...Romantic to Cynic...

18 APRIL 2010

War stories are a sad ritual you can never avoid once you find yourself in the company of too many soldiers. And these stories are not in short supply here, but what they lack is content. Mostly the newer Joes—the ones whose definition of combat could only reflect their last two month’s experiences—are asking the questions: grunts want to know about receiving a Combat Infantry Badge; the POGs want a Combat Action Badge. I tell them silently, “No, they only give those to soldiers who actually see combat.” But I don’t tell them aloud for fear it might insight more dialogue of their exploits, to prove their hardened warrior skills.

There was a time, when I would sit patiently around the circle, awaiting my turn to tell of daring heroics in the face of certain death. Now those tales are reserved for bar room chatter with some nut-job who wants to buy the veteran a drink—which, in a case such as mine, is far too often than my liver can manage. But there was a time. This was years ago, in a bombed out, roofless/doorless/windowless, crumbling shell of a home for a company of men, just a half dozen months after the invasion. I was with Shanks and Walker and Sowers and Wells, and a number of other Joes all gone now or spread elsewhere throughout the Battalion.

Do you remember when we walked up on that car, all turned to swiss cheese, and saw that guy’s head in his son’s lap? Or that suicide bomber whizzing by on his motorcycle and vanishing into a pink haze just before he reached our truck? Or when we cleared the whole damn hospital and found nothing, only to have someone drop grenades down on us as we walked out the front door? This was the type of conversation passing around the circle when a cook—who had escorted by to drop off some foodstuff—spoke in, “I was stationed at Fort so-and-so in Peaceful Town, USA, when this happened…”. He had brought a knife to a gunfight, which is to say, he tried selling over-easy eggs to a hard-boiled customer.

Having an outsider like Nigel here this time around helps me to realize the only hard-boiled anything, found this late in the game, is found in the DFAC. This, however, has not deterred the aspiring war story fanatic. And the mellow happenings of each mission brings back some auditory on you should have seen me out of the wire; that’s just how I do, cause I’m hard. And I try to take some level of calm in thinking, whatever damage 2003 brought to my scale of romantic to cynic, it is unlikely to teeter any further in the direction of the latter.

- The Exodus