Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  This has Dee and me using our rifle barrels to motion the conscripts to their feet, to raise their arms, which has one collapsing in abject expectation of being cut down in a firing squad execution. We shake our heads, say things that communicate next to nothing, even grin as we get them to spread their legs…pat them down in circumvention of any possible suicidal madness.

  When the terrified Iraqis are given bottles of water and led away by MPs, Dee and I, unnerved by what has happened, spend a minute returning back to earth from our strange encounter. Suddenly for me the war is personal, human, troubling. Grown men reduced to begging for their lives…dropping to the ground and kissing your boots. “That was weird,” is the best I can say at the moment, assuming that Dee is suffering the same mortification.

  We have time for an awkward exchange before Dee has to get back. He will see me in Germany, he says as he makes his way off between M1A1s and Bradleys being refueled and oiled in anticipation of another thrust forward.

  “We’re on for a celebration!” I call after him. “Tell Magda…I’ll tell Lotte. Something to look forward to. We’re gonna need it.”

  Just like that, Dee is gone while I remain confused and troubled by what happened with the Iraqi conscripts. It’s one thing to send machine gun and cannon fire at black and white targets on small screens, another to be faced with obliterating everyday human beings begging for their lives.

  With Fox back in the lead, we roll on as before. Within half an hour (having all but forgotten that we’re in a battle zone) outright warfare begins to unfold. There comes a recon report of forty armored vehicles (APCs and light fighting tracks) maneuvering northeast, either having learned of our advance and trying to escape or fisting up to unleash a head-on attack. With Eagle Troop, we Geo tankers are ordered to race northeast to intercept this armada, and so we do, thirty-two M1A1s and twenty-six Bradleys (no small wedge) in an attack formation slamming over rough terrain at 35 miles per hour. As we rush bucking-bronco style over ridges and gullies, as enemy armor comes into range at 1,950 meters, we commence firing and begin taking fire in turn, and our encounter with the pathetic Iraqi conscripts gets left to history.

  Incoming artillery explode short, and machine gun fire pings and clangs from our depleted uranium armor, raising shouts within The Claw of “These fuckers are trying to hurt us!” and, “Murphy, unload on the assholes! Give them some shit they won’t forget! Make them fill their pants!”

  Perched half an inch above my seat, close to my thermal screen as my hands work the grips, confident in my control and in having it together, I shout and fire and add, “Silver bullet!” before firing again! I add machine gun fire where Eagle and Fox are sweeping their erupting cannons left to right, taking out one APC or fighting truck after another, blowing apart every identified target.

  In but two minutes white flags are reported! The Iraqis have had enough and just like that, the skirmish is over…followed by orders to cease fire! (White flags? Do they carry them in anticipation? Do they pull them out as rounds were blasting through everything and it was either death or ripping off a T-shirt and getting it on a stick?)

  Iraqi soldiers are scrambling to surrender and survive, exiting APCs that have taken hits and are exuding flames, smoke, burn-off explosions. They are not the malnutritioned conscripts we previously encountered or Republican Guard forces wearing uniforms more green now than brown. Nor are they a match in any way for our discipline, confidence, technical superiority, and relentless firepower.

  As new prisoners on-screen are searched and passed through to MPs, it’s clear that they’re better fed, younger, and stronger than the three conscripts Dee and I encountered. Loudspeaker warnings are given to MPs to conduct thorough searches for weapons and IEDs…to, “Shoot anyone who is slow to obey!”

  The captain comes on net to confirm what is obvious, that in encountering these better prepared Iraqi soldiers we’ve engaged not a Republican Guard unit but an RG security zone. He adds that when the Iraqis begin fighting in earnest, when they take risks and seek to do damage, we’ll know we’re facing the Elite Republican Guards.

  We grind on in our armored tracks, leaving prisoners and site to be processed by MPs, moving one or two kilometers before pulling up to be refueled and restocked with ammo, to perform maintenance, stretch our limbs, and, as damp and cold as it is, take in some non-cordite air. “Be cautious with stragglers,” the lieutenant calls. “Could be some zealots. Shoot anyone who declines to obey.”

  All the same, it’s a time-out, and on hitting the ground for some air I look back over a smoldering battlefield, asking myself if this is war. If this is how it happens. Did we just blow apart a fraction of an ill-equipped army?

  Hundreds of soldiers are moving about, and I see the captain driving one of the Soviet-made light armored fighting vehicles, doing circles through burning rubble, hearing someone note that he’s doing a test drive before giving up the vehicle to Squadron intel. Smoke rides the air like cotton candy, and there’s a stench that can only be burning human flesh.

  Sherman is sitting guard with The Claw’s .50 caliber, and with time on our hands, as refueling proceeds, I step off to piss and pull in, if I can, breaths of other-than-tainted air. Returning to air-hose the vee packs, I sit in readiness for my descent down through the hatch to the gunner’s seat, and it is that moment, surprising me, that Dee appears, apparently knowing the identity of The Claw on sight and at a distance. “Hey, what’re you doing?” I call like a neighbor on a street in town.

  “Yeah,” is what Dee says.

  Yeah? Am I missing something? I remain outside The Claw in any case, to indulge whatever he’s after.

  His teeth and the whites of his eyes are visible within the shadow of his helmet and the heavy air around us. Otherwise, M-16 hanging upside-down, flak jacket and battle gear covered with dirt, he looks like any other cav scout. I snicker as it occurs to me that he can’t spit out what he wants to say. “What’s cooking?” I say. “You doin’ okay?”

  “I’se a dimeass punk then,” he all at once lets me know. “That shank. S’okay, you toss that sucker on the Autobahn.”

  I’m surprised and confused, can see only that he seems to be serious in what appears to be either an apology or an afterthought. Shouldn’t he be with his squad? My response is to grin with affection. “You’re apologizing!” I ask, which has him grinning, sharing a brotherly conviction (only in the army! is my thought) together with an odd urge to put things right, to have me know he’s in acceptance of the brotherly gestures I’ve sent his way.

  “Didn’t know stuff then,” he tells me.

  “You’re apologizing for the shank?”

  “Yeah,” he seems to say.

  “Accepted,” I say. “No need to apologize,” I add in ongoing confusion.

  “Didn’t know nothin’!”

  “Me neither,” I say.

  “Be a dime-ass punk, what I be then.”

  “Been there, done that,” I tell him.

  We continue grinning in awareness of this being a goofy exchange that could only occur between uncertain friends on a distant battlefield where nothing is as it ever had been before.

  “You hear from somebody in Bayreuth?” he wants to know.

  “Bayreuth?”

  Still not getting it, I close an eye in confusion.

  “You know who I mean.”

  I laugh and say, “You mean somebody…in Bayreuth? Somebody named Magdalena?”

  “Tha’s who I mean.”

  I can’t help breaking into laughter. “You think she’s writing to me!” I say. “Is that what you’re saying? You’re crazy!” I add, seeing that he remains serious.

  Then he’s grinning in a way that I cannot read one way or the other, until he repeats: “Tha’s who I mean. Tell me,” he demands.

  “A thousand miles away? You think I’m messing with your woman through the mail? That’s what you’re thinking?”

  We’re both laughing, and my guess is that he needs to spe
ak of Magdalena here and now, whatever the context. “You’re as crazy as a coot,” I tell him. “I swear to God…you really are.”

  “Guess I am,” he admits.

  “She’s not writing to you? She sure as hell isn’t writing to me.”

  “She be writing,” he tells me.

  “You really think she’s writing to me? On the side? That is crazy.”

  “I know you after her.”

  I laugh, laugh some more, as does Dee. “You’re fucked up,” I tell him. “That’s what is funny. You’re fucked up and you wanna talk about her, don’t you?”

  He doesn’t say, continues staring at me. “Let me tell you. I like her. Admire the woman like mad. Breaks my heart her life has been so weird…you know. But I’m not after her. She’s a friend. That’s all. Can’t a person be friends with her…like teachers can have more than one student, you know?”

  “She be with somebody…all I know.”

  “That’s what you know for certain? Or you just lonely out here in the middle of Oz?”

  “You think I’m lonely.”

  “Now you’re the one breaking my heart,” I say. “She tell you she’s messing around?”

  “Nah.”

  “But you know she is?”

  “I know she is.”

  “How often does she write?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You’re jealous…because you know she’s writing to somebody? Seeing somebody while you’re gone? You decided it was me?”

  “I dunno!”

  “Know what, man? You’re in fucking love. That’s what it is. You’re in love like a mad dog in the desert…it’s making you crazy.”

  “You think I’m crazy?” he wants to know, letting me see that he is serious still in his jealousy over a unique and aging European beauty back in Bayreuth, a jaded woman who adopted him in his despair as a black U.S. soldier.

  “She didn’t tell you she’d be messing around, but you know she is?” I ask in a more rational tone.

  “I tell you, I know it.”

  “Like you know she’s writing to me on the side?”

  He looks away like a ten-year-old.

  “Man, you are hopeless,” I tell him with affection. “You’re in love, is what you are. Mind’s playing tricks on you. Is she out drinking? Of course she is. She’s an alkie, you know. She’s not some girlfriend in ninth grade. She likes you. I know that because she made it clear when I talked with her. Is that what you need to hear? You’re jealous…which I think is natural off like this in another world. Otherwise things’re okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he admits.

  “Know what you are?” I tell him with more brotherly affection. “You’re a lost dog that somebody needs to feed and raise.”

  This makes him giggle and snort, as he says, “I be fucked up like a lost dog. You can write and all that shit,” he adds.

  “You’re like I was in fifth grade when Sondra Brown took up with Jerry Rowe and stopped letting me chase her home after school,” I tell him. Tears of confused laughter fill my eyes as I speak, as Dee’s eyes also fill with emotion.

  “Shoot, man,” he says.

  “Told you: You tell me the truth, I’ll tell you the truth. You’re jealous is what you are… it’s because you’re nuts and you’re in the fucking desert.”

  As he wipes his eyes, so do I. “Don’t worry about Magdalena,” I say. “I’m sure she loves your dumb ass as much as she can. Enjoy it for what it’s worth.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s life. Better than nothing.”

  “Foo,” he says.

  “Foo?”

  “Gotta go, man.”

  Walking off, he glances back. I call, “You’re pathetic!” and we pop more laughter.

  There he goes, while I look after him in confusion. Our joking has been uncertain, and what I’m left with all at once is a realization that he doesn’t trust me, that he may not be my buddy at all, not in the way I was thinking he was. Black guys can be weird. Blame it on the bossanova. This when I was thinking we were brothers in a world of crazy shapes and colors, unforeseen perceptions, visions and ideas. Inaccurate beliefs and narrow thoughts.

  February 1991

  PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder, once called shell shock or battle fatigue, is a condition that develops after a person has experienced or witnessed a terrifying event in which serious physical harm occurs or is threatened. PTSD is a lasting consequence of trauma that causes intense fear, helplessness, and horror, such as a physical assault, the unexpected death of a loved one, an accident, a war, or a natural disaster in which unspeakable horrors take place.

  Most people who experience traumatic events will have reactions that include shock, anger, nervousness, fear, even guilt. These reactions are common; for many they go away in time. For persons with PTSD, however, the feelings continue and increase, becoming so strong at times that they are unable to lead normal lives.

  I don’t have it, not yet, though the warnings are pervasive in handouts and skull sessions when we take breaks and sit around our mud-bellies in the overcast, darkening air. Nor have I sought any advice or counsel concerning the syndrome as it might apply to me or to Dee, in light of our reactions to the broken Iraqi conscripts sobbing and kissing our boots in appeals not to end their lives. PTSD is also mentioned by the captain and by meandering medics trying to do their stuff for the troops. Visiting the dispensary (part of the troop command vehicle) for aspirin, I take another flier from a rack for later study…to see what the experts have to say about this curious threat of which so many seem to be aware.

  I wasn’t really traumatized, I don’t think, by the pathetic Iraqi conscripts. At the same time, something changed in me with that close-up view of their sad humanness. My curiosity remains aroused. Firing on targets as they appear in black and white on screens is one thing. Seeing older men face to face as they demean themselves by sobbing and begging for mercy is another. What was clear above all else was their wish not to be there…how, in a second, they’d have chosen milking sheep all the remaining days of their lives over being used as cannon fodder. Cannon fodder. The reality was traumatic to me…learning that Iraqis used their people as targets to cause an enemy to expend its ammo.

  Monday, 26 February, 1991. At 0900 hours the sad conscripts are all-but forgotten as an outright encounter with a well-equipped enemy force occurs. Geo is sharing the lead with Eagle. Apaches remain grounded, more in the face of howling wind shear than blowing rain. 2nd Cav’s revised mission, we’re told, is to follow our scouts and Bradleys in an attempt to fix on an enemy known to be before us. Alerts, warnings, heads-ups keep coming from troop, squadron, regiment, and higher commands.

  “This may look like West Texas, but there are Bengal tigers in these rolling hills!” “Be suspicious of every nook and cranny because enemy perimeter scouts are here before us!” “We’re entering a Republican Guard hunting preserve…watch your ass from every angle, and tune in to any marks left in the ground!” “The enemy is watching you!”

  Contact for Geo occurs when a Third Platoon Bradley and recon team finds itself under sudden attack from 650 meters. They radio back: “Red One here. Have hit a hornet’s nest. Four APCs. Three BDRMs with anti-tank missiles. Right front. Circling to evade and return fire. Looks like an RG scouting party. Assistance requested.”

  Orders, info, questions flying over the nets is sorted by the lieutenant as Noordwink (and other drivers) make adjustments and accelerate. We’ve trained long and hard, have gelled by now as a crew, as a platoon, a troop, a regiment. We may be greasy and dirty, but we know what to do, and the enemy, from his perspective, could not have engaged at a worse time given the readiness with which we click into place in our eagerness to face, function, fire, fulminate with force. As gunner, I’m ready at once to fire at four-ten meters. “Here we go,” the lieutenant says. “Double-check everything. Don’t wanna be hitting our own guys.”

  Butt above my seat, eyes on my screen as we s
lam over rough the terrain, I strive (intensifying) to be on target as we near 410 meters. Not on a fellow Bradley but on any Russian-built T-72 tanks.

  “Double-check GH two-two six-oh one-oh!” I shout with clarity, certainty, conviction. Also: “Super say-bo,” in the same shouting tone.

  Knowing full well that to hesitate is to be lost, rolling with it, not thinking too much, I add, “On the way” as my crosshairs reach the lead BDRM and squeeze the trigger with my right forefinger. At once I feel The Claw rise in its motion of belching fire. I also take in the sound and smell as I hear the lieutenant note, “Direct hit!” as Sherman calls: “Up!”

  I lean more deeply into my screen, into myself, advance my crosshairs to an APC (a second BDRM has taken a hit), call “On the way!” and squeeze the trigger again.

  The Claw rears in recoil while continuing to slam forward. The lieutenant calls “Cease fire! Cease fire! No need to waste it. Last vehicle, taking evasive action, hit by Green Three! Way to go, Green Three! Good work, Murphy! Two direct hits! Two for two! Good work! How elite is the Elite Republican Guard in the face of that how-do-you-fucking-do?”

  As before, we roll through scattered smoldering vehicle wreckage, but this time without slowing down. There appear to be no survivors, no soldiers trying to surrender, as a voice shouts over the net, “Don’t ever fuck with 2nd Cav.”

  The Claw, one of four M1A1s now abreast, churns on. “Great response all around,” the lieutenant calls to the crew. “Two direct hits. One each BDMR. One APC. Seven seconds each. Good work, Murphy. First-rate firing. That may have been an RG scouting party, but they challenged the wrong offensive line. Who knows if they were able to say The Claw was on their ass like a grizzly bear?”

  Geo, centered within the regiment’s wedge of tanks and Bradleys, slams on, devouring real estate in its rush to engage the enemy. Air scouts get into it for twelve minutes before rain and wind shear force them back to the ground. Heavier rain and stronger winds follow, weather powerful enough to whip wet sand through the air and reduce long-range observation through thermal sights down to two-twenty, three hundred, back to two-forty meters and once, for part of a minute, to under two hundred…which, as we roll on, has the lieutenant calling, “It’s like we’re in a submarine without a periscope!”