by Roy Scranton
desiring democracy and modernization immediately
is a good example of what
a westerner might view as an arab’s “wish vs. reality”
Sergeant Chandler read Maxim. Lieutenant Krauss and Captain Yarrow watched Braveheart in the captain’s room. I sat listening to this mix CD a girl had made me and rereading the letter she’d sent. Rifle fire popped off close. Sergeant Chandler flipped a page of his magazine.
Lieutenant Krauss stomped in, weapon in hand. “What was that?”
Sergeant Chandler shrugged.
The LT went downstairs, then returned a few minutes later and went back to Braveheart. Healds came in and asked me if I wanted to smoke and I told him I’d just had one.
I read the girl’s letter again, amazed at how far away it came from, how ignorant she was of my world. I picked up a pen and paper to reply but found myself struck dumb, washed in a frustration humming like great engines.
•••
The next day we got a late start and by the time we hit the streets, the shooting was heavy. A shot every few seconds, every minute or so a long clatter of fire. Some close, some farther away. Sometimes we’d hear the ping of nearby ricochet, though it didn’t seem like we were being targeted.
We pulled off onto a frontage road, searching for the first cache. Captain Yarrow peered at the map, at his GPS, then back at the map, sometimes giving directions. For myself, I watched the tree line, the buildings in the distance, the earth and sky, eyes wide for the spray of impact or a muzzle flash. I felt preternaturally alert and also numb. Shots cracked out all around us.
Captain Yarrow directed us into a wide, vacant lot, about a block off Canal Road.
“Fuck this,” Healds hissed.
“You guys nervous?” Lieutenant Krauss asked.
Loud zing of ricochet.
“Fuck no, sir. This is bread and butter. I love it when the world goes batshit and everybody’s shooting all over the goddamned place.”
“You worry too much,” the LT said.
There was an overpass to the west and a cluster of half-built three-story homes to the north. Beyond that, northwest, lay Sadr City.
“Stop here,” Captain Yarrow said. He and Krauss got out and Healds and I stayed in the truck.
“You see anything?” Yarrow yelled as he and the LT stomped around searching for shells.
“No, sir.”
“Follow me,” he said. We circled the field, shots popping all around us, then the two officers got back in the truck. Another zing, another ricochet.
Captain Yarrow had me drive northwest toward Sadr City. As we neared the ghetto, the shooting got louder and louder until we swam in the noise of it. Shots and echoes and ricochets wrapped us in a cacophony like industrial dance. I waited for the first rounds to puncture the windshield or the canvas roof.
The next site was a larger lot, five blocks long and two blocks wide, full of stagnant pools and blackened muck. Driving in circles through the filth we eventually found several hundred mortar and light artillery rounds scattered in and around a stinking puddle. Fins stuck out of the oily water like dead metal sharks. Most of the rounds were scattered, black, and misshapen, the obvious remains of an explosion. Captain Yarrow marked the site on his map and had me drive the corners. The shooting let up for about half an hour then redoubled, manic, the sky raucous with metal.
The BC had us drive to the UN compound at the Canal Hotel. We parked our trucks around back and went in for lunch. Weapons and armor were prohibited, so we left everything with Foster, who volunteered to stand guard if we brought him a plate. On the way in, we passed fleets of bright blue, brand-new SUVs marked in day-glo orange: UNHIOC, UNHCR, UN, UNESCO. We’d seen them driving the streets, clean and shining, stunning colors blazing against the city skelter.
“Remember,” Captain Yarrow said, “we’re representatives of the United States of America. Be on your best behavior.”
The doors opened to beatitude: clean and quiet, chilled, orderly, bureaucratic assurance washed in light and AC hum. A woman wafted by in a skirt, trailing eddies of designer scent, and our heads turned together following her gold earrings, her swinging curves and lean calves, her high heels clipping along the stone. A man in a jacket and tie passed the other way, carrying thick files in soft pink hands.
Captain Yarrow led us to the cafeteria, where again we stood dazed, this time by the heaps of food on the serving line, the gleaming elegance of the white tablecloths and smiling servers. They had roast chicken and fresh salad, rice and hummus, bread and fruit and sauces, all on porcelain plates with metal servingware, drinks in glass tumblers and—impossibly—ice cream.
We piled our plates high and feasted like jackals.
I wondered as I ate: maybe when I got out I could do this, be one of these people, get the thrill of war without all the Army bullshit. I could be a war correspondent or maybe some kind of humanitarian. It’d be perfect: I’d get the adventure but I’d get to bathe, eat well, and drink cognac with beautiful, intelligent women. I’d have the internet, cynical-wise conversation, and the warm fulfillment of knowing I was doing something good. For the world.
My mouth full of chicken, I flushed with obscure yearning, loneliness, and the sudden desire for these people to see me as one of their own, to see how enlightened I really was beneath my salt-stiff DCUs, how different from the thugs I’d come in with. I wanted to talk with these business-casual cosmopolitans about human rights and cultural programming, Michel Foucault and Zadie Smith. I wanted to corner the woman in the skirt, take her hands in mine, and convince her: I used to read Whitman. I used to read Joyce.
After finishing our ice cream, a few of us wandered down the hall to the café to smoke. There were more men and women there, more UN types drinking tea and coffee. A talking head on the TV said that Uday and Qusay had been killed.
the primer ignites the propellant in the round
gas from the burning propellant
pushes the projectile along the weapon
Captain Yarrow watched Black Hawk Down. I stood in the doorway behind him, eyeing the jumpcuts flashing Hollywood prettyboys acting tough.
“You don’t get enough war during the day, sir?”
“What’s that, Wilson?”
“I said you don’t get enough war during the day, sir?”
“I’m watching for pointers. This is tactical review.”
“Sir?”
“Yeah. Good lessons learned. Like, bring water. See, if they’d done that, they would’ve been in much better shape. Their NCOs needed to be doing better precombat checks and inspections. You can learn a lot from this, Wilson. You’ll be an NCO yourself someday.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Pull up a chair.”
“No thanks, sir.”
I went back to the common room. I looked around at the same tired, dirty faces I saw every day, then sat and flipped through the letters I’d saved up from girls back home—artifacts from hyperspace. Who were these women doing roller derby in Wisconsin, meditating, hiking mountains? Who were they to say they missed me and hoped I was safe? What the fuck did they know about it? Where were their hands, their smells, their voices? What would they think if I shoved my rifle in their faces and screamed at them, “Kif! Oguf!”
I did fifty push-ups then went downstairs to smoke.
Geraldo had lit a plastics fire in a trash barrel, filling the courtyard with toxic fumes. I walked past him, out through the yard toward the wall, thinking I could go right over—escape into the night and find some nice Kurdish family to take me in who wouldn’t cut my throat in my sleep. I could walk around in regular clothes, sit in a café and bullshit about politics. I could even turn hadji, learn to read the Koran, grow a mustache, wear a man-dress, glare at Ameriki humvee. I could learn to breathe again.
I made my way back toward the barracks
. I brushed my teeth, went upstairs, took my cot out onto the balcony, and unrolled my patrol bag. Shots rang out. I listened to The White Album for a while, then took off my glasses and closed my eyes.
Used to date a beauty queen, olee-olee-annah. Now I date my M-16, olee-olee-ann-ah. Oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah, oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah. Used to drive a Cadillac, olee-olee-annah. Now I hump it on my back, olee-olee-ann-ah.
We tumble off the bus in the night, screamed at by a redheaded specialist who briefs us on what we’re forbidden and gives us two minutes each in curtained stalls to dump out all our chewing gum, candy, novels, magazines, CD players, nonprescription medication, booze, cigarettes, drugs, video games, and whatever else we thought we could sneak past the drill sergeants. We’re warned this is our last chance. We’re told someone will think they’re the exception. They’re wrong, the specialist says. They will be the example.
On Monday morning, just like in a movie, our first round brown breaks the dark shouting and banging a can. We muster, go to chow, and it starts: forms, shots, ID cards, briefings, initial uniform issue. Somebody tells the drill sergeant there’s no hot water in the showers and he puts on a concerned face and says he’ll check on it. Thursday we take our initial PT test: thirteen push-ups, seventeen sit-ups, run a mile in eight thirty. Three guys fail out and get recycled to Fat Boy. The next morning the rest of us post with our bags in the yard.
Then the real drill sergeants arrive. Heads shaved to bullets, eyes dooming searchlights, boots gleaming liquid pain, they lunge at us in their Smokey Bears lucid, swift, and terrible. At once they’re on the attack, herding us into cattle cars, and we stumble in on each other, dazed and sweating.
Inside the cattle car hot and close with the stench of fear, I watch the fort roll by through a tiny window. We stop and they scream and we fall out and form up. There are legions of them and all they do is yell. You flinch, move, wobble, mutter, blink—Wham—there’s a fucker on your eyeball like you just raped his mom. We line up and get helmets and rucksacks and laundry bags full of equipment. As we waddle with our gear into lines in the sun, the drill sergeants lash into us. They form us back up and issue precise instructions for the arrangement of our equipment, this goes here, that there, you have thirty seconds and what the fuck are you thinking, Private? You have completely jacked your entire day and do you think . . . Are you eyeballing me, Private? Are you fucking eyeballing me?
We’re loaded back on the cattle cars panting. The trucks cross to the training side. We stop and they’re on us again, faster Private you wanna die, you gonna die you move that slow, you think this is summer camp, you think I’m here to—you best move Private—Are you eyeballing me?
They start simple: stack things this way, you have thirty seconds. You fail, get down and push. Move over here, stack everything that way, you have thirty seconds. You fail. Get down and push. We get some kind of speech. Get everything up to the barracks, pick a bunk and stow your gear and return to the drill pad. You have two minutes.
You fail. Get down and push. You have to learn the value of time, Private, you must learn the value of time. A lot can happen in two minutes.
The lunatic fascist fuck in the funny hat who made us call him Drill Sergeant gathered us around him in a small circle, forty stinking boys, and had us one by one say our names, where we’re from, and why we joined the army.
His name was Drill Sergeant Krugman. He was our supreme fistfuck, a light infantry sniper, and I still think back fondly to our first day there, his big black boots shining in my face as he walked up and down the line, the pain in my arms and chest and hips, the puddle of sweat on the floor under my chin. Down, he said, and we lowered ourselves to the level of his rippled boot soles. Up, he said, and we pushed past the toe gleaming like a vulcan mirror, past the ankle where the boot narrowed, up the leather along the leg where it widened, the laces taut and strong, hide smooth, to the very top, where snugly bloused trousers slid into the leather like a hand into a glove.
Three-five, Drill Sergeant, we gasped, weak and broken. We did not deserve his love. Down, he said. And we went down.
Now his eyes scanned the circle of shaved skulls.
“How about you, pinhead? Why’d you decide to pollute my army?”
The googly-eyed private looked up. “Uh, my name’s Jimmy Wuckertt, Drill Sarnt, and I’m from Bahstan. I, uh, joined ah, you know, ah, nine-eleven. Drill Sarnt.” The truth: a long night of the soul, in jail for possession with intent to sell, when he realized that if he kept dealing and smoking, it was sooner rather than later he’d be doing way more than ninety days. Of course you’re not supposed to be able to get in the army with drug offenses like that on your record, but there’s a waiver for everything.
“And you, Carruthers, you fat fuck?”
A brick-headed troglodyte: “Jason Carruthers, Drill Sergeant! I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana, hooah. I joined the Army to shoot stuff! Jump out of planes and kill people! Drill Sergeant!”
There were a couple hooahs.
“We’ll see. And what about you, Thorton?”
“Hi.” Thorton waved at us. He was a big guy with an ape’s face and monstrous ears. “I’m Albert Thorton. I’m from Nebraska, but I was actually living in Illinois. Uh, well, actually I joined the army for a couple of reasons, Drill Sergeant. I was a teaching assistant, working on my PhD in history, on the one hand going further into debt and on the other, after September 11, it sort of seemed . . . I mean, it felt like I wasn’t doing anything with my life. I wanted to do something important. Something meaningful. So, I felt like I should . . .”
“Shut your cakehole, Thorton. You’re a fucking college professor?”
“Well, I was teaching but . . .”
“Alright, Professor, shut your goddamned mouth and push.”
Thorton was confused.
“You better dad-gummed start pushing right now, Private.”
Thorton dropped to his hands and pushed himself up and down.
“You.” Drill Sergeant Krugman turned, pinning me with his cold blue eyes.
I saw myself as he saw me, skinny-necked, bird-beaked, blinking anemically from behind clunky-framed Army-issue Basic Combat Glasses, and wanted nothing more than to erase myself from his vision, erase my poems, my hippie past, erase everything but the camouflage BDUs I wore and my determination to make it through.
“Nine-eleven,” I shouted, “Drill Sergeant!”
most iraqis see themselves as a persecuted people
and hold the coalition forces, as the occupying power,
responsible for resolving all personal and national problems
I sat in one of the ratty chairs scrounged to furnish Sergeant First Class Perry’s “reading room” and opened my MRE: Charms, Cappuccino packet, Country Captain Chicken, Pasteurized Jalapeño Cheese Food Spread, Wheat Snack Cracker, and Noodles with Butter Sauce. The Noodles and Charms went in the trash. The entrée I deboxed and slid in the MRE heater bag, into which I poured some water. Then I fit the bag and entrée back into the box and placed it all, as per instructions, “against a rock or something.” I leaned back, listening to the heater’s chemical hiss, my transistor radio’s crackle, and the BBC announcer’s accent, so civilized, doing cricket scores.
A boom sounded somewhere in the city and I jerked. Voices, talking, nothing—I wanted to be on mission or I wanted quiet. Sergeant First Class Perry was the same, which is why he’d commandeered this room, closed off as it was from the gymnasium that housed our new barracks.
The gym was a vast bedlam, divided into rough thirds by battery, about two hundred joes all told. The main areas were subdivided into loose platoon AOs, squads, and individual cubicles carved out with plywood and poncho liners.
A guy in Bravo Battery named Pizza had started walking around naked. When he got up one afternoon and pissed all over the floor, he was put on suicide watch. He screamed in the
night, eerie piercing howls of terror. Villaguerrero punched some dude from Alpha, got his rank taken away, and was tasked to DIVARTY. Bullwinkle crashed a hemmet into the compound’s main gate, tearing open a fuel tank and spilling gas everywhere. Lieutenant Krauss had started talking to himself.
The Iraqi Governing Council was appointed. General Abizaid said our enemy was waging “a classical guerrilla-type campaign.” Rumsfeld said we’d turned a corner. The Jordanian embassy got hit by a suicide bomber—foreign insurgents, they said, probably al-Qaeda.
We were told to be on the lookout for an orange and white sedan.
I took out the entrée bag and cut it lengthwise. The smell of cheap curry and preservatives made me gag. I set the entrée aside to cool and squeezed Pasteurized Jalapeño Cheese Food Spread on a Wheat Snack Cracker.
Anxious music cut the cricket scores: “Breaking news at the BBC. Just minutes ago the UN headquarters in Baghdad came under attack. We go now live to Baghdad . . . Adrianna?”
“Hello, David. We’re live from Baghdad. US forces have sealed off a sizable area around the UN headquarters here in response to what initial reports seem to be saying was a suicide car bomb attack just moments ago. There’s no word yet on any casualties sustained inside the compound.
“The bomb was heard throughout the city, yet another in what has become a typical series of daily explosions. United Nations representatives and American military personnel have so far refused to confirm speculation as to the number of casualties or how the attack may have penetrated security, though it is worth mentioning that in recent days the UN had reduced its security profile and decreased the number of American soldiers stationed there.”
“Have any groups claimed responsibility for the attack, Adrianna?”
“No, David. Representatives have so far refused to speculate on which group if any might have carried out the attack, and there have not as yet been any statements made claiming responsibility. I can tell you that unidentified sources say the attack was committed with a truck bomb loaded with high explosives, and that the driver used an unguarded access road to enter the compound.”