“CRUSADER THREE-SIX, THIS IS CRUSADER SIX. I NEED A SITREP.”
My rifle bucked into my shoulder. The .50s punked away. It was like a carnival, a shoot-em-up stand on the midway, but as I fired again I felt light-headed and distant, third-person somehow. The figures on the overpass ducked from pillar to pillar, dodging fire, and finally disappeared off the far side. Porkchop shifted fire to the trees at the edge of the highway, dumping rounds into foliage.
Staff Sergeant Gooley ran out of the building and grabbed the hand mike. “Cease fire, cease fire, this is Crusader Three-seven say again cease fire.”
“CRUSADER THREE-SEVEN, THIS IS CRUSADER SIX. I NEED A SITREP.”
“CRUSADER SIX, THIS IS CRUSADER THREE-SIX.” Lieutenant Krauss broke through. “WE’RE, UH, TAKING FIRE BUT, UH, IT’S UNDER CONTROL NOW. STANDBY FOR SITREP. BREAK. ALL CRUSADER ELEMENTS, THIS IS CRUSADER THREE-SIX, RETURN TO THE HIGHWAY AND GIVE ME A PERIMETER.”
“Three-six, this is Three-seven, we need to clear these buildings,” Staff Sergeant Gooley said into the radio.
“THREE-SEVEN, THIS IS THREE-SIX, GIVE ME A PERIMETER, NOW. OUT.”
So we drove back down the highway and set up a perimeter, blocking traffic both ways.
Staff Sergeant Smith walked up to Lieutenant Krauss. “We gotta clear all them buildings, sir. They’re out there.”
“Sergeant, we’re not prepared to cordon off a whole…”
“Sir, we need to clear them fucking buildings,” Staff Sergeant Smith shouted up at him.
Krauss backed down. “Alright, Sergeant. Take some men and clear the buildings.”
We spent the next two hours waiting while the clearing teams went through the cluster of buildings along the highway, kicking in doors and screaming at hadjis. They didn’t find any weapons. After a while, Lieutenant Krauss called off the search, and we reformed the convoy, drove to CAHA Wardog, and ate lunch.
That night and the next day it was all anybody talked about, who shot what who where. I didn’t feel any better and my soul didn’t bleed like the wounds of Christ. What happened was the days got colder. I drew new rounds to replace the ones I’d fired. We ran patrols. We set up TCPs. We watched more Sex and the City, cleaning our rifles and arguing about who’d give better head, Charlotte or Carrie, and who we’d like to fuck up the butt.
remember, you are not alone
We got a speech from Captain Yarrow telling us what a great job we’d done. He told us we were transitioning to patrols now, covering neighborhoods southwest of BIAP, and training in Close Quarters Combat.
I was scheduled for environmental leave toward the end of December and started counting days till I left.
We practiced kicking in doors. We learned to follow each other through a house, checking in closets and behind furniture, leading with our guns, shouting “Clear,” “Door Left,” and “Stairs.” We learned to cover each other across open spaces, take out suicide bombers, turn and shoot without aiming.
On Thanksgiving President Bush came. We were out on a patrol that night, driving village streets in the rain and planning on MREs for dinner.
We watched Top Gun, Pumping Iron, and The Shawshank Redemption. We wrestled, played pool and ping-pong, played touch football in the parking lot, argued and laughed and got in fights. Reading kept playing “Gimme the Light” and that “Birthday” song.
One day I walked up to the CP and First Sergeant Beaman came out grinning. “They captured Saddam,” he said. “Caught like a rat in a trap.”
“Great,” I said. “We can go home now, right?”
“It’ll be a real turning point,” he said.
I nodded. “Now all we gotta do is find those WMDs.”
“Hey, Wilson,” he said. “Get down and push.”
“Hooah, First Sarnt.” I dropped and pushed until he told me to stop.
I decided to quit smoking. Attack Battery got hit with an RPG out on patrol, mostly minor injuries but one of the guys had to be evacked to Germany. Somebody in another unit was run over by a tank. I cleaned my rifle and waited for Christmas.
4 to 71 at 122nd. 9:59. Take the 10 to the 15, change downtown to the 77 and get off at 21st. 10:12.
I talk to my ex-girlfriend and we decide to try again. The trouble starts almost immediately, with my car’s clutch grinding out as I drive in over the coast range from Newport. I make it to my mom’s in Corvallis, but going to Portland the next day the clutch drops with a thunk, and I have to get the car towed back to town, where it sits in my mom’s driveway growing a skin of brown needles.
It’s a sign, of course—the sky full of signs that fall.
Things don’t improve in Portland. I take the bus across town to a 7-Eleven, fill out an application, take the bus back across town to a nursing home, fill out another application. Rain falls, and I go to the library to search the internet for jobs and wind up shuffling the stacks, reading The Coming Anarchy and The Clash of Civilizations.
4 to the 72 at 82nd. 11:37. 12:19.
We go to a dinner party with some friends of hers. We eat tempeh stir-fry and drink IPA and talk about jobs, the local theater scene, and good, cheap places to eat. After dinner we pass a joint and the conversation gets grim, somebody says they can’t stop thinking about on TV those bodies falling. Did we think everything had changed? Would they attack the Mall of America? We talk about blowback and globalization and how, yeah, on the one hand it seemed maybe we’d sort of caused it. Maybe we wanted it to happen. We talk about troop movements in the Hindu Kush.
3:58. 14 to 9 to 60th. 4:09. 5:23. Home.
I make pasta. We drink wine. The money dribbles away. I apply at Goodwill, Burgerville, Powell’s, Denny’s.
Thanksgiving comes and goes and Christmas too. Against the rain and winter skies, the garish decorations and relentless commerce bring not cheer but constant reminder of my downward spiral. No joy, no carols, not even Santa can save me.
One day, after spending two hours filling out a personality test at Walmart, I go down the strip mall to an Army recruiting office. The recruiter starts my packet. He asks me about drug use and criminal record. He tells me about bonuses and college money. He asks me what I want to do and where I want to go.
babylon
wounds to the stomach, prosecuted—many have moved to the cities, particularly Mosul, Kirkuk, and Sulaymaniyah Operation Resolute Sword divided into the Shi’a majority in the south and the Sunni who live mostly in the central part of the country around Baghdad have not been assimilated into the population are “Marsh Arabs” who inhabited the lower Tigris and Euphrates urban centers with Baghdad being Iraq my spear
population of two
already pleaded to be those targets on the edge of the gallbladder and transverse colon; only those acts which can be said to be half measures, the national Kalashnikovs
with a gunshot wound through the rectum; and two with possible war seen war that will be fourteen more casualties arrived Operation Sidewinder CIA secret prisons at the military’s Iraqi Advanced Trauma Life Support protocols for the administration of Bush’s decision was over the last six
sometimes they arrested all adult males present the