Princes of War

by Claude Schmid

  The next day would be all Wilson.

  Kale had bonded with the boy, though he wasn’t his father. He felt about him the way it must feel to love your own son. When he met Wilson for the first time, the boy was two years old, barely conscious of the world. In the last three years, Kale had become a surrogate father and watched Wilson grow into a quiet, happy, even-tempered boy; and their relationship had grown close.

  For their special last night, Wilson and Kale intended to go camping. A few months before, they had camped for the first time and had a blast. Camping was classic boy’s stuff, confronting the outdoors, surrounded by all the mysteries of nature, and he wanted Wilson to grow fond of call-of-the-wild experiences.

  Serena agreed. Camping was perfect. Just the two men. She had encouraged his closeness to Wilson. The boy didn’t know his biological father and the title “Dad” had been Kale’s early on.

  Late the preceding night, while Serena and Kale were out, it had unexpectedly started to rain. It rained hard all night. By late morning, the rain had stopped and it looked like it might dry up. But by mid-afternoon the rain returned. While Kale was out shopping, Serena broke the news to Wilson that the camping trip was off. Nature gave and nature took away.

  A tank drove by outside, shaking Kale’s trailer like a small earth tremor. Somebody outside shouted about going to chow. Kale, not wanting to be disturbed, locked the doors.

  His thoughts returned to Wilson. Sometimes you try to do special things, and it doesn’t work. A five-year-old kid can’t understand nature. It didn’t make him feel any better, but Kale told himself that the one redeeming fact about not going camping was that children learn so much from disappointment. Cruel, but true. Disappointments, large or small, form internal scar tissue. You were supposed to get better handling disappointments after dealing with them. Of course, you could not explain this to a little boy.

  “I told him that you can’t go,” Serena had told Kale when he arrived home. He kissed her gently on the cheek and asked where Wilson was.

  “He’s downstairs, baby.”

  When Kale got to the bottom landing of the steps, he peered carefully around the corner, hoping he might spy on the boy. Both loved to tussle, and to play hide-and-seek, and surprise each other. A successful sneak attack would guarantee laughter and vanquish, at least for a few seconds, any disappointment. Spotting Wilson over on the far side of the room, Kale stopped. Wilson sat maybe 15 feet away on the floor, looking down, concentrating intently. One of his hands held something small. Kale realized what the boy was doing.

  Wilson sat on a large carpet printed with a town map and played in an imaginary world. A life-truth held him—we always look to the future. To the boy, the carpet had a real community, with streets and houses and lakes, green places too, and fire and police stations. Wilson, a toy car in his hand, had transplanted himself into a make-believe town, his future town. By the “Humm Hummm” motor noises, he could tell Wilson drove a car. Suddenly, a road curve was too treacherous. The boy’s voice elevated sharply for a second, but then the child driver steadied, continuing safely. Already Wilson, like other children, had attached himself to the actions of adults, to the adult world. Why? Maybe kids wanted their rightful place in our world as soon as possible? Perhaps he figured that in the adult world he, not others, could make rules, and control things, however illusionary that control was.

  Maybe it was self-training through imitation. You learn from all you do.

  Kale had lost something by being in Iraq. He’d lost, for one thing, a year of watching a child grow up. He closed his eyes and hoped that would be all he would lose.

  At 2230 Wynn sat beside the small folding table in Petty’s trailer. Petty’s papers and periodicals from back home, including the Army’s Military Review, lay scattered on the table. From somewhere Petty had procured a shabby reclining swivel chair, and Wynn leaned back in it, contemplative, as if he was nearing the end of a session with a therapist. They had been talking privately for nearly half an hour as Wynn decompressed. Petty sat Indian-style on his bunk, with one leg pulled up higher and his arm hooked around his knee. He was relaxed, happy in his element.

  “Do you wonder why these people fight us?” Wynn asked. “What we want to offer them is good. Something so much better than they had before, under Saddam. Why fight us?”

  Both men were more candid with each other than with anyone else in the unit. They asked each other questions about the war, sounded out ideas, explored theories. True candor meant blunt questions and answers. Both sought to understand the war, understand what could be understood. Wynn respected Petty’s intelligence, his access to official analysis, his insight regarding information obtained from both combatants and non-combatants. He also could share doubts and theories with Petty that he was unwilling to share with his subordinates or his superiors. Petty envied the fact that Wynn, as a platoon leader, led young men in combat. Petty, as an Army Intelligence Officer, lived on the edge of war, vicariously, through Wynn’s retelling. Both knew their ideas needed to be tightened by reading and talking and thinking more. Was victory achievable or a triumph of faith over reality?

  “I’ll give you a concrete example of one reason why,” Petty continued, “Today I read a report about a shooting in another Brigade’s area, about forty-five kilometers from here. The incident had to do with the wife of an Iraqi contractor being shot by a sniper as she got out of a car outside of their home. One of the insurgent groups we’ve got some Intel on, a group that calls itself Purifiers for Allah or PFA, claimed credit. A couple of months ago they put out some kind of wordy manifesto. The translated summary of that manifesto has PFA claiming that anyone, Iraqi or otherwise, that cooperates with, or takes advantage from, the American occupiers, has defacto ‘joined the infidels and is automatically a bad Muslim.’ They claim that only pure Muslims can lead Iraq. It goes on to say they’ll kill ‘bad Muslims and their families’ to ‘purify Islam’ in Iraq. Other insurgent groups have similar ideologies.

  “Put the extremism aside for a moment and think about what’s at the core here,” Petty continued. “What I mean by that is there’s an ingredient that’s necessary to get things together. Like for bread to rise, it’s the yeast, right? What’s the yeast here?”

  Wynn considered Petty’s meaning.

  Petty screwed his eyes, hoping to draw gold from confusion, and went on. “I suppose the yeast is legitimacy—the idea that the ruler or rulers have the right to rule. Unless the folks here think they have a legitimate government, they won’t come together. That’s the yeast.”

  “Saddam wasn’t legitimate. Yet he ruled,” Wynn countered, then paused, thinking the comment needed more.

  “That might be true. I guess it is. But not sure we can’t say Saddam didn’t have the right. Now, I’m not saying his rule is right. And I’m not saying he gained power in a respectable way. But for many years he had, however he got them, the reins of power. The populace probably got accustomed to it.”

  Wynn thought about that, unconvinced. “Sounds like you’re near to saying ‘might makes right.’ That if you’re in charge, it gives you some legitimacy, in time.”

  “No, I don’t believe that.”

  “Aren’t you saying that? Doesn’t it matter what the nature of the regime is? Whether they are basically decent or tyrants?”

  Wynn watched his friend. Petty looked away, struggling for words. Then he hugged his raised knee closer and looked at the ceiling, as if the answer might be written there. Wynn couldn’t get his own head around a concept of government that didn’t associate legitimacy with at least the elementary characteristics of good government. His fingers scratched the imperfections on the underside of his chair’s plastic armrest, as if he were digging for insight.

  “Let’s smoke on it,” Petty said suddenly.

  Wynn smiled. The two of them smoked cigars twice a week or so.

  Anticipation creased Petty’s face. “I got an order of Thompson cigars
in yesterday. Seems like they ought to be tested.”

  Wynn drew deeply on his cigar, energizing it. A cigar in hand gave stature to any discussion. And he liked the image it suggested: two serious men, earnest about their work. Petty climbed off the bed and reached into his mini-fridge and got the box of cigars. He took a cutter and matches out of a mug with Lacrosse stenciling. They walked outside to a row of T-barriers 50 feet away and sat down, backs to the wall. Petty cut both cigars with the meticulous care and handed one to Wynn. Petty lit his, deftly rotating the cigar, letting the flame catch the full circumference, inhaled deep and smoothly, then handed Wynn the matches.

  “I think legitimacy is a rather amorphous concept,” Petty continued. “Maybe you have to separate how you get power from the exercise of it. We’re dealing with tough things. I guess I’m concerned that the long-term challenge here is that there’s a growing feeling among Iraqis that everything we touch loses legitimacy. That, somehow, only if it’s all their doing can there be legitimacy.”

  Wynn started to speak, but Petty brandished his cigar like a wagging finger, cutting him off and continuing, “I’m not saying I agree or disagree with that. I think it’s a perception we have to battle.” That thought lingered, as if in silent realization that executing good ideas are always far more difficult than just thinking of one.

  Wynn drew deeply on his cigar, belaboring the smoke, a long vaporous stream from burning end to cut end. He let the tobacco mist linger in his mouth and it felt smooth and cool and soothing, then he let it out, first a dribble through his pursed lips, then expelling the rest, signaling his satisfaction. He felt the discussion now hit fundamental points, and said, “Most rulers didn’t get power through democratic means. So question number one is can they be legitimate governments without coming to power democratically? In the past, many rulers came to power with outside assistance—meaning foreign powers helped them. Even America. Maybe the key question is: can legitimacy be gained over time?”

  “I think it can. Probably the ‘how’ to that is whether the new government matures over time and builds trust in the people,” Petty replied.

  Wynn inhaled the rustic cigar aroma. Cigars always made him think of cabins and trees and fishing. He had none of that now, merely memories. His grandfather used to smoke cigars when they fished. Paps would say that by adjusting his flies with a cigar smoke-scented hand, the fish wouldn’t be able to detect the presence of humans.

  Petty continued. “I don’t know. Maybe all this talk of legitimacy is western thinking. We’re always looking for reasons for everything. Maybe it doesn’t fit here. In the Muslim world, passive acceptance—even acceptance of lots of ugly things—is part of their inheritance.”

  “Those guys trying to kill us aren’t too accepting.”

  “True. But they’re a small group. At least we hope they are. Most locals in counterinsurgency wars sit on the sidelines. It’s always like that.”

  “Maybe so, but even a small number can be deadly,” Wynn said.

  “Yes, but small numbers are easier to defeat than larger numbers.”

  After talking another half an hour, they’d solved none of the world’s problems. Wynn wanted sleep. Speculation about the legitimacy and forms of government never ceased, and would be available again tomorrow. His cigar half-finished, he abruptly ground it out in the dirt, and stood up.

  “OK man, another healthy dose of brain food. I’m outta here. Need some sleep.”

  In the dark, Wynn lay on his rack thinking about his platoon and his life. He was thankful for his own upbringing. His few short years in the Army had taught him that two-parent stable families were increasingly rare. Most of his soldiers had been buffeted, at one point or other in their lives, by family breakups, or had never experienced what was still called a traditional family. Wynn’s early years had been storm-free. His father had a solid insurance career, anchored in the central Pennsylvania town where he’d grown up, and where he eventually met his wife, Wynn’s mom, and raised a family.

  Wynn’s mom, a teacher, and ever the project manager, had taken the lead on his introductions to young ladies. One was Clare Baldwin. Though considered quite handsome, Wynn’s courtship skills in college had the finesse of a concrete slab, a deficiency he acknowledged. His mother stepped in periodically to alleviate this, despite his regular protestations. Clare, the daughter of his mother’s teacher-friend, was a student at Bryn Mawr while Wynn was at Temple. The mothers had done their thing, and the next he knew, Wynn had Clare’s phone number. After light grumbling to his mother about her continuous matchmaking efforts, he’d ended up calling Clare. They’d started dating in the second half of their junior year. Soon they went steady. How easily a good woman could conquer a man. Clare was sophisticated, talented, and attractive, with long full black hair and fine symmetrical features all topped with a champagne personality. And she had big blue eyes, big enough to swim in. But he had big ambitions and a stubborn streak, and these attributes prevailed late in his senior year. Despite both of them realizing they fit well together, he’d never come close to proposing.

  The Army officer commission he got at graduation would take him far away from Pennsylvania. They both knew that. They both knew, too, that neither wanted marriage straight out of college. She knew he wasn’t ready for a total commitment. Finally, after stumbling around a bit, he had told her that maybe the time apart would make both of them appreciate how good of a thing they had.

  After graduation and commissioning, he went on to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic officer training. She took a nursing internship at Penn Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia. They tried to date long distance for a while. He saw her probably three times in the first six months after graduation. Each of those times he felt that their relationship was steadily thinning out, slowly starving, like any living thing without regular sustenance. Soon after that, his first permanent Army assignment took him to Fort Riley, Kansas. Before leaving for Kansas he’d come home to Pennsylvania one more time. A week prior, he had called Clare and they had made plans to meet. The day before they were supposed to meet, she called and left a voice message explaining that she couldn’t see him, her work schedule at the hospital had changed unexpectedly, and that he should call her if he had time to meet the following evening. He didn’t call her back. Soon after that, back at Fort Riley, over a beer—a couple of beers actually—one of his new buddies told him that he had to let it go—that he had to marry the Army for a while before making room for a lady. So that’s what he did.

  Had he made the right decision? Could they have made it work?

  Early one summer, he had accompanied Clare as she shopped for her mother’s birthday present. Clare was wearing one of those turn-a-man-on-fire dresses. He had simply been walking beside her in the Lord & Taylor store when she bent over to pick up a purse off a lower shelf. He watched her in profile, from about 10 feet away, mesmerized. She had to be unaware he was looking, but the delicacy of her white neck, the smooth curving lines of her arching back and bottom, the finely shaped muscles of her calves, all came together in a mini-ballet before his eyes. The totality of the movement she made in bending over, so graceful and beautiful, as if she had put the whole story of femininity on the stage, registered inside him in a way nothing else possibly could.

  Paps had said one time that men’s experience with women had something in common with fish: “Even if they shake it free, they never forget a hook in the mouth.” Here in Iraq was the wrong time to think much about serious romance. He tried to shut it down.

  A few moments passed before he finally closed down his mind and went to sleep.

  DAY THREE

  9

  At 0615, Cengo stood alone outside the Company CP, reflecting on the many strange things around him as he waited for the Wolfhounds to pick him up. Even after working for the Americans for more than a year, this place, the FOB, still felt like an alien camp, an incredible foreign creation inside his own country. What the America
n Army had constructed was a miracle. These people were rich, so very rich. And everything organized. Exact rows of olive green tents set on wooden floors. Neatly arranged square metal boxes all over the camp funneled electricity for America’s Army. Hundreds of new same-sized rectangular metal living trailers, all with hinged doors in the center and two windows spaced equally on each side of the door. Cengo had never lived in a home with a glass window. Planning and order meant everything to these Americans, these masters of the material world. Allah had blessed them beyond anything Cengo thought possible.

  Nothing in Iraq was the same. Everything was different. On this base, at least, the old Iraq seemed irretrievably gone. He’d heard stories—mostly horrible stories—about executions and tortures, including torture of children on this base in Saddam’s time. The base had originally been built when Cengo was a small child. His father helped build it, having worked many years as a brick mason until his hands were dry and hard like bread crust and always getting infected. The Americans said that was because the Iraqi brick masons didn’t wear gloves, so the cement ate his father’s hands.