Just Another Soldier Read online

  After a short search of his ruck, Ray plucks from it a coin of his own with the rank of specialist engraved on it that he bought at the PX for four bucks. (Many coins are very elaborate and somewhat pricey to produce, unlike this trinket.) He hands it to the general and says, “From all the high-speed specialists in the Army, I’d like to give you this coin. We think you’re doing a really good job, sir. Keep up the good work.”

  The adjutant general took the coin, thanked Ray, then started to get teary-eyed and emotional. Feeling bad that his jocular ribbing had been mistaken for sincerity, Ray played along and kept a straight face.

  A few weeks later we’re standing in formation at our deployment ceremony on the basketball court at the gym at freezing-ass Fort Drum. The ceremony is plodding along, as is to be expected—a lowcost master of ceremonies bungling people’s names, politicians giving listless speeches, female soldiers passing out in the formation because they forgot not to lock their knees. Then the final speaker, the adjutant general, gives his words. And what story does he tell? The Specialist Who Gave Him a Coin. By this point, everyone had already heard it, so to hear it from the general himself was priceless. We could barely contain ourselves. Thank you, general, for making my deployment ceremony completely worthwhile.

  February 19, 2004

  I’m sitting at a war-torn ’50s-era desk in a small, dirty room of a stuffy, garage-like building that acts as our company’s supply building, arms room, and CQ office. I’ve been in the Army for so long now, I’ve forgotten what CQ stands for, but I know that it means I have to answer the phone if it rings. The standard answer goes something like this: “Bravo Company, first of the one-oh-seventh infantry, this is Sergeant Hartley speaking, this line is not secure, how may I help you, sir or ma’am?” When I want to savor the absurdity of this verbose announcement, I clearly enunciate it in its entirety. If I’m feeling lucky, I truncate it a bit. But in most cases, what guys do is just smear the phrase into one inarticulate ogreish exhalation, something like what Mormon kids do at the end of every prayer: “INTHENAME OFJESUSCHRISTAMEN.”

  The bare concrete floor is covered in a nearly even dusting of sand, which is incredibly annoying because no matter where you plant your feet while sitting, you have no traction. This means you have to readjust your feet more often to try to find a comfortable position, but this also means that you have to feel the skin-crawling grind of sand between foot and floor. I swept the area under the desk, but then, because of the still air of the unventilated office, I had to sit suspended in a cloud of dust that only Pigpen would have appreciated. This is what you get for trying to eke incremental gains in comfort out of the Army—different discomforts.

  Sitting next to me is Jose, a mortars sergeant I’ve known for a few years from my original company in the city. He’s watching Carlito’s Way on DVD on a laptop. He turns to me and says excitedly, “Look, look! See? That’s me and my baby!” He has the movie paused and points out a man in the near background of a nightclub who looks like a younger version of him wearing a spic-tacular brown polyester suit and wiggling to the club’s music with an attractive Latina. I’ve known for years that Jose was in a scene in Carlito’s Way, but this is the first time that I’ve actually seen it. He and his wife appear a few more times throughout the scene, which he proudly points out to me. It’s almost as if he bought the DVD just to pore through this part of it. I guess if I were in a film standing right next to Pacino, I’d review it a few times, too.

  The funny thing about Jose admiring himself in the movie is it seems to have been a real highlight of his life, something he says he loves showing his kids. But it’s the timing of this self-validation that I find interesting. It’s almost as if this is the most meaningful record of himself, something that makes permanent a more perfect version of who he is—younger, thinner, and better dressed, and all on celluloid (or in this case DVD).

  And he’s not the only soldier who seeks a sense of permanence. Every soldier who had a “girlfriend” before this deployment had a “fiancée” once it started. Over the few breaks we’ve had, more guys have clandestinely gotten married than I can count. The same can be said for guys who made conscious and concerted efforts to impregnate their wives while on leave. There have also been a whole slew of deployment tattoos, most involving religion (a rosary, a crucifix) and loved ones (wives’ and children’s names). Me, I’m as fixated on releasing myself from attachments as some guys are on establishing them. Well, that’s half bullshit. I’ve worked very hard over the last several years to strip my life down to a state of minimal attachments, but my inner drive to create my own legacy is manifest in this journal, so I can’t self-righteously pretend that there are not things to which I cling. I believe that the only genuine stories are the ones that never get told. When someone records history, you get their view infused with their motivations and insecurities and their myopic observations of events. Not only am I no different from any other historian quack, but I’m the worst there is. I’m obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I’m really any good at is telling you how I feel.

  In a few days we leave for Kuwait. From what I hear, the logistical mosh pit that is Kuwait has hit epic levels not seen since World War II. The fear of going to a place where there are people who actually want to hurt me is something I’ve never felt before. And I can’t seem to overcome the feeling that there is something more I need to bring that I haven’t gotten yet. Gearheads like Chris really go bananas at times trying to decide these things, like which optic to purchase for their rifles—the ACOG or the Aimpoint?! I left my room in my apartment basically clean but not organized in any way to make easier the lives of those who would have to clear it out should I be killed. I am a rabid record keeper. I’ve kept every email, every instant message conversation, every digital photograph. My maternal grandfather helped raise me for the first four years of my life and was my first male role model. He’s dead now, and I wish I could have known him better. Maybe someday there will be a grandchild wishing he knew more about me. So I leave every inanity I can find a way to save, for future generations to sift through. So much for no attachments.

  I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won’t see before I leave; there are bills I still need to pay. I haven’t written as much as I’ve wanted, and there are countless things I’ve said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now. I don’t even know how to end this entry.

  But I guess that’s the tao of it all. Learning how to leave things undone and still be at peace with it. Nothing ever really gets finished anyway, nothing ever really ends, so why this need to create an end state? Maybe this explains humankind’s apparent need to destroy itself.

  “There will be no resolution.”

  Last line from Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Høeg.

  “This is not an exit.”

  Last line from American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis.

  February 23, 2004

  It’s an unusual concoction of emotions I’m feeling tonight on the eve of what will be the longest flight of my life. I keep thinking I should be dreading my departure, but I feel oddly eager to get there. On a basic and immediate level I’m fairly nervous, but I also feel an inexplicable excitement and undeniable optimism about the future. It’s hard for me to admit that most of what I feel is positive, for fear that I’ll later regret my naiveté. More than ever I find my unremarkable life to be sublimely precious. And it’s also hard for me to admit that the rest of what I feel is a sense of incredulity at how colossally absurd it is, what I’m about to do. There are people who are going to try to kill me, and I’m going to try to kill them. (Don’t these assholes know that all this killing stuff is dangerous? Someone could get hurt for chrissakes!) But fighting is something so basic to humanity that ruing it is just plain futile. Duality is
intrinsic to mortality, so as motivated as we are to preserve life, we still succumb to the lust and necessity to destroy life. To transcend this cycle would mean to transcend our own mortality—not a trivial feat. I don’t assume to know so much as even the first step in this process. But I suspect a good start would be a simple sense of compassion and determination.

  My heart is full and my weapon is clean.

  Camp Udairi, Kuwait

  February 26, 2004

  We are now at Camp Udairi, Kuwait, by way of Shannon, Ireland, and Sicily. We will be here for about two more weeks before we head up to our area of operations in Iraq. Most of the battalion will be flying up, but my platoon will be part of the convoy that drives up. Yay.

  I have a new weapon now—an M4 assault rifle with M203 grenade launcher. Her name is Wazina. She’s dark and beautiful.

  March 4, 2004

  It’s sorta hard to talk about what life is like for us right now in Kuwait. We don’t really do that much other than walk to chow three times a day, occasionally making a stop at the PX or computer center. We’re in the middle of a desert; there’s nothing here.

  Something I’ve been puzzling over for some time now: being here in Nowhere, Kuwait, is it more Indiana Jones or more Star Wars? The Star Wars argument is pretty sound, I think. We started out at the snow-covered fields of planet Hoth (Fort Drum, New York), then we made a short trip to the swamps of the Dagobah system (Fort Polk, Louisiana), now we return to the vast deserts of Tattooine (Iraq/Kuwait). “But Return of the Jedi was filmed in Tanzania, which is in Africa, so I’d say this is more Indiana Jones,” Dan pointed out. Between all the tents and soldiers and sand and the actual setting, the Indiana Jones argument is pretty sound, too.

  Then we were assigned the Humvees that we’ll be driving in our convoy into Iraq, and the argument was settled: this is definitely Mad Max. If you could see our vehicles, you’d understand.

  Our battalion was given a number of the new “up-armored” Humvees, these bad boys with the powerful engines, air conditioning, bulletproof glass, and more armor plating than you can shake a stick at. My platoon did not get many of these. I think we got two. Then there are the Humvees that have the “bolt-on” armor-plate kits. Once these kits are installed, the armor is pretty damn decent. I think we have one or two of these. The rest of the vehicles we were assigned are plain vanilla unarmored Humvees, which we have now sandbagged the hell out of. We put those Halliburton carpenters to work and have had them make all sorts of stuff for us to help us turn our Humvees into giant rolling mounds of sandbags. For the normal turtleback Humvees, we’ve sandbagged the floors and the windshield on top of the hood and, best of all, we’ve had plywood boards cut that now separate the passenger area from the back, so we can stack a wall of sandbags behind us. Some of the seats are now covered with Kevlar blankets. Once you cram all your additional equipment, food, water, weapons, ammunition, and your gear-laden bodies into what little space is left, you have a Gigeresque monstrosity. These fuckers are now uncomfortable as hell, and it’ll be a miracle if we make it to our area of operations in Iraq without anyone developing blood clots in his legs from being folded into his seat like a Swiss Army knife. I’m not complaining, really. It’s not like I want to get blown up by some shitty roadside bomb. I’ve placed every sandbag with the outcome of flesh vs. shrapnel well in mind. But I’ve gotta tell ya, some of these vehicles are just laughable the way they look now. We have a flatbed Humvee that has a mount in the bed for a machine gun. A double-walled plywood box was constructed in the bed to surround the gun and gunner. The hollow space in between the walls was then filled with sandbags. Although neither of us will be the one standing back there, Kirk and I took great care packing in each one of those sandbags. I’ve seen five-ton cargo trucks that have had similar boxes constructed for their gun turrets, some with welded metal plates. Every vehicle with a gunner turret has also had a sharpened piece of angle iron bolted to the frame of the windshield. The iron stands straight up like a sword to cut through any piano wire that may have been strung across the road in an attempt to decapitate machine gunners. It all looks pretty gypsy. My favorite, I think, is Dan’s and Kirk’s vehicle. It’s a canvas-top Humvee that’s had the armor-plate kit applied and a plywood sheet bolted to the roof in place of the canvas. It looks sorta like a half-armored dune buggy—semi-ridiculous. Or, as my platoon leader likes to call it, the Malibu Barbie Humvee.

  The First Infantry Division general spoke to us a couple of days ago. The most memorable thing I remember him saying was in reference to our rules of engagement and how we can “crush the rattlesnake that is poised to strike.” He said, “What do you do when you see an Arab put an RPG to his shoulder? You draw a bead on his fucking head and you kill him!” He also told us how none of the recent convoys going into Iraq have been attacked. That changed today. One of the First Infantry Division convoys got hit just as it left the Kuwait border. From what I heard, there was one KIA and two WIAs. Score one for the enemy. They hit us the moment we walked out the front door. If I were the enemy, I’d hit the new incoming U.S. soldiers with everything I had right off the bat and inflict as many casualties as possible in an attempt to demoralize the new guys. In a way, I hope this is what they are thinking because I would love to make contact on our convoy. I want to get the trepidation I feel about making first contact out of my system. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. I also want to discard any moral qualms I might have about killing other human beings, and help as many of these fuckers die for Allah as I possibly can on day one. Also, if they bring everything they’ve got to the fight, it will give us a chance to neutralize more of their assets.

  I refuse to call this a war. World War II was a war. This is a fight. And a dirty one at that. The way I see it, our enemy simply wants to kill as many Americans as possible, thereby convincing the CNN-watching public that the price is just too great and we should pull out and let the Shiite clerics or whoever take care of things. In my opinion, this strategy is brilliant. It’s cheap, and it has a good chance of working. I pray it doesn’t.

  I think about the reasons why all this started and how America is commonly perceived as the big evil land of the infidels. When I think of what America must look like to Islamic Fundamentalist Joe, I think of Hollywood. Hollywood makes so much offensively unwatchable garbage and aggressively sells it to the world. Whether we like it or not, Bad Boys II is how America gets represented to the rest of the world. This is unfortunate. Then Islamic Fundamentalist Joe looks at the proud and history-rich culture he comes from, and how Martin Lawrence is encroaching on it, and he becomes Terrorist Joe.

  America is beautiful, from the bustle of her cities to the hiking trails of her national parks, from the snow-mobiling people in Minnesota who talk funny to the grits-eatin’ people of Georgia who also talk funny, from the kids on skateboards at strip malls in California to everyone’s grandparents enjoying retirement in Florida. But Terrorist Joe sees only Jerry Bruckheimer and his Taco Bell merchandizing tieins wiping his shoes on his prayer mat. So I feel for ya, Terrorist Joe. But some of your buddies attacked me where I live in New York City. They killed people I know. And since a lot of New York City police officers and firefighters are also National Guardsmen, they killed a lot of our brothers-at-arms. So invite all your foreign insurgent friends and anti-coalition forces friends to your place and set the table, because a lot of very pissed-off New Yorkers are coming over for dinner and we’re hungry.

  March 9, 2004

  This will be the last time I write from Kuwait. My platoon leaves shortly for the heart of Iraq, by way of no small convoy.

  I’ve spent so much time existentially pondering all this combat crap, that I’ve forgotten to complain about the Army. I’ve always been taught that the most important thing a rifleman can do is shoot straight. This apparently is not very important anymore. We’ve been sitting on our asses for the majority of the last two weeks, and then finally we went to a range. Since I carry the M2
03, my weapon wasn’t ready until just a few days before we left Fort Drum. So I never got a chance to zero it (adjust the sights) there, the idea being we would zero it in Kuwait. We finally get to the zero range, and they give us just enough ammo to zero the iron sights. Okay, fine, but I don’t really use the iron sights to shoot, I use the Aimpoint (reflexive firing optic). But there was not enough ammo or range time to zero both. I refuse to zero only the Aimpoint and not the iron sights, because if the battery dies, I want a reliable backup aiming solution. So I compromised and got a decent zero on the iron sights and a half-assed zero on the Aimpoint. This is totally unsat. We should have spent days at the range zeroing the hell out of all our weapons systems and doing familiarization fires on all the weapons systems.

  Me and the guys of my truck almost didn’t get to go on the convoy. (“Road march” is a better term, even though we won’t actually be marching.) My commander’s Humvee needed a new alternator, so in the meantime, during training, he took my platoon sergeant’s Humvee, who in turn took mine. A few hours ago, the commander’s vehicle finally got fixed. This gave the guys of my Humvee only a couple of hours to pack our vehicle. Actually, it’s not our vehicle. Since our platoon sergeant has been using ours for the past several days, he decided to keep it so he wouldn’t have to unpack it and then repack his old vehicle. This is cool (sorta) because this now means that we have his vehicle, which has one of those super-duper high-tech Blue Force Tracker computers in it. This thing is cool as shit. It’s a GPS (global positioning system)-linked touch-screen computer that sits in the front passenger side of the truck that allows the truck commander to see a bird’s-eye-view map of the battlefield in real time.

  Speaking of the Humvee snafu, my platoon was given Kevlar blankets to put on the seats of some of the Humvees. Mine was one of them. This is cool because it literally protects your ass from land mines, IEDs, etc. Well, we had to give them back for some reason. All of the guys in my truck agreed that we would forgo the sandbags-on-the-floor bullshit and just live dangerously and roll without them. The Humvee is uncomfortable enough as it is without a bunch of friggin’ sandbags crammed in there for the sake of the time when an explosion happens to take place directly beneath me. There are still a shitload of sandbags in the Humvee, don’t get me wrong; we just opted for more leg room.