Captain Yarrow led us to the cafeteria, where again we stood dazed, this time by the heaps of food on the serving line, the gleaming elegance of the white tablecloths and smiling servers. They had roast chicken and fresh salad, rice and hummus, bread and fruit and sauces, all on porcelain plates with metal servingware, drinks in glass tumblers and—impossibly—ice cream.
We piled our plates high and feasted like jackals.
I wondered as I ate: maybe when I got out I could do this, be one of these people, get the thrill of war without all the Army bullshit. I could be a war correspondent or maybe some kind of humanitarian. It’d be perfect: I’d get the adventure but I’d get to bathe, eat well, and drink cognac with beautiful, intelligent women. I’d have the internet, cynical-wise conversation, and the warm fulfillment of knowing I was doing something good. For the world.
My mouth full of chicken, I flushed with obscure yearning, loneliness, and the sudden desire for these people to see me as one of their own, to see how enlightened I really was beneath my salt-stiff DCUs, how different from the thugs I’d come in with. I wanted to talk with these business-casual cosmopolitans about human rights and cultural programming, Michel Foucault and Zadie Smith. I wanted to corner the woman in the skirt, take her hands in mine, and convince her: I used to read Whitman. I used to read Joyce.
After finishing our ice cream, a few of us wandered down the hall to the café to smoke. There were more men and women there, more UN types drinking tea and coffee. A talking head on the TV said that Uday and Qusay had been killed.
the primer ignites the propellant in the round
gas from the burning propellant
pushes the projectile along the weapon
Captain Yarrow watched Black Hawk Down. I stood in the doorway behind him, eyeing the jumpcuts flashing Hollywood prettyboys acting tough.
“You don’t get enough war during the day, sir?”
“What’s that, Wilson?”
“I said you don’t get enough war during the day, sir?”
“I’m watching for pointers. This is tactical review.”
“Sir?”
“Yeah. Good lessons learned. Like, bring water. See, if they’d done that, they would’ve been in much better shape. Their NCOs needed to be doing better precombat checks and inspections. You can learn a lot from this, Wilson. You’ll be an NCO yourself someday.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Pull up a chair.”
“No thanks, sir.”
I went back to the common room. I looked around at the same tired, dirty faces I saw every day, then sat and flipped through the letters I’d saved up from girls back home—artifacts from hyperspace. Who were these women doing roller derby in Wisconsin, meditating, hiking mountains? Who were they to say they missed me and hoped I was safe? What the fuck did they know about it? Where were their hands, their smells, their voices? What would they think if I shoved my rifle in their faces and screamed at them, “Kif! Oguf!”
I did fifty push-ups then went downstairs to smoke.
Geraldo had lit a plastics fire in a trash barrel, filling the courtyard with toxic fumes. I walked past him, out through the yard toward the wall, thinking I could go right over—escape into the night and find some nice Kurdish family to take me in who wouldn’t cut my throat in my sleep. I could walk around in regular clothes, sit in a café and bullshit about politics. I could even turn hadji, learn to read the Koran, grow a mustache, wear a man-dress, glare at Ameriki humvee. I could learn to breathe again.
I made my way back toward the barracks. I brushed my teeth, went upstairs, took my cot out onto the balcony, and unrolled my patrol bag. Shots rang out. I listened to The White Album for a while, then took off my glasses and closed my eyes.
Used to date a beauty queen, olee-olee-annah. Now I date my M-16, olee-olee-ann-ah. Oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah, oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah. Used to drive a Cadillac, olee-olee-annah. Now I hump it on my back, olee-olee-ann-ah.
We tumble off the bus in the night, screamed at by a redheaded specialist who briefs us on what we’re forbidden and gives us two minutes each in curtained stalls to dump out all our chewing gum, candy, novels, magazines, CD players, nonprescription medication, booze, cigarettes, drugs, video games, and whatever else we thought we could sneak past the drill sergeants. We’re warned this is our last chance. We’re told someone will think they’re the exception. They’re wrong, the specialist says. They will be the example.
On Monday morning, just like in a movie, our first round brown breaks the dark shouting and banging a can. We muster, go to chow, and it starts: forms, shots, ID cards, briefings, initial uniform issue. Somebody tells the drill sergeant there’s no hot water in the showers and he puts on a concerned face and says he’ll check on it. Thursday we take our initial PT test: thirteen push-ups, seventeen sit-ups, run a mile in eight thirty. Three guys fail out and get recycled to Fat Boy. The next morning the rest of us post with our bags in the yard.
Then the real drill sergeants arrive. Heads shaved to bullets, eyes dooming searchlights, boots gleaming liquid pain, they lunge at us in their Smokey Bears lucid, swift, and terrible. At once they’re on the attack, herding us into cattle cars, and we stumble in on each other, dazed and sweating.
Inside the cattle car hot and close with the stench of fear, I watch the fort roll by through a tiny window. We stop and they scream and we fall out and form up. There are legions of them and all they do is yell. You flinch, move, wobble, mutter, blink—Wham—there’s a fucker on your eyeball like you just raped his mom. We line up and get helmets and rucksacks and laundry bags full of equipment. As we waddle with our gear into lines in the sun, the drill sergeants lash into us. They form us back up and issue precise instructions for the arrangement of our equipment, this goes here, that there, you have thirty seconds and what the fuck are you thinking, Private? You have completely jacked your entire day and do you think… Are you eyeballing me, Private? Are you fucking eyeballing me?
We’re loaded back on the cattle cars panting. The trucks cross to the training side. We stop and they’re on us again, faster Private you wanna die, you gonna die you move that slow, you think this is summer camp, you think I’m here to—you best move Private—Are you eyeballing me?
They start simple: stack things this way, you have thirty seconds. You fail, get down and push. Move over here, stack everything that way, you have thirty seconds. You fail. Get down and push. We get some kind of speech. Get everything up to the barracks, pick a bunk and stow your gear and return to the drill pad. You have two minutes.
You fail. Get down and push. You have to learn the value of time, Private, you must learn the value of time. A lot can happen in two minutes.
The lunatic fascist fuck in the funny hat who made us call him Drill Sergeant gathered us around him in a small circle, forty stinking boys, and had us one by one say our names, where we’re from, and why we joined the army.
His name was Drill Sergeant Krugman. He was our supreme fistfuck, a light infantry sniper, and I still think back fondly to our first day there, his big black boots shining in my face as he walked up and down the line, the pain in my arms and chest and hips, the puddle of sweat on the floor under my chin. Down, he said, and we lowered ourselves to the level of his rippled boot soles. Up, he said, and we pushed past the toe gleaming like a vulcan mirror, past the ankle where the boot narrowed, up the leather along the leg where it widened, the laces taut and strong, hide smooth, to the very top, where snugly bloused trousers slid into the leather like a hand into a glove.