Writing in the Gray Area

Day Mission.

For anyone who hasn’t been to the Middle East there’s often a misconception.  Phrases like “World’s Biggest Beach!” or “The Sandbox” conjures specific images in the minds of most civilians.  They’re inaccurate and that’s intentional.  We don’t like remembering where we are any more than the average citizen wants to think about what we do.  Not thinking about the larger context is a soldier’s primary occupation, we spend our time concentrating on what’s in front of us, war is good as a clarity inducing mechanism that way.  Everything else is confusing and draining, what is in front of you, that’s what matters.

Anyway, back to the most prevalent misconception about Iraq, the awful, terrible, oppressive sand.  Evil baby powder is the closest metaphor I can think of.  Fine powder that manages to be harsh edged and annoying while being maliciously effective at disrupting the function of weapons, vehicles, and my mental health.  That’s what I tell myself the cause is anyway, the best lies we tell ourselves are mostly true.  Day missions are the worst, not only is the sand everywhere, but it burns you.  I get why the locals are covered head to foot.  There’s other reasons too, primarily that there’s a curfew now, been in effect for two years, since ’04, no civilian vehicle traffic after 2100 in the cities.  Makes missions easier, sometimes I’ll go four or five days without having to pull the trigger.

Day missions are the worst, and we’re on a five day (ha!) mission to the Syrian border.  Delivering armored personnel carriers on the trucks meant to haul bulldozers.  We all know why, tracked vehicles are destructive beasts, but they’re short range and break when you start them too often.  We still make fun of the mission, the ridiculous concept of our puny HMMV escorting a Bradley.  There’s three of us in this steel plated box, Romo’s a Peruvian immigrant, and my roommate. The “Room” part of the term is another self-deceptive lie, everyone in the tent has their living space partitioned off with scrap plywood sheets, gives us an illusion of privacy.  We’ve noted that the line between minimum security felon and deployed soldier isn’t always a wide one.  They get in trouble if they inflict violence on government time, we either get a medal or jail time. Either way we get hazard pay, that’s something.  

Romo’s the driver, it’s the only position he doesn’t fall asleep at, I should know, I wake his ass up every day.  Sergeant Henderson is the Vehicle Commander, VC, and we’re not far apart in most ways.  We’re both logistic clerks, meant to be “in the rear with the gear”. He’s from Illinois, I’m from Michigan, he’s got two daughters, I’ve got two sons, similar age too.  We both were here three years ago during the opening invasion, neither of us saw much combat.  That’s changed for both of us here too.  He had a few semesters of college more than I did so he pinned Sergeant right before we deployed, so he’s sitting on the radio and monitoring the BFT while I’m wearing 40 pounds of hard plate ceramic armor I bought because the Army issue stuff is old and sketchy, sitting behind a 7.62 millimeter chambered machine gun, an M240, with an actual M-16, the old one, probably manufactured before I enlisted seven years ago next to it.  Most importantly, we both have epic deployment mustaches.

I’ll go to my grave before I admit it out loud, but his has more style.

The M-16 is for warning shots, the 5.56 doesn’t have enough ass behind it to make it effective against vehicles, and I can load the first five rounds of the magazine with tracers to warn off local nationals (LNs).  Suppose they get really close and I want them to run. In that case, I have a M9 on my thigh, the old Iraqi regime would use pistols to assassinate political opponents, rifles are so common mothers will walk to the market with an AK on her back, a basket in one hand and her children in the other.  The tracers don’t work great in daylight, my high intensity spotlight is barely a glow, I’m better off waving my arm and pointing to the literal machine gun in front of me as deterrents for distant contact, or unholstering a 9mm pistol to get their attention.  I don’t like doing it, I barely train with the damn thing, I’d have to switch to something else if things go south.

Day missions are the worst.

We’ve been driving for three days, it’s day four, should hit the objective tonight, then it’s a refuel turn and burn back to the relative safety of Baghdad International Airport and Camp Stryker.  We’re exhausted, fourteen hour days driving, shift sleeping at night.  Our team is tight, but missions like this exhaust even our ability to gossip about the hot Lieutenant and her Staff Sergeant boyfriend, who according to regs, are completely not in a relationship.  General Order Number One is no porn, no sex.  There’s no way the most competent platoon sergeant and highest speed platoon leader would be sneaking off like hormonal teens would there?  In truth none of us care, we just need the distraction.  We’ve been here for eight months, four to go, I’ve already done my mid tour, went home for two weeks, seen my family, said goodbye again, and came back here.  Back to counting the days, marking the missions.

A rocket attack killed six National Guardsmen at the PX a week before we left and the only way to keep functioning is to bury it, keep pushing, keep going. Keep distracting ourselves.

I’ve no idea what the name of this little village is where a logistics company set up their fuel tanks, but I’m not fond of it.  It’s built on a hill which means there are building overlooking us, and any jackass with a Chinese knock off AK could drop rounds on us, and our turrets are open top.  The captain in charge of the transport trucks thinks the same thing and soon I’m just watching the tiny houses on the outskirts while he gets a few Cavalry guys in the building to pull overwatch.  There’s some children gathering close by to stare at us.  I hope no one’s rigged any of the kids up with explosives.

“Huh.” SGT Henderson says.  “That little girl, the one in blue, she looks like she’s the same age as my daughter.”

I’m watching the four men sit in the shade while their wives work the fields.  They’re older, higher end of the Military Aged Male spectrum, but a suicide vest doesn’t take athletic ability.  I feel something plastic tap my leg.  It’s a bottle of water, a bigger one from a Kuwaiti company.  Not as refined as the imported stuff, better than what these people are drinking.  SGT Henderson doesn’t look at me, but we’ve been on the same team he doesn’t have to say anything.  I let go of the 240’s pistol grip and take the bottle slinging it towards the little girl in blue.  For once I throw true, and it lands in front of her.  She bends and picks it up.

One of the men I was watching stands up and yells something at her, he shakes his fist as he approaches and snatches it, pushing her away.  Her expression doesn’t change much.  Sound goes away, I can hear my pulse in my veins and SGT Henderson’s muted but vitriolic cursing.  He’s cursing himself, the war, the situation, the asshole who just stole water from a little girl most of all.

“Sarge,” I say, my voice calm.  “Lemme have another bottle.”  

There’s a pause, I can feel his eyes on me but I’m not looking at him.  I’m not looking at the M-16 either, I’m just moving it, making sure I’m ready.  Wordlessly, he lifts the bottle up and I deliver it the same.  I can feel every bit of sand on my skin, I can feel the pattern of the M-16s pistol grip through my combat gloves as I lift the rifle and snug it against my shoulder.  I can’t hear anything, I feel nothing but a glacial hatred.  The man turns back around and says something that has his three friends laughing.  He takes a step towards the bottle on the ground.

I hear the crack, feel the push against my shoulder.  5.56 is fast but it’s still just an oversized 22, my aim shifts to where it needs to be. There’s dust a foot away from his foot where the round hit.  I hear the click going to three three-round burst before I even know I’ve done it.  His guts are in my sights, the rise of the muzzle won’t kill him instantly, but it’ll be enough.  There’s no thought, barely any feeling, just short measured breaths, keep the rifle still, sights on target.  The trigger on an old M-16 like this isn’t great, it has about two millimeters of play before you hit the wall that will send three rounds into flesh and bone, I squeeze it just enough and feel the resistance.  A silence stretches out, moments dripping out like blood loss.

I hear the radio through my headset.  SGT Henderson.

“Warning shot, got an LN getting too curious, hold one.”

The man finally looks up at me after staring at the cloud of dust my first shot left, maybe a foot away from his front foot.  His eyes meet mine.  This isn’t a righteous shoot, this isn’t combat, but it is honest.  And for a moment that honesty is passed between us.  I wasn’t warning him, I was scaring him, scaring him like I felt every time I woke up in a country that could kill me without a moments warning.  Scaring him like every child feels when their parents put on a uniform and leave for a year.  Scaring him like a little girl who just wants some water felt when someone gave her some, and someone else took it away.

“Ansaraaf.” I whisper, the word a bare breath.  It’s a legal requirement, warning him to get away, the barest nod to a legal code I can barely recall right then.  The man slinks back, the confusion in his eyes matching his fear.  There’s no way he heard me, but he can see.  He can see that I will unquestioningly end his life.  I barely see the little girl pick up the bottle of water and run away.  Eventually he does too, his three friends following his heels, not even risking a glance at me.

It’s been maybe three seconds.  It felt longer.

“Ratpack 6 this Pack 3, all clear, LNs are leaving, no casualties.” SGT Henderson says. I safe the rifle and hunker over the machine gun again.  No longer 4 pounds of pressure from being a murderer, just another soldier doing his job.

“Pack 3 this is 6, roger that, we’re Oscar Mike in two minutes.”

We roll out four minutes later of course, the transport company has an allergy to making a hard time.  Five minutes later and Romo is telling us about his mom’s cooking back in Peru.  It doesn’t sound good, but it’s probably better than the Dining Facility. I wrap up a tan scarf around my face to keep the sun and sand away, as we hit the highway.  No one was shot, no bloodshed, nothing even needing a written report.  Just another wartime memory, another incident in a history filled with hair’s breadth decisions between right and wrong, honor and crime, life and death.  Another tale written on gritty sand and infernal heat.

Day missions are the worst.

Author’s Notes:  Everyone deals with trauma in their own particular method, and violent trauma, regardless of how it happened, takes a set of skills society still hasn’t truly figured out yet.  Despite the massive difference between Hempel’s story and mine, there’s themes I definitely recognize.  Displacement, black humor, the sense that if you stop and think about everything that’s happened too much you’ll just drown.  I heard someone say that the military is life times ten, but war is life times one hundred, and that seemed to fit very accurately.