It had occurred the previous spring, long before my days as a Gunslinger and even before I became an e-swashbuckler through the demise of my blog. While on a Sheik Nour escort mission, we drove along Route Pluto, well into the core of North Baghdad, to an Iraqi police station opening ceremony. While there, some of the Gravediggers and I wandered around, marveling at the new buildings. Obviously, a lot of rank and brass walked around too, but they all ignored us, until a colonel I didn’t know pulled me aside.
“Lieutenant, is that big guy your terp?” He pointed at Suge, who unbeknownst to me, had donned his mask.
“Roger, sir, he’s mine,” I replied.
The colonel spoke quietly and calmly, but with the crispness of a man who didn’t enjoy dialogue. “No masks here,” he said. “At all. We’re professionals, and we’re trying to show the IPs that they shouldn’t be afraid of their own populace. We can’t damn well do that when our own terps are wearing masks, can we?”
“No, sir,” I said. “It’s my fault: I gave him that discretion. I’ll fix it immediately.” The colonel nodded and walked away.
I gave Suge authority to wear his mask when he chose to because it was his life, in his country, and he knew better than any of us when and where he felt safe. But I knew he understood the inanity of army rules and orders, so when I told him, rather innocently and ignorantly to “lose the mask,” his response shocked me.
“Please, Lieutenant, do not ask that of me!” Suge roared, emotion erupting out of him like lava from a volcano. “I cannot do it!”
Staff Sergeant Boondock and Doc looked over at us quizzically. Suge had never questioned any of us in a serious manner, let alone me, his known sugar daddy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“This place,” he said, his voice muffled by the cotton, “is very bad, Lieutenant. IPs are work with Jaish al-Mahdi, and they hunt terps. I know this to be true. We are close to my home. I must be careful.”
I nodded, understanding Suge’s plight, as his fear was justified. A few years back, thirty members of the Mahdi Army armed with AKs had showed up at his construction business and requisitioned all of his assets, financial or otherwise. His smile, and quickness to accede to their demands, had saved his life. Whether I believed Suge was safe or not at the IP station was absolutely irrelevant. While I understood the colonel’s points, I felt that we catered to false appearances with that approach. Suge’s feeling safe enough to not don a mask at the IP station should have been our goal, not making the IPs think our terps felt safe. It felt like we took off the interpreters’ masks to sport one of our own, except ours hid reality instead of a face. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to risk running into that colonel again either, so I told Doc to walk Suge back to our Strykers. Staff Sergeant Boondock and I walked around for another hour or so without an interpreter, until Sheik Nour got bored with the ceremony. Then we drove him home and sat in his driveway for ten hours, keeping the hajji bogeyman away.
Many months later, Suge’s voice and eyes and desperation and words of lava compelled me—no, forced me—to try to rectify the situation. I couldn’t always be his platoon leader; nor would every situation have an easy solution. So, when Londono asked for a quote, I pounced. The article ran. Nothing changed, at least not in our remaining time there.
I got an e-mail a few months later from an old college friend, who was still deployed to a city in Iraq near Hussaniyah as a rifle platoon leader in an infantry company. He told me they still ignored the mask ban too—because it “was fucking stupid as hell.”
Indeed.
ACOUSTIC WAR HYMN
I staggered around in the midnight pitch, near the dark, forgotten corners of JSS Istalquaal, seeking a burning bush but finding only a box full of sharp objects.
It sufficed.
We’re almost there, You know. We’re almost there.
No. Not home. Not yet. Not never. But to the black hole of what if. Almost, always. There.
A tribute of praise. Monks chanted. Choirs clapped. Ministers preached. The blessed sang.
And baby, sweet baby, in the meantime, the damned stared. Back. With dead-fish eyes.
But still, in the shatter of the still, I must ask, What the fuck.
...
True.
I oriented myself like a bat’s squeak and looked into the mud. Sinking, slinking, sinking in my boots made of elastic tears and soulutions and blinking bloodcrust.
My supper is maroon. My star is spoon.
Forever fleeting, looms.
I can think of nothing more sacred than parity, and yet, nothing is less. It’s not fair, You know. None of it.
I’d bet the crumbling walls of Little America, Bizarro Iraq, You’ve heard that one before.
Burning ears are one thing. I’s of arrogance are quite another.
The guilt of touching Fortuna’s touch is not worthy of guilt at all. Yet. And yet. Yet. Like rain without a rainbow. Like a moonbow without a moon. Like life without the f.
Thank You for guiding me through this. Fuck You for not guiding them through this. Thank You for getting me out of here unscathed. Fuck You for leaving them here or leaving them there, forever scathed.
Fuck You for the will to say Thank You. Thank You for the freedom to say Fuck You.
Freedom wills free will. And.
And.
And breathes reckless mountain air.
If You can splice existence, I can splice phrases.
!
The gobblers wargasmed and the chickenhawks crowed. So we.
Creation sensation seeks a Big Bang penetration operation. Nonsmoker, will make tender hate after the first date.
Happiness Is.
Why?
No.
Why.
KABOOM
No. Never that certain.
kaboom?
Pretty much. This isn’t a comic book or a Disney film. Here, the question mark exists, because the question itself persists.
The black hole of what if knows not, but wonders all.
Smooth. Light. This. So much prettier. Than.
Yes.
Life. Liberty. And the pursuit of diggity.
Why burn bridges when You can burn worlds, eh? Thug Life. Like opening up a yogurt top, but splat goes the dreams of why.
The flame in the distance dances in defiance. Until. The song ends with a snuff.
The American clears, holds, builds. Why are we so historically bad at this, again?
Because we are all insurgents at heart. Well. We were.
True.
. . .
The emo fever dream indulges, gesticulating like a lonely igloo:
Hope-dope.
springs eternal
summer smokes
winters blunt
fall is.
. . .
out of order
~
Still.
The gobblers wargasmed and the chickenhawks crowed. So we fought. The rest is.
Another man’s morning, and another son’s gun.
That’s how it goes, You know.
My supper is maroon. My star is spoon.
Forever fleeting, looms.
THE LAST PATROLS
Finally. They finally came. They finally fucking came.
“Who?” SFC Hammerhead asked me in our room.
“Our replacements. The Pennsylvania National Guard. They finally fucking came. All of them. All of them finally fucking came.”
Despite it being well past midnight with the lights off in our room, SFC Hammerhead started whooping and hollering and wrapped me up in a big bear hug. We flipped on the lights, waking up Captain Clay and Lieutenant Rant, and gave them the news. Captain Clay joined the celebration, but Lieutenant Rant simply flashed us a thumbs-up and rolled back over in his bed.
Twelve days before our fly-back-to-civilization date, the main body of the Pennsylvania National Guard arrived at JSS Istalquaal. A Stryker brigade as well, they seemed like the ideal replacements for us, ev
en if some of our soldiers exchanged stereotypical jokes about National Guard soldiers being weekend warriors and civilians playing dress-up. I knew our replacements would be just as confused and overwhelmed as we had been when we first arrived, but that had nothing to do with their training background and everything to do with the Iraq counterinsurgency being as fluid an environment as existed and nigh impossible to grasp unless you were actually there.
Our last two weeks in Iraq, even before the Pennsylvania National Guard arrived, had proven eventful. Depending on whose perspective, either the battalion intelligence elements had ordered the other company to detain four innocent men and then snapped a staged photograph that made them look guilty, or a grand mistake had occurred due to the complexities of the COIN environment. Either way, justice prevailed, and the four men were released after spending a week in the custody of the National Police. Then, after a new round of VBIED-factory reports proved false yet again, our company stumbled upon a house with three EFPs and a mortar round buried in its courtyard. We detained two brothers living there, who eventually revealed that they had just moved to Hussaniyah from Sadr City due to a JAM order put out by Ali the Beard. And then there was the fallout from the awards.
I saw, experienced, and lived through many fucked up things in my time in the army. But nothing, and I mean nothing in a vacuum world where hyperbole doesn’t exist, was as much of a clusterfuck as the awards system employed by the military. Broken did not even begin to describe it. Packets were routinely lost, downgrades occurred without explanation, and award interpretations varied from unit to unit, from year to year, and sometimes from day to day, depending on who read the packet and that person’s mood at the time. Further, a process that should’ve lasted a couple weeks often took nearly a year. So when we submitted the end-of-tour awards in September, more than six months before we actually left the war, I wasn’t surprised. SFC Big Country and I had recommended nearly all of the Gravediggers for a medal of some sort, reasoning that they had stayed out of trouble and spent every day in Iraq on the front. They certainly met the award requirements laid out by the army. However, when they came back down the pipeline in late February, most of the platoon’s awards had been downgraded to “certificates of achievement,” which PFC Van Wilder and some of the others stuck on their refrigerators as a joke, like they would spelling bee ribbons. These downgrades wouldn’t have been such an affront to me if I didn’t see a multitude of fobbits receive medals—some of which were definitively reserved as combat awards for combat soldiers—for their service. It always paid to be close to the flagpole, and nothing, it seemed, would ever change that about the military. The same series of downgrades occurred with the Gunslingers as well, and it almost always seemed to happen to the Joes, no matter how meritorious their combat service.
Adding further insult to this travesty was the word that four of the Gravediggers had been denied their Combat Action Badge (CAB) for the firefight we had engaged in the year before, while intervening between the Iraqi army and the Saba al-Bor Sahwa augmented by civilians of unknown affiliation. Most of the platoon, myself included, had been awarded our CABs in July, and I had been told the other four were pending due to a clerical error. Well, after months passed and the awards had been resubmitted three times, that clerical error turned into a time-consuming albatross no one wanted to deal with. Yet again, soldiers suffered because leaders proved unwilling to fight for what their soldiers had so rightfully earned. Considering one of the missing badges was for PFC Das Boot, who served as one of the point men for the penetrating dismounts, no question as to their right to the CAB existed. I did everything in my power, even after we left Iraq, but no one wanted to untangle a snarl from the year before. I was eventually told “to stop asking about it, because it’s not fucking happening,” but I was never told why I needed to stop asking about it or why it wasn’t fucking happening.
The worst award travashamockery happened when PFC Smitty’s promised Soldier’s Medal returned, downgraded, without explanation. After he pulled Private Hot Wheels out of the fire, multiple visiting generals heard the story and assured me that they’d fast-track his Soldier’s Medal—the highest award given in the American military for a noncombat event. After I heard the words, “Son, consider it done,” when I asked about PFC Smitty’s Soldier’s Medal, I considered it done. It wasn’t.
Not all was lost in the award realm. My write-up and recommendation for SFC Big Country’s Bronze Star for service got approved, something he had certainly earned and deserved. Captain Ten Bears saw fit to recommend me for a Bronze Star as well, something I knew Lieutenant Colonel Larry would never approve, thanks to my digital rendition of our XO conversation. That proved accurate, and the award was subsequently downgraded. In all honesty, I didn’t care; it had been an honor simply to get recommended for a Bronze Star, and I knew exactly what I had accomplished in Iraq. I even learned to take pride in the downgrade, something I picked up from the various Gunslingers who felt scorned and used by the process. This had been happening in the military for years upon years, and not unlike old, crusty World War II or Vietnam veterans, I found that basking in being an army bastard felt nice and strangely fulfilling.
None of that mattered once we started our last patrols with the Pennsylvania National Guard. Initially, only their key leaders went on mission with our platoons, which operated at full strength. Gradually, though, as the number of their soldiers going out of the wire increased, the number of our soldiers doing so decreased. Wars ended every day in this fashion, creating a sort of perma-jubilee in the soldiers’ living quarters. At first, the National Guardsmen treaded carefully, their nerves and questions amusing us. In retrospect, I realized that our comfort and ease in the combat environment threw them for a loop, as it would any group of men still holding onto a logical and civilized world. In a way, our insanity prepared them for their new world, and their sanity prepped us for the return to our old world.
I did my best to be available and helpful to our replacements. Their company’s lethal targeting officer, a lieutenant recalled to active duty from the irregular reserve but on his first deployment, immediately proved himself a quick study. I felt comfortable leaving the intricacies of the ever-evolving JAM-nation of our AO in his hands. His HUMINT collection teams definitely lacked the experience of mine, but a few weeks dealing with our Hussaniyah sources would change that. Conversely, I did lose my patience a couple times on patrol with the National Guardsmen. One time, I snapped at a staff sergeant who displayed open hostility and impatience with his young platoon leader; I knew firsthand that NCOs could make or break new lieutenants, and I’d been blessed enough to serve with the best instead of this meat rocket. Another time I pulled aside the aforementioned lieutenant and lit into him for forgetting his ammunition on the JSS. Then I gave him some of mine, subtly pointing out that he “wasn’t in fucking Kansas.”
The afternoon before our last day, while on a patrol in central Hussaniyah, Lieutenant Dirty Jerz and I took a platoon of our replacements to a known Jaish al-Mahdi restaurant and bought falafels. Needling JAM members always proved a good time—I loved complimenting them on their well-trimmed goatees and hair gel abuse, which forced them to pretend to laugh along with me—even if many of them weren’t currently detainable. Although initially unnerved by the setting, many of the guardsmen quickly caught on to the game and promised the owner they’d come in at least once a week.
“You guys are going to be fine,” I told their lethal targeting officer. “Just keep it fresh and never get too comfortable. Most of your NCOs have been here before; they’ll take charge until everyone figures it out. It’s a fun job, though—way better than what your artillery officer has to deal with, with all those contracts. That’s hell. A sick, sick person invented that job.”
As we walked back to their Strykers—ours were now already in Kuwait, ready for shipment back to Hawaii—a series of gunshots resonated in the distance. A few of the Pennsylvanians hit the ground, but most took a knee, loo
king at Lieutenant Dirty Jerz and me for direction. Another steady purring of shots popped into the air. And then another. We both shrugged our shoulders.
“It’s Iraq,” I said to everyone and no one in particular. “Gunshots happen.”
Lieutenant Mongo, on a patrol with another Pennsylvania National Guard platoon, radioed us two minutes later, telling us that the shots emanated from a National Police memorial service. Apparently, two of their men had been killed a few days earlier in a car accident on Route Dover. Just a twenty-one-gun salute, Iraqi style, spraying AK-47 rounds across the dismal Hussaniyah skyline.
Our last night passed uneventfully. The next morning, the remaining Gunslingers—Captain Frowny-Face, Lieutenants Rant, Mongo, and Dirty Jerz, Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull, Specialist Gonzo, and myself—gathered in the motor pool, saying our goodbyes to a few Iraqi security forces and our interpreters. Lieutenant Anwar swung by and insisted that a photograph of the two of us be taken on his digital camera for his daughter. Eddie wept openly as he said goodbye to Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull, promising to visit us when he returned to the United States. The guardsmen waited around impatiently, as they should have. It was their show now, and they were ready for it—we were now relics of another time and era. They drove us back to Camp Taji, and I was a helicopter ride, a C-130 plane ride, and a charter flight away from somehow surviving this fucking war.
When we turned in our rifles and our ammunition, I felt like I’d lost an appendage.
Two days after we departed JSS Istalquaal, the camo grapevine informed us that an RPG had been fired at the Pennsylvania National Guard along Route Crush. Rather than reacting to the attack and conducting a movement to contact, the platoon continued moving back to the JSS. Some of our soldiers mocked them when they heard the tale, although I never learned whether the rumor was true or not. Captain Frowny-Face, however, reminded us junior officers that they’d learn, just as we had. The insurgents would test them because they were new, he reasoned, just as they had with us. And then they’d adapt and start figuring out how to crack the COIN walnut.
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