1.6.10

...Cupid and Board Games...

25 MAY 2010

Imagine a desert. Do you have it? I’m guessing you pictured loose sand and rolling dunes, maybe with some random camels in the distance, or one of those snakes that fumbles sideways all of the time like it’s always dizzy. None of that is Iraq, at least not like the Iraq of memory. This has been like visiting a childhood home, and though everything is just as it was, nothing seems the same. I remember dirt and grit and burning trash everywhere; some palms and brush along the river’s edge; shambles of homes and shacks over-shadowed by small lots of marble structures with thick metal gates; and all of this was covered with a fine powdered dusting—like watching the foot prints on the moon—but no sand. This was the pesky annoyance of thought fluttering about as our convoy drove north to grab this week’s haul of downgrade. I lost my thoughts in a gaze to the road as the wind-blown sand crawled over the asphalt to the east as we trucked along north until I felt bent and sideways and dizzy.

The Convoy Commander is from the Trans unit and even though our gun trucks are charged with the convoy’s security and movement, the CC is by and by the boss of things. So far we’ve had asshole CCs and clueless and lazy and all sorts of other CCs. This one, though competent surely, I believe is on drugs. When I met him at Buerhing, an hour late to the appointment he set, he was all stumbles, mumbles and fumbles. Each point he addressed was cut off mid-thought and abandoned for something more shining and tantalizing. A kid in a candy store comes to mind. At our convoy briefing at the border, he passed off his duties to one of his Joes under the premise of ‘not feeling well’. Maybe he’s just lazy and prone to illness and suffers from an equilibrium off its keel and so on.

His men were a bunch of super soldiers too. They rolled into country with a burnt out alternator—and I had flash backs to empty cans of 10 weight. We halted the convoy and the CC had the wrecker pull up to tow the down truck, and its crew got out to hop in an empty seat here and there. One of his homeless Joes asked, “Should we take our sensitive items with us?”—he meant their weapons, ammunition, night vision goggles and such. And this, somehow, was a hard question for him to answer but by and by he was able to mutter off an, “Um, roger.” When they called up to say they were all in this or that truck and ready to go, one of them said, “Yea, we have all the SI, so-and-so took all the NVGs and I have all the ammo.” Silly POGs.

But it wouldn’t be fair to point—as I do so often—fingers at these Trans units and say how they’re all ate up like soup sandwiches—a popular army saying that shouldn’t hold so much merit; when I think of a soup sandwich I think of bread bowls, and I love bread bowls—if I didn’t mention our own mishaps. For instance, just a few days ago my driver merged in behind the wrong convoy, separating us by about fifteen miles from where we should have been. If it hadn’t been for luck alone we may have followed them off into nothingness till morning. So, there. Equality.

You might call this a mishap too: I spoke to my wife—ex that is, I imagine it’s the last bit of catholic in me that would rather not say ex-wife—on this mission. We were held up at one of those FOBs and had all been turned away from the internet/phone center. Anytime a soldier dies in theatre, they try to blackout the area, so the family doesn’t hear about it on Facebook or whatever first. I am unfamiliar with the details of the incident, was even told it was a rumor, then truth, then a rumor again and so on. But it did make me think a little. Nothing important, I guess, just wondering how they notify the families now-a-days—I find it hard to imagine some high ranking brass still knocks on doors. Naturally, I thought about my own death, which, I imagine, is a perfectly healthy thing to do. And this made me realize it would probably be a long time after the fact that my ex-wife would hear the news. I guess it made me sad or one of those other silly little feelings so I wrote her to say hi. Didn’t mention any of the sad, sappy, self-pity whatever feelings to her, which was probably best and all.

I wish I hadn’t mentioned death like that just now. I don’t want to give the wrong impression about our task and purpose on this mission, which is a joke; that I’d probably rate it at a ‘2’ on a ‘1-10’ HOOAH scale. So let me remind you of the absurdity that is our time spent here with a little help from Cupid and board games.

The New Guy, my driver, the one who got us lost a few days back, had struck up a conversation with a female soldier at one of the staging lanes. I saw no harm in a little innocent flirting and thought it might be good for morale so I let him blabber away like a chatty Cathy. They went on about how silly and easy convoy security is and all, and then typical army small talk lead to the question, “So what MOS—army speak for job—are you?” When the New Guy said 11B—more army speak for Infantry—she was blindly confused and asked, “What are you guys doing here?!” We didn’t roll out that night because of a sandstorm or a broken truck or some other unfavorable circumstance, so the boys retreated to a friendly game of Risk to pass the remaining night hours. They fought and squabbled over two-dimensional countries and made a good time of things. But I can remember telling myself in the middle of it all, “This is the most combat any of you will ever see.”

- The Exodus

No comments:

Post a Comment