Just Another Soldier Read online

  The following night, at another party, Willy broke his foot while horsing around. He then became the world’s most crestfallen and despondent soldier ever. We assumed he’d be nondeployable. But sometimes bullshit situations where soldiers are sent on deployments at the last minute can also be advantageous; in his case he was kept on the battle roster. He was told the break would take about a month to heal, so he was put on light duty for six weeks. He doesn’t even have to wear a cast. That’s Willy for you. Crazy brave, and stupid strong.

  So I had my last meal (a gluttonous amount of sushi) and said goodbye to all my friends in New Paltz. I have to admit that my anxiety level was a bit high. I had a dream that I was in Iraq and the serial number on my rifle didn’t belong to me. The absolute worst dream a soldier can have is the “Where’s my rifle!” dream. Mine was, I suppose, a derivative of that. At least I had a rifle.

  October 4, 2003

  It’s basically been confirmed that we will be in Iraq for at least a year, this means the deployment will be at least a year and a half, with two years total a good possibility. In the Army’s infinite wisdom, we will be training at Fort Drum, in upstate New York—the frozen version of hell on earth. This is ironic, seeing as how afterward we’ll be sent to one of the hottest places on earth. Ray put it best: You always keep the steaks in the freezer before you put them on the grill.

  October 7, 2003

  We’re at Fort Drum now, and today we had NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) training, sans nuclear. There could be no teaching environment more adverse to learning than this one was. Two companies of soldiers in one huge auditorium watching hour after hour of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations about how to inject yourself with nerve agent antidote and the like. Keep in mind that none of us has had more than four hours of sleep a night for seven days now. A “test” was then administered by the instructor, who asked, “After the first injection, you wait ten seconds before removing it, right?” You simply had to nod your head. Think Danny Kaye being knighted in The Court Jester:

  KNIGHT

  The candidate must climb a stone wall in full armor!

  THE JESTER is thrown over the wall while wearing full knight’s armor and comes crashing down on the other side.

  KNIGHT

  The candidate passes!

  The best part was the gas chamber. We filed into a room full of CS gas (tear gas) while wearing our protective masks. We did some exercises for a few minutes, then volunteers were asked to take off their masks. (They can’t make you take your mask off anymore, since this isn’t in keeping with the new wussified Army that doesn’t want to yell at or hurt the feelings of soldiers—but they have no problem injecting relatively untested and potentially dangerous vaccines in us.) I took off my mask, stowed it in my carrying case, got to the ground, and started doing pushups. A few other guys followed suit and took off their masks as well. After I’d had enough, I calmly walked to the door and tried to control the combination CS gas/veal dinner burps that were boiling up to my now-covered-in-tears-and-snot mouth. The stuff burns like hell. It’s like breathing wasabi. After I got the snot and tears to stop pouring out of my face, I had a cigarette.

  October 8, 2003

  WILLY—THE AMAZING BROKEDICK STORY

  Since Willy broke his foot the day before we deployed, it’s been an incredibly emotional trauma ride for the poor guy. First, he’s told he can’t go, then he’s told he has to go since it’s too late to take his name off the list. After spending several days not knowing if he’s gonna get axed, we go through the administrative process to deploy: make sure guys’ teeth are okay (if not, they get pulled; one guy had thirteen teeth pulled), make sure no major medical conditions exist and that medical records are in order, make sure guys have wills and powers of attorney set up, get them new ID cards, and give them tons of shots—I got anthrax and smallpox, among others. I was surprised at how much the anthrax shot hurt. They actually inject you with a live agent (similar to anthrax). Leaves a wicked bump. And we were given an entire briefing on why we shouldn’t scratch the scabby blister that develops from the smallpox shot.

  When Willy showed up on crutches, this enormous gray-haired civilian lady who looked like an obese witch grabbed him by the arm and told him to get his commander and first sergeant. She then berated our captain for bringing a soldier on crutches to the deployment process. She pronounced Willy’s deployability dead and gave him his, um, walking papers.

  At this point Willy sank into a dark hole. This heartless four-hundred-pound gorilla seemed to be in ecstasy at having just squashed a soldier’s sole reason for being. She swaggered by (be it from bravado or just the fact that she was a shambling, bitter curmudgeon whale) and said, “One down.” I could have strangled her. For the next four hours, Willy sat there trying to cope with the unthinkable: being a brokedick soldier who couldn’t be deployed. I was nearly on the verge of tears. The idea of going into combat without him was incomprehensible to me.

  While Willy was ruminating, he overheard a conversation between an officer and a soldier who was also unable to deploy, due to back problems. The officer was explaining to the soldier that he needed a medical review by the head surgeon before he could be officially taken off the mission. Willy interrupted the officer and asked who this surgeon was. Willy then crutched his way to the head surgeon’s office, and at this point he was enraged. He said, “There are guys who are dying to get out of this mission and they’re not being let go, and now you mean to tell me that all I have to do to get out of this deployment is walk in with a set of crutches and an ace bandage on my ankle, and I’m done?!” Moved by Willy’s performance, the surgeon ordered the active-duty liaison to immediately take Willy in his personal vehicle to the X-ray center on post and have his foot X-rayed. Once his foot was X-rayed and the slides were returned to the surgeon, Willy started working his magic, before the surgeon even had a chance to make a judgment. He told him how the witch lady had made the call to take him off the mission and how at one point his commander even wanted to take him off the mission. Apparently this really got the head surgeon’s goat. “I’m a major! I make the determination if a soldier is fit to ship or not! Not your captain and not some civilian administrator!” He then looked at the X-rays and pronounced Willy’s foot not broken. “Tape your toes together and put on a boot! Your foot is fine!”

  The next day, Willy repeatedly used Jedi mind tricks to cut to the front of every line, and he finished before noon a process that for some soldiers took all day and night. That night the crutches were unceremoniously destroyed and strewn across the barracks floor.

  October 10, 2003

  THE MONASTIC ORDER OF INFANTRYMEN

  The last two days have been Death by PowerPoint. Presentation after presentation, and trying as hard as possible to not fall asleep. We still haven’t had more than five hours of sleep a night for ten days running. Yesterday was medical familiarization, such as dealing with cold and heat injuries, burns, fractures, etc. The instructor seemed to see it as an excuse to show as many fucked-up photos of injuries as possible—people run over by tanks, stabbings, shootings, frostbite, burns, and a photo of a still-conscious guy who had an explosion take place in his mouth from a blasting cap or something. It left his jaw split in half and dangling, with everything below his eyes a huge mess of hamburger and with his blood-drenched tongue hanging down in the middle of it all to the point where you could see the back of his throat. There was absolutely no reason for the instructor to show half of the photos that she did. Gore porn is all it really was. Fascinating, sickening.

  I’ve been spending a lot of time these days with my friend John, and one of our favorite topics of discussion is how he and I epitomize the single soldier. No wife, no kids, not even a girlfriend. He described us as being part of a subculture that he called the “monastic infantry.” Such a perfect description. So we started thinking about who else fell into this category: Willy, Ray, Ernesto, and a few other guys. The funny thing is that all these guys are
really decent, normal guys—smart, okay-looking, friendly—but they just can’t seem to settle down. I have to admit that the Tyler Durden Buddhist in me takes great pleasure in this. What I lack is what gives me my strength. I have nothing, so I have nothing to lose. This of course it not totally true, but not having a wife, kids, or a girlfriend whom I have to call regularly is something I take great solace in. I see these guys at night outside on their cell phones, shuffling around aimlessly, hobbling back and forth from one leg to the other like zombies, mumbling sheepish sweet nothings to the girls they’ve left behind—and I pity them. I have the luxury of being able to focus on the moment in which I’m living and not dwell on what and whom I’m missing. God, when I think back to my experiences at Fort Bragg and Fort Benning ten years ago, trying to nurture a broken relationship over the phone, I shudder. The telephone is an emotional trauma delivery device. I hate the telephone when I’m in uniform. Putting a phone to your ear is not unlike putting a gun to your head.

  I like to make light of topics that most decent people would never touch, but I think it’s good to be able to expose the things that cause the real pain and just laugh at them, morbidity and all. For example, one of the guys in my squad, Joel, is on his second wife, with whom he’s had four children and who came with two kids pre-installed. I was on the bus one day pontificating about the virtues of the monastic infantryman, and I told Joel that while he’s away there are seven people who will have learned how to live without him by the time he gets back. Matt shook his head in disgust and muttered, “That’s fucked up, man.” Matt is the liberal of my squad and has a very beautiful girlfriend who is also going to learn to live without him. So I suggested that we should start a pool on who’s going to get the first Dear John letter. Matt really didn’t like that idea, either. He said, “That’s so bad, man. Guys don’t want to hear that shit.” Then this guy, Corporal Damion, chimes in and tells me, “Do you really want this many people to hate you this early in the mission?” Then I started to feel guilty. Then I thought about it and decided, fuck that, I don’t feel guilty. These guys are being pussies. So I turned back to Matt and said, “Look. Every week in Iraq, three to six U.S. soldiers are killed and forty are wounded. There are fifteen to twenty attacks made against U.S. soldiers a day over there right now. The chances of someone we know getting killed are highly likely. The chances of multiple people we know at least getting wounded are pretty much a statistical certainty. If we can’t even joke about getting Dear John letters, how are we going to be able to handle the other stuff?” The only thing that seemed to placate these guys was when I determined that by having the least familial liabilities, I was the best suited to be on point.

  October 12, 2003

  My smallpox shot itches so much right now. It’s a blistery, scabby mess. The anthrax shot has finally stopped hurting, though.

  The temperature at Fort Drum has been unusually warm. The honeymoon before the divorce. There should be snow on the ground before Halloween. I think this year I’ll dress up as a soldier.

  Today, and for the next two days, I am teaching a class on the M240B machine gun. This gun replaced the M60 (a.k.a. “The Pig”) of Vietnam fame. Excellent weapon, the 240, but heavy. Twenty-eight pounds without ammo. Rate of fire at 950 rounds a minute, maximum effective range 1,100 meters, with a maximum range of 3,700 meters. That’s right, it can shoot over two miles.

  For this mission we will be going as “motorized infantry,” which will be something the Army really hasn’t done before, at least not since World War II. We are part of something completely new. In other words, the manuals of doctrine for motorized infantry will be written after this deployment, based on our experiences. Despite the inherent dangers of being total guinea pigs, I take a certain comfort in knowing that we will be absolutely bristling with various weapon systems in each Humvee.

  October 14, 2003

  I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve been driving down the street and encountered other drivers so irritating that I just want to ram into them or run them off the road. Anyone who drives feels this way at one time or another, right? My personal fantasy was to mount a computer-controlled machine gun on the roof of my car and program some kind of tracking system where I could lock the gun’s aiming system onto the annoying driver’s car and lay a few hundred rounds of 7.62mm full metal jacket into it. Oddly enough, this fantasy may be coming true very soon.

  As I mentioned before, this motorized infantry thing really hasn’t been done before, and the Army is literally making it up as they go. Apparently the tactics will be based loosely on Russian tactics for fighting vehicles used in urban environments. But here’s the cool part: I’ll command my own Humvee. A Humvee will fit five soldiers snugly, including one guy in the turret. There will be an M240 7.62mm machine gun mounted on a 360-degree rotating seat/turret in the center of the Humvee. Additionally, we will have a second M240 in the back if we need to dismount from the vehicle, at least one guy with an M203 grenade launcher (rifle mounted), a guy with an M249 5.56mm machine gun (or SAW, for “squad automatic weapon”), and perhaps a fifth guy with an M16 assault rifle. The guy with the M240 on top is the true firepower. For us to be effective, this guy has to be a straight-up killer. I’m not sure who my gunner will be, but I pray it’s Ray. He’s about one step away from being the next world-class mass murderer, but he’s a guy who will unflinchingly know when and who to shoot. The way things look, I’ll be driving a vehicle in Iraq that any boy who ever watched GI Joe could only dream of. Yes, yes, I know, I shouldn’t compare combat with cartoons, but seriously, for just one moment let’s look at this for what it is: I’ll be driving around in a car with a friggin’ machine gun mounted on top.

  The weather at Fort Drum has been warm and beautiful, but that should all be coming to a gloomy end tomorrow. I’ll bet we have snow in a week. Also, I almost forgot to complain again about how gross my smallpox shot is. And I only got pricked three times. The guys that were getting it for the second time had to get fifteen pricks. Theirs look gangrenous.

  We will be going to the rifle qualification range in a few days. This is where we really find out which soldiers are worth a damn and can perform the single task they were meant to do: shoot things accurately.

  October 17, 2003

  ELIAS VS. BARNES

  Thursday was the big day. Rifle qualification. Forty pop-up targets of human silhouettes, twenty to be shot from a foxhole-supported position, twenty from the prone, unsupported position. Targets range in distance from twenty-five meters to three hundred meters. No scope on the M16, just plain ol’ iron sights. Hitting thirty-six gets you the rank of expert. Two guys in my platoon shot thirty-eight, I shot thirty-seven, and the next best was thirty-five. My squad leader, Chris, a police sniper, shot thirty-three, and my other team leader, Kirk, an FDNY firefighter and my new nemesis, shot a plain shitty twenty-six. Yes, I am gloating. And oh yeah, remember Corporal (now Sergeant) Damion, who asked me on the bus if I wanted people to hate me? Well, he couldn’t stand me before, and now he can’t stop telling me how much of a bastard I am for shooting better than him. Respect comes in all forms, I guess. There’s been a lot of tension in my squad due to my style of leading, and this was the perfect way to serve up a steaming-hot helping of “Shut the fuck up.”

  A lot of the guys in my platoon, particularly Chris and Kirk, have a leadership style that is more rigid than mine. They are both originally from the same company and are used to working together with non-city troops (a.k.a. rule-following upstate white boys). Leading troops from the city forces one to take on an entirely different approach to leadership. John put it best when he said, “You can’t push a piece of spaghetti.” Willy has said over and over that leadership in the National Guard is more difficult than anywhere else. You can’t show up to drill and treat guys that are normally civilians like they’re on active duty. If you push them, they resist, and all that comes of it is that nothing gets done and everyone thinks you’re an asshole. Additionally, I ca
me from a Special Forces unit, where guys pride themselves on being “silent professionals,” looking down on the rest of the Army and their pushy form of leadership. Having worked for the last four years with guys with typical Bronx and Brooklyn attitudes, I have developed a style of leadership that assumes the soldier is an adult and doesn’t need to be hounded every two minutes about whether or not his boots are shined to standard. In my normal company I think I’m held in fairly high regard among the soldiers and the leaders. For five months, I was the acting platoon sergeant. Then, one month later, I show up to a new squad and platoon that think I’m too lackadaisical. Funny how so much comes down simply to perception.

  October 22, 2003

  YOUR MUSIC IS GAY

  Things have started to mellow out a bit. Instead of training from 5:00 a.m. to midnight, we’ve started getting off by 4:00 p.m. most days, at which point we’re allowed to change into civilian clothes and do stuff like go to the PX or the mall off post or whatever—so long as we return to the barracks by 11:00 p.m. Despite this, I still find myself going to bed each night at about midnight. The training during the day has been really mellow, too, mostly classes on stuff like land navigation, calls for fire (calling in fire missions from mortars or artillery), first aid, and walking through basics on CQB (close-quarters battles, i.e., urban warfare). Getting up at 5:00 a.m. and exercising outside in ball-freezing weather is a serious drag, though.

  We have a little stereo in the barracks, and I recently borrowed a CD from John that is an MTV compilation of alternative ’80s hits. I’ve already been branded as being gay by my platoon for a number of stupid reasons, like looking younger than I actually am, crossing my legs when I sit, being educated, having stylish sneakers, and generally being way more in touch with my anima than your average infantryman. To add fuel to the fire, I was listening to this CD, and Kirk starts haranguing me about listening to gay music. Then in walks Chris and he starts flipping out about how much he likes this CD and how he used to own it. Kirk and I were both shocked. Chris then states emphatically, “My squad needs to know that my favorite singer of all time is Morrissey.” So Chris flips through the different tracks, commenting on each. While it’s on a New Order song, someone yells from the latrine, “Keep it there!” Then in walks Tony, a Brooklyn cop and a real hard-ass. So we’re all listening to the various tracks now, talking about where we were when we first got into this music and the memories it evokes, when Joey, a sergeant from another platoon, walks in with a CD case and a big grin on his face and says, “I heard you guys were listening to depressing music, so I came over.” Another closet alternative-’80s infantry sergeant! More discussions ensue. Tony asks, “Hey, I’ve had this song in my head for years, and I can’t remember the name of it. It goes like this: ‘Heeey now, hey now now…’” Then Joey says, “Yeah, that’s The Sisters of Mercy. I’ve got it right here.” Now Tony and Joey are flipping through the CDs in the case like it was the new issue of Tiger Beat. The whole time all this is happening, I’m ecstatic watching all these trained killers act like giddy schoolgirls as they discuss these bands. At this point, Kirk is in a state of utter disbelief and disgust trying to comprehend how his infantry company could harbor so many apparent fags.