...reflection part III...

I find myself staring at roughly 170 photos from Ft. Hood that I’ve yet to edit and send off to be added to the 245 photos I have already archived. My goal, upon entering Kuwait, was to share a handful of photos that summed up the entire mobilization training at Ft. Hood. That was not possible since my week went something like this: not being able to eat at the DFAC, having a room with second platoon, getting kicked out of the room in second platoon, not being able to eat, almost being deported, finding a new room with third platoon, not being able to eat, sleeping in transient tents at Ali Al Salem, not being able to eat, getting my IDs at Arifjan, coming back to Buehring (not deported) and swamping the blog with a bunch of posts Giunta had written...and finally being able to eat at the DFAC after finding out all I needed was a bloody stamp on my ITO.

I was lucky enough to be able to stuff my face at the many fast food chains that have graced Buehring. It’s a weird feeling being in a so-called ‘combat’ zone and eating at a Burger King, KFC, or Taco Bell; the whole sense of danger and adventure seems to be lost. Hearing that the terrorist threat here at Camp Buehring is still high baffles me, I have more of a chance getting killed or hurt back at home crossing the street. Grant it, I will be going into Iraq quite frequently, but the war here has come to a halt for Coalition Forces, allegedly. It seems the Iraqis are too busy killing themselves during the elections to even care about the withdrawal. Don’t get me wrong this is nothing to complain about, but I wonder if I will be the only photographer to spend a year in a ‘combat’ zone and be as green as the day I arrived.

The cluster *f-bomb* that this blog has become over the past few days should hopefully start to clean up in the near future. Giunta has written some great stuff below these photos, so I strongly suggest you dig back if you haven’t already read them.

- The Exodus

...reflection part II...

...reflection part I...

I will be posting a written portion about this in the next few days. Right now I'm opening up with photos.

- The Exodus

...On the other Foot...

Putting my thoughts into elegant words like my comrade Sgt. Giunta is not my specialty, that’s why I take photos…but since this is a blog of words and photos, I shall attempt to write as well.

At times I feel the need to take a step back from the camera and view the world through my eyes rather than a lens, which is what happened during my pass in Austin, TX. The extent of my photography during this little adventure ended briefly after picking up a soldier’s, Barnhardt, pocket digital one night and trying to figure out how to work it. I gave up rather quickly and decided I’d rather sip on a Jameson and watch the insanity around me fold out. This entry won’t contain any photos, just my experience of what it is like to be cooped up for almost two months in a seemingly circle of hell, or purgatory *cough, cough*, and then let loose for a few days before going overseas.

If a camera had been turned on me during this pass, which I’m sure there was, I’d be embarrassed to show my face in Austin again…well a certain bar anyways. Making a very short night even shorter, it is physically impossible, for me, to drink the same amount of alcohol after two months of sobriety. There are only so many shots of liquor and beer you can drink in a short period of time before your body decides to shut down. After my little endeavor of making a fool of myself I decided to be sensible for the rest of the pass. The next few days were filled with excellent food, moderate drinking, and being sober enough to watch other people act like asses, only to know I was right there with them a few days ago.

The reason I write about my overly intoxicated night on this blog isn’t to sound like some frat boy blabbering about the last time he got shit faced and how everybody thought he was so cool, but to make a point of being vulnerable and under the scrutiny of others. It’s easy to photograph a soldier when he messes up or gets chewed out by his superior if it makes an interesting frame, but when the tables turn and you see photographs of your own retarded behavior, it makes you think twice about photographing somebody just to make a good photo. I could have filled this blog with photos of individuals making terrible choices while intoxicated, and I could have cleverly labeled it “When Soldiers Go Wild”, but I see no good in doing that. I understand showing how men and women act before going to ‘war’ is an important part of the story, but at what cost. At some point I feel my job as a photographer ends and I’ll just experience life with these men and women and learn from my mistakes. Maybe that makes me a soft photojournalist, but I’ll take the trust of a unit that I’ve been with for over two years rather than some scandalous photos.

- The Exodus

...And then What...

27 FEB 2010

Sand Hill, Ft. Benning, GA, the birthplace of every Infantryman.  There are few institutions in the world, where a man can be taught to live by violence of action; that driving sense of purpose to follow the path of least resistance, to move-move-move, regardless of what waits for you on the other side.  The Infantry lives by violence of action, whether you’re assaulting a beachhead or making your bunk.  Typically, it’s something similar to the latter.  The life of the soldier is not an hour and a half, action packed adventure, starring Joe Hollywood all dressed up for blood, guts and glory.  The Drill Sergeants on Sand Hill inspire hard charging, let’s get it done, hurried movements; practically pushing you out of the barracks or foxhole or whatever, and then what?

The and then what will be the vast majority of every soldier’s career.  I imagine, of my eight years in service, I owe seven of them to and then what.  Sure, I played a moderate role in the invasion, but I can tell you, for every ambush I went on that ended by bombs and bullets, there were twenty more where the only opposition found were chilly nights, the want for sleep and giant spiders.  And the same can be said for every kicked in door or convoy patrol or any other soldier stuff.  The Army calls the and then what moments ‘hurry up and wait’.

This is where I find myself now, at hurry up and wait.  I am on the second chalk to Kuwait; we fly out tomorrow.  I have already packed my bags and cleaned the barracks and called my list of loved ones.  And I did all of this with such a sense of urgency, such violence of action, that the Brown Rounds from Sand Hill would smile with pride at their good little soldier.  Why proud, if all my scurrying around accomplished was a day or two of and then what, of hurry up and wait?  It’s conditioning, for that one time of twenty, where your target walks into the ambush or an armed silhouette appears in the doorway or the convoy takes fire.

With the current US operations in Iraq, and our assigned task, I imagine, I hope, the odds of one in twenty are actually far less.  I’d rather not relive 2003, and I cannot expect we will.  But still, the conditioning is there.  My father gave me sass a few years back, at some family gathering.  “Calm down”, he told me, “You would think that the Army would have taught you patience.”  I replied with, “No, the Army taught me the importance of meeting your time hacks.”

- The Exodus

Freedom'ish

24 FEB 2010

A year ago, when I left my fraternity brothers behind at ‘coolege’, after a very long and equally unproductive educational pilgrimage, my father told me not to fret, that I had socially graduated.  To what new level of social advance, I can only assume he thought my efforts towards drinking would shift focus to my unethical, and quite likely illegal, undergraduate essay ‘workshop’ business.  To his dismay, I will admit, a four-day pass to Austin proved that I am the same drunkard who has roamed the halls of various Florida University and College dormitories over the last eight years…

Saw a man dancing on a Grand at a piano bar.  Met six bikini waitresses who serve false hope.  Nigel threw up.  Bought food from a street vender and wore it for the rest of the night.  Walked into the wrong hotel—three times.  Flat Iron steak and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.  Piano bar again, someone paid seventy dollars to hear the UF fight song.  Found the First Sergeant and got a free beer.  Ate at Katz’s deli, it was nothing like New York.  Bought clothes without food stains.  Played billiards and watched USA beat Canada.  Air hockey in a dingy bar.  Shots that taste like Tabasco.  There was a light-saber battle on a mechanical bull.  Hailed a cab to go four blocks.  Ribeye on the bone, a bottle from Stellenbosh, finished with a Port and felt snooty.  Barnhardt threw up, and then he bought false hope from a bikini waitress.  Took a body shot at Coyote Ugly’s, probably have herpes now.  After hours party at some hotel.  Drunkenly slurred directions, luckily our cabby spoke gibberish.  Snow in Texas, all fights cancelled.  Sign-in to base postponed.  The snow stops.  Sign-in is back on.  A last look through a Starbucks window of the slush filled streets, as I sipped on an espresso and tried to remember the last four days.

The grounds at Ft. Hood were still covered in snow when the taxi dropped us at the gate.  And I may have been drunk still, when we woke in the morning for a run.  As for my misadventures my father had hoped I left behind, it seems more likely that I’ve merely deferred my actions for the deployment, and I’ll reinstall my payments into sophomoric behavior as soon as I get home.

- The Exodus

...Reindeer Games...

17 FEB 2010

My last training mission has ended.  The remainder of our Ft. Hood experience will be cleaning and packing.  I remember my last mobilization; we must have re-packed our gear a few dozen times, each time with some tiny detail added or excluded.  Have four socks in your rucksack, six in your A-bag.  No, make it five and five.  And on the tarmac too, waiting for our bird, the bags were dumped and packed again with little piles of personal items left behind to be lost forever.  The Army calls this Reindeer games.

The Army plays a lot of Reindeer games.  Eight trucks my platoon washed for turn-in today will be driven on tank trails tomorrow.  Dirtied again and cleaned again.  A four-day pass requires counseling, a risk assessment and contact information.  Each day these papers are reformatted and filled out again.  I think of the movie Groundhog Day and I want to play the piano and rob an armored car and get the girl.

In the haze of Reindeer games, there are tricks to keeping your sanity.  A long distance runner will find objectives along the way to run towards, goals to achieve to break the monotony of the trek.  Surrounded by Reindeer games, we beat down monotony with our own goals, our own little moments of happiness to race towards.  I’m racing towards four days and nights in Austin.  Four days of medium rare ribeyes and tall glasses of Jameson, putting my gut and liver at peace one last time before I see the desert again.

And after I’ve run to Austin and my trek puts those days and nights behind me, I’ll look forward to another, and the Reindeer games will pass by like mile markers on the road to something better.  Jumping through flaming hoops to find boat drinks and sunsets and Rockette girls on the other side.

- The Exodus

Private Murphy's Law...

04FEB2010

Along with half of my platoon, I have bronchitis. If you have no military experience, surely you’ve heard some random hero in some random war flick say, “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training”. It’s true. From now on, ignore the weather channel. If you want to know if it will rain on your wedding day, call the nearest Army post and ask if any Infantrymen have a training exercise that day. Normal people label this irony Murphy’s Law, but out here, we call it Private Murphy’s Law. And Private Murphy is always there—omnipresent. For three days in the rear we had adorable weather; San Diego weather; mid-70’s, no cloud in the sky weather. The morning we woke for a five-day field problem, the rain was making mini ice rinks here and there. I imagine mini Private Murphy rolling around the mini rinks on a mini zamboni.

Out there in the field with the mini zamboni, fueled by irony, we practiced soldier stuff. We practiced convoy security, practiced occupying a battle position, urban operations, and firing our mounted weapons while on the move. The last of these was the only fun found that week. And that fun, as always with the Army, was a controlled fun. An observer sat up there with our gunner and said, “shoot here but not there”, “are you sure you know what you’re doing”, “shoot”, “don’t shoot”, and so on. I imagine a Nun with a ruler, jabbering on about piety while smacking away at children’s wrists, where piety is really fire control and smacking away at wrists is really smacking away at wrists.

Between each wrist smack, our gunners would fire a burst of 7.62 or .50 cal rounds down range towards the enemy—those little green plastic men. If Martians hold true to stereotype threat, the Army is well prepared for their arrival. But for each crew, the Martian slaughter only lasted an hour. The remainder of the day I sat at the ammo point, coughing up a lung and handing out bullets. Little bullets covered in my sickness. I think of small pox covered blankets. And I wonder if one day green plastic men won’t have to pay taxes.

- The Exodus

 

    

 

The beginning...ish...

08JAN2010

I’ve often referred to my first deployment in Ramadi as a hell on earth.  A tired cliché I realize, but if war is hell, the mobilization process at Ft. Hood, TX is purgatory.  A tedious repetition of monotonous redundancy.  The sin of being a National Guardsmen has enslaved me to this dead space for a month to come, a month of paper work and PT.  In a message home I wrote, “Iraq would be fine, I can’t wait.  Anywhere but here”.  I say stupid things from time to time.

Another stupid thing I say is a response to a commonly offered question.  “I thought we weren’t sending troops to Iraq any more.  How long do you think we’ll be there?”  The stupid thing I say is that we still have troops in Germany.  That’s usually the start of a reoccurring conversation I have in pubs after too many pints.

Recently though, I spoke with an editor who suggested Iraq is America’s forgotten war.  I suppose I didn’t think much of it then, but here in purgatory, it was brought up in conversation again.  The officer who greeted our company had a very nice speech prepared for us, telling us all about the burden of being a Guardsmen and our willingness to sacrifice those comfortable little lives we’ve created for ourselves off in the ‘real world’.  And he mentioned the unprecedented support our countrymen are giving the American soldier.

The editor had made a loose reference to likening this war with Vietnam.  And for a while, I could see that.  My amendment came after this welcoming speech, where I decided the general population has become indifferent to the war in Iraq.  The forgotten war.  I don’t mean to rationalize whether this war is just or not; I’m here to serve without pride or prejudice—another cliché I realize.  And I think it’s great that Americans have this blind love for their soldiers regardless of their political agenda.  What I mean to say is, the people thought Vietnam was bad, and they told us so.  And the people thought WWII was just, and they told us so.

But now, indifferent to the war but in love with the soldier, I feel as if we’re the people’s favorite college team.  And even though we didn’t get into the best of bowl games, they cheer us on anyway.

- The Exodus