I wanted part of me to be with them.

After the attack the Powers That Be changed the entry and exit points for the chow hall, the Rat Run where Kathiria was killed remained open but it was now used for Iraqi Terps and military.
If you walked through to concrete T wall hallway and knew where to look you could see where the rocket had come in, pushing one of the T walls aside slightly and taking a crescent shaped chunk out of the edge. There were gouges in the surrounding barriers where shrapnel scored hits and black spray paint covered there the blood had pooled on the flag stones and gravel, splattered the walls.
Now Camp Falcon has been turned over to the Iraqis and it makes me angry. I think about that spot and I'm sad.

Everything tells me,Doc tells me, the battalion surgeon that worked on Rocket Man, that called him dead, that tried to sew him back together again so he could be transported home. They all tell me he was dead, the only reason he was still breathing was because his body was to fucking stupid to know it was already dead, they all tell me I couldn't have done anything.

I know that

The logical part of my brain that has seen people blown up and shot and wasted knows that. But my emotions don't know that. And I still feel the guilt over walking away from that man. For not being a simple human being and showing some kindness to him in his last moments.

There was nothing I could do.

I know that.

But I still see those eyes.

.

PTSD Salad

2006-11-30T06:33:00.000-08:00

Every other week I gt to the VA for my Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD Group headed up by Dr. Kay. There are supposed to be seven of us in the group, but so far I have only been to one meeting where all were present.

An hour or two after landing back in the US, back on FT Bliss, TX, the half of the battalion that was there found it’s self in a mental health briefing. This was to be the first of many. The two female docs that were their gave a talk, asked if there were any questions, and handed out some cards with telephone numbers on them that we could call anytime, day or night, if we were having problems. And, of course, it would all be anonymous and confidential. Your Chain of Command would never know.

Sure.

A few days later at the medical out processing I made the mistake of telling one of the headshrinkers I would rather still be back in Iraq, which was true at that point. Instead of listening to what I had to say he went into panic mode and referred me to the head headshrinker where, finally, I was able to explain myself.
"Well, you see, Doc...My wife left me, took all my money, I have no place to live, no job, no car, my father is in Hawaii with his wife helping out her family and won’t be at the airport when we get released from here. So, I got nothing. Why the fuck not just stay in Iraq?"
This she understood, however, since our unit had taken so many causalities - men killed and wounded - the mental heath professionals back in The World and at FT Bliss were warned to look carefully at 1st BN 184th INF.

Nice to know we were famous.

I knew we were fucked up in the head, I knew I was fucked in the head. Anyone that felt the intensity of hate and rage that I did everyday had something wrong with them. Besides, I was attempting to start a new relationship with Rachel and I needed to be well in the head and soul if I were to continue with her. (We all know how well that turned out.)

So two weeks after being sent home on leave, terminal leave, I called the Vet Center in Sacramento and made an appointment, that’s where I met Sandy, my councilors who spent a year in Iraq running a Combat Stress Center up in Balad. That she had gone to Iraq made it easier to talk to her, and harder sometimes too. Our experiences were worlds apart but she had at least been there.
Soon after I made an appointment with VA Mental health so I could get further evaluated.
That’s where I met Dr. Kay and attended classes on PTSD with Vietnam Vets. The classes lasted six months. I did not.

The night before the classes and the night afterward were filled with dreams and soaked sheets and terror. I would be in a bad mood, snapping at people for no reason, edgy, pissed. Between that and talking to Sandy every week it became to much. I was overwhelmed, talking about my war hurt, made me face things that I didn’t want to face, besides, every time one was over Rachel would want to know what I learned or talked about and, the truth was, I didn’t even know half the time. I was still processing the information myself then to have her try and pull it out of me... So I would shut down, numb out, and more than once start to get angry at her for probing, for pushing.

I’m frightened of my anger, my hate. Over there it has a place, it is useful - maybe even nessary to survival - but here. Here it will get me put in jail. Here my anger scares people when it flashes over, makes them afraid of me. Makes me look like a monster, out of control. Getting cut off on the road will bring it all back again, having some motherfucker flip me off makes me want to chase them down and kill them. And I mean kill them.

My first week at home in Grass Valley I went out one night to get some things from the store. I knew it was bad idea to be there the second I walked into the supermarket. Just that feeling you would get, unsteady in your stomach, hands cold, and knees weak, the buzzing in the back of your head before an IED went off and blew you up or the truck in front of you.
Cpl Stew used to ask before patrol,"How’s everyone feeling today?" Trying to gauge the ‘feel’ of the day, like a weatherman.
Standing in line at the check out stand the feeling was almost unbearable, like a low electric current was flowing through my body, not enough to hurt but enough to make me really uncomfortable. The people behind me were standing way to close to me, their kid making way to much noise. I thought of the children I had seen in Iraq and how I never saw one cry, even the wounded ones.
It felt like I was suffocating in the store, near panic, but I was going to maintain, I could do this, JUST BUY YOUR SHIT AND GET TO THE CAR.

Just then was when the boy behind me popped the balloon he was playing with.

I was on the floor,clawing at the fake marble colored tiles, attempting to crawl under a magazine rack. I may have yelled INCOMING I don’t know but when I came back into my body everyone was looking at me. Jumping to my feet I spun on the kid, "You little fucking bastard! I should fucking kill you!"
As the words were leaving my lips, as they formed I knew I was about to say something I shouldn’t but it was to late. Nobody said a word.

"Aww...Fuck it!" I kicked the items I was going to buy and got out of line, backing through the doors, covering everyone, like a gunfighter.
I stopped at a gas station on the edge of town, bought a bottle of Jim Beam and got drunk at my Dad’s.

I knew I had to deal with this beast that lived inside me, with all my hate and pain, the memories, but it was all getting to be to much. It hurt to much and I needed a break, a rest. So I tried to bury it all, do what my grandfather did with his war. Forget about it. Not give into to the PTSD, I didn’t, and don’t, want to become a Professional Vet. I’m strong, right? I can do it alone.
It started to fall apart for me in June. I was counting the days down, waiting for 22 June to roll around, the day D was killed. The night before the 22nd I didn’t sleep. I was restless, couldn’t eat. After that, well, as a good friend of me and Doc told us, the hardest part of this year is it’s all the one year anniversary of all these events. That’s true.

I like the group I’m going to now. I look forward to seeing these people and talking with them. They understand and have helped me understand myself, told me I’m not alone - especially when I felt more alone than ever after Rachel went away - and I can help them too, I think.
Dr. Kay brings us in and we all sit facing each other in a circle. Everyone has their chair picked out and no one takes your chair. For the next hour and a half the group talks about whatever it feels like, sometimes one person takes control and does most of the talking with the others responding and giving feed back.
A few times it has been me, the week before Halloween it was a senior NCO from the Marines named Kenny.

His first time in theater Kenny was tasked out to be Graves Registration for both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Marine Corps does not have a Mortuary Affaires MOS so, it seems to me, they just choose someone to run the show. The Marines have a lot of good ideas, this is not one of them.

The second time Kenny went over the Marines said they would not make him do the same job. Old Chesty Puller must have had his figures crossed behind his back on that one. Kenny’s team started out with himself, a hand full of privates, and a Chaplin. Their job was to go through the fallen’s personal effects and weed out things that maybe momma back home in St Albans, West Virginia didn’t need to see.

You can tell a lot about a Soldier from the contents of his pockets and gear. I carried a picture and letters from my wife, Wendy, until she left me, my wedding ring was tied in a length of 550 cord that I either wore around my neck or looped through my belt loop and in to my right rear pocket. Around my neck were my dog tags and my Saint Michael’s medal, left wrist was the OD and desert tan 550 cord bracelet that Keo bradded for me, later the sliver bracelet with D’s name on it.
Packs of smokes, good luck charms, letters, pictures, the contents of a wallet. Think of all the things in your pockets on any day of the week and imagine what a stranger could learn about you by going through that.

"And...And, these kids... Started to become real people to me."

Soon the younger Marines began to ask to be reassigned or just drifted off and never came back. That left Kenny and the Chaplin. Inventory the possessions, try to put the bodies back to together again and send them home.
The two would drape the coffins with the flag, say some words, and then march it out to the waiting C-130 or C-17.

Kenny was having difficulties was Halloween and the depictions of death, the near glamorization of it, he more than likely would never use those words but I will.
"Deaths not fun or cool. I went out to dinner with my girlfriend and there was a Halloween party going on a few tables over, you know...", his eyes glaze over a bit. I know that look. In his head he is seeing all those dead Soldiers and Marines, "...They were dressed up as, well I guess, dead people. I couldn’t stay, I had to leave."

Sometimes you just listen, sometimes you take part. Nothing is forced, everyone gets equal time and talking about something that you are dealing with or feeling may very well help someone else. It might draw them out, maybe save their life. Maybe save your own life.You never know.

(The title of this post is blantly stolen from Jesse. It was so good I just had to use it.)

Thanksgiving Day or: I don't need a miracle But I could use a push in the right direction

2006-11-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

My Grandparents on my Dad's side have lived in the same house in Yuba City all my life. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas cousins and uncles and aunts would gather there to eat to much, sometimes drink to much, watch football, and later - my favorite part - the men would launch into their war stories.
My Grandpa was an Army MP during the Korea War, at the same time my Uncle Walley served in the Navy, and my late Uncle Jonny, Grandma's brother, fought the Germans as an Infantrymen in WWII with General Patton's Army. The men would tell their stories and I would sit quitely nearby, soaking it all up, hoping someday that I would have my own war stories to share with them. That I could be part of the group, accepted as a man in their eyes.

Now I have my war stories too. I am one of them.

Uncle Johnny is gone, Uncle Wally lives in Oregon, my Dad was in the Navy but never fought. Grandpa came home from his war and got a job the very next day, he never said anything about having problems, aside from a general distrust for Orientals. But never anything about dreams or flashbacks, about being "shook" which is what they called PTSD in those days.
Uncle Johnny, who was blasted off the back of a Sherman tank by an MG-42 just inside the German boarder didn't speak much about the war but I never remember him flinching every time a soda can was opened around him.
These men were my role models. They were, and are, the way I want to act. Especially my Grandpa.

I went to their house Wednesday night so I could spend sometime with them, along with my Dad and my step mother, Donna. On the drive up I had a long talk with Doc so maybe that brought Iraq to the surface, not that it is more than one thought away all the damn time, I don't know, but was defiantly there when I woke up Thanksgiving Day.

Actually, it is there all the time. It's usually the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thought on my mind when I wake up. It is with me all the time, a constant companion, a specter that never leaves my thoughts. Sometimes I think I am still there, that I will never really leave Iraq. Never really come home.

My Grandma is 89 years old and frail. She doesn't leave the house much anymore and turned in her drivers licence since she gets lost two blocks away from the house. Maybe it's because I was smaller but she seems to be so much more robust before age drained her, dried her up. She gets confused a lot, sometimes still thinking I am still in Iraq - something we have in common - doesn't hear well - again like me, damn... One thing she still goes is smoke constantly despite generations of grandchildren trying to get her to stop. I love it. I wouldn't be surprised if she out lives most of us.

One time she told me I was her favorite grandchild.

This morning she was watching CNN as I ate breakfast at the dinning room table. Most of the stories were related to the holiday, about the poor and the newly immigrated, and the military. Lots of video of pouges eating turkey and stuffing up at LAS Anaconda and Camp Liberty, tow places so far removed from the actual fighting they might as well be back in The World. We never got that kind of coverage out at Camp Falcon. No USO, no Nick and Jessica, no Toby Keith.

All morning I had been thinking of the events of last Thanksgiving, trying not to but still thinking about it, like a cold soar or scab you can't stop picking at until it bleeds.

Doc and I were on night patrol, midnight to 6 am. I was starting to get cold at night now, cold enough to start wear snivle gear under our DUCs and body armor. Under our medical gear and magazines full of 5.56mm green tip ammo. In my case seven twenty round mags of 7.62mm for the M-14 rifle I was carrying now.
The patrol was uneventful for the most part, driving around in the dark with headlights off night vision flaring and blooming in the lights from hoses and working street lamps. Night Dogs and us out on the prowl. And the enemy, somewhere. Most of the time I was thinking how pissed I would be to get wasted on Thanksgiving Day. Talk about a bummer.

At the top of the hour CNN gave the highlights of another day in Iraq, in Baghdad. Tens and tens killed and hundreds wounded in Sader City by VBIEDs, hospitals packed with wounded, flooding into hallways awash in blood.

SLIDE SHOW: Wounded Soldiers, wounded Iraqis thrashing around, crying spurting blood from gunshot woulds to the neck and chest, wounded children that never cried just looked at you waiting for you the help them, blood slicked latex gloves, rolls of CURLEX to staunch the flows. The hot copper smell of blood and the constant fear that you were next, knowing it was not if you would be hit but when.

I snapped.

"Can we please watch something else for fucks sake!" I might as well have taken a shit on the living room floor. All conversation stopped and everyone looked at me as I stood there frozen. Not knowing what to do I stormed out of the room to the bedroom I was staying in.

Their I closed the door and paced around, running my hands over my shaved head, shaking with rage. Finally I picked up my jacket, punching my fists through the sleeves and grabbed my car keys. I had to get out. I had to get away.
"I have to get away for a bit," I told my Dad on my way out the door.

Once in my car I floored it out onto the street and toward Yuba City. I was looking for a bar, someplace I could cool off and collect my thoughts. No Go. Not in Yuba City at 8am on Thanksgiving morning. Instead I pulled into a convince store. Where I stopped. And thought.

I shouldn't drink. I shouldn't. My headshrinkers at the VA tell me alcohol is not good for my recovery and, to be honest, I have been drinking way to much since I got back. Self medicating. Using it to cover the pain, to go to sleep, to forget, trying to fill the empty void where my heart used to be by crawling into a bottle.
No, no, no... Not this time, dammit.

Outside the store was a newspaper vending machine. The headline : IRAQ IN CHAOS.

Fuck it.

I came out with two tall boys of beer, a can of Copenhagen, and a Gatoraid.

Back on the road I headed south, the Sutter Buttes drawing me in as if they had their our gravity. I drove fast, to fast, driving like I was back on the streets of Baghdad, not really knowing where I was going, just going, trying to out run the memories and myself. Through the small town of Sutter, past cemetery, and on toward the sharp hills of the Buttes, green brown, rock out croppings, live oak trees clustered in the draws.

I loaded my Anna Nalcik CD into the player and skipped to my second song,"Citadel" the song I sang to myself while on patrol, while I worked on the Iraqi man that had been shot six times.

Holdin' on to something
That's keepin'me from jumpin'
So afraid to go it alone

The man spitting out mouth fulls of blood, splattering my boots.

What if I fall
What if I don't
What if I never make it home
What if I bleed
What if I break
And I find that I can't take
The city below the citadel

I skidded off the main road and onto a dirt side road, throwing up gravel in a spray, the rocks striking the under carriage sounding like bullet hits. I couldn't go very far since the Buttes are privately owned. Bastards.

With the car stopped I got out and threw myself down against the left front tire, the only sound the wind and the ticking of the engine. I cracked open a beer and began to sob. Hard, angry sobs full of hate and disgust. Self loathing. Memories flooding back.

I was driving the lead vehicle that morning. It was nearing time to head back to the FOB, just before curfew ended. Curfew started at 2300 and lasted until 0600, but just like children the Iraqis always had to push the rules. Most mornings heavy trucks started rolling down the MSRs at 0545, sometimes 0530. People that wanted to try and beat the traffic to get to work or get into line early for the gas stations would start appearing at the same time.
I turned left onto Market Street, heading toward the traffic circle at Market and Yo Mamma. I must have been looking down or somewhere else since I didn't see the first vehicles cross the intersection. Instead I heard firing, lots of it. The first vehicle I was was an America HEMMETT roaring through the intersection. The gunner was firing on an small sedan, the slow, powerful chugging of a 50 cal, the thumb sized rounds striking the car and pavement, throwing up splashes of sparks.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
I floored the pedle, turbor charged diesel lugging just a bit before it began pulling the 13,000 pound armored HUMMVEE toward the firing.
More trucks followed the HEMMETT, all of them pouring rounds into the car. Out of site the 50 cal fired again and again.
At the intersection I turned left again toward Route Highlander and skidded to a halt. Jumping out of the truck, M-14 in hand, I sprinted toward an Iraqi heavy cargo truck that was stopped on the road, smoking, the windshield spider webbed with bullet hits. I lept up onto the running board of the truck on the driver side and stopped.
Inside were what was left of two Iraqis. The driver slumped over the wheel, passenger, well, the passenger was spray painted all over the inside of the cab. Blood, still warm, dripped off the the roof and seat, the windows, the dash. A 50 cal round will tear the shit out of a human being, vaporize parts of the body.
I got down and called for Doc, not that he would have helped much. Meanwhile, Doc was working on a middle aged man in the sedan. He was trying to get to the gas station early, to beat the rush.

By that time in the deployment I was pretty hard hearted. For the most part I hated the Iraqis. I hated the fucked up dirty country they lived in, I hated what had happened to me. I simply hated. I used rage and hate to make me go on patrol, to conduct raids, to do anything and everything. I simply hated all the time. It was my fuel, my Engine. A nuclear furnace burned inside of me threatening to go critical. It was all I had left. After my wife left me and either spent or straight up stole all my money I earned with my fear and sweat and blood in that terrible place. After I reduced to a private basically, humiliated in the company, after people that I thought were my friends turned against me and stabbed me in the back. After D had his heart shattered by a sniper. After Rocket Man and Sara... After all I had been raised on to think was right and just turned out to be lies. I hated.
But this...

Out there, alone, on a dirt road I sobbed. Hating myself, the war, the Goddamn Army, every failure I have ever done. My weakness. Being alone. Being dumped back in October by Rachel because, in her words, "wasn't what I needed. I need something different." I was to broken. I didn't meet her needs after I tried as best I could, after I gave her as much love as I possibly could despite my short comings. So she left to. Walked away from the wreck that was me, after all, it's the easiest thing to do, right?
So many days and nights fighting the demons, the dreams and flashbacks, the melt downs. Failing where my Grandpa didn't, being weak, drinking to much. Being pissed that I made it home alive, feeling like I was cheated after wanting to die over there. Having to go to PTSD classes at the VA, feeling like a freak. Jaded and angry. Praying to a God for help, one I'm not even sure I believe in anymore. Not even sure He cares. Wondering what the point of it all was? Why not just put a bullet into my head and finish it all? Do what Haji didn't do for me. At least I would know who did it, right? And being to afraid to even do that.
Hating myself for wanting to go back to the war, for missing it.

Feeling lost and alone. For not having anymore hope left. For having a wall inside of me that keeps me constantly separated from others because I'm waiting for them to be killed, because getting close to people puts you at risk of being hurt when they die. Or let you down.

For being doomed to survive the war, no matter how many died.

I don't even have my hate left anymore. The fire has gone out inside me, instead of a hate brighter than the heart of a star I have a cold hate, a White Dwarf hate, a black hole where my heart and soul once were.

Sometimes I start crying about something, D or Rachel or something else then, soon, I'm crying and I don't even know what about anymore. Just the black well of pain pouring out of me, flooding me, until I'm spent.

I spent myself Thanksgiving morning on that road. Eventually the tears stop, the wracking sobs. You bundle up the loss and pain and put it away until next time.

Two hours later I was back at the house. Grandpa was waiting for me in the cold.
"Well, Michael, I figured you needed to talk."
I just nodded my head, I couldn't say anything.
"You know, I had my share of problems after Korea. But it gets better. This one time..."

Holding on to something.

Thank You, From R2A

2006-11-22T00:28:00.000-08:00

I am about to do something that I was once told I should never do, address my readers directly. This time I will ignore that advice, not that that is anything new to the people that have read my words and supported me over the last two years, you that have wondered about how I was and what I was up to.

I want to thank you all. Thank you for caring about me and my men, about the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen that decided to join the military and do what we were called to do. Words alone cannot express the joy and pride, sadness, and... Hope I draw from you all and your comments and emails. It has been a long hard road, and it's not over yet. I still have a long way to go before I am healed, if I ever will be again. Some never heal, still struggle, and I will be right there with them because I am one of them.

I have read others saying that they cannot understand how I open myself up to everyone. It's not easy, however, I am the voice that others do not have. I didn't finish college, hell I flunked out my first year. But somehow I can say things that make people get it. I am no different than any of you, I mean you, reading these words right now. I was not born into a rich family, fuck, I'm White Trash, the only difference is I have the words to put it on paper, or computer screen, that make our fight make sense. I try to be our Voice, to tell the truth. If I can help one person understand, to help that one Vet that doesn't think anyone else gets It then I have done my job.

Thank you, again. Thank you for caring. For helping me feel less alone.

There is much more to come, my friends.

Red2Alpha

Breakfast at Denny's

2006-11-21T07:19:00.000-08:00

There is a Denny's near my house and on my way home from work. This morning, after work, I decided I could afford to treat myself to breakfast there. Besides, I really didn't feel like going home to my empty apartment quite yet.
That's not entirely true either, there is George, my cat, but he only seems to like me when I feed him. That's the extent of his thanks for me rescuing him from the SPCA.

I get off work at 6am after working twelve hours, sometimes a little sooner, sometimes later, depending on traffic. Since Iraq I hate driving in traffic, trying to watch everything, afraid I'm going to get into an accident. Looking for IEDs and VBIEDs... Still. Driving on the highway is the closest thing to combat we have back in The World.
Traffic was light this morning and I was stepping into the restaurant around 06:20, feeling self conscious in my uniform, and began scanning the patrons, looking for danger. An old lady with a red knit cap and glasses drinking her coffee, a middle age couple reading the paper, two older black men having an animated discussion, and in the back to Sheriff Deputies. I locked eyes with the older one for a moment. We both nodded to each other.

The waiter took me a table in a corner, a good position. I could see the door and the parking lot where my car was parked and watch most of the people that would enter or leave. Paranoia is a motherfucker.
I ordered, Ham and Cheddar omelet, then sat reading my book and drinking orange juice, trying to act normal.

A day or two before the battalion was released from Ft Bliss to go home after Iraq a group of us went to IHOP off post for breakfast. It was a Sunday and the restaurant was packed, families and other Soldiers lined up outside, waiting to get in. Those of us in C for Charlie company were wearing our DUCs thanks to the combined wisdom of the CO, Lt Winters, and 1Sgt Welsh. I guess they assumed we would behave ourselves if we remained in uniform. Whatever.
Sooner than I expected we were seated, Doc, Sgt Agie, and Cpl Stew. The waitresses were young attractive Mexican girls with golden brown skin, straight black hair, and flashing eyes and I was reminded of Fatima, the Iraqi girl that I flirted with in Baghdad. Her mother gave Team Mayhem a full lunch meal, to go. We returned the bowls the next day along with some gifts.
The IHOP waitresses would look at our table and turn away and talk amongst themselves and several different one took turns serving us. Finally one came over and asked Sgt Agie for his phone number.
"Ahhh, thanks," he told the girl,"but I'm married. But thanks!"
"I'm not married though," Stew said to her retreating back.

The sky was lightening outside the windows, another overcast, wet, day as I read James Brady's book 'The Marines of Autumn'. The cops had left and I was watching the waiter ring up a sale out of the corner of my eye. He turned and started toward my table with, what I guessed, was my bill.
"Here you are, sir. Your meal has been paid for by a lady on in the other section. She has short dark hair, glasses, and is reading a book."
I was shocked and touched. My eyes clouded up and voiced failed me. I haven't been feeling very well for a few months, emotionally. I've been feeling lost and alone and emotionally broken. With the end of a meaningful relationship recently I have lost what little confidence I had been building. More loss to add the the big pile of loss I already have been dealing with. My friend, my fucking wife, my satus in the platoon, my fire team...
I nodded and tried to get my emotions under control. You hear about this sort of thing happening, some vet or older couple, the father or mother of a Soldier, Marine, Airmen, Sailor picking up the meal tab for a Joe. Hell, I've known guys that this has happened to so it's not a myth like alligators in the sewer.

But I never expected it to happen to me.

After a few moments I got up and went looking for the woman and found her, just as the waiter said, reading a book. Short dark hair and stylish glasses. She smiled warmly at me and I tried to smile back, the tightness constricting my throat again.
"Th..Thank you, ma'am. You didn't..." I was starting to lose it - all the sadness and loss, all the emotions kept inside for so long, welling up inside me drowning me under their weight, pulling me out to sea - "You didn't have to do that. Thank you." I managed to choke out.
She smiled and put her book down,"No, I didn't but I wanted to. Thank you, Sergeant."
That broke me, plunged me under a wave of emotion. I smiled weakly but couldn't say anything so I nodded and staggered away.

Back at my table I couldn't even eat. I didn't want to eat the meal. It had suddenly come to represent so much more to me. One simple act of kindness by a total stranger. Unless you have been on the receiving end you can't understand what that means.
If you watch the news, which I avoid if possible, all you hear is how The United States is failing in Iraq. All you get is negative stories about Soldiers, overpaid under intelligent Hollywood morons make statements about the war and the military, that motherfucking son-of-a-bitch, blue blood John Kerry calls us stupid and thinks he can get away with it, bumper stickers... NPR, gleefully reporting deaths. You know, it's funny, Liberals always say how they hate the war and or military etc. but they just love to read about it or report about it. I think, deep inside, they love the death and the blood. But they will never admit it.
Now this woman buys my breakfast. After I have been feeling sorry for myself, wondering why I survived and others didn't, feeling sorry for myself.

And now this.

Some people do care.

I may have been sitting at a table for one but I wasn't alone anymore, this meal was no longer just for me, it was for all of us. Especially the men that were not around anymore, my friends. I imagined the ghostly images of D and Glenn Watkins, Cpt Hill, PFC Sam Huff - the female MP that bled out on the way to the CAS because her patrol couldn't find it - and Spc Hatim Siraj Kathiria, the man I ran to help. The man I walked away from. The man I let die alone.
They were all with me, along with others I can't name.

They will always be with me.

The woman stopped by on her way out the door,"Happy Thanksgiving," she told me.
"And to you."

Maybe today will be a good day after all.

Veteran's Day

2006-11-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

I have no idea what I was doing last Veterans Day. I was in Iraq, I know that, but beyond that my memory fails me. Patrol, raid, sleeping? I don't know.

One year later I am back in the United States on a rainy Saturday morning putting on a set of DCUs I wore in Iraq. I kept all my uniforms, faded from the sun heat, the material smooth now, almost soft, broken in from a years worth of sweat, being laundered in the large industrial sized washers and dryers in Camp Falcon's laundry facility. Patches of the camouflage dye worn white where body armor constantly rubbed the fabric. Most of the visible stains are gone now but I still know where the blood spots were.

As I pulled on the trousers I worry about the uniform fitting right. I have gained more weight than I like since last Veteran's Day, but to my surprise the pants and top fit just fine. The uniform feels good, like an old friend, a comforting article of clothing, and I wonder how much fear and hate these items have absorbed since I was first issued them at Ft Bliss, TX back in August 2004. Thousands of miles and I don't know how many lifetimes ago.
Everything I have on today is something I wore in Iraq, my boots scuffed and bleached from sand and dirt and hard use, my blood type written in faded black ink on the outside and inside of each heel.
Before leaving Kuwait for the trip into Iraq in February 2005 I took all my Army brown T shirts into the shower trailer next to C for Charlie Companies tents and wrote my last four and blood type on the front of all of them. I was alone, and in the humid air of the trailer, I remember the act feeling rather sad and final.
Later, later, after seeing, working on, and evacing wounded I wrote my blood type on my belt, and later my boots, O POS.

I was heading to Auburn to talk part in the Veteran's Day parade. The men of C for Charlie were going to be honored for their service in Iraq and my friend, Sgt Arnold Duplantier II, along with his wife and daughter, were going to be the center of the show. Except for one thing. Arnold was dead. He had been shot through the heart by a sniper on 22 June 2005 while standing on a roof top in the blazing heat and sun just south of the Baghdad city center.
My squad was on QRF that day, we had been for a few days already and responded to the mission. Somebody had been shot by a sniper at the DAC meeting, an annual meeting between Iraqi officials, tribal leaders, and the local American forces. It was unclear to me if it was an American or an Iraqi, at that point I assumed it was an Iraqi.
An hour or so later, after my squad leader had been shot in the neck by the same sniper only feet away from me I learned it was Arnold Duplantier, my friend.
The rest of the day passed by in mental jump cuts and razor sharp memories.

But that's another story.

My first memory of D - that's what I called him. Others called him Dup, not me. My first real memory of him was one of frustration and exasperation. I think it was 1999, just after he joined the California Army National Guard and C for Charlie. And my fire team.
The platoon was rehearsing how we would breach a wire obstacle. We had been at it all day and everyone was tired. Except for D. The problem was he was so focused on the training and trying to get it right that he just didn't hear me or my commands. I remember looking at his lanky form laid out in the prone, pulling security, his eyes set in total concentration on his job and getting it right.

He was a brand new E Nothing as we call the E-1 Privates, nothing on his collars. As the day wore on I had trouble pronouncing his name -God, forget about spelling it - funny now, since I can say and spell his name as well as I can my own.
"Hey!" I shouted at him. "Hey... ahh...Goddamnit! Ahh... Duplant...Fuck..."
He look up at me and jumped to his feet, "Yes, Corporal!"
"Relax man, OK? You make me nervous. Look, I'm having trouble with your name and all..."
"Well, my family calls me Opie, you know, like 'Andy Griffith'?"
"Oh, well, that'll work. Thanks!"
"Roger, Corporal."

D always called me by my rank, never by my first name. Even when we were all by ourselves, drinking beer in my apartment, by then I was E-5.
"Come on ,D. It's just you and me. You can call me Mike, OK?"
"I can't do that, Sgt D." He looked down at the can he held, standing in my small kitchen. He had come over to talk and do some loads of laundry. The drier airily whined as the washer paused, then thumped into it's next cycle. "It would be disrespectful, you know?"

That was just the way he was.

It seemed fitting that it was overcast and raining as I drove up Highway 80, only half listening to classical music on the radio. Part of my mind scanning the roadsides, still looking for IEDs.
I was trying not to think, trying to hold my emotions back behind a mental wall. Sadness and hot anger.
This was the first time I would be back with my old company since our return eleven months ago when I stepped off the plane at Sacramento Metro, waded through the crowds of cheering, crying families and media, collected my gear, and caught the first flight heading east.
There was no one waiting for me in California.

After D was killed things went down hill for me in Iraq.

I still hold a lot of resentment and cold hate for certain individuals in C for Charlie and most of the company leadership. Especially 1st platoon, my old platoon. But I knew friends were going to be there, the enlisted guys, and my best friend Doc, our platoon medic and my roommate in Iraq.

For a rainy Saturday the turn out for the parade was pretty good. The sky was still the color of brushed steel, a misty drizzle fell from the clouds. Just enough to soak through our hats and the shoulders of our uniforms.
The parade organizers handed out medals to us, a bronze colored disk with a V in the center. A flaming torch shot out from the joining of the letter. We all wore them around our necks, suspended from a red, white, and blue ribbon.
Before we stepped off the company passed a group of Civil Air Patrol cadets. They eyed us and we eyed them, them shifting nervously and I wondered what they saw when they looked at us. The cruel hard part of me surfaced for just a moment and as we passed I hissed,"Your going to go to Iraq and die, kid." One boy quickly looked away.

Marching down the street, more or less in step and calling cadences, I felt flush of warmth and pride. I had never been in a parade before and like any Soldier I have imagined coming home from some terrible war in a far flung land and marching down the street of my home town. The girls would wave and cry, some rushing out to kiss the returning heroes while the men that had not gone looked away shamefully. Later they would say things like,"I would have gone but, you know, I have a bum knee..."
This wasn't the same. We have not won yet and this war seems to be more hotly contested than the Vietnam War. No girls ran out to hug or kiss Soldiers but there were people on the side lines that began to shout at us.
"Thank you!"
"God bless you!"
"Thanks for all you do!"

Normally I don't like that kind of stuff. Just like those goddamn yellow ribbons that say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS on them that I see on cars all the time. I hate those things. I don't really need to be thanked for doing my job but this time it wasn't just form me or Doc or anyone else in my unit. I felt that it was for D, for Captain Hill who burned to death after an IED blew up his HUMMVEE, for SPC Guy, for all the men that were killed while we were in Iraq. I tried to keep them in mind as we continued down the street.

The parade paused in front of the clock tower in downtown Auburn. As we marched up and finally came to halt I noticed a group of Vietnam Vets on the right side. Bearded and graying but still wearing their old jungle jackets adorned with CIBs, unit patches, stripes on the sleeves. Faded but taken care of. They saluted us and my vision misted for a bit, a lump in my throat. These men that fought as well as they could, that were on different than us, holding sharp salutes to men that could be their sons. I wanted to ask them to join us, they should march with us since they never got a parade.

Up ahead someone was giving a speech but we were to far back to hear so we stood in the rain at parade rest and waited. When the first notes of taps reached us Charlie's new CO called us to attention and present arms. Taps is, I believe, the most sad and mournful pieces of music ever played and it never fails to make me swallow hard and blink away the tears.

I remembered all the memorial services I had attended in Iraq, on Camp Falcon, out on the basketball court. I remember not wanting to go to anymore after the first one when Glenn Watkins was killed. I didn't go to D's. The same day he was killed my R&R to Qatar came down. SFC Burt pulled Sgt Paris and myself aside after we returned from the mission to tell us we could either stay or go on R&R. We had to decide right now.
I chose to go to Qatar. I had to get away. I was no good to anyone right then. With SSG Cooper wounded in the neck and no one sure what his status was I was suddenly thrust into the position of 4th squad leader. I didn't care. I no longer cared about anything. A black hole had suddenly appeared where my heart used to be and it was eating me up from the inside out. I needed to get away.
Sgt Paris went with me.
We spent the next five days trying to get to Qatar, sleeping on the floor of the terminal tents of BIAP. Or in the dirt outside. In the same stinking sweat stiffened uniforms we wore on the mission. I was in a daze, numb inside, trying to come to terms with what had happened yet not ready to accept it. Every time I saw a Soldier that even slightly resembled D, I saw his face.

That still happens now.

Even then, standing next to him, his eyes half open, intibation tube in his mouth, skin waxy, I expected him to sit up in his body bag and tell me it was all OK. Not to worry.

That was the last time I saw him.

Taps finished and there was a pause before a ragged volley of fire came from up front. The 21 gun salute. Everyone in the formation that has ever heard a shot fired in anger flinched or ducked slightly. Afterward there was a nervous laughter from us all.
The parade ended in front of the VFW Hall. As soon as I could I ducked out and made for my car. There were people there I didn't want to see and memories it was getting tough to fight off.

As I drove home it started to rain harder and I sobbed until it felt like my soul - if I have one anymore - was being torn in half.

To the living I am gone
To the sorrowful I will never return
To the angry I was cheated
But to the happy I am at peace

And to the faithful I have never left
I can not speak but I can listen
I can not be seen but I can be heard

So as you stand upon the shore
Gazing at the beautiful sea
Remember me

As you look in awe at a mighty forest
And its grand majesty
Remember me

Remember me in your heart
In your thoughts
And your memories of the times we loved
The times we cried
The battle I fought
And the times we laughed
For if you always think of me
I will have never gone.