Ryan Smithson (17 page)

“They’re just kids,” I say. “They can’t understand—”

“
You’re
just a kid, Smithson,” he says. “You don’t understand what war is, do you?”

“No, Sergeant.”

“But you understand your freedom.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s what separates them from you,” he says. “They take their freedom for granted because it’s always been there.”

“Yeah, but going through basic is what made me understand.”

“You new recruits. You need to stop telling yourself that,” he says. “You can’t understand freedom until you give it up. And that’s just what you did down at the MEPS station, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“No, it’s not a guessing game,” he says. “Before you ever
set foot in basic training, you voluntarily gave up your freedom at the MEPS station.”

“Yeah.”

“And that was in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“How many other kids in your class joined the military?”

“A few.”

“Exactly,” he says. “These kids we’re going to try to recruit today, they think recruiters lie and cheat and trick kids into joining. You just watch. Most of them won’t even look at us. And they think they’ve got it all figured out. They think they know what democracy is because they study it in history class. They think they know what a dictatorship means because they read the definition in a book.

“But they don’t have a clue, Smithson. Because if they did, they’d look you straight in the eye and thank you for what you’re doing.”

“Then what is a dictatorship, Sergeant?” I say.

“You want to know what a dictatorship is?”

“Yeah, why are we trying to overthrow the government in Iraq just because we don’t agree with it?”

“You kids,” he says, shaking his head. “You think everything is about ideals and proving points. Iraq is about human suffering. War, it’s about human suffering.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few moments. He stares ahead, the highway passing us on all sides. Finally, he takes a breath and tells me a story.

“It was during the first Gulf War,” he says.

Desert Storm in ’91. He was a kid like me, fresh out of ranger school and living in Iraq. The public didn’t even know about the mission he was running. To this day he can’t discuss details. But he can tell me that he witnessed some soldiers from the Iraqi army trying to take a boy away from his mother.

The Iraqi army at that time was run by Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq.

It took place on the outskirts of a little village. They lived in a little mud hut, just the boy and his mother. They were sustenance farmers. The mother’s face was covered with a black cloth, as was required by law.

The boy’s face was dirty since he hadn’t yet rinsed off in the nearby irrigation ditch. He was pulled by his arm away from his mother. The Iraqi army, this was how they did their recruiting.

The soldiers threw the boy in the back of a pickup truck. The mother begged the soldiers to let her son go.

“He’s only twelve years old!” she screamed in Arabic. “I need him on the farm!”

Howling in sorrow, the mother ran after her child. The boy sat in the pickup truck, helpless, being held by his arm.

One of the soldiers turned and shot the woman, point-blank, in the face. Her body fell limp to the ground, her face dismembered. The son watched it all happen, watched his mother die in a pool of her own blood. The truck took off, and the boy began his service in the Iraqi army.

“We couldn’t reveal our position,” says the recruiter. “We had to sit there in the irrigation ditch and watch it all happen, just like that little boy.”

I think of the students at the school to which we’re going. I think of their designer jeans and backward hats and iPod earphones. I think of them sitting at cafeteria tables in a high school paid for by the government, by their parents’ tax money. I think of how they complain about their mother’s brown sack lunches. How they complain that they didn’t get enough for Christmas.

And then I think of that little boy, pulled by his arm away from the only person he had: his mother.

We pull up to the school; some kids who are probably sneaking cigarettes look away and put their hands in their pockets. With their backs facing us they walk toward the main entrance.

The recruiter shuts the car off and looks me straight in the eye.

“Let me ask you something,” he says. “And be honest.”

“Okay.”

“Do you appreciate your freedom?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you appreciate your freedom so much that you’re willing to fight for it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he says. “Do you appreciate your freedom so much that you’re willing to fight for the freedom of others?”

I think for a moment, really trying to answer this question honestly.

“Yeah, I think so,” I say. “Yes.”

“That, Smithson,” he says, “is why you deserve to wear this uniform. And I’m telling you right now, if that’s really the way you feel, then the army needs more soldiers like you in Iraq.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Those people deserve to be free,” he says.

He’s looking me straight in the eye, but his eyes are not even in the vehicle.

T
he soldiers from our replacement unit are staying in Tent City, the same tents where we stayed upon our arrival back in December. It’s now November. With the exception of a few guys on their second tour the replacements are brand-new to the war. And it’s our job to show them the ropes.

It’s the last mission I conduct in Iraq. I am driving the last gun truck in a convoy of eleven vehicles. SSG Robert Gasparotto is my A-driver, and our gunner is Zerega. There are two guys from the replacement unit in the backseats among gear, water, and ammo cans.

They didn’t convoy into Iraq like we did because they didn’t bring any of their own equipment. Our unit is
handing all of our equipment over to them, which for us, is a good thing. This means when we fly back to Fort Bragg, we won’t have to stay and get all the equipment off the navy ships. We can simply out-process and go home.

But right now we sit at the gate of Anaconda waiting to go on our last mission. I look back at the new guys. One is a bit older than the other, and he looks a little more calm. The other one, the kid, looks scared shitless.

“So you guys just drive through an attack?” he asks.

“Yep,” I say. “There’s not much else to do.”

After a while in a combat zone you start to think of everything as fateful. Something blows up, and it’s fate. Get lucky when an IED is a dud, that’s fate, too. Jim Conklin dies while on a simple LOGPAC mission, you guessed it: fate. And if today’s the day, this last mission, well, then fuck it. At least we know God enjoys some good old-fashioned irony.

I push the play button on my MP3 player that hangs from the windshield frame. Two speakers, strung up by 550 cord, start blasting Tool into our cramped Humvee.

“Is it hard for you to concentrate with that music playing?” asks the scared-shitless kid.

“Do you play music in your car back home?”

“Yeah.”

“Trust me, man,” I say. “There’s a lot more to pay attention to while driving back home than there is here.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah,” says Zerega from the roof. “Back home you have to watch out for other cars and stupid drivers. Here, a stupid driver is a dead driver.”

He laughs that maniacal laugh of his.

“Dude, we own the road here,” I tell the kid in the backseat. “Civilians have to get out of our way—”

“Or it’s roast Haji for dinner!” Zerega cries. Then he rolls his tongue to make a machine gun noise.

Gasparotto and I laugh. We’re used to Zerega’s antics. Plus, we know he’s only upping the ante today to get a rise out of this kid. Truth is nine out of ten convoys are routine and uneventful. It’s not unreasonable that he’s trying to invent some entertainment.

“All you have to do on a convoy is stay on the road,” I tell the kid. “Especially being the last vehicle. We don’t even have to know where we’re going.”

“Ninety-nine Hajis alive on the road! Ninety-nine Hajis alive! You shoot one dead, run over his head! Ninety-eight Hajis alive on the road!” Zerega sings.

“Don’t mind him,” Gasparotto tells the kid in the backseat. “He’s crazy.”

“Oh,” says the kid.

“Trust me,” I say. “You guys will be fine. And music doesn’t distract you from anything. Plus, if we’re going to go out, we might as well do it with a little style, right?”

The kid nods his head. I put on my aviator sunglasses and turn up the speakers.

The handheld radio crackles. It’s LT.

“All Hunter elements, this is two-six. We’re rollin’.”

The brake lights on the vehicle ahead of me go dim, and I put the Humvee in drive. We roll out of the gate. Outside the wire.

Zerega loads his SAW once we’re out. That familiar
click-clack.
Those familiar wind chimes of the devil.

“Let’s kick some ass!” he yells from the roof. The way his voice echoes, the way it overcomes the steady roar of the diesel engine, it’s like God talking.

Zerega is, for all intents and purposes, crazy. Out of all of us, he’s developed his sick sense of humor the most. But developing humor, it’s the reason we’ve survived. Not literally, of course. Laughing at a bomb doesn’t make it any less lethal. But mentally it’s the humor that keeps us going. It’s how we stay strong.

See, Zerega makes some fun out of this kid’s first convoy, out of this kid’s fear. But it’s also Zerega’s fear. His fear is why he sings “Ninety-nine Hajis.” Our fear is why Gasparotto and I laugh with him instead of telling him to shut up. It’s why I throw on my aviators and crank the music. Going insane is how we keep our sanity.

And out of all the convoys this is the scariest. The convoy up here was pretty scary, but at that time home was a
long way off, anyway. This is our last convoy, and home is just around the corner.

I drive down the road, thinking of a soldier I met while waiting at the PAX terminal to go on my two-week leave. He told me about a guy in his company who went on leave in February. While waiting at the PAX terminal, the guy got one of many Estimated Times of Departure. They had a few hours, so he decided to take a trip to the PX. He didn’t really have a reason to go other than boredom, but he figured he could pick up a pack of gum or something. On his way he was hit by a mortar and killed.

Driving down the endless dirt road for what will be the last time, this is the kind of story that runs through your head. The image of a soldier whistling and skipping down a concrete sidewalk runs through my mind over and over again. All he’s thinking about is how hard he’ll hold his parents or kids or wife or girlfriend when he finally sees them again. Home is just around the corner for him. Just a few short traveling days and his war was over. And then, out of the sky, there’s the
whoosh
of displaced air and then the
boom
of an explosion. And then there’s the shrapnel slicing through his body.

Irony is a literary device that’s supposed to happen in novels. It’s supposed to keep the reader interested and entertained. But living in a war zone, you realize that irony is real life. To deal with it we develop a sick sense of humor.
Living in a war zone, you realize that God is the one with a sick sense of humor. So I guess that makes us Godlike.

I drive down the empty road trying to empty my mind of ironic images. There’s a herd of cows off to the left edge of the road. One cow in particular seems to be the leader of the pack. She’s standing at the very edge of the road waiting to cross. She’s fearless, or perhaps just stupid.

The tenth vehicle in the convoy, the one right in front of me, zooms past the skinny brown cow. Somehow I know that this stupid, fearless cow won’t be patient enough to allow me, the last vehicle, to pass before crossing. Irony is what I expect out of this convoy, and irony is what I get.

Like the rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland
, the cow heads into traffic. But unlike the rabbit who’s “late for a very important date,” the dumb cow plods along without a care in the world.

You couldn’t have waited for one more damn Humvee?
I think.

There is no way in hell I am going to halt an entire convoy to watch one starving Iraqi cow cross the road. Not to mention the herd behind her that now seems to admire her plodding along. They’re sure to follow shortly.

I slam the gas pedal to the floor, and it becomes a race. The diesel engine roars, and the needle on the speedometer is buried. I time the cow’s slow trot with my own increasing speed. Luckily, after a year of dodging every possible
IED at every possible speed, the situation is almost second nature. But, hey, you never know.

I can’t see them, but I know the two replacement soldiers are jockeying for position, trying to catch a glimpse out of the windshield. It’s our last convoy, and I expect to see God’s sick sense of humor awaiting me with the swipe of fate’s sickle. Instead, I am playing chicken with a cow. I don’t know what kind of irony you’d call that, but it’s something.

“Smithson!” Gasparotto yells over the deafening roar of the engine. Just like Woodlief going into the dust devil, Gasparotto grabs the “oh shit” handle in front of him.

“Can’t stop now!” I yell, smiling.

Bring it on, Fate!

The cow steps across the road. Her front foot crosses the middle of the road and her head sticks out into the right lane. Since we’re the last Humvee and his weapon needs to face six o’clock, Zerega is watching the road behind us. He has no idea we’re about to collide with a suicidal cow.

“Hold on, Z!” I yell.

I barely hear him say “What?” as we approach the stupid cow.

I jerk the wheel to the right at the last possible second. No one in the Humvee is breathing. And the passenger side tires jump off the edge of the road. They stir the hot sand, and I wrestle with the wheel to keep the Humvee
from jumping off completely.

The side mirrors on an armored Humvee stick out more than a foot, so the driver can see out of his small armored window. As we pass her, I look the cow directly in her dumb black eyes. I wait for her blood to splatter out of her nose and across my thick windshield. I wait to smack into her and feel the Humvee fly out of control. She’s still plodding along, well into the right lane, and I watch the tip of her nose miss my side mirror by inches.

Zerega howls in laughter. The sudden hop off the road probably threw his heart into his throat. His laughter, I think, is of relief.

“You should’ve told me,” Zerega yells through the hole in the roof. “I would’ve wasted her!”

I look in my rearview, and the cow is slowly turning around to walk back toward the herd.

You spend a whole year avoiding man-made bombs. You spend an entire year thinking that humanity’s evil is going to widow your wife. The whole year, your brain is consumed with thoughts of being murdered. Then the thing that almost takes you out is some stupid, impatient cow.

Above the diesel engine I can hear God laughing at me. That maniacal laugh of his.

There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.