Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  “So this is what our training was for!” Sherman likes to joke. At the same time no one jokes about nerve and mustard gas, or the anthrax and botulism germs we keep being warned that Saddam will rain on us in artillery shells. For my part, lying in my sleeping bag on occasions of waiting to fall asleep, I review gas mask, chemical suit, gloves, and bootie routines to be used when the first gas alarm is sounded.

  “Let’s be savvy in how we handle sleep,” the lieutenant lectures one evening as we finish still more PT near our mud-bellies. “When the call comes, turn sleep off mentally as if with a switch! Just do it! As you have to know by now, sleep management is part of being not a good tanker but a great tanker! The highest rated tech equipment in the world is not going to do any good if you’re not alive and using it with confidence and creativity! Don’t forget it!”

  The lieutenant also waxes sentimental one evening over a German submarine movie he saw years earlier in which a call to battle stations brought the captain from a dead sleep right into slamming his eyes to the periscope, calling coordinates, giving an immediate order to fire. “That submariner had the heart of a tanker!” he adds. “I expect nothing less from each of you!”

  It’s on this occasion that Sherman, glancing my way, gives a smirk meant to ridicule the lieutenant for being gung-ho, which has me helpless against grinning. At the same time my thought is that I may grin now but I won’t be shortchanging how I’ll handle the sleep challenge when the drums begin to roll.

  I fashion a wake-up routine for sleeping outdoors under a tent fly attached to The Claw: On shoving my sleeping bag to my knees, I sit up. Rub my eyes. Slip a hand into the leather glove I’ve slept on and, taking up my boots to knock them together, wipe the glove within to crush any scorpions that might have entered in the dark to set up housekeeping. Pulling my boots onto my stockinged feet, I crouch under the flap in the damp air, stand to zip and buckle, and reaching for my flak jacket and gas mask, fix them in place as I step two steps away to piss apart from my fart sack. Recovering my canteen cup (also knocking it free of visitors) I make my way to the HQ tent and the Mermite Vat of hot coffee ahead of any others emerging from tent flies and vehicles. Eighteen, twenty seconds total. Sometimes I’m on my feet and moving in ten seconds or less. Mainly I rally myself into focus, into a positive frame of mind, in a way that I believe will save my life.

  “Wanna live, gotta be good,” I remind myself in the words of Captain Kinder. “The crush will come, the world will explode, and when it does you don’t want to be caught napping and wondering who you are as your body parts are blown around.”

  Like the submarine captain in the lieutenant’s movie, I want to roll out of sleep firing. A right cross. A left hook. Saddam, having fucked with the wrong guy, being dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  Returning tank-side, sipping coffee, I tip water from my canteen to my free hand and wipe my eyes, face, neck, under my arms and, on pushing down my pants, up between my legs. On brushing my teeth, I rub soap over my chin and shave quickly, preparing to face the day. Re-fixing my helmet and gas mask container, I return to the field kitchen for water-heated T-rations, scrambled eggs, toast, and home fries. Cool milk. An orange stuffed into my shirt for later. Life in the field. Everyone says an army moves on its stomach. What an army thinks on, I can tell them, is an orange stuffed into a pocket, a brain fired by coffee, muscles primed by scrambled eggs, genitals enlivened by a handful of warm water. A mind working more on these connections than on a computer.

  Then a visit to a slit-trench without a Stars & Stripes to read. Every few days, when I can no longer stand the smell of myself, I carry a towel and soap to a gravity-fed shower for a quick total strip and hardy crotch scrub, a shampoo and wash-over with chilly water, a redressing in clean socks and underwear. Returning to The Claw to endure remarks of “looking cuter every day,” the lieutenant threatening, again, to add saltpeter to the water, given the look of longing on Sherman’s face.

  Raucous laughter. And, day after day and night after night, nerve gas rehearsals in concert with tank maneuvers, dry-running target practices, and a chance at last to eat the juicy orange and experience a rush of clear-headed creativity. Anticipating knocking the Elite Republican Guard flat on its ass.

  In a training exercise at what we come to call Muddy Creek Range, I score first overall as gunner in the troop as Sergeant Agee, the troop’s established top gun, is at a briefing and doesn’t compete. The sand berms, ridges, and obstacles where the engineers have positioned pop-up targets are as real as were conditions at Graf, the terrain rougher, the tank speeds forced to 40 miles per hour (to test everything) and, if I may, I ascend (without touching the seat) into a zone I haven’t known before. Of thirty-two tank pairings, my score, firing with Sherman as loader and the lieutenant as TC, takes first place overall in the squadron and earns all kinds of kudos.

  The lieutenant is so overcome he can hardly speak. “Who in the world was that masked man?” he wants to know, almost in tears.

  “Murphy, unreal, how’d you do that?” Sherman wants to know.

  I try to explain by saying, “It’s falling into place.”

  What I know at heart is that I’m achieving a new plateau. I felt right as things clicked as in a many-cylindered engine. It’s not anything about which to brag, but still I know that I’m breaking through. Fingers, eyes, brains. Instant automatic calculation. Fire! Fire! Firing ahead of the impulse to do so! Dynamic duo, indeed. We have a team. No-look passes and Magic Johnson vision while racing the floor at full speed. All the training we’ve done. I can’t help knowing that a breakthrough is mine, is in my make-up.

  Needing thereupon to settle into sleep. Needing to return to earth and relax, to see that good outings in practice will not necessarily prevail when the starting whistle blows.

  The weather, contrary to expectations, is no longer desert dry and hot, but rainy and wintry cold day and night. Crawling under my tent fly when sleeping outdoors, I use my chemical suit on top of my sleeping bag for added warmth.

  Sleeping becomes hit and miss then as training exercises are staged after dark. “In desert warfare, it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll attack, or be attacked, under the cover of darkness,” Captain Kinder tells us at another troop formation. “Be advised! An armored engagement in open desert will be decided quickly, day or night! Crews needs to be cocked like a hammer, ready to read/identify/fire/ destroy! Not in an hour! Not a minute from now! NOW!”

  Limited use of water and flashlights is imposed. Any kind of illumination is under advisement, which is also different from maneuvers in Germany. Still we learn to get around in the field, making pathways to field kitchens, latrines, HQ tents, and battle wagons. Electric lights, like alcohol, become dreams of the past. Oh, for glasses of German beer under string lights with music filling the air. “Lily Marlene.” “Glow Worm.” “Third Man Theme.” “Nel blu dipinto di blu.” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” “Cold Cold Heart.”

  The simple pleasures of life, of hot showers and feather pillows. How precious they are at this distance. How much my thoughts remain on Lotte, on hearing from her in this desolation as I did at our frantic staging area. To think that she was dissed by Sherman at the outset, by anyone, while at this distance in the harsh desert she offers beauty and brilliance, cleanliness and control.

  Anxiety is different here, too. Nerve gas is expected…though as days go by the fear of gas lessens. Black humor slips in. On latrine waste being burned with diesel fuel, the all-clear has it that Tabasco-enhanced turds dropped by Sergeant Tourneau (weight: 295) were ignited and alarms set off when, sitting on a slit trench, he deposited a cigarette butt down between his legs. It’s good for grins that cut the tension we’ve hardly acknowledged.

  Anxiety is pumped up time and again by a sleep-deprived captain bellowing that we’re in a war zone! that headlights! a lighter! a flashlight is putting lives at risk!

  Yeah, yeah. Yadda yadda. Shove it up your ass! Doesn’t he know that when he
started bellowing my thoughts were on Lotte? Her head resting on my arm as it did in the hotel?

  Except for volleyball and flag football in the rain, there is little to do during off-duty hours but descend into one’s sleeping bag for a snooze. As the holidays are approaching and mail begins seeping through, Germany appears ever more sentimental on Christmas cards I receive addressed to “Any Soldier, 2nd ACR.” Together with gifts of candy, cards, and toilet articles sent by wives and children and German civilians intertwined with the American communities in Germany, there are images of twinkling snow falling on town squares and cobblestones in Bavaria. When asked where they’re from, soldiers accustomed to saying Iowa or Illinois are answering Bindlach and Bamberg. My mind is on Lotte, no matter what I’m doing. Like the air itself, she remains ever present.

  I turn again to my stationery kit. My promise was to write to Lotte when my situation clarified, which I did at the initial staging areas, before we moved into the desert and began to suffer not only radio silence but an absence of the helicopters (due to security and foul weather) that otherwise made deliveries of letters, magazines, newspapers. Unaccustomed to letter-writing, I procrastinate in the face of training and busyness until there comes a morning when, relieved from vehicle guard, I take up my ballpoint and hunker in under my tent fly with my flashlight, with Lotte alive in my lonely heart. Rain persists while a desert skylight washes into view through an opening in my tent fly, raising an emotion of missing things, even if I’m not sure what they are… aside from Lotte and an existence she is coming to represent at this impossible distance.

  Having hiked through darkness to the field kitchen, finding it open and offering warm drinks and food, I have a canteen cup of coffee at my side. One thing I miss, I realize, is the Stars & Stripes I read each dawn in the mess hall at Bindlach. The thin newspaper was a daily companion, as present as had been my mother in Southie on returning home from her shift at Gillette. As present then as Lotte is present now. The persons, places, and practices that define my days. An uncertain web within which I’m trying to survive.

  Like everyone, I’ve heard many times of the power mail has to cheer up vulnerable soldiers far from home. Nothing I’ve heard, however, includes anything as extreme as the thoughts occurring at this distant locale. My view over the desert in cold half-darkness: An all-night diner at home resembling paradise with country music playing. Desert dust working like metallic talcum into every body opening. Scorpions invisible on sand until the little bastards move. Condoms fixed over M-16 barrels. One’s malodorous body inhaled at the throat and, stepping aside, inhaled as well on squat-dropping what is called “a short stack of DNA cakes” into a toe-gouged hole in the sand. Desert rats, for sure.

  Crouched with my flashlight, coffee, and ballpoint, I try to imagine what Lotte is doing at the moment while trying to contain how much I’d love to be with her. Asleep in her bed. Covered by a down comforter on a cool autumn night in her tiny home town of Kirchenlaibach? I’ve never regarded myself as a booze-hound (I am wondering if abstinence has anything to do with the way my mind works?) while it occurs to me that a ration of cognac in my coffee might put sanity and salvation within reach again at last.

  Writing to Lotte promises fulfillment. Doing so (not sure yet what I’m going to say) feels as certain, in substance, as a lighted German bus pulling over at daybreak. Within my stationary kit is the note I received from her several weeks ago, when I was caught up in the busyness of deployment. Sleeping bag over my shoulders, sipping coffee, I use my flashlight to re-read her words. Hearing her voice rise from the page, I experience degrees of warmth and affection, love and eternity.

  It will give me happiness in my heart to hear any words from you.

  Overhearing my breathing, I tie my flashlight to a strip of canvas hanging near my shoulder, uncap the ballpoint I fixed to my stationery kit in Bindlach, and arrange hands, paper, and person into a writing position. I ponder as my heart opens to her. I’ve written to her before but am extra lonely now and also extra happy to write the first words of what will be a love letter from the heart

  Dear Lotte…

  January 1990

  VII Corps arriving in the Gulf from Germany was a development that those in the know took as a clear signal that the coalition forces intended to go on the offensive.

  –General William G. Pagonis,

  Moving Mountains, December 1990

  January 9, 1991: Baker opened the session giving Aziz a letter in a sealed envelope with a copy to pass on to Saddam Hussein. Aziz took five minutes to read the copy.

  Aziz: I’ve read Bush’s letter to my president. It is full of threats. I cannot receive it.

  Baker: The only question is, are you going to leave Kuwait peacefully or are you going to be forced to do so. There will be no UN truce creating a breathing space. It will not be another Vietnam. It will be fought for a quick and decisive end.

  Aziz: Iraq knows the power of American weapons, but this war will not be decided by high technology. My youngest son is eleven years old. The experiences of his lifetime are exclusively confined to war, to expecting Iranian air raids and missiles. War is not alien to us.

  Baker: I sincerely urge you to reconsider your position.

  Aziz: I sincerely and without pretension tell you that the nineteen million Iraqis, including the Iraqi leadership, are convinced that if war erupts with you, we will win.

  Baker: Please do not let your military commanders convince you that the strategy used against Iran will succeed here. You will face a completely different force. Midnight of January 15, 1991, is a very real date.

  Aziz: Against the backdrop of your ties with Israel I would like to tell you in all sincerity that if you initiate military action against an Arab country, you will be faced with hostile sentiments in the region, and in many Muslim states as well. You think the battle will be short but we are determined and confident that it will be long.

  –Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard Trainor,

  The General’s War

  “This is no longer training, you desert dogs… it’s rehearsal for a live performance!” Captain Kinder calls to us several dozen tankers standing apart from our mud-bellies beneath another cloudy sky. Sherman, at my side, is giving a cynical grin, taking in the captain where he’s looking down at us from an open Humvee like General Patton in a movie.

  “Hear me now!” the captain calls with increased volume. “No matter what you pick up on the radio, the Iraqis will ignore the 15 January ultimatum! There will be a massive air campaign! Targets in the north will be hit hard, while the forces we’ll be facing will suffer little more than three to five percent casualties. The bombing will inflict collateral psychological damage, no doubt about it. As will the chemical warheads they’ll be raining down on us! Fierce soldiers among you will survive! As will the creative!

  “The time is coming for every tread-head to earn his hazardous duty pay…in a full-scale ground campaign triggered by the air campaign! When all is said and done, seventy, eighty percent of enemy forces will fire at us with ordnance from underground bunkers they’ve had six months to build! As we’ve known from the beginning, VII Corps will lead the way, spearheaded by 2nd Cav. If there is one thing to which I subscribe, it is keeping the troops informed…allowing you to exercise personal judgment at every level. Stay sharp, you tread-heads…stay tuned!”

  Touched by the Captain’s enthusiastic call to arms, we clap and call “Yowsa!”

  Captain Kinder gets more into it every day. As Sergeant Noordwink notes in the privacy of The Claw, the captain will either go insane from having the world disappoint him, or, one day when he’s a four star general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will have us recalling having served in his troop when he was a captain but a few years removed from West Point. “Harry Truman, you know, was a captain of artillery in World War I,” Noordwink adds. “Truman was a good CO, a brilliant and disciplined soldier…whatever you hear about his politics.”

  Night exercis
es continue to dominate our intensified training. The 15 January air campaign ultimatum looms but days away, giving new focus to our desert-rat preoccupation with oiling our mud-bellies, machine guns, M-16s.

  Dismount scouts continue to come and go, leaving their vehicles and doing perimeter guard after dark with radios on their chests and M-16s in hand. On seeing them pass I think of DeMarcus, the army buddy with whom I would most like to joke and laugh, share beers under dim dangling bulbs in a beer tent (if we had one) and speak (there’s no one else with whom to share such feelings) of the women in our lives back in Germany. He has his senior beauty (to each his own) while I have a skinny girlfriend who is amazing to me (whatever Sherman said in his snobbery) and a beauty unto herself. She remains precious by way of her warm humor and sweet personality, command of languages, friendship unlike any I’ve known…unless it is being buddies with DeMarcus in his shedding of the gangbanger pose he allowed himself to adopt in Baltimore. Talk about coming of age in the army. Thanks be to all the doors it has opened to all of us.

  The evening of 14 January arrives as if without notice. January 15 remains the ultimatum date for the beginning of an air campaign in the east, with no added word coming to our desert location from BBC or on scratchy transmissions on AFN Radio. All’s quiet on the eastern front, Sergeant Noordwink notes with solemn awareness that has me, if not others, at least glancing in that direction on the gray horizon.

  The captain calls a skull session at 1600 hours in the presence of our tuned up, fueled, and armed mud-bellies. No one speaks except the captain, who explains, again, that night warfare is natural to the desert. “Don’t kid yourselves,” he says. “The Soviet T-72 is almost as sophisticated as the M1A1. Intelligence is predicting up and down the line that the Iraqis will attack at night. They’ll have hidden their T-72s during the day, engines off and cold, to avoid detection. They’ll have infantry divisions hiding in pre-dug reinforced bunkers where they’re invisible to thermal sensing and U.S. Apaches looking to spot stray vehicles to target with HEAT missiles. U.S. air support will be useless on a crowded battlefield and our reality is simple: The side that carries the battle at night will prevail. The side that runs into itself in the dark will die.”