Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Measure of Respect Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: Iraq Memories: The Tent
    5/25/2008 9:35:29 PM

God, the things you bitch about in the Army. Do I have to share a tent with guys? With snoring guys? Do I have to share a room with other people? OMG, latrines. Hauling jugs of water to do laundry; standing in the burning sun waiting for chow, walking a mile each way in the heat to get to the internet cafe, all that stuff. And then you get home and you find that life is strange and different, and that you miss those things. Most of all you miss the greatest irritant of all, your fellow soldiers. All along it was there, and you didn't appreciate it. All along it there, hiding in plain sight, and you couldn't appreciate it till it was all gone. And then you miss it and them with your whole heart, and you're left trying to explain how, in war zone, there were these people who irritated the fuck out of you really bad...and you miss them. Bad.

Ah, your fellow soldiers. What a bunch. They irritate you when they're all you've got, and yet somehow they leave a mark that can't be forgotten once you separate and you're home...alone. Get a good group of good soldiers, and it's a return to a kind of innocence, before gender, before any of that stuff. You're not male or female yet, even though you all might be middle-aged, but something more and less and all of that: you're just human, and you're tired because you've been hauling your fucking duffels all over Camp fucking Wolverine, Kuwait, for hours after a hellacious long flight and you're so tired you just want to close those burning itching eyes and rest. It's an elemental existence. Sometimes the elements one gets reduced to are inhuman, but sometimes-----oh, sometimes, it's a delicate thing, where a huge ex-Marine asks shyly if he can have that set of Harry Potter some kind soul sent, or a grim-faced Captain sees the handful of chocolate you've got for him, and his whole face smiles. If you're all bitching about the same thing, you're not bitching about one another, and that's what counts. Pity it's bitching that binds people together, pity that it's war that gives people an appreciation for these tiny little moments that pass unnoticed in civilian life.

Every little second of happiness and contentment is finite in a genuine war zone, one where bullets really fly, where mortars land and people die. You savor those tiny little bits of privacy or quiet or happiness with some guilt and some desperation, because they can't last and unless they're happening right here and now it's hard to put your finger on them later. Only when you're home do they hit with full force, when you dare to experience them fully, and by then they're gone, like the smoke from a long-dead fire. You might as well try and catch the smoke.

You remember that tent choked full of soldiers in Kuwait, when you were so tired you dropped your duffels on the cot and leaned against them and conked out till they shook you awake for chow. You remember the thrill of opening boxes and handing eagerly-awaited stuff to soldiers, the way their faces light up, the way they scurry off with their treasures. Sometimes it's a soldier from another country, in good times and bad. I was feeding some wild Iraqi cats one day with food purloined from the chow hall when a Polish general stopped dead in the courtyard and watched, his expression changing to something lost and longing. After a bit, he came over to me, a tall, spare, stark man, with hollow cheekbones and a luxurious mustache, to pet the kitties and sigh over them and what they meant to him. "I...have cat home," he said. "She is very bad." The mamacat, rasping at him when he paused in petting her, purred like an engine. "She is boss, she is queen."

"I have cats, too," I said. We smiled at one another in complete and international agreement: cats boss us around. I don't know what rank of general he was, but love of cats reduced him to just another supplicant before the Almighty Feline. Later on, in the twilight, I came out to put out some more food and found some already placed there: a bowl of tuna and some milk. Home is where your pet is, evidently; home is where you have something fluffy to cuddle and love, no matter your nationality or rank. Even generals bow before cats, it seems. Not a startling sentiment, but when you see it in action, it touches you, literally. Every time that general and I spotted one another, after the salutes there was a tiny little bond. You look for those when you're far from home, you're living in a weird environment in a strange way. A lot of those tiny moments can add up.

Later, after the XO had his first kid---pretty much listening in on the phone the whole time---and then got leave to go home we goofed around so much before the convoy that we were late in line le

 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics