The experience is tsunami-like in its proportions. It leaves the sufferer in an utterly depleted state, sometimes unable to leave the latrine for any period of time, and sometimes requiring IV fluid replacement. The latrines are not adequate for an onslaught of such seismic events.
When a toilet overflows here, it is not the same as the plumbing backing up. It simply means that the pit, which is dug below each seat and furnished with a bit of sanitizer, is spilling over. If you still have to go, you have to go, but if you were sick going in, you’re going to be sicker once you get there.
The other uncomfortable issue is the lack of privacy. There are fabric partitions between the toilets, but not in front of them, so inside the women’s latrine, everyone passing has a full frontal view of you attempting to look as graceful as possible with your cammies around your boots. Everyone manages the situation by wearing an unfalteringly placid expression that makes it seem they have seen nothing.
This is also the way things are handled in the women’s showers, which have much the same set-up. Everyone unavoidably sees everything, but I am so impressed by the shared elegance of no one appearing to do so. Even in what could be an incredibly base and humiliating circumstance, the women manage an unblemished dignity.
Things are worse elsewhere, however. Leatherneck is big enough so that latrine issues are infrequent, and if they do occur, the equipment to solve the problem can arrive reasonably quickly and efficiently. Forward operating bases like Ramrod (I always have to giggle a bit at the masculinity of that name), and especially extremely remote combat outposts like Hotel, both of which I visited last month, do not offer such an option.
These bases have port-a-potties, which are actually convenient for gender segregation, but terribly inaccessible for maintenance when they overflow. The biggest issue with port-a-potties in the desert, though, is the occasional problem of strong and capricious winds, like those of a sandstorm. Not a few poor souls have found their facility overturned while making a visit. That, I suppose, is what might be worse than an overflow.
Also, such small and remote bases do not usually have shower facilities exclusively for women. As the furthest bastions of infantry, they would have no reason to anticipate women, and it’s oddly unfortunate when you happen to be one. Luckily, prior training has taught me how to cope.
Will write more tomorrow—it’s a long story.
Day 40
Because of yesterday’s events, I am vividly reminded of the training I underwent in the Mojave Desert before deploying. Thanks to it, I am well-prepared for what I can meet in terms of “biological,” gender, and a few other challenges in Afghanistan. Actually, after that training there is very little that daunts me in the desert.
Just weeks away from deploying, our HTT training class visited the Mojave to participate in an exercise with an Army brigade, on their way out of country as well. The Mojave Desert is a wonderful place for this kind of exercise, because it truly immerses you in the stark harshness you will actually encounter. Also, the exercises are incredibly well-crafted to make you eventually lose your sense of being “home,” convincing you that everything around you is a real part of the war.
As we arrived to join up with the brigade—which was in charge of all logistical arrangements—we found that women were not anticipated. Enormous tents, each housing hundreds, had been set up for the men, and these tents had heaters. Big, powerful, glorious heaters.
While the desert can certainly be hot in the day, in the early spring the nights can be as frigid and wind-blown as the land is sparse. No tent was available for the few women present. There was myself, a civilian attached to the Army (who I would meet later), a cook, and an older woman from my program we called “Mema”—a bit of affectionate Arabic for “mother.” Mema is another story.
A Huey and its Afghan dust. (Photo courtesy Department of Defense)
Finally, a small pop-up tent was found for us as an afterthought. Unfortunately, however, there was no provision to heat this tent. It was so tiny, heating it probably wasn’t worth the logistical worry. I, with my sailor’s inclinations, also wondered if the tent was actually tied down securely enough. It snapped too violently as the evening winds picked up.
Sleeping in the tent was impossible as the temperatures dwindled toward the teens. The snapping was so loud that I got up to see if I could make it more secure. Just as I was doing so, a “bomb” hit near us (a planned explosion that was part of the exercise), and we were all required to don our helmets and run to a “hardened” location.
Of course, as the weight of the last person left the tent, my worries proved themselves worthwhile. The tent lifted off in the wind. The canvass itself remained held by one corner, but its contents blew out into the night. I didn’t know whether to run to the bomb shelter or after our things.
I saw my sleeping bag rolling swiftly away, end over end, over one dune, and most of our clothes over another. I chased them to the point of exhaustion until I simply stood atop a hill and cried mournfully after them, “Come baaaaaack!” I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, but I hoped they would obey.
The men, in their solid and warm large tents, had no such issues. In the light of day, I found my sleeping bag and some of our things. We got the tent better secured, and I went to work on the exercises.
My team at that point consisted of Pop, Lanky, Mema, and me. (Tex would later replace Mema before we left for Afghanistan.) Assigned to a certain area of operation, we went on patrols in simulated villages and interviewed actors posing as locals. We ran through various tactical scenarios. I started writing reports.
When I returned to the tent that evening, I had somewhat of a problem. Among the things that were never recovered from the desert was my stash of underwear. To this day, it doubtless still flies somewhere, freely on the wind.
When I was in the FBI, I was shocked to see that they sold employees underwear that did not require washing. Disgusted, I couldn’t imagine in what circumstance that would be a good thing. Now I knew.
That evening, I hand-washed my one remaining pair of underwear. I hung it on a cable near my sleeping bag in the tent. We still had no heat, and this night was colder than the first. When I got up, I found my underwear frozen into a solid inflexible piece. I now understood why the term was “commando,” but I wasn’t yet ready to go so.
I was sure the men weren’t having this problem. With an incredibly uncomfortable smile on my face, I arrived to work bright and early. The reports were going well, and we started running more serious scenarios.
We encountered angry actors. We simulated a village situation where we would have to run to a rally point. We learned how hard it really is to run distances in body armor with heavy packs.
Mema was never one for running at all. She was surprisingly senior to be in such a physically demanding program as HTT, and while she had the classically beautiful face of her Arab heritage, she was quite large. She had an endearing personality, however, that won her a great deal of slack.
She would embrace anyone, even near-strangers, with “I loooove you!,” and she “looooooooooved” my Marine in particular. Both he and I thought it nothing but sweet and motherly, because of their large difference in age.
Still, she showed me a side that made me uncomfortable. Just the week before, we were to hike a circular course in the woods near Ft. Leavenworth where we trained. She hid herself near the beginning of the path and when she thought enough time had passed, she simply walked back out. She finished with the time of an Olympian!
When an official from the program later confronted her, she wailed in hurt tears until he felt so guilty for having accused her, he gave up. She turned to me then, shockingly tearless, and said casually and disdainfully, “As if I would actually do any of these stupid things they require.” I was more than a little unnerved by her lying and her “switch,” so I began to put as much distance between myself and Mema as I could. We were here together now, though, and things were unavoidably c
lose.
Just like there were no provisions for women’s sleeping spaces, there were also no provisions for women’s showers. (The latrines were not a gender issue, as individual port-a-potties were provided and private.) To allow us to shower, a 15-minute period early in the evening was allotted when male soldiers were instructed to stay out.
To make it in the 15-minute time slot, you literally needed to run from work, but a shower was worth it! I made it in immediately, as did the other Army contractor—a slim and pretty blonde girl who I learned went by JJ, just as I went by CC. The coincidence made us fast friends.
Because our shower stalls were adjacent with a curtain between, JJ and I struck up a conversation. She was on a different type of government-sponsored team that would interact directly with Iraqi villages, and we both wondered about how successful or safe we were going to be as females attempting the work.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but at least I know I can rely on my team. I’ll be safe because I can count on them for anything. In fact, they’re out there right now, guarding the door for us.”
“That’s so good to hear,” I was saying mid-shampoo, precisely as a strange young man barged into the shower room. Apparently, her team had left their post.
“Female shower time!” we called out, thinking he had simply made a mistake. He kept coming.
“Get out! Females only.”
The young soldier hovered too close. We did have something of a front curtain each, but they were inadequate and blowing flimsily. We could see him, probably as well as he could see us, and he was cocky. He was a bit short, with his intentionally too-tight t-shirt showing off his bulging muscles and his shorts comically too loose. He carried a towel slung over his shoulder. He supposed he was both unbearably “cool” and impressively intimidating.
He launched into a tirade as he got even closer. “You women. You’re probably gonna wash that long hair, right? Take an hour to be all pretty in pink, maybe? Gonna paint your toenails? Why should you get to shower first? Why the hell do you get in here first, huh?” He snapped his towel for effect.
“What’s your plan here, bastard?” I asked, cutting to the chase.
“You need to get the hell out,” JJ added seriously.
Given our professional inclinations, neither one of us were girls who couldn’t do at least some damage, even against such a muscular, brutish bully. All we had to do was convince him that we would give him more of a fight than he wanted, and he would back down. We both knew it. We let him feel it by showing him a confidence in our eyes that made nothing of our nakedness.
“Worthless women.” He gave up and headed toward the exit, “But if I find just one long hair in the shower drain…” He snapped his towel again, pointlessly trying to save face in his retreat.
I smiled with some satisfaction as he turned tail, but it soon turned to outright hysterics. He ran squarely into Mema, who had only recently arrived and was just disrobing as he passed. She put more than icing on the cake.
“What?” she asked. “You never seen your Mamma?!” She revealed her copious bosom and shimmied. It all proved too much for the soldier who thought himself a “big man.” He blanched and tripped on the way out the door.
While her approach was unarguably inappropriate, she did demonstrate what I ultimately thought was an important point. In our own way, each of us in the showers that day had the confidence to make our nudity a non-issue. Prudishness had no place in this environment. The self-assurance to see to your own safety was all that was worth true concern.
There was no real incident to report, though Mema enjoyed relating the funny story. Officially, a soldier had walked into the bathroom at the wrong time. Soldiers were reminded not to do so.
In the days that followed, the training became more realistic and intense. Patrols in angry villages were the norm, and as we realized that our “games” were no different from what we would actually be facing in a few weeks, any sense of “playing” faded.
During one patrol in a village that had become familiar, a sniper fired from a rooftop. At that point, everything felt real. We hit the ground. He kept firing, and soldiers were being picked off around us. I moved to better cover, and then realized that Mema could not. She lay on her belly and was breathing raggedly, crushed by her armor.
It was a game. She was basically fine. But somehow it just couldn’t seem so in my mind.
It was raining death, and we couldn’t find the sniper. By now I was sure there were several. They shot and ducked back into their high positions, and while we tried to maintain our cover, we couldn’t see them to stop them.
Lanky was soon “dead,” and Mema was a sitting duck. I grabbed her and pulled her safely with me behind a short wall—also freeing her breathing from the weight that had been stifling it. It literally took all my strength, and she was irate with me. I couldn’t have cared less.
The exercise changed and we were to run again. We were to take different directions to a rendezvous point. The run was longer than I had ever done before with my armor and pack, my strength had been spent with Mema, and when I arrived at the location, my mind finally, truly, registered what we were doing.
This was real. This was very, very real. And this is what it would be like.
From the rendezvous point we moved to a central outpost, and stripping off my armor in the shade, I discovered my fiancée there. He, having found just the smallest moment and place of privacy, pulled me swiftly into his arms and kissed me. It was a life-and-death kiss, driven and heightened by the realization that too soon we would be truly at war. His team must have met snipers too, and he knew what I knew.
As he, for a last instant, lowered his head to brush his lips against my throat and I pressed close the unshaven roughness of the face that I so loved, I was startled to see the strangest intrusion. Mema, peering through a tent flap, scowled. “Go, go,” I whispered to him, and wished it needed not be so as he took up his rifle and ran for his team.
Mema disappeared from work the rest of the day, and I did not see her until I entered the freezing women’s tent after showering that evening. She always had a fascination with my Marine. Because of the kiss, I supposed, or because of some other offense, she would now take the opportunity—of all truly unimaginable things—to literally curse me. Her words, though they flowed from her quickly, were shockingly ornate, and crafted to a deployment. She had practiced!
“May you know the face of death a hundred times,” she began, extending a hand toward me. “May tears pain your eyes always for the things that will pass. May hope meet its end in your heart, and may you never find peace all your days.”
(Later, I would recount this humorously to friends as “May the fleas of a thousand camels follow always at your back, and may dung clog your boots all your days!” though I somehow always remembered Mema’s shocking original words.)
She finished dramatically, pounding her heart and waving a fist heavenward, “God will hear the rage of my heart and grant this.”
She was serious! I had just witnessed a bizarre superstition taken to unimaginable heights! My head rattled in confusion at her take on things right then—she had always made a point of her religious piety, and it just seemed odd to include God in a bid for such cruelty. It certainly wasn’t a part of Islam as I understood it, or that I believe Muslims practiced.
“I can’t imagine God would want horrible things like that,” I said, trying to find some reasonable common ground, “but may He bless you and grant you peace.” She really seemed to need it!
I walked out of the tent, my wet hair making me shiver violently in the wind, and found myself in tears. I didn’t believe in silly curses. It was simply the fact that she had spent time working on something so florid and detailed that shocked me most. It was her hate, not her threat, that hurt.
Later that night, a good, heavy knife I was using to cut a cable and better secure our tent slipped from my grasp. Reflexively and unwisely, I caught it spinning midair, and
it sliced through my hand. Two kind soldiers, a stocky lieutenant and a wiry young captain, were chewing tobacco nearby.
They happened to notice both the feat of the catch and its result. They sprung into action and came immediately to my aid. I was deeply touched.
“See?” Mema gloated as the soldiers quickly wrapped my hand and began to lead me gently away for stitches. “This deployment will go badly for you.”
“Why on earth do you still insist on that?”
“See your own blood! It was not I who spilled it! Because of my prayer, God does it now!” Her voice rose disturbingly, and the soldiers traded wide-eyed looks.
Now freezing cold and badly cut, I found myself occupied trying to sort out a bit of Theology. I was fairly certain God didn’t come down and slice my hand because of her prayer! Islam meant submission to the will of God, and her “curse” was an attempt not to submit to it but to bend and control it—to some very ungodly purposes.
Superstition creeps into so many religions, and this didn’t appear to be Islam at all! Did she even know how far off she had gone from a basic tenant of her own faith? It seemed to me she did not. Of all the things that should have been bothering me at that moment, that thought, oddly, did the most.
“I couldn’t possibly know,” I said, “but I suspect that it’s more like God’s will that my hand heal up nicely. May you stay safe and whole as well.” I let the soldiers lead me on then, which they did even more protectively than they had before. I get dizzy when I see a great deal of blood, and their shoulders were nice to lean on.
In the meantime, Mema sought out Lanky. She cried in her most persuasive way, and bewailed to him my cruelty toward her (for what offense, I remained unsure). Shocked, Lanky berated me the next day for upsetting an older woman, and I lacked the apparently necessary tears on call to convince him otherwise.
Crossing the Wire Page 8