Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  My dear Jimmy,

  I have but a moment for a note, one that has me wishing you were here and we are together. You are so on my mind every moment, I hope you know this. Yet we are far apart and I’m seldom able to say to you all I would like.

  I’ve had a dream only last night, while my realest dream is to see you again. In my dream, it is happy and funny. You have hired me to keep house for you? With great enthusiasm I am burning meals, am never darning socks or sewing on loose buttons, am giving everything to the laundry and never touching the iron. I refuse to lift a finger to clean the house you have hired me to keep. Why? I am too busy spending the generous salary you are paying!

  I’m only wishing on waking that this is not a dream at all. Rather that I am a perfect housekeeper and we are perfectly happy together. Do you like my dream? Or do you like better the reality to which I’ve awakened? Please tell me.

  I must hurry now to dress for work.

  Your Lotte

  My shocked realization, replacing her letter in my pocket, is that she is thinking of marriage! Dreaming marriage! She is, in a teasing way or not! Her words within my dome light have my heart lifting in reciprocal devotion…as well as in terror of what I’ve invited and what she is proposing!

  Writing a note back (which I know at a deeper level I should not be doing until my thoughts have settled) I do her one better, for the fire it inflames within my foolish belly. “I love your dream of us being together,” I say. “Maybe it’s what we’ll end up doing, what do you think? I’m lonely, and I know what I’m saying has to sound crazy, but it’s what I hope whenever you cross my mind.”

  In my eagerness to express my adoration, aware that we will be moving within an hour, I slip out to make my way to the Troop Command Vehicle, where mail is processed and outgoing letters commence their journey to the chopper that settles in now and then for the purpose, among others, of picking up the mail bag.

  Excited love stirs my heart and, given the circumstances of being in a dark and damp locale where battle will explode at any moment, my chest remains warm on having my commitment, my counter-proposal of becoming a couple making its way to the first object of affection I’ve ever known. Lotte Lengemann. A bright and pretty girl. In love with her, at a distance or not. Words in transit! How daring I feel! How seized with infatuation! How like Superman flying through dark skies back to Germany!

  As day is beginning to break and we’re outside The Claw doctoring MREs with Tabasco sauce and stirring instant coffee into lukewarm water, the captain stops by with word that Iraq, one klick away, seems yet to remain unaware of our pending visit. He jokes about an Iraqi border guard calling his superiors to say three hundred U.S. mud-bellies have amassed at the border only to be accused of hallucinating, given that everyone knows the attack will come by sea, straight into Kuwait, led by U.S. Marines two hundred klicks east of where the border guard has been staring from his outpost!

  In these final moments the captain is in a talkative mood that infects others on the verge of our attack being unleashed. He tells of a recon team infiltrating thirty klicks north yesterday evening, carrying jam-resistant frequency-hopping backpack radios and pinpointing each desert berm, ridge, and outcropping our M1A1s will have to breach. “Scouts got close enough to clarify which units are Republican Guard and which are conscripted cannon fodder!” he tells us.

  “Sir, when do we move out?” Sergeant Noordwink wants to know.

  “Maybe minutes,” the captain says. “The final ultimatum needs to be processed. Apparently the Iraqis are saying they’ll leave Kuwait but want six weeks to make the move. President says it’s a hoax. Says no way.”

  Learning then that our move is not minutes but an hour away, we do more vehicle maintenance and take additional turns on guard, sitting in the open hatch in mist behind the .50 caliber machine gun as time passes. We do more PT because the lieutenant insists that we remain in tip-top physical shape. “Catnap when you can…you’ll need it when the time comes,” he says, and adds yet again, “Be in shape, you desert rats…this is for real.”

  Rolling out to engage the enemy. What begins–unbeknownst to us–is a scenario of countless starts, preps, delays, fresh starts. Excited reports picked up on BBC get passed around: The USS Tripoli and USS Princeton hit mines outside Kuwait City in the Persian Gulf, their death and injury counts unknown. Also, an Army complaint of inadequate air support leading to a confrontation between branches of service. Word has it, that is, that the Air Force wants only to hit targets in Baghdad and is refusing to target the tanks and tubes we grunts are about to face in the barren stretches south of the sprawling capital. We hear that the Air Force wants to show that it can win the war by itself and Field Marshall Schwarzkopf is apparently furious! Army brass believes the flyboys are more interested in PR than in doing damage to the enemy! Word has it that grunts on the ground are regarded as expendable by the Air Force.

  “No need to believe any of that crap,” the lieutenant repeats. “It’s pure bullshit and politics.”

  Lotte remains within my mind like fresh air inside our diesel-smelling universe of imminent battle. This is where (I keep thinking) lethal rounds will be aimed at us in turn as we commence firing live and lethal shells! As the minutes go by I know, in my confusion, that my letter is on its way to Kirchenleibach, carrying the sudden terror that she will accept my proposal!

  What was I thinking? Have I been thinking at all? Have I been imagining a story from a Hollywood movie? One frightening line I wrote, and mailed, and would like to have back:

  If something goes wrong for me, I want you to know that my plan is to ask you, when we meet, how would you feel about us spending a lifetime together?

  The proposal sparkles in my mind like a stick of dynamite with a hot burning fuse. Is it what I really said? I know it is, just as I know I was caught in a love-seized need to utter words of the kind, if only by mail! In my imagination she’s electrified by my devotion in one moment and terrified in another, wondering how she can get out of what seems to be coming about!

  Inside The Claw it’s increasingly like camping in a tent packed with seats, handles, stored ammo, stacked instrumentation. When the lieutenant asks if it’s still raining and I say, “Cold and rainy,” he replies, “Worst weather they’ve had here in decades. Odd thing is, it favors us, coming from a cold climate. We’re equipped to deal with it. For the Iraqis, it couldn’t be worse. They hardly know protection against foul weather! Don’t even own ponchos or raincoats. Here’s the worst weather in their history–present outdoor temp is thirty-nine–with a huge force telling them to get the hell out of Kuwait or be annihilated. How’d you like those odds? Imagine how you’d feel.”

  “Saddam saying they’ll be shot if they even think about backing off,” Noordwink adds.

  “Camped out once, over Labor Day, got hit by rain and snow,” Sherman says. “Bedding got soaked. Food got soaked. Asses got soaked. No way we coulda felt worse. We’re pre-teens…ended up walking miles on a two-lane highway at midnight (folks ain’t picking up no black boys, believe me) to call daddy and say come get us our dumb asses.”

  “I’d have picked you up,” the lieutenant says.

  “Too late, sir,” Sherman lets him know.

  “I hear you talking,” I add to Sherman, seeing him all at once as friend, roommate, fellow kid soldier rather than as a college snob and know-it-all.

  “Where’re you camping that it’s snowing in September?” the lieutenant wants to know.

  “Keystone State, sir. Poconos. Freak storm…like this. At the time, din’t have no climate-controlled hundred-million-dollar set of wheels protecting us against the elements.”

  “Tracks,” Noordwink corrects.

  “Tracks,” Sherman says.

  After a moment, within our unexpected moment of camaraderie, the lieutenant notes, “You know the tolerances in this mud-belly are more precise that those in a Swiss watch.”

  I say, “That’s sort of a shame, isn’t it? All th
at care going into a killing machine?”

  “Murphy, you’re beginning to sound like someone else around here,” the lieutenant says.

  Noordwink laughs. We all titter, and it’s as if Noordwink is back in the fold and we’re brothers again, living in a tracked vehicle about to roll into the open in a barren desert.

  Word comes in that 2nd Cav, as the most vulnerable unit, is being offered first dibs on a new last-minute botulism inoculation that has arrived on the brink of moving out. “Voluntary basis only,” the captain adds over the troop net. “Don’t wanna do it, don’t have to do it.”

  It gets discussed. Noordwink and Sherman decide to go for the shots on a dash to the command vehicle. The lieutenant and I decline. On their return, Noordwink tells us that forty-two percent in the regiment is accepting the offer. “You nice folks get germs in your craw, don’t be looking for no French kisses from me,” Sherman says.

  “With Agent Orange, you didn’t have to pay until later,” I say.

  “Hear, hear!” the lieutenant adds. “I’m glad somebody in this tub is not totally unaware of history.”

  The wet night continues turning. A mist is pressing the grit to the ground, which is fine, given that it’s easier to inhale washed air.

  A news flash breaks from BBC: First Cav, which we know to be to our right in a position similar to our own, suffered three dead and nine wounded in a feint-and-withdraw maneuver into Iraq just before midnight.

  The news bulletin hardly alters my focus as I heat water on the tank stove and work up an MRE. A rumor on the troop net has it (again) that the Air Force may be withholding air support, and my anger, like the water heating on the stove, needs, in disbelief, to be turned down. In the confusion of continuing to wait Captain Kinder rallies the troop. Calling us out and shouting into the dark rainy wind, he lets us know that he’s giving us our final marching orders if for no other reason than to quell the idle rumors.

  “First Cav’s maneuver was an intentional deke, meant to suggest the attack would be coming from the east!” he shouts. “Had nothing to do with the Air Force! Was a feint! Nothing more! A large-scale attack into Kuwait, by two Marine Divisions, 1st and 3rd, is getting underway right now! Don’t mess with the U.S. Marines! The KO punch–VII Corps, XVIII Corps, British 1st Armored, French 6th–spearheaded by 2nd Cav, will kick off any minute!

  “That’s the plan of attack! Word is that conscripts are being thrown against U.S. Marines in the east. Elite Iraqi divisions, the Medina, the Tawakalna, the Hammurabi, eleven or twelve divisions in all, are right HERE in the goddamn desert before us! Dug in! Supplied! Waiting to determine where our thrust will come from before they counter-punch! Some of those divisions are expected to rush east to help take on the Marines, but who knows? Ours is a left-right-left combo even if it’s being called an end-around! You hear me? Our role is to blast right through and open a goddamn doorway! Hear me? I don’t want any more rumors repeated in our troop or I’m going to have some stripes! The feint has been delivered! The knockout punch, massing behind us, led by us, will kick them flat on their ass, where they’ll be run over by an armada the likes of which history has never seen before! Got it?

  “Let me say this…because it may be my last chance before we rock and roll: The Iraqis are NOT prepared for the new American Army! Hear me? They do NOT have clue one how goddamned good we are! How well trained and well equipped! How ferociously we are willing to fight! They are not prepared for the new confidence that is driving the U.S. Army! So get some rest when you can, you dog soldiers, because we are going to make some history! We’re going to kick ass like it has never been kicked before! When Saddam baited the U.S. Army he opened the door to the wrong goddamn kennel!”

  The captain addresses us again less than five minutes later, when an alert is sounded and he comes on net to say all at once that our time of attack has been postponed by one full day! He’s back on in thirty seconds (as our hearts have sunk, only to be prodded again) saying: “Correction! We will start engines and move out in ten minutes, at zero-one-hundred hours. Bear with us while we get our ducks in a row.”

  The colonel himself comes on and is calmer and clearer. “Here’s the situation,” he says. “Recon scouts have identified three Republican Guard divisions before us. No matter our satellites, we don’t know what they’re going to do, or which of our probes will make first contact. All we know with certainty in this weather is that 2nd Cav is leading the way. Will make contact and deliver one hellacious blow! That is our mission. Find, fix, and stick! Godspeed, all of you!”

  I step off for a last-minute nervous piss in the sand. On my return the lieutenant is in the open hatch, goggles around his CVC helmet, adjusting his intercom microphone. This is it. It’s oddly like sex, like climbing into the ring at last, like hearing the bell, and I feel relief and anxiety that we are getting it on at last.

  Captain Kinder comes on the troop net as I squirm into the gunner’s seat and commence repeating safety checks on the arming system. “Thought you should all know,” he says. “Iraqi Scud hit a building in Al Khobar, killing twenty-six U.S. soldiers, male and female. Wounded ninety. It’s our turn now to show our stuff. Fierce professionalism all the way, you desert dogs! Fire power! Discipline! Well-oiled machine! Tourjours pret!”

  February 1991

  Gorbachev desperately needed a diplomatic success to revive a reputation that was crumbling. On 9 February, Gorbachev expressed his concern that “events in the Persian Gulf were taking an increasingly alarming and dramatic turn,” and called for a “political settlement on the basis of the Security Council’s resolution.”

  On 12 February, Gorbachev’s “personal emissary” Yevgeny Primakov met Saddam. He noted that the Iraqi leader had lost 15 to 20 kilograms since they met in October 1990. On 15 February there comes an Iraqi bombshell as Baghdad Radio announces that the Revolutionary Command Council is prepared “to deal with Resolution 660, with the aim of reaching an honorable and acceptable solution, including withdrawal from Kuwait.”

  Before long, however, disillusionment sets in, as it transpires that Saddam’s readiness to withdraw from Kuwait is accompanied by conditions that nullify the letter and spirit of Resolution 660. Not only is an Iraqi withdrawal conditional on an Israel withdrawal “from Palestine and the Arab territories it is occupying in Golan and southern Lebanon,” and the cancellation of all UN resolutions against Iraq, but is predicated on international guarantees for “Iraq’s historical rights on land and at sea,” which implied general recognition of Iraq’s claim to Kuwait. In addition, Saddam compiled a list of demands, including the cancellation of Iraq’s $80 billion foreign debt and the reconstruction of Iraq by allied countries at their expense.

  Colin Powell suggested that Saddam be given no more than twenty-four hours. This was Bush’s inclination. However, while this issue was being debated, news came in of the Iraqis igniting Kuwait oil wells. Accompanied by stories of executions of young Kuwaitis, this made the twenty-four hour limit unavoidable.

  “The coalition will give Saddam Hussein until noon 23 February to do what he must do–begin his immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait,” Bush said the next morning.

  Despite his desperation, Saddam could not submit to an American ultimatum before his people. His emissaries continued to play in Moscow with a new Soviet plan that gave them twenty-one days to get out of Kuwait. The American response to Saddam’s indifference to the ultimatum was swift. On Sunday, 24 February, President Bush announced that the Commander-in-Chief of the coalition forces in Saudi Arabia had been instructed “to use all forces available, including ground forces, to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait.”

  The ground war had begun.

  –Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh,

  The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991

  Thus the diplomatic status before us as final alcohol-free urinations have been deposited into the sands of Saudi Arabia and armored vehicle engines are ignited and loading procedures and firing mechanisms
are double-checked. There are satellites and drones, heat-seeking missiles and thermal eyes and ears…but it will still be what it is…a thin red line of soldiers (in armored vehicles) as the drums begin to roll.

  The invasion commences at 0115 as VII Corps net opens after ten straight days of radio silence. At 0100 an artillery barrage began splitting the air from a thousand meters to our right and rear. Howitzers and MLRS rockets have hammered their outpost targets thirty and forty kilometers into Iraq. Relief in The Claw is muted but real. It’s happening. Everything we trained for and practiced is happening. The whistling and the explosions last twenty minutes until, as the lieutenant (in his hatch in the mist) lets us know, two clouds of white phosphorus have puffed, indicating our time to enter stage-rear has arrived. Motors revving in combat attack formation, gears as eager as leashed dogs to shift into drive and be allowed to roll.

  “Ride of the Valkyries” fills the air as Fox, Geo, and Eagle Troops roll into Iraq over an intimidating thirty-kilometer front. Armored combat earthmovers take less than one minute to push lanes through the berms marking the border. Within seconds the regiment’s armored vehicles (M1A1s with big defining guns) slam through, followed by Bradleys, Howitzers, mortar carriers, NBC, and command vehicles, over three hundred armed and oiled mud-bellies in all, followed by dozens of fuel and ammo trucks, Humvees with mounted .50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, engineers, and fire control troops trailing within a swath (Apache air cover grounded due to wind and rain), out to destroy anything and everything seeking to challenge our authority or hinder our movement.

  So it is that we’re in Iraq and on the attack, just like that, slamming forward in our fighting mode, raising freight trains of dust and belching flames of fire. The sense is one of penetrating Iraq’s underbelly like a many-pronged beast that will make the country explode…though nothing happens just yet. To our rear, earthmovers keep widening breaks through the two-story berm…in anticipation of VII Corps’ heavy divisions and more than 140,000 soldiers following in a thrust through the opening. A one-two-three combo, started by the Marine textbook right-cross in the east, is unfolding.