Got up and went to the gym then to breakfast then the internet.
Each platoon designated a counter responsible for collecting all our rounds and grenades. We each kept one thirty-round mag each, but everything else went in cans to hand over to 1st Cav.
At around three we went to the gym and lifted, then to dinner, then to the coffee shop for cappuccinos. After that we came back and played volleyball and watched videos till it got dark.
About twenty minutes later, we were rousted for stand-to.
“Command’s expecting an attack on the FOB tonight,” Lieutenant Krauss said, “so gear up and stand by.”
We got all gussied up then stood around bitching about having only thirty rounds apiece. When the LT came back, he picked five guys, including me, to ride in the back of C27. We were assigned to secure the northeast corner of the tents. Another five were put in C26 and sent to the southwest corner, and everyone else was QRF.
“They’re expecting some kind of concentrated attack, so eyes and ears open. Maintain radio contact. If you see something, fucking radio it up first. The last thing we need is a friendly-fire incident.”
There was some shooting far away, a lot of shooting closer, a couple more pops very close, then quiet. After about ten minutes or so, we heard a barrage of machine-gun fire from the south wall.
Then the shooting died out and we waited another forty or fifty minutes before the call came to stand down. We got back to the tent and asked what happened but nobody knew, so we went to bed.
Thursday. Our Big Day. Chalk 1 got up and got our shit together and staged at 0545 for an SP time of 0630. Our convoy of five-tons was ready, but our escorts hadn’t shown, so they told us stand by. At about 0730, they told us to go get chow and report back by 0900.
Bullwinkle, Sergeant Chandler, Sergeant Nash, and I went to breakfast. We ate a big meal and grabbed extra fruit and rolls and boiled eggs for later.
“I can’t fucking wait till I touch down on German soil. I swear to God I’m gonna fall on my knees and kiss the ground.”
“I’m gonna kiss the first fucking German girl I see right on the lips. Just grab her.”
“Shit, I’m gonna kiss the first fucking German I see no matter what. Klaus, Dieter, Heinrich, Adolf. I give a fuck.”
“You know, we’ve been here so long, that ain’t even gay.”
Bulldog Battery had already sent out their first chalk all the way to the airfield at Balad. We watched the last company of 82nd Airborne roll out.
We waited until 0850, then found Staff Sergeant Gooley and asked what was up. “Stand by,” he said. “Stand by until further notice.”
We waited. Some guys smoked, some guys slept. At 1015 they told us mount up. We cheered and loaded our gear in the back of the five-ton, clambered aboard, then waited, grinning like retards at lunchtime.
“Let’s go!” Sergeant Nash shouted.
“What the fuck’s the holdup?”
“Can you drive a five-ton?”
“I can, but I don’t have a flight manifest.”
At ten minutes to eleven, Staff Sergeant Gooley came out and told us to download our gear and take it back to the tents.
“What the fuck, Sergeant?” Bullwinkle shouted.
“Your LT’ll brief you. Download your gear.”
“Negative, Sergeant. Negative on that.”
“What the fuck’s going on, Sergeant?”
“You’ll be briefed by your platoon. Don’t make me tell you again.”
We dispersed, dragging our bags behind us. Inside Second Platoon’s tent, Lieutenant Krauss stood down at one end talking. He was saying words but not words. I couldn’t hear anymore. The air was like water, like I couldn’t breathe, like if somebody bumped me wrong I’d slide floating across the sky.
It sounded like something ninety days or until complete. Something about Karbala. Something mission essential. Something about not wanting to hear any fucking bitching, because we were soldiers and we were called on by our commander-in-chief, the President of the United States of America, and we would do our duty with pride.
The fog rolled in off the sea, clouding the trees, closing in on the mountain so that when I woke it was as if from sleep to waking dream, a mirage of insubstantial gray pierced by great black spires. I’d make myself coffee and inhale the chill air and roll a cigarette and think.
I’d sit at the formica table in the trailer and, staring through the mesh behind the slatted windows into the fog, drink my coffee and scratch poems onto notebook paper, poems about the way memory shifts in and out of focus, the way we imagine things that never happened and remember other things wrong, the daily reconstruction work of being, who I am, what I’m doing, how can I be the same I was before and who am I tomorrow.
Sometimes I’d go out into the mist and listen to all the green held thick in the moist air, my palm on the trunk of a tree just to feel the heft of it. Sometimes a deer would come through, wild and wary, and I would fill with longing for the wholeness of animal life.
It took the sun a long while to come over the mountains and until it did my vision was bound to the few gray yards around the trailer. It was day but not day, dim but not night, a fugue of half-thoughts and disconnected images, pulsing with power beyond easy meaning—a crow flapping, glowing black against the gray—a shadow like a man crouched with a knife—parking lots aching with pink blur—so overwhelmed by thought I’d have to sit back, set down the pen, set down my coffee, and it goes on—glass towers gleaming out of gray cityscapes, blinding silver—an old man with a red guitar—the booming flame of rockets trailing smoke—a girl’s face, her freckled cheek downy with fine hairs, fleshy lips spread in a smile over crooked teeth. I sink in reverie—and what, what does it mean?—then scrape a few more lines with my pen. Nothing even approximate. Another failure.
I’d moved that June into the mountains just outside Newport because my uncle had finally bought a house and moved out of his trailer. He wasn’t sure what to do with the land, so he said I could stay there over the summer if I did a little work for him. There’s no TV, he warned me, no cable, no internet, no phone, no mail, but I could get letters delivered in town.
I was at loose ends, which I’m sure my mom had told him. I’d spent the winter in Eugene, taking a couple classes at Lane Community College and working as a delivery driver for an organic juice company. I’d been dating this girl but it ended badly and I was itchy to move on, tired of the scene with all its dreadlocked anarchists, tired of weed and patchouli, the protests to save trees, stop globalization, and free Mumia. I thought about trying again with the old ex-girlfriend up in Portland, but that just made me feel worse.
My uncle’s offer seemed perfect. It’d give me a chance to get my head on straight, really figure shit out. I thought I could work part-time and write some poems, maybe finish that screenplay. A good word from my aunt got me work at the bookstore, which was more than enough to get by. I closed shop three nights a week and the rest of the time just chilled, read, smoked a little weed, and helped my uncle with his odd jobs. I wrote letters to the ex-girlfriend in Portland. I wrote poetry. I hung out with this guy named J.J. who worked at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! I hung out with Lisa from the bookstore and her husband, Mike, a house painter. I met a girl named Alice at Nana’s Irish Pub and we started hooking up. She was a total flake, which I guess is sort of what I wanted.
The sun came over the rise around ten, burning off the fog, unveiling vivid green. I’d lose my sense of boundlessness then, my dreamscape of wandering intellection, and come back to the blood-filled breath of life, the hum of bugs and the warmth of sunlight. I’d come back to the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was killing time, that when I went into town later I’d be the same aimless transient I was yesterday, still no goal, no point to my story.