There are events that happened in Iraq that I will never, ever, forget. This is one of them. How could we possibly come to terms with an experience like this? And should we come to terms with it? If we were to, maybe that would mean that something was really wrong with us.
20
Anticipation
Camp Victory is located in northern Kuwait. The camp operation can redeploy about 10,000 soldiers every two weeks, which is also the amount of time the process generally takes …
While folks at Camp Victory, Kuwait’s primary redeployment camp, deal with many of the same billeting and supply issues that affect the other camps, their job is made somewhat easier by the fact that most of the troops passing through the camp are on their way home and in high spirits. Living conditions are harsh. When sandstorm season began in 2004 its first victim was the tent over our Internet café, so communicating with loved ones back home was on hold.
Camp Victory —Globalsecurity.org
Our six-month tour of duty was scheduled to end in August, but August came and went. Every day we’d ask Sergeant Johnson if he’d heard when we’d be leaving, and every day we were told he had not. Other Marines were beginning to rotate out of Camp TQ. Each week another group would pack up their gear and head to Kuwait. I saw Cherie—the corporal who had tried to befriend me—gathering her belongings together and I helped her pack. Now that we were leaving I didn’t feel as strong a need to distance myself from her. I wasn’t as worried about bringing her bad luck or about just bringing her down with reports of what was going on in Mortuary Affairs. I felt guilty as I helped her carry her gear out to the convoy that would take her away. As we waited together for a couple of hours in the heat, sand, and sun, I wanted to tell her why I had rebuffed her friendly overtures. I wanted to thank her for the opportunity I did not take to talk to her. I wanted her to know that I appreciated the kind of Marine she was, a straight-out top notch Marine, one who didn’t hide in the role of a typical female Marine and one who, in a futile attempt to find acceptance, didn’t try to pass herself off as a version of a male Marine. I wanted to tell her that in another place and time we would, I was sure, have become fast friends. Back home, we’d be college roommates, the kind who genuinely care for each other and who develop a life-long bond. A generation ago, we’d have been neighbors, each pregnant with our first baby, there to help each other adjust to a life at home. Instead, I chatted with her about the meals she’d have when she got back to the States, the comfortable mattress she’d sleep on, the relationship she’d enjoy with the man she was planning to marry. Suddenly, it seemed, Cherie was sitting in the back of the truck, wearing her flak jacket and helmet, waving good-bye to me as she disappeared into the sand.
They say that the most dangerous parts of a deployment are when you first get there and when you’re about to leave. I could see why this is true. I could see the ignorance and naiveté of the incoming soldiers. They were way too careless and not half as serious as they should have been. Many didn’t have a clue as to what awaited them. And for those of us who were about to leave, anticipating our departure made it easy to relax and to let down our guard. We were done being warriors. We had dropped our packs. We were ready to go home.
We got word in early October: Sergeant Johnson gathered us together and told us we were heading home. We went back to our tents and broke down our filthy, sweaty, sandy, smelly, uncomfortable, green canvas cots. We left the tents dressed in our cammies, wearing flak and Kevlar, an M-16 slung over our shoulders, each carrying two bulging sea bags, and a 75-pound Alice pack. We were taken to AGDAG (Airfield) and flown to Camp Victory, Kuwait, a huge base designed for transitioning into and out of Iraq, the base we convoyed out of almost eight months earlier. Now, it felt empty, like a ghost town. There was a skeleton crew working the chow hall and they were the only military I saw.
Our platoon was allowed to stay in any tent we wanted, so we all headed to a huge one close to the trailers that served as heads. There was not a designated tent for the females, so I slept in the same one as the guys. I chose a cot at the end of a row, between two other end-of-the-row cots that were occupied by the men I had come to trust most, Copas and Pineda. When I returned to the tent later that night after showering, I walked along the row of cots wearing a blue t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. It was a novel situation, and an uncomfortable one. For more than seven months these men had seen me only in cammies or PT gear and, now, I was walking past them in my PJs and with my wet hair down. I could feel their eyes on me. Nothing at all inappropriate happened and maybe that’s why the situation ignited in me the faint memory of a complex sexual ritual more subtle and less crude than what I had witnessed since enlisting. It was a process that may have begun with the scent of a just showered woman, the hopeful glance of a young man, an averted gaze, a smile, eventually, a touch. I couldn’t tell whether my recollection was from an old movie or a novel or a long-ago experience, but before my hair was fully dry, the memory became a promise of a future, post-military relationship of the sort I needed. As I slipped into sleep, the promise became a prayer.
We stayed in Kuwait for several days waiting for our platoon to be placed on a waiting list for a plane to Germany. A loudspeaker announced when a plane was ready for a particular platoon. Static and the word “Attention!” raised our hopes; the subsequent message absent a mention of us, dashed them. We were away from the MA bunker and the convoys, but we were still far from home. As time dragged, we felt we were in purgatory. Finally, our platoon was called and we humped all of our equipment down to the flight line. We stood in a line bordered by yellow rope, weighted down by our bags which we had to empty out onto the ground to show that we weren’t taking back any weapons or other trophies from the war. We packed everything back up and headed to a second, nearby tent. We stood for several hours, then dropped our gear, then sat on it, then sprawled ourselves over it, to rest, then to sleep. The hours turned into days when, finally, we boarded the plane and flew to Germany.
From Germany we flew on a civilian plane to Maryland. We rushed out into the terminal, to the pay phones, to make collect calls to our families to let them know we were stateside, but to really let them know that we had made it home alive and, as far as we could tell, in one piece.
From Maryland we flew to California where we waited in a USO tent for several hours for the buses that would bring us to Camp Pendle ton. There, we headed first to the armory to turn in our rifles. It was then that The Sir called us to fall in. We rushed to get into formation, not knowing why, but pissed nevertheless because we were home and the last thing we wanted to do was this. As we stood there, The Sir said “Goodell, front and center!” I marched in front of The Sir and saluted him, and he started to recite the standard promotion speech: “On this day …” he stopped, mid-sentence, saying, “Goodell, you know how this goes,” and he pinned the Lance Corporal chevrons on my collar. “Don’t go losing these this weekend,” he added. The Sir wasn’t supposed to be pinning me right then or there, but he had been trying hard to get me promoted throughout the deployment and could not. He decided to promote me anyway, thinking that after what we went through, no one would question him. It was a small promotion, insignificant, except to me. I was grateful. And I was proud.
The Marines of Mortuary Affairs, Camp TQ, 2004. (Author collection)
21
Home
Ken Dennis was fresh out of the Marines, finally out of Iraq, flailing financially and filing for divorce from a wife who ran off with a fellow Marine.
The combat rifleman wasn’t sleeping much: nightmares. He had tried counseling but only briefly, then he had given up on it …
His best friend, Abram Hoffmeister, found him in the bathtub, a belt around his neck, blood vessels in his face exploded.
“It was pretty obvious he was dead,” said Hoffmeister, best buddies with Ken since kindergarten in Ephrata.
Military statistics also don’t follow soldiers home, out of uniform, out of the service, and
into the stateside messiness of civilian life—a tricky territory planted with its own potential landmines: broken relationships, money troubles, legal hassles and mental stresses …
Ken’s mother, Shirley Dennis, says her son’s jump from military to civilian life was too quick. “There should have had more one-on-one talks with other vets. There should have been more realizing that you just can’t kick loose these young boys after what they’ve experienced and seen.”
From: “The War Comes Home: Rifleman Couldn’t Take Any More,” by M.L. Lyke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 13, 2004
As we were leaving the bus in California, I was struck by the vibrant colors I hadn’t seen in eight months. Other aspects of life, natural and social, that I had once taken for granted now seemed odd or wrong. And this feeling was immediate; it hit as we were exiting the bus. I could see vegetation and the air smelled fresh and clean. I didn’t hear the loud chugging of the generators. Most of our friends and family members waiting for us seemed so big and round and colorful in their bright blue and red and yellow clothing; they resembled oversized gumballs that had escaped their plastic bubble dispenser, rolled to the base, and came to a stop before us. I saw smiles, hundreds of them, and toddlers and babies. And when I noticed husbands and boyfriends running to their partners with bouquets of flowers, I thought about this common transaction and its symbolism differently than I ever had before. Flowers for warriors! What does this mean? Who are these women expected to be now?
I woke up very early the next morning to join Leslie, the Marine who would help us when we got busy, the one we called “Nancy,” for a run. He worked with us often and we all knew and liked him. He and another Marine shared sleeping quarters in a small room on base. It was still dark when I arrived and I noticed that the lights were on inside. Not wanting to wake his roommate by knocking, I quietly opened the door. There, taking up all of the available floor space, were six of my Mortuary Affairs comrades, arms and legs and heads, all helter skelter, over and under and around each other. These men had their own assigned sleeping places, but here they were, together, with the lights on, a litter of puppies, like the night in the bunker when we were threatened by at tack. I wondered when the ghosts of war would loosen their grip on us.
Over the course of the next several weeks, I realized that many of my taken-for-granted assumptions about how we live here in America had been shaken by my experiences in both the Corps and Iraq. For one thing, it seemed that everyone I saw was eating. No matter the time of day or night, no matter the place, they were eating. They ate with others and they ate alone. They ate while driving and shopping and talking. They ate in restaurants and food courts, on park benches and city sidewalks, in elevators and buses, in movie theaters and ball parks. I saw a young man eating while smoking a cigarette and a middle aged woman eating while ordering a meal at a fast food drive-thru.
I noticed too how we were always buying things, and then buying more. New cars and then new stereo systems for them, and then new wheels, and then newer, more powerful stereo systems. Clothes. Jewelry. Cell phones that would soon be replaced with fancier ones. Flat screen televisions that would be replaced with larger ones.
Life was characterized by a carelessness that ranged from not using a directional signal when driving to not getting proper directions when on a road trip to failing to make reservations. There was a lack of attention to details that during a deployment could get people killed.
Everyone was busy. Too busy to meet, to have dinner, to carry on an actual conversation.
Everything moved fast. Strangers became best friends—“brothers”—or they became lovers—“soul mates”—in an instant. Relation ships and marriages ended overnight. Jobs were lost, families were broken, plans were changed, and futures were canceled in the blink of an eye.
People seemed self-centered and relationships felt superficial. Favors were asked but seldom returned; everyone wished to talk and no one wanted to listen; plans were kept on hold until the last minute in the hope that something better came up; friends wouldn’t show up or couldn’t be bothered.
For a while I knew what it was like to have friends who would give their life to protect mine. Back home, I couldn’t be sure that one would show up to an agreed upon lunch date or actually meet me at the library as we had planned.
Everyday life had the feel of a shopping mall, on Black Friday, and you were there alone, among total strangers, wandering around or, at most, transacting business. The Mall of America.
All of this—the rampant consumption, the materialism, the self-centeredness—the Corps had purged from us; then we were dropped back into the middle of it all. The experiences of war, of combat and death, left us jittery in public places, jumpy at the sound of fire crackers, sleepless at night. And it was these changes in what we saw as important, in who we were, in how we lived, in the bonds that connected us, or didn’t, that created deeper problems in adjusting back to our old lives.
To say that this set of fundamental changes created a sense of confusion is to minimize our sense of the term “confusion.” We did get disoriented with regard to time and, certainly, identity, but it wasn’t just all in our minds. The disorder was also in our lives, in our interactions, our relationships, as well as in their absence. As we were soon to learn, the confusion was in the very ground beneath our feet that would give way like loose sand whenever we tried to propel ourselves forward, trying to get back to a source of social gravity, where life had meaning and our interactions had structure.
Before we left Camp TQ, every Marine was told to see a counselor. This soldier gave us each an electronic stylus-like device with which we completed a questionnaire, and then he called us into his office individually where we were asked the same questions. The same idiotic questions. Questions like, “How is your libido?”
“Well, we’re in Iraq, in wartime, and I’m working in Mortuary Affairs,” I said. After a brief pause I asked, “Under these circumstances, what libido?
“I know where we are,” he said, “and I know where you’re working. What I’d like to know is how your libido is doing.”
“Well, maybe someone could ask me when we’re back in the States and things are more normal,” I suggested.
“Alright, then,” he continued, “How’s your appetite?”
“Umm … the trucks that deliver our food to the base keep getting blown up, so now we’re down to one meal a day. And I work in Mortuary Affairs.”
“Okay,” he said with a sigh as he jotted down my answers on his yellow notepad, “what about your sleeping patterns?”
“The base is under threat of attack every night … and I work in Mortuary Affairs,” I murmured impatiently. When he saw that I couldn’t hide my irritation, he directed me to someone else.
The second soldier asked the same stupid questions and then recommended that when I return to the States I should talk with still another counselor.
“Goodbye,” he said as he extended his hand.
“Thanks,” I replied as I shook his hand.
And that was that.
There was no debriefing. There was no attempt to communicate with us in a therapeutic way, or to encourage us to talk to each other. There was no nothing. Nope. Nothing. He just recommended that I talk to someone when I get back. He didn’t tell me what to tell my sergeant when he’d say, “It’s tough luck if you have to talk to someone, we’ve got things we have to do this afternoon.” The counselor didn’t recommend what I do then.
He didn’t tell us that what we saw and did in Iraq we’d never forget. He didn’t say that the images would keep us awake all night in a sweat or that we’d never fully rid ourselves of the smell of death or that we wouldn’t be able to eat or leave our parents’ house or our own apartments for months or that we’d shoot at neighborhood kids from our windows or pop sixty pills a day or wander the streets of our hometown in a stupor. The counselor didn’t tell us that whole spheres of our lives and basic aspects of our selves were gone. Obli
terated. That friends and family members and spouses, good memories, sleep, fun, food, and clarity would all have to be shaded black. He didn’t tell us that for several of us, our former lives would be shaded black. The counselor didn’t say that for a couple of us, hope would be shaded black.
We received a call one day and were told that an IED exploded under an Army convoy that was crossing a bridge. It blew a truck over the side and down into a ravine. (Photo courtesy of Bill Thompson)
22
Miguel*
In her study, Dr. Dobie and her colleagues mailed surveys to 1,935 women [veterans] …
The women who screened positive for the [Post traumatic Stress] Disorder also reported more psychiatric problems, more issues with substance abuse, and more lifetime exposure to domestic violence. They also had more physical health problems …
From: “Female Veterans Increasingly Diagnosed with PTSD,” by Ruth SoRelle, MPH Emergency Medicine News, Volume 26, Issue 6, June 2004
*Not his real name.
Before heading to Iraq, I did a two-year stint in Okinawa, Japan. From Okinawa I was sent to Twentynine Palms, California. Upon arrival another Marine took me around the base to “check-in,” which involved get ting assigned an M-16 at the armory, stopping by BAS and the Dental clinic, and picking up the gear that was issued to me, such as the Alice pack, ammo pouches, canteen, Kevlar and flak jacket. The Marine’s name was Miguel. He was 6’ 2’ and 230 pounds of solid ox muscle. Hispanic and bilingual, Miguel had dark hair and eyes, and thick, solid, working hands.
Jessica Goodell & John Hearn Page 10