A naval air station in Meridian, Mississippi, is named in my great-grandfather’s honor: McCain Field. Also named after my great-grandfather was a guided-missile destroyer, the USS John S. McCain (DL-3), which was later decommissioned. Another destroyer, the USS John S. McCain (DDG-56), was named after both my great-grandfather and grandfather; when I was a child in 1992, my mother christened it with a champagne bottle in Bath, Maine. My entire family was there and celebrated.
The McCain men are all known for being of a smaller build, using profane language, and liking to drink and gamble. They are also all known for being natural leaders. All the men in my family love and serve their country. You know that part in Forrest Gump where Lieutenant Dan has his family history explained and it shows the flashbacks of each of his ancestors fighting in every American war? That’s kind of like the men in my family. I am most proud of this long legacy of service, and although I never served, if in some way I was called to, in a draft or a crisis, I would be the first one in line. I thank God for the men and women who serve this country to keep me safe. I get to go on road trips with crazy comedians and wax poetic about the future of American politics in gorgeous television studios for one reason alone—because men and women fight for my freedom to do so. The men and women who elect to fight for and serve our country are truly the best of the best of the best. We don’t celebrate their service enough these days, and they all sacrifice so much.
Michael: I’m a little apprehensive as we drive onto the base. I just don’t have much experience with soldiers or military culture. Spending time with Jimmy and his friends in Prescott helped, but that was on civilian turf. This is where soldiers come to learn how to jump out of airplanes and rappel from helicopters. This is where people learn to kill other people. I’m afraid they’re going to make me crawl under barbed wire or yell at me to polish my Crocs or make me peel potatoes. God forbid I’m asked to do a single pushup. Because I will cry.
We’re met at the Public Affairs Office by a trio of minders: two civilians and a staff sergeant. They ask that our visit be “off the record,” meaning they do not want us to quote anybody directly. Nor are we allowed to videotape or make audio recordings of anything we see. They don’t explain why and we don’t press the issue. It sucks, but okay.
The thing I’m about to learn over the next six hours about the military is how good they are at being the military. These people, and everybody we meet, are so adept at promoting their own culture and ethos that it’s kind of amazing. Every soldier we meet is working from the same playbook, all marching in perfect metaphorical lockstep. The experience is so scripted, so spit-shined and perfect, that it’s impossible to believe, the way a reality show is impossible to believe. Yes, both undeniably have moments of reality, but the entirety is so heavily edited that it’s difficult for me to fully buy any of it.
The experience reminds me of our Zappos tour in Las Vegas. In the case of Zappos, the weird corporate culture was an enforced cheeriness. Here at Fort Campbell, it’s a steely, strident professionalism. They seem to be attempting to project an aura of invincibility, which I guess is what you want in an army. Both environments have an artificiality to them that I find difficult to reconcile with the way people actually conduct themselves in the real world.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe an army needs to believe itself to be superior in order to survive. What unnerves me about being among these guys, though, is the sense of otherness that I feel: a feeling of detachment among the soldiers, as if they are somehow removed from the society they are sworn to defend.
Or maybe it’s just my own boyish insecurity among these men that’s making me feel that way, a quiet shame that I haven’t done my own part in protecting America. Maybe it’s just an inborn suspicion of the military left over from my upbringing. Whatever the cause, I’m unable to ever fully relax for the duration of our visit.
Meghan, of course, is right at home among these guys. She’s twittering at them about this and that, asking questions, flirting a little bit. They seem to like her a lot more than they like me. I don’t blame them. As we make our way across the base, I like her more than me too.
Meghan: I talk with everyone, ask them about their time in the military, tell them about my brothers; just lots and lots of small talk trying to make them feel at ease. They’re all extremely friendly and accommodating. It feels a little second nature; I am around men in the military all the time.
The first place we are taken is the ELS training simulator, where soldiers prepare for combat. After making pleasantries, we are ushered into a giant simulator screen with a bunch of guns connected. It’s pretty crazy. Stephie, Michael, and I go in and watch the men train for a few minutes. The simulator is extremely loud and lifelike. As weird as that sounds, because it is a screen and fake guns, the soldiers are all lying on their stomachs with another guy touching them to signal when someone should shoot and where. The entire room is filled with screaming and blasts of rounds going off. It even takes me aback a little.
After they’re done, their kill scores and reaction scores are tallied and they are told the results. When the lights go on, I can’t help but notice all the men look like versions of Captain America. They are all built, handsome, and looking good in their camo. I have to force myself to concentrate on the task at hand; I had almost forgotten how hot men in the military look in fatigues. They ask us if we want to give the simulator a try. All of us want to. So me, Stephie, and Michael pick up fake M4s and the instructors show us how to shoot. Except that the simulator guns are a little lighter, it’s pretty much like shooting an actual M4, which I have done a few times.
We all take the same positions that the soldiers did and start going through the same scenario that was just on-screen. We are in a desert town filled with insurgents and it is our job to shoot at anyone who opens fire on us. Everything starts happening really quickly—a man jumps out and starts shooting at us and I make an attempt to shoot back at him. The instructors start yelling at us where to aim and who is coming out and my heart starts racing. One of the insurgents falls to the ground, my gun jams; I am doing all of this wrong and it is freaking me out. This does not feel like a video game; it feels like the actual thing. The simulation ends, the lights go on, and I can see that Michael’s brow is damp with sweat. My heart is still racing. Stephie looks like she might pass out. Michael looks more freaked out than me; in fact, Michael looks like something might be wrong. So I do all the talking.
“Hot shit!” I say. “And that is why America has the greatest military in the history of the world, baby!” All the guys like this. I tell them how amazing this training is, and I mean it. I can’t imagine doing this in real life.
Whenever Michael laughs at me when I say that freedom doesn’t come free, this scenario right here is what I am talking about, soldiers in situations where they are forced to kill.
Michael: This simulator is crazy. It can transpose any conceivable environment onto a large video wall. Soldiers then monitor the environment for hostilities and take appropriate action. In other words, the simulator teaches them when to shoot, who to shoot, and most important, if to shoot. To my ears, it sounded like a high-tech video game, which it is. Except that it’s not. For one thing, the M4 weighs about as much as a Great Dane, and is about as easy to lift and shoot. For another, when the lights go down and Iraq comes up, no video game has ever freaked me out like this. Not even Super Mario Bros.
When the first simulation ends, I am out of breath and close to tears. There’s an unexpected weight in the middle of my chest, a kind of adrenalized dread, as if I’ve just narrowly avoided a bad traffic accident. I am completely unprepared for this reaction. After all, I’ve spent countless hours in front of television screens shooting burglars and aliens and killer robots and never felt anything more upsetting than annoyance at having to repeat a level. But something about this experience is different—some combination of the huge, immersive wall, the barely modified weapon in my hand, the concussive po
pping of the gun, the soldiers yelling beside me. Something about it leaves me disoriented and upset. Neither Meghan nor Stephie seem to be having the same reaction as me, and I don’t say anything because I don’t want anybody making fun of me.
We walk over to the workstation to gauge our shooting. Surprisingly, nonviolent, spinach-chomping Nermal was the most effective shooter. She killed three or four bad guys. Meghan was next. I brought up the rear. They ask if we want to go again. No.
“Hell yes!” says Meghan.
We run through the simulation several more times, repeating the desert scene before moving on to jungle terrain. Each time we do it, I feel my emotional reaction lessening. I guess this is what desensitization feels like. Our last exercise is something called Shoot/ Don’t Shoot. This is a scenario in which, unlike the others, we are shown actual video of a potentially hostile situation. We’re in tight quarters, a walled hut. Three angry-seeming actors are yelling at us in a language we don’t speak—in this case, Pashtun. One of the actors waves a pistol in our direction. Do we shoot? I feel myself tense. What are we supposed to do here? What if he turns the gun towards us? We stand there, guns raised, our fingers on our triggers, unsure what to do. Then Meghan creates an international incident. She shoots the guy. Wrong move.
“You weren’t supposed to shoot,” our instructor says. He plays the videotape forward and, within a moment, the guy puts his pistol on a table and raises his arms.
“Shit,” says Meghan.
We run through the same scenario again, but we do not know what the outcome is going to be, and when our instructor whispers in my ear, “Shoot him in the head,” I do not hesitate.
POP!
The guy goes down. Oh wow, I just took that fucker out. To my surprise, I feel pretty good about it. I just killed a guy and it feels awesome. To my further surprise and annoyance, it turns out it was Meghan who fired the kill shot, not me.
By the end of our half hour in the simulator, I feel almost numb to the experience, which troubles me almost as much as my initial emotional reaction; I mean, I’m legitimately annoyed that I wasn’t the one who shot that guy in the head.
I also gain a profound respect for what these soldiers go through in a combat zone. We were in the most controlled, artificial environment imaginable and yet I still experienced incredible tension. What if I were weighed down with eighty pounds of gear in 120 degree heat? What if I’d been out on patrol for five hours in those conditions? What if I’d had to deal with those conditions every day for a year or more? What if it was my second or third tour of duty? What if I’d had friends who’d been injured or killed doing exactly what I’m doing now?
Fuck me, what if it was real?
Meghan: When we leave the simulation and head back into the waiting room, we see all the soldiers from inside again. They are all very polite and friendly but I know we are probably not going to get anywhere with them. First of all, seniors are in the room, as is PR for the base. In my experience, the only real way to talk to a soldier is over whiskey—lots of whiskey.
We talk to them about our book and what they are doing there and they are not really responding. I get it: they have better things to do than entertain Michael and me. I try flirting with them a little and it kind of works. Then I switch gears and tell them about our trip to Vegas and how Michael doesn’t like strip clubs. This, they find entertaining.
The ugly truth is we are not going to be able to talk politics with these guys; it’s just not going to happen. This is not the right setting and at the end of the day, soldiers are supposed to be apolitical; they are not really supposed to have an opinion and are only supposed to support our president. At the end of the day, these soldiers are not here to be political, or talk politics, they are here to do their job.
Looking at all these handsome, shiny faces makes me think of my brothers, and what Jimmy must have gone through. Easily the worst day of my life was when he deployed to Iraq in 2007. My brother was so determined to enlist that when he was seventeen my parents finally gave in and signed the underage permission letter. When you go into military service in this fashion, you are nothing more than a grunt, with no officer status. He went to basic training like every other man who joins the Marines and was sent off to war.
In the spring of 2007 when I was a senior at Columbia University, I got up at five o’clock in the morning, drove an hour and a half to Camp Pendleton with my mother, sister, and two brothers, and stood in a parking lot for a few hours waiting to say goodbye to my brother Jimmy for what might have been the last time. My family waited in a giant parking lot with probably a hundred other families, all of us in the same grim boat. We watched everyone give last wishes before leaving. I watched as men and women with baby faces put giant packs on their backs, picked up semi-assault rifles, boarded a Greyhound bus, and left to possibly go die in the Middle East.
That is what the cold reality of a deployment looks like: standing around a barren parking lot, waiting with bagpipes playing as you contemplate never seeing the person you love again. I stood there, that day, in that parking lot, hating my brother, hating the military, hating wars, hating that my family and my brother were being called to serve while so many others did not, and worse, did not seem to care or really understand our sacrifices.
I remember standing there with my boyfriend at the time, a good friend of Jimmy’s who is also in the military, and screaming at him that none of this was fair. I couldn’t lean on my mother because she was also a mess, so my boyfriend was the only option. He had to hold on to me because I could not stop myself from crying. He grabbed my hands and made me pray with him. I remember hot tears pouring down my face and feeling like I hated God. I remember feeling like I was watching this happen to someone else, that it was some sad movie about the Iraq War that a girl who looked a lot like me had a role in. I remember feeling angry at every other person in this country who would never have to go through what I was going through at that very moment.
When it was finally time for my brother to board the Greyhound, we walked across the giant parking lot to say goodbye to him in a sea of other soldiers. I hugged him really tightly. At the time I think I weighed more than him; he still has such a small frame but was waiflike as a teenager. I could barely get out of my mouth that I loved him and to be safe. I stood there and thought I would never see Jimmy again. I was angry at myself for not coming up with something more inspiring to tell him as we said goodbye.
I’m not enough of a poet to eloquently explain what something like this is like. Any of you reading this who has sent a loved one to war, you understand. A piece of you dies. A part of your heart just falls out of you and evaporates and if you had any innocence to begin with it will quickly evaporate as well. It was the worst day of my life. I wish that day and those moments on no one. That is why no one gets to lecture me, or my family, about war unless they’ve experienced it as well. I am a gray person, but on this subject, it’s black and white. You’ve experienced it or you haven’t. And those of you who haven’t, you couldn’t even begin to understand what it feels like, thinking that you are giving your brother’s life for the good of the United States of America. That this country and freedom are important enough to you and your family; that all of you would give so large a sacrifice. Feeling like maybe you would die for it as well. And I do. I believe America and freedom are worth dying and fighting for. As painful as that is, I do.
Michael: To wind down the visit, we take some pictures with the guys and drive over to the Sabalauski Air Assault School, in which “the course of instruction is focused on Combat Assault Operations involving US Army rotary-wing aircraft.” My understanding is that this means “doing shit with helicopters.”
A pleasant guy with two inconspicuous silver bars on his cap greets us at Air Assault School. He’s probably in his mid-thirties, a little round-faced but fit. He leads us through the school, taking us into classrooms, telling us a little bit about their mission, then leading us into the stifling heat where ro
ws of soaking wet soldiers in full uniform are learning to fasten and unfasten payload nets.
After a while I ask the guy what his job is at Air Assault School.
“I run it,” he says, and not for the first time today, I feel like an idiot.
On our way over, Meghan asked what percentage of soldiers are female. Nobody in the van knew, which was fine. I don’t think anybody expected them to know things like that off the top of their heads, but I am very surprised when we return from our tour of Air Assault School to see three female soldiers lined up waiting to greet us. Somebody clearly plucked them from their duties to speak with us in response to Meghan’s question. They seem less prepared than the guys we spoke with at the simulator, less gung-ho.
Two of them are sergeants, one an adorable twenty-one-year-old specialist. They are more willing to talk about their time in the service than their male counterparts we’d spoken to earlier. “I didn’t get to do what I wanted,” says one. “I studied forensics in college.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Human resources.”
Another says she is an engineer. She describes her job as “digging holes and blowing stuff up.” She’s been in for nine years, has a kid, and wants to get out. She’s only got four months left. I ask her if she’ll continue what she’s doing when she leaves the service.
“No. I’m going to cosmetology school in Miami.”
Meghan asks if they experience any sexism.
“No more than in the civilian world,” one says. The specialist, twenty-one, the lowest-ranking soldier there, doesn’t meet our eyes and doesn’t offer any information about anything. I get it: there’s no upside in talking to us, and a lot of potential downside. One military expression that has found its way into the popular lexicon is CYA: cover your ass.
America, You Sexy Bitch Page 26