by David Rose
A pair of trousers and a wrinkled, collared shirt draped over a bamboo divider, speaking; certainly plotting my death.
The kingdom of cowards in the land of lies. Shielded by their excuses, I just have no time for them.
Can my grandmother watch me masturbate from Heaven?
Fuck it, throw a poncho liner over it and bust out the spaghetti MRE’s main meal.
If one had the choice to determine if the Judeo-Christian afterlife did or did not exist, what would actually be the most Christ-like answer? Wouldn’t the ultimate form of metaphysical altruism be to willingly forgo your heavenly reward if it would relieve the millions that are confined to Hell?
An orgasm brings suicide to mind; how the two got crossed I will never know.
When I am in a crowd I often, suddenly, daydream about being in a gunfight. Cutting the pie, buttstock firmly in the left shoulder pocket, elbows in, and feet moving the upper body like a turret. Relaxed, purposeful trigger pulls and blasts of fire from the barrel as people dive, run, and hide. Not from me. This vision existed long before actually being in a battle. Prior to, this fantasy was a rung to be reached, the true north. After the battles and the eventual return to the world of placidity, this same vision took on a new feeling. Sadly, it is gone, the days of such, less some vigilante extremism. Yet, at the same time, some feeling of realism permeates from a highly fictitious mental image. It was once the thought of a thing I was going to do in the future and now it is something behind me yet just as powerful, maybe more so. If I was stirred by the taste of blood and sand in my dreams, it was because at twenty-one we are all so suddenly pierced by the idea of the life that has yet to arrive.
Hung over, I walk past your flag, a seed in me that never really grew. A country song, a letter from a schoolteacher, and a man with a dime-sized plastic flag on his coat lapel all proclaim who we are and why we did what we did. I came from grandfathers who occasionally wore dresses and hacked their daughter’s doors with fire axes: carnies, and the socioeconomic rung on our warped ladder that has no real education, no retirement. I came from the pharmaceutical dominion over the directionless. I didn’t come from the America on TV; I came from the people living vicariously through the cliché and overdrawn characters in it. I didn’t come from the America on the magazine covers; I came from the Walmart checkout line that gawks at them. From the living room full of secondhand smoke, I am the true American son. . . your true American son.
29
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY VETERAN
Not a doctor—
Kill
Not a lawyer—
Kill
But a warrior—
Kill
—Marine running cadence
The American warrior culture has come home to a society that is continuously further removed from ideals and principles in which the warrior culture itself exists.
The World War II generation was participatory in the war, whether they liked it or not. Women and young people put in long, grueling hours in factories and steel mills, etc. Of course, this wasn’t the case for everyone. It is arguable that the global threat during WWII was larger than those that followed, as was the war. Be that as it may, during every war since then society has grown further disconnected from the actual blood-spilling. A blurb here, a bumper sticker there, one more deranged vet killing someone famous; Americana belly-crawls past the static to the strip mall.
There’s a professed need in modern society that perpetuates preposterous entitlement, rounded edges, and a doing away with all that could harm the mind, body, and soul. The warrior class is without doubt embedded inside a foreign land.
It is this polarity—the twenty-eight year-old who can’t point to Afghanistan on a map, next to the twenty-eight year-old who lost a gallon of blood there—this massive societal disconnect leads to a powerful perception: one of displacement and anomie. Said perceptions are only heightened from the whispered, collective pity our own country has for us.
The pity for the GWOT veteran stems from the idea that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a lost cause. And while the rest of the country knew it, we were duped, fooled, or just too damn stupid to see how blatantly futile the effort really was. Our most gallant energy and all our forged brotherhoods that we wear on our chest like some big badge of honor ultimately were done within the confines of a fool’s errand, known to all but the sad uniforms carrying it to its sad end. Now technically over, but the bloodshed still raging on, we stand empty-handed as the war, our War, proved in vain.
The joke is on them, though. We knew the wars weren’t about liberating local nationals, or any of the other post-facto dribble. We knew everything that they knew. But we also saw the one opportunity to pursue the life, packed in the facade of patriotism, that the civilized world strangles out. To see the sharpening of our iron, the flourishing of the self; and done so in the most chaotic event humanity has to offer—an armed conflict.
It’s not that we are some generation of amoral existentialists, nihilists, or what have you. A common theme I noticed was the powerful admiration of the WWII fighters, and sheer envy of their circumstantial placement of space and time. It’s not that we were incapable of being warmhearted liberators; we could have been, and certainly some rabidly argue we were.
But the truth is the world has changed immensely since the 1940s, as have America’s enemies as well as the complexity of global politics.
All generations of warriors possess a universal energy, the common thread that connects the rifleman in Ramadi to the takers of San Juan Hill. This energy lives and breathes in the fighters of the GWOT. Souls who preferred placing this energy in a great task, a war that history may label futile, rather than no task or war at all. And the wars came.
But there is a real struggle affecting the GWOT, one as powerful as Hell and damn sure as powerful as an armed conflict. In a society that relentlessly praises homogeny, the self-proclaimed color-blind, the tight-lipped, the PC rattled—so far gone and struggling for any real identity, the transition back to the “normal life” is extraordinarily difficult. The difficulty only intensifies when one realizes how much the world has changed in only a few short years. Retrograding from a leadership role on a mobile security detail, or a platoon sergeant in a tight-knit SOF outfit, back to the rank and file, and stripped of a powerful identity the moment the plane lands—a sense of alienation and loss is likely a common occurrence. And then, of course, the hot-button topic of our era. . . PTSD81.
PTSD: the diagnosis is the new black. The amazing detail in all of this (if there is one) is that it’s not so much from the blood stains, bullets, air ripped from IED blasts, or the daily threat of death. . . but from the deafening isolation one feels when returning to their homeland, now a strange place, alien even. The distant battlefield assumes an awkward and unshakable familiarity.
The GWOT warfighter—tested in the deserts, villages, valleys, and mountains—emerged from a nation so patriotic that it borders on ethnocentric at the very minimum. With certain, strategically placed, hyper-masculine social norms, the last lingering taste of the World War II nostalgia in our upbringing, with a plethora of violence on TV and video games, yet in a society that is increasingly egalitarian and forcibly politically correct. The lukewarm, pacified society simultaneously engineered some of the best war fighters in all of human history; what reasonable place is there for these warrior souls? At a very minimum they found an outlet for the time being, a call to action to sate their dispositions in a world that unfortunately no longer needs cave bears slain.
The warrior mentality is good to serve a purpose; however, once the purpose no longer pulls at the lapels, there is little to no place for the warrior to go. A war ending is fine for those who look at the military as a job, nothing more, or for those whose connection to the war effort results in their belief of an accomplished mission. However, those who went to war for war’s sake are thus left in a terrible predicament.
It is of
ten attributed that those who get out of the military do so due to the harsh nature of the institution, and for some that is certainly true. However, there are others, myself and many of my brothers included, who got out for much different reasons. The political push-pull factors, the bleeding through of the US mass-pussification into the military command structure, the sheer warm-hearted blunder of full integration of females into ground-combat units. . . they all fuse to damage what to many was the Last Bastion, or as Hemingway once referred to Africa—“the last great continent”—and without it, these many have a hard time finding where to go after. And that is it. . . where are we to go? There seems to be one place, at least. . .
The VA, any VA across the country that is, is bursting at the seams. Parking lots overflowing, vehicles excessively draped in stickers and flags, stacked upon one another. Canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and baseball caps with ships and ribbons on them clog every entrance and exit. Relatively new to this bent Norman Rockwell painting are the droves of GWOT veterans; digital camouflage pants, beards, and thousand-yard stares wedging between men their grandfather’s age.
Something interesting is occurring in the US veteran community, and politicians are noticing. Standing above all else is the relationship the federal government, through the VA, has with the veteran. The whole thing systematically crosses party lines. “Public purpose” and entitlement programs since the New Deal era have been traditionally Democrat, while pro-military hawk sentiment has been overwhelmingly associated with the Republican Party.
At certain times of the year, all one has to do is turn on any news station to watch senators and TV personalities adorn the veteran in, often, hollow praise. “Come to our side, you legless crazed fucks,” as parties gear up. Disparaging a veteran is nothing short of political suicide; the veteran class is practically invulnerable to ridicule. Problem with the VA? Fix it. Disagree with the wars? Still thank the veterans—the canned “thank you for your service” will do just fine, with a free meal.
Via a few long-lasting entitlement programs, men swearing up and down to be diehard Conservative Republicans, align much harder with the current ethos of the Democratic Party than they would ever wish to know. Is the Red losing its grip on the veteran steering wheel, or is the Blue going to receive a revision toward individualism, essentially serving as a blockage toward future egalitarian agenda?
Ah, yes—the transgressive era set alive in the boys of the GWOT. Bored, bad boys who’d do just about anything. They had their wars, so be it—it will have to suffice. The ideological enemy still exists and proliferates, but they had their kicks, time to move on to something else.
And just maybe, in shaping both America and the world, through the sacred instrument of the vote—the precious idea a few of them actually thought they bled for—the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be more pivotal postwar than during the war itself.
30
“This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this, yet to die.”
—Earnest Becker, The Denial of Death
I am one time, I am RIGHT HERE
I am what’s left, I am RIGHT NOW!
—Henry Rollins, from the song “Burned Beyond Recognition”
A handful of months after donning the ruck for the first time, the ARS student stands with an assortment of tightly packed clutter and one neatly placed sandbag inside his Alice pack. For me, it started in Camp Pendleton, where our drill instructors would take us on brief, lightning-paced speed marches. This was, come to find out later, to condition our legs for the Crucible, in which numerous hills would be summited in haste. Later, to do more of the same during Marine Combat Training. It was only when I had gotten to RIP that I was exposed to the ruck run, a galaxy different from the ruck march. Whereas a ruck march existed upon a uniform pace, meant to facilitate troop movement, a ruck run was a chaotic physical training event meant to do two things, and two things only: weed out the weak, and simulate the deep strength necessary to conduct the infamous E&E.
The Alice pack: an OD green combat backpack with metal frame, numerous small pouches, and one large main compartment. Just looking at one pokes the brain with a punji stick: a silent foot patrol in Vietnam about to get hairy. I had seen, on numerous occasions, the nasty spills bearers of a loaded Alice pack would suffer. Poor footing, a loose rock, some slippery California clay or something, all to result in a destructive and brutal tumble down a hill face. This piece of gear, like any piece of gear to be worn so much, demanded to be listened to. Adjustments become a habit, and at some point they slow down, and suddenly you are. . . ready.
By the time I was in ARS, I was very different than a year or two years prior. I owned the strange callouses that develop in the lower back, due to the bottom portion of the frame, and trap-muscle so tight, that upon the shoulder straps bearing down, a .22 may bounce off, all from becoming accustomed to the ruck, and the world of the infantry in which does not exist without it.
The ruck runs would always start in the darkness. Freezing. Cold. Before the sun was even purpling the horizon, in the Virginia winter, standing in a formation, as the wind licked its way around our legs. Every student had a green ChemLight attached to the back of their ruck. The physical specimen of an instructor, soon to be leading the run, known then as the Rabbit, had a lone red one on his.
It started the same, always. Where what was a formation just a moment earlier, now a bunch of savages exerting fiercely for their position. Some quick steps, a light jog. . . then into the weight-laden run, turning hard right. Down a draw made by two dunes, into sand so soft and sugary that boots were sinking instantly up past the ankle. Not even a run, but a struggle to free oneself from the grabbing sand, bursting out onto the beach of Chesapeake Bay. Forging ahead. Despite the howl of the wind, the pre-dawn slush of the waves, followed by their retrograde, slipping into the ear. The faint whitecaps to our right, as the wind hurls featherings of sand against our face and chest. The world has yet to come fully alive, as if operating in some dream land, on some fine border where the world we live in has overlapped by a sliver with a doppelganger world, just devoid of the Great Human Distraction. Now, with all the room one could ask for, the array of green lights jingling becomes a stretched-out body, reminiscent of some bioluminescent sea creature. Now a full run—not the sprint one would produce if only pushing his own body weight, but the shortened-step run, punishing the ground below. The wind screams in the ears, and the cold fills the lungs.
A heuristic develops, as per the runner. Some trying to stay with the Rabbit the whole time; others taking the tough terrain easy and making up the distance on the straightaways. Whatever working rule applies, it finds its groove momentarily on the beach, and is to be changed soon after. . . ChemLights far up ahead getting closer as they bounce, and suddenly the hard left under some boardwalk and toward the front gate of the Fort.
The sand loses its moist, packed consistency and returns to something similar to that hellish tunnel prior to the beach. The formation completely ripped apart, the student-body now a comet, a core group of animals right behind the Rabbit, and the rest at certain points within the tail, jockeying to catch the bastard in front of them; and would rather die before the footsteps heard to their rear should overtake them.
A brief run through some empty parking lot and then onto a sandy, pine-needle trail. The property-line fence to the right and a black mass of forest and fens to the left, the trail littered by the bouncing, glowing green echoes, sporadic grunts, and explosive, out-from-nowhere auditory bursts of self-motivation. All the world sucks in to the walls of the trail. The eyes see nothing more, save an occasional flash of lingering moonlight on a near runner’s pack.
The trail seems to go on forever, asking only that you lose your mind before stepping off. At some point, feeling as if that exact exchange is about to occur, emergence into a vast open area—a thin, b
lacktop road winding excessively through it. The red ChemLight of the Rabbit is smiling, and now seen ascending the face of Loch Ness.
Loch Ness, the nickname of the steepest hill within the confines of the Fort, owns a thin but well-worn trail up one side, the side that is now being approached. A clogged amalgamation of green lights climbs up through the thin spindly pines, stuck into the sand like Martini picks. At the base, the lone baby pine, worn smooth at about three and a half feet, from generations of Recon hopefuls using the stalk to propel them up the initial ascent. Here sets in the beginnings of the deep exhaustion. Physiological reactions like pissing one’s pants, drooling, and yelling inanities as if in the front row of a Pentecostal Charismatic assembly have all been known to occur.
And that’s when it happens. . . the reality born when the finite flesh is held up against the light of the infinite will. You push yourself so far that determination is no longer a gym-coach moniker, but the thick, viscous fluid draped to the side of your cheeks as you squeeze the rifle in your hands. There is no sense of time, only place; and unless breathing down the Rabbit’s neck, the place is not good enough. The sound of your blood pumping howls, and the first car, some early-morning riser, is seen, headlights on a distance street. The route turns to road, then back to sandy trail, then road once more. A turn to the left, then to the right, and down a final slope to the hardball that is the final stretch. Nearing the finish line, those before you stand in the billowing wisps of body heat meeting the cool ocean air. A moment before ending the run that took near an hour, the ears pick up on the various boot strikes behind you, coming up the street, some distant and some near. The eastern sky now a faint morning blue, a man with a stopwatch yells out a time. Finished, and at a recuperative walk now, the totality of the morning’s event hits the body like the booming of a wave against a seawall. Some may call it self-actualization, and maybe so. The men standing around you, panting and armored in a drenched uniform glittering from the snow, they know something that you know.
