by Joshua Key
Van Houten told me to keep one or two other details to myself as well. He would not take down information about the two herniated disks from an early back injury, because he said that could complicate my entry into military life. He didn’t want me to say anything about the time I had been arrested for assaulting a police officer. When I began to raise the matter of my debts, which had made it impossible for me to join the marines, he stopped me once more. “I won’t ask and don’t you tell,” he said.
Van Houten gave me the impression that, as a favor to me, he was leaving out all the details that might hurt my chances of getting into the military. He became my coach, my guidance counselor, my adviser, and my personal biographer, as well as the provider of coffee, doughnuts, and submarine sandwiches over the next five or six weeks.
I had imagined that it would be possible to apply, be tested and checked out, and sign up in a day or two, but the process stretched out for the better part of six weeks.
After completing the initial questionnaire, Van Houten told me to return at five-thirty in the morning a few days later to take an aptitude test.
“Have a good meal, get a good night’s sleep, and eat breakfast before you come in for the test,” he said. “You’ll do better that way.”
I showed up on time and spent two hours on a question-and-answer test dealing with math, English, mechanical understanding, and general knowledge.
There were about thirty young men and women in the room, and we all got our scores as soon as we finished the test. I was told that 30 was the passing score and that 99 was the highest score possible. I got a 49, then saw to my amazement that not a single other person in the room had passed the test.
Van Houten told me that 49 was a good score, but that if I wanted I could take the test one more time to see if I could get a 50, which would give me more choices about where to go in the military. I took the test again but got the same score.
One of Van Houten’s colleagues, a short, thin, middle-aged government employee in civilian clothes named Daniel Russell, told me that I had three options. I could become an infantryman, a multiple-launch rocket systems driver, or a bridge builder.
“Can I join the army without having to go overseas?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave Brandi and the kids.”
“Absolutely,” Russell said. “I can give you the bridge-building position in the continental United States. That means right here on the continent. You wouldn’t even have to go to Hawaii or Alaska.”
“Bridge builder sounds good to me.”
Russell leaned forward over his desk and looked into my eyes. “I can get you a seven-thousand-dollar signing bonus if you pick one of the other two options.”
I asked for more details. Russell explained that working as an infantryman or as a multiple-launch rocket systems driver would involve combat duty. I made it clear to him that I did not want to leave my country or go into combat.
“Think about it,” he said. “Seven thousand dollars.”
“I don’t have to think anymore on that one, sir. I don’t want to do combat duty. Not even for seven thousand dollars. Tell me more about bridge building.”
Russell told me that the army employed many men to fix bridges in the continental United States. I would not receive any signing bonus, but the advantage was that I would be allowed to choose to go to a “nondeployable” military base. “Nondeployable,” Russell explained, meant it was a base that did not send men to war.
When I pressed for more information, Russell said that if I wanted to do bridge building, the closest military base was at Fort Carson, Colorado. I told him I had never heard of it. Russell explained that Fort Carson was in Colorado Springs and was home to a military unit called the 43rd Combat Engineer Company.
“But that sounds like combat,” I said.
“It sounds like that, but it isn’t what you think,” Russell said. “It’s a nondeployable base, and you will be put to work building bridges in the United States. It’s called Combat Engineer because you have to blow up bridges, sometimes, before you can build new ones.”
“So this means I can stay with my family and don’t have to go overseas?” I asked again.
“Soldier, it will be as easy as cheesecake. You’re going to be building bridges from nine to five every day and spending every evening at home with your family.”
It sounded too good to be true. But Russell promised to write “CONUS,” short for “Continental United States,” right on my contract if it would help put my mind at ease.
Our conversation ended there, and I felt a little more relaxed about my future in the army.
A week or two after I first showed up at the recruiting center, Van Houten came to my home and immediately won Brandi over. Life on the military base was secure, he said. We wouldn’t have to worry about violent criminals breaking into our home and hurting our children. We would stay in clean, decent accommodations that any working American would be proud of, he said. The rent would be free on base. (I learned later that this was not true, that about $700 would be docked every month from my paycheck for the rent.)
The whole family would have access to comprehensive health insurance, he said, and I would be able to get up to $20,000 in tuition for college studies. I told Van Houten that I wanted to get training as a welder, and he said the money could be used for that, and that I could even begin college studies while posted to my military base.
Over the next several weeks I had to see Van Houten nearly every day to take additional tests and to fill in more paperwork. Every time I came into the recruiting station he offered me something to eat. What is more, he offered to take me along when he went jogging or did weight training in the gym of nearby Tinker Air Force Base. I accepted, joining him some thirty times at the gym. On each trip, he bought me coffee and a sandwich. Van Houten offered up a little information about himself. He was married and had three children and came from Lawton, Oklahoma. He was looking forward to returning to his regular military job as a surveyor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but for the time being he was stuck recruiting young Americans and working on a quota system. I can’t remember exactly how many men he said he was required to recruit, but I believe it was about one person per week. He was stressed out about it and said he couldn’t wait to return to his former job as a military surveyor.
“They rip up my ass if I don’t make my quota,” Van Houten said.
For my medical and physical tests, I peed in a cup, gave blood, and was made to walk like a duck—knees bent and squatting low with my butt near the ground. I asked about that and was told the test would indicate if I was flat-footed. Apparently, you could not get into the military with flat feet. It seemed that they gave me every vaccination known to mankind, including eight shots against anthrax.
I was almost twenty-four when I applied, and I felt old compared to the bulk of the applicants, who appeared to be teenagers. Young men and women who were just seventeen were allowed to join if they had permission from their parents. I would say that about three-quarters of the applicants were men and one-quarter were women.
One day, a teenage girl entered the recruiting station and began to apply for entry to the army. A little later, a lieutenant colonel in military apparel burst through the door. All the soldiers and noncommissioned officers in the room jumped to their feet to salute him. Somebody whispered to me that he was in the marines. He swept by us all, grabbed his daughter by the arm, and shouted for all of us to hear, “There is no goddamn way that any daughter of mine is joining the fucking army.” He dragged her out the door and that was the last I saw of her. I had heard that marines and soldiers hated each other, but this was the first time I saw the emotion expressed openly.
Another time, at a military entrance processing station—a separate building to which I often had to go as my application inched forward in the army bureaucracy—I saw a poster on a wall that read: “Desertion in the time
of war means death by a firing squad.”
I watched a young man and woman standing under the poster.
“Oh my God,” she said, “can they really do that?” I wondered the same thing as I was made to sign a paper saying that I had read and understood the poster.
Finally, in mid-April 2002—just a month shy of my twenty-fourth birthday—I learned from Van Houten that the army had cleared all of my medical tests and paperwork. I was fit to join the United States Army, he said, and I would do my country proud. He explained that I would receive $1,200 a month in salary and commit to a three-year contract. He did not tell me what I would learn only later—that the army could recall me anytime it wanted up to seven years after I signed up.
One last time, before signing, I asked Van Houten for reassurance that I would not be sent into combat and that I would be allowed to live with my family and work for the army in the United States.
“If World War Three breaks out and they are sending everybody overseas, then you could be required to do duty as well,” he said. “But even then, it would be unlikely. Because of your growing family, you would be the last person to be sent overseas.”
That seemed reasonable to me.
To seal the deal, Staff Sergeant Van Houten looked me in the eye, man to man, shook my hand, and said, “Soldier, you ain’t got anything to worry about. You’re going to be building bridges in the continental United States and home with your family every evening.”
Two other noncommissioned officers looked over my shoulder, turned the pages of the contract, skipped over the fine print, and pointed out all the X’s where I was to sign my name. I signed where they pointed and believed what I was told. I was a bloody fool to do so.
On April 13, 2002, I entered into a contract with the U.S. Army. Eighteen days later I was sent to basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
* * *
I took a commercial flight from Oklahoma City to St. Louis. At the airport, I met up with about 150 other new recruits. We boarded a number of military buses. It was a long drive to Fort Leonard Wood, but at least I was on the military payroll now. Brandi—who went to live with our boys in Checotah, Oklahoma—would be able to buy the children some clothing, and we would all eat a little better.
We pulled into the fort around three a.m. As we prepared to disembark, a long line of drill sergeants awaited us. They shouted that we had to get off the bus immediately, screamed that we were worthless assholes, and hollered that anything could be changed in the contracts we had signed and any promises made to us could now be thrown out the window.
The drill sergeants held megaphones as we all scrambled to get out. “Get the fuck out!” they screamed right in our faces.
Like the others, I was nervous and scared, but I knew—even amid all the pushing and the shouting—that they were just trying to break us down mentally, and that more of this would come.
We had to give up our cigarettes, lighters, scissors, and nail files. We were taken to the barracks, allowed to sleep for an hour, then rushed to a mess hall and given one minute to eat. And I mean one minute. I wolfed down the scrambled eggs as fast as I could.
A day after our arrival I was allowed to call Brandi. I had only a minute or two on the telephone with her, and I wouldn’t be given another chance to call her for seventeen weeks. Quickly, I told her that they did not let us have coffee or tea in boot camp and that she should send me some over-the-counter uppers called Yellow Jackets. You can’t get them any longer but back then they were perfectly legal, and you could buy them at any gas station or drugstore in Oklahoma.
Ever the dutiful wife, Brandi slipped the Yellow Jackets inside a box of Zest soap, repackaged the bar of soap, and sent me the uppers by mail. Every morning I swallowed a pill to jolt myself awake.
Within a day or two of arriving at Fort Leonard Wood, while I stood at attention with three hundred other recruits, a drill sergeant hollered out that we had been put into the 35th Combat Engineer Company and that we would learn to be “the most devious goddamn killers on the battlefield.”
I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it sure didn’t sound like bridge building. I tried not to worry about it because I still believed that after boot camp I would be sent to a nondeployable military base. So, to my way of thinking, it did not matter if I learned about grenades and mines because I wouldn’t have to use them in combat anyway.
I turned twenty-four just a few days after arriving at boot camp. I didn’t tell anybody, because I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. If anybody notices you or stops to speak to you at boot camp, it’s bad news for sure. The name of the game is to stay out of sight of anybody in any position to rain down punishment. When sergeants blew horns and banged trash cans at two in the morning, hauled us out of bed and made us each do a hundred push-ups, I tried to struggle through it and to stay under the radar.
I shared a bunk bed with a private named Babbit, who was steaming over a lie he had swallowed during recruitment. The poor sucker had been told a story like mine—but even more ridiculous. A recruiter in Lawrence, Kansas, had promised Babbit that if he signed up for service, the army would reward him and his girlfriend with a holiday to Korea. When Babbit got to Fort Leonard Wood and found out that his Korean junket had disappeared about as fast as my bridge-building promise, his girlfriend dumped him.
“When I get back home I’m going to find that recruiter and tell him that he’s a lying piece of shit,” Babbit fumed.
Among the three hundred recruits, about a third of us were white, another third black, and another third Latino. There were just two women. As we went through the seventeen weeks of basic training, we were all shouted at, insulted, awoken abruptly, and kept off balance by sergeants whose job it was to break us down and build us back up in their own mold.
If somebody failed to do something properly, every recruit in the company would be punished. That quickly taught us to hate laggards and people who just couldn’t follow orders quickly enough.
I must say that I loved boot camp. I was good with guns, didn’t mind the exercise, and felt myself swell with patriotism and pride when our commanders told us that Americans were the only decent people on the planet and that Muslims and terrorists all deserved to die.
One day, all three hundred of us lined up on the bayonet range, each facing a life-size dummy that we were told to imagine was a Muslim man.
As we stabbed the dummies with our bayonets, one of our commanders stood on a podium and shouted into a microphone: “Kill! Kill! Kill the sand niggers!”
We, too, were made to shout out “Kill the sand niggers” as we stabbed the heads, then the hearts, and then slashed the throats of our imaginary victims.
While we shouted and stabbed, drill sergeants walked among us to make sure that we were all shouting. It seemed that the full effect of the lesson would be lost on us unless we shouted out the words of hate as we mutilated our enemies.
I shouted as loud and stabbed as mercilessly as any man on the range, and I slowly began to feel that I was somebody important. I was no longer a fast-food delivery man earning a pittance for a wage plus tips and all the pizza I could eat. I was no longer wondering how I could possibly put enough food on the table for Brandi and the boys. I was now an American soldier, and proud to think of myself as a perfect killing machine. I felt patriotic and invincible. I believed every word I was told, including that it was the job of the American army to keep order in the world. Our commanders told us that people who were not Americans were “terrorists” and “slant eyes.” They said that Muslims were responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country, that the people of Afghanistan were “terrorist pieces of shit that all deserved to die.”
Commanders drilled these beliefs into us by making us memorize and call out various chants. I have trouble remembering the precise words of all of these chants, but one of them went something like
this:
One shot
One kill
One Arab
One Asian
Another of our chants had to do with putting our skills as sappers, or makers and defusers of bombs, to good use:
Who can take a shopping mall
And fill it full of people?
The sapper daddy can,
‘Cause he takes a lot of pains
And makes the hurt go good.
Who can take all the people in the mall
And chop ‘em up with Uzis?
The sapper daddy can,
‘Cause he takes a lot of pains
And makes the hurt go good.
Iraqis, in the mouths of the officers and soldiers of the United States Army, were never Iraqis. And Muslims were never civilians. Nobody once mentioned the word “civilian” in the same breath as “Iraq” when I trained to become a soldier. Iraqis, I was taught to believe, were not civilians; they were not even people. We had our own terms for them. Our commanders called them ragheads, so we did the same. We called them habibs. We called them sand niggers. We called them hajjis; it wasn’t until I was sent to war that a man in Iraq explained to me that hajji was a complimentary term for a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In training, all I knew was that a hajji was someone to be despised. The hajjis, habibs, ragheads, and sand niggers were the enemy, and they were not to be thought of with a shred of humanity. No wonder my wife and I both thought, by the time I flew overseas to war, that all Muslims were terrorists and all terrorists were Muslims and that the only solution was to kill as many Iraqis as possible.
There is one other thing I was taught at Fort Leonard Wood that chipped away at my soul and made it that much easier, a year or so later, for me to accept and take part in the violence that my fellow soldiers dished out to civilians in Iraq.