I winced a little as I raised my food to my mouth. Man! I felt like I had cuts everywhere! How did I get cuts between my toes? I was wearing boots! “I think they only counted nine hundred and ninety-nine,” I countered. “There is life left in me yet.” We had another good time talking and laughing over a bland meal of . . . something. I learned it was better not to try and identify the food. You might not like what you figured out.
Our fun was interrupted by some grumbling of soldiers elsewhere in the mess hall. I saw a sergeant walking around and pointing at people. Whoever he pointed at usually responded with a frown or a muttered curse that the sergeant pretended not to hear. In the corner of my vision I could see Ian starting to shrink into his uniform, like he was trying to make himself invisible. I wasn’t sure why until the sergeant walked up and pointed at me. “You! Sentry,” he growled.
“No, Sergeant. They call me Pup. I don’t know anybody named Sentry.” I spend a lot of time these days looking back on things that I have said and done. Most of the time I realize that my responses to questions and situations are about two steps below moronic. This would be one of those times.
The sergeant slapped the back of my head. Technically, I suppose that’s an assault. However, compared to what I’m sure he wanted to do to me, the head-slap was perfectly acceptable. “Smart ass,” he growled as he moved on. I had to wonder if that was his natural tone of voice. When he told his children, “Good night. Sweet dreams,” did it sound like a threat?
My train of thought was derailed by Ian snickering again. “I’m sorry, Pup, but that was funny. In all honesty, I probably would have responded the same way last year.”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Now comes the part where I ask what it was that I just responded stupidly to.”
“The sergeant was assigning people to sentry detail. You have to stand guard in one of the bunkers tonight.” He watched my face fall like someone had just proclaimed that my dog was deceased. “Don’t worry. It’s not that bad. You’ll be in the bunker with one other soldier, and you’ll split the shift. I’ll help you draw the equipment from the armory when we get done eating.”
A few minutes later, Ian was talking me through the requirements for sentry duty. (I know. I said “doody.”) It turned out that even I could figure it out. I and whoever was stuck in a bunker with me would split up the watch. I would sleep while the other soldier had watch, then they would wake me up and I would take watch. I would have to check in regularly on radio and scan with my NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) occasionally. Mostly, I would be watching out for flares. The perimeter of the base was lined with trip wires that had flares attached to them. If someone crossed, a flare would be fired and we would make their night a whole lot more difficult. I doubted even I could screw it up. I should have more faith in myself as a screw-up than that!
Since it was summertime and the sun set late and rose early, night watch was just from 2200 to 0400. At about 2130, I arrived at the armory and was issued a carbine to keep with me that night. I reported to the watch officer who assigned me to a bunker on the north corner of the base. I found the bunker easily. Thankfully, someone had labeled the bunkers well enough that I could read it in the minuscule light. I crawled into it and then stopped in my tracks. There was a belt-fed machine gun mounted on a stand at the front of the bunker. There was already a radio set up in the front corner, within easy reach for whoever was on watch. There were two MRE packets open with their contents laid out near the machine gun. There was also another soldier there, and she looked at me impatiently.
I guess that I have to explain a few things. First of all, I was an eighteen-year-old guy. I was a not-very-popular eighteen-year-old guy. I was a smart guy that thought about a lot of things. However, like most eighteen-year-old guys, I thought about women a lot. I was pretty sure that I had dreamt about this particular scenario before. The woman in the bunker was not gorgeous. She was not going to make a career in modeling. She was too well filled out for that. She had obviously gotten a lot of exercise, and it wasn’t in an attempt to lose weight. She could probably punch a hole in the side of the bunker to shoot out of if I got in her way. Her eyes were of a distinctly feminine shape, but the look in them was hard and cold. A little wisp of red hair escaped from underneath her cap. She looked like she belonged in a uniform, and that made life . . . difficult for me. I had a thing for women in uniform. I had a thing for women not in uniform. OK! I admit it! I was eighteen! I had a thing for all women! Any delusions I had of romance were quickly destroyed when she spoke. “Are you gonna get in here, Private, or are you gonna stand there like a friggin’ moron?”
I quickly squirmed the rest of the way into the bunker. “I’m sorry, Corporal . . .” I checked her name tape. “McKall.”
She glared at me for another moment before offering me her hand. “Folks call me Rabbit.” I shook her hand but looked at her curiously. She finally felt compelled to explain. “My first name is Jessica. I have red hair. Apparently there is some old movie that I need to see to understand. Whatever the movie is, some of the guys started calling me Rabbit.”
“OK. Well everybody calls me Pup.”
“Great,” she mumbled. “Get a couple more animal nicknames and we could start a friggin’ zoo.” I laughed at her joke a little too hard. Stupid hormones! She glared at me again, and I got quiet quickly. “Whatever. I’ll take first watch. Are you a cherry?” I looked at her in shock. I couldn’t believe that she would ask me such a personal question when we had just met! It really threw me for a loop because I think that the woman in my dream asked the same question. I’m so glad I’ve learned to think with my brain since then. Rabbit rolled her eyes at me. “I meant is this your first tour, perv?” I nodded, too afraid to speak. “Fine. We’re post Delta Thirteen on the radio. We’ll do a check-in each hour. If a flare goes off in our area of responsibility, you’ll wake me so I can report it on the radio, and you’ll look for the problem with the NVGs. If it’s a sapper, you’ll take them out. Simple enough?” I nodded once more. “Good. You can sleep over there.” She gestured to a corner of the bunker.
I proceeded over to the corner that Rabbit had indicated and got ready to sleep. Ian had made certain that I brought a nose strip with me so that I wouldn’t give my position away to enemy listening posts all the way at the North Pole. I put one on my nose and glanced over to say good night to Rabbit. She was already looking through her NVGs and reporting on the radio that we were secure. I decided that it would be smart not to disturb her. I was pretty sure she hated me already. I wrapped myself in a poncho liner and got ready to sleep. It took about four seconds. Poncho liners are so cozy.
I’m not sure if I had any dreams during that brief rest. I hope not. I have a feeling that I might talk in my sleep, or at the very least make noises in my sleep. There is a high potential for humiliation there. I tend to dream that I am a captain of a starship. That could be tough to explain. Whether I did or not, Rabbit never said a thing about it. She just woke me up when her shift was over. She checked in on the radio and informed them that we were switching watches. I listened closely to what she said on the radio so that I could duplicate it. She passed the NVGs to me and shuffled to the corner of the bunker and placed her carbine within arm’s reach. She asked to borrow my poncho liner, which I readily agreed to. She gave me a curious look and then settled down to sleep. I started to put the NVGs on so that I could look around outside, but I was interrupted by a drowsy sounding Rabbit. “Pup?” I turned around to see what she wanted. “If I wake up and find you staring at me like some kind of weirdo while I sleep, you won’t be able to walk for a week.”
I rather awkwardly replied with a “Yes, ma’am,” and she settled back in. I was completely confused by her threat. Why would she think that I would be watching her while she slept? I had a responsibility to monitor the perimeter, and I took it seriously. Who would shirk that responsibility to watch someone sleep? I turned to ask her about
that, but she was already asleep. I was about to turn back to monitor the perimeter when my curiosity got the better of me. Why would anyone watch someone else sleep? I started to watch her to see what might be so unusual about a sleeping person. I had never watched someone sleep before. I had never had a reason to. Now I watched Rabbit sleep, and I was mesmerized. It wasn’t some odd sexual thing. That was one of the things that amazed me the most.
My therapist and I have spoken at length about that. I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with it. I’m starting to think that he has some issues. Quack.
I noticed how her lips were parted just slightly. Barely enough to let air enter or escape. You could see her taking deep breaths as her chest rose and fell under the poncho liner. OK, yes I noticed it was her chest. Stupid hormones. Her eyes were moving back and forth under her eyelids, almost as though she were reading a book in her sleep. One of her legs twitched slightly. I began to wonder what she might be dreaming of. I wondered how much of the world she was aware of right now and how much she was oblivious to. Was she seeing things with her eyes or her mind? I really have a tendency to overthink things.
I was so focused on my thoughts and analyzing my observations that I never noticed that the twitching and eye movement had stopped. I almost screamed out loud when I heard her voice speaking to me. “I mean it, Pup. I will hurt you.”
“Uh, yes, ma’am. Sorry ma’am,” I stuttered. I quickly turned around and made a concerted effort to not look back at her. Amazing. I was just doing something quasi-scientific and I still got busted. I had no luck whatsoever.
I learned a few important things during my first hour or so of sentry duty. The first thing I learned was that when it gets dark outside of the city, it gets dark! With no streetlights or headlights to bring about any ambient light, it can get remarkably dark outside. When I say dark, I mean that anything more than ten feet away from me was invisible. It was amazing. It wasn’t total darkness. I had experienced that on a tour of Mammoth Cave once. I still have nightmares. The quack is trying to talk me through those. However, it was still dark enough that my mind had trouble grasping it. I had never gone camping in the woods or anything. My mother hadn’t let me join the Scouts. She’d been scared of me learning how to start a fire. I also discovered that the darkness made the stars much more visible. I knew there were a lot of stars in the sky, but I had never realized how many I couldn’t see while living in the suburbs. It was like someone had plopped me down in the middle of a planetarium and turned the projector up to “ultra.” I learned that NVGs gave you a headache if you wore them for very long. I also learned that once you got past the darkness and the view of the stars, sentry duty was incredibly boring. I mean mind-numbingly, coma-inducing, singing-to-yourself, creating-finger-puppets-out-of-clay-and-putting-on-a-play boring!
I have a habit that I started when I was a child that I still have to this day. It’s something that occurs when I’m bored, confused, or angry. I talk to myself. No, I don’t think there is another person talking back to me or anything like that. I just do it as a way of voicing my thoughts. Sometimes hearing things out loud changes your perspective on them. I had gotten so incredibly bored by the end of the second hour that I had to have some kind of sensory input before I lost my mind. The radio was digital, so it didn’t have any kind of static that might have broken the monotony. Rabbit didn’t snore. I didn’t want to sing for fear that I would be accused of violating the Geneva Convention, dealing with torture of the enemy. I started talking to myself. I mostly replayed the events of the last few days. I spoke through the different conversations that Ian and I’d had. I even replayed conversations I’d had with others, but the way that I wanted them to go instead of the way that they went. By the time I was done with my faux conversations, the Japanese lady in the airport had to be pried away from me by the MP while she begged to join me on my deployment. Ah, reality, thou art a harsh mistress.
I was so deep into my thoughts that I almost didn’t notice the flare shoot into the sky. It was the movement that caught my attention more than the light, but regardless of what drew my eyes out of my dream world, it caused my adrenaline to surge. In the flare light I saw one thing move rapidly along the perimeter, then I noticed something crawling low. Sappers! I thought. I knew what I was supposed to do, but I was afraid that if I took the time to do things right that the sapper might accomplish his mission. It’s all up to me, I thought. I had seen way too many movies. I grabbed the machine gun and fired off a burst. Wow! What a rush! I had been trained on how to load and operate a belt-fed machine gun, but I had never really gotten to fire one with live ammunition. It was a blast! Something about the rapid recoil and the ear-splitting, ripping-a-hole-in-the-sky sound was more than the pleasure center of my brain could handle. I remember smiling widely after that first burst. Unfortunately, the burst was high. Really high. If there were any owls out there that night, I was a big danger to them.
The burst of automatic fire woke Rabbit up immediately and apparently did the same to everyone on the perimeter. Rabbit was asking me what was going on. The HQ radio operator was demanding a report. Why couldn’t they all shut up? I was busy trying to aim and be a hero. The flare light was starting to dwindle, and I wanted to get my target before it went out. I fired again, much lower this time. Dirt was thrown into the air only about twenty feet from my bunker, but I didn’t let off of the trigger. I walked the fire all the way to what looked like a man that was surprisingly fast on all fours. The bullets finally started landing near the intruder. They turned and started to retreat. Man! They were fast on their hands and knees! I could see Rabbit donning the NVGs next to me. Good. She could help spot for me. I followed the retreating figure. Just as I heard Rabbit shout “Cease fire!” I hit the target. I heard a noise I hadn’t expected. A yelp. Not a man shouting in pain, but the yelp you hear from a dog that just discovered the odd object it was sniffing was a snapping turtle (don’t ask how I know that). I immediately took my finger off of the trigger about the same time that Rabbit grabbed my arm to get my attention. Things suddenly got very quiet.
I turned toward Rabbit. The grin was gone from my face. I realized that I hadn’t taken a breath for the last thirty seconds or so and started gasping for air. Rabbit removed my hand from the gun and then took off her NVGs. She looked like she was going to ask me a question, but she realized I couldn’t speak then. She instead went to the radio to report our situation. “HQ, Delta Thirteen. Our position’s clear. A wild dog breached the perimeter, and the kid got antsy. Over.”
I didn’t catch the response from the operator. I was busy replaying the whole event in my head. How come I didn’t notice that it was a dog? Why didn’t I put on my NVGs? What was my hurry again? I was used to screwing up. It was kind of my thing. But this time I screwed up and I hurt something. That really bothered me.
Rabbit stayed up with me for the rest of the shift. I could tell that she wanted to chew me up one side and down the other. I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit for doing it either. Still, she held back. I guess she knew that I was busy punishing myself. If my kids are reading this, I hope you don’t inherit my conscience. It’s torture. My conscience never leaves me alone, and it sounds just like my mother! Then again, if it keeps you out of trouble . . .
The sun came up eventually, and we were given the all-clear signal. I decided to go and see what I had done that night. So did Rabbit and the occupants of almost every bunker on the north side of the base. I walked toward the perpetrator of that morning’s “invasion,” following the bullet holes in the ground that I had created. I’d damned near dug a trench. I wanted to remember that next time somebody wanted me to dig one with some little shovel. That machine gun was easier. As I started getting closer to the target I saw bits of brown fur spread out over a wide area. It was finer than dog hair, and I wasn’t sure where it had come from. I was thinking about that until I nearly tripped over the victim of my adrenaline-surged rampage.
&n
bsp; Calling this dog a mangy mutt would be an insult to mangy mutts everywhere. This dog had likely never seen the inside of a home and had definitely never seen the inside of a bath tub. I’m sure that it had fleas and ticks, it had some kind of skin condition, and it was ugly. I mean ugly. I look like a cartoon character that is meant to frighten small children and I still had the right to call this thing ugly. Much to my surprise, it was also alive. The bullet had struck its right front leg. It lay there panting and unconscious but alive. I knelt down and placed my hand on its side. It growled a little but otherwise remained asleep. Someone from one of the other bunkers asked in a bad Australian accent, “Why were you so mad at it? Did a dingo eat your baby?”
I ignored them and found myself asking, to no one in particular, “Who can help it?”
The soldier with the bad Australian impression replied, “Help it? That wild dog is beyond help. We’d be doing it a favor, putting it out of its misery.”
His partner seemed a little more sympathetic. “There’s a K-9 unit stationed near here. I know they have a vet. I’ll get it moved there.” I watched him carefully lift the dog and carry it off. It never occurred to me or him that the dog could have woken up and torn his face off in a fearful rage. I’m not sure that he really cared. I discovered long after the war that the soldier got to take the wild dog home after the vet fixed him up. The dog only had three legs but wound up being a wonderful family pet. Rumor has it that the dog passes out if you show it a picture of me. I always joked that I frighten children and small animals. I didn’t realize that it was true.
Rabbit came walking up with some of that brown fur in her hands. “It looks like the dog was chasing a rabbit. No stupid jokes, please. You must have hit it because there’s fur everywhere. You really should have . . .” She stopped after she looked up at me. She had noticed that tears were welling up in my eyes. “You pussy.” Some insults seem to carry extra weight when they come from a woman. That was certainly one of them. “It was a wild dog. You should have followed procedure, and I’m sure you’ll catch hell for that, but it was just a wild dog. Are you going to cry over the first enemy soldier you shoot?”
Pup Page 5