But Paul wasn’t interested in taking it light, and “Go along and get along” may have meant something different to him. He called me almost every weekend. And every time I heard his voice, all my reasoned resistance seemed to drop away, making me once again helpless. I’d travel down to Hanau and then to Frankfurt with him. If I tried to come up with some reason to say no, he pressed me and I’d give in immediately. In Frankfurt one night, a few months later, he told me that his unit was deploying to the field and that he’d be away for a forty-five-day rotation. I didn’t say anything, and he got a weird look on his face, as if he was expecting me to say how much I’d miss him or something; when I remained silent, he quickly changed the subject. I felt guilty about this since I knew that I would, in fact, miss him terribly, but I was still unsure just how much of that feeling was mutual. The whole thing still made me so paranoid. Though I was upset, I was kind of relieved that we’d be able to bring an end to things gracefully and could just get on with our careers. Little did I know that this was merely the beginning of the relationship and, far from coming to a graceful end, it would be the catalyst that would ultimately lead to my departure from the army.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Desert Shield
As spring turned to summer we began to prepare for the annual fall exercises. We’d be doing a massive computer exercise to test communications and help us develop standard operating procedures. Some units would deploy their command posts to the field, where they would receive situation reports from the simulation center. Even though the Berlin Wall had just fallen and the enemy as we knew it for forty-odd years was no more, I was assigned to the OPFOR (opposition forces), which meant I got to play the part of the Soviets. Little did we know just how short-lived our lack of a traditional foe would turn out to be, for as we planned this simulation Saddam Hussein was beginning to threaten Kuwait.
During the simulation planning I was sitting in the office with a few of the guys talking about going to Switzerland to see a jazz festival when the boss walked in and told us the battalion commander had called a meeting of all officers in two hours. He wouldn’t tell us what it was about. Two hours later we all filed into the battalion classroom and sat down until the adjutant appeared in the doorway and announced the commander.
“Gentlemen, the battalion commander.”
As one, the whole group of us stood at attention until he told us to take our seats.
“Gentlemen,” he started, in a formal voice I’d never heard him use before, “the president of the United States has just ordered elements of the Eighty-second Airborne to Saudi Arabia in response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. We are there to ensure that the president of Iraq does not attempt to invade the kingdom as well. The operation is called Desert Shield, and it is very, very serious. We may end up fighting a war in the Middle East for the first time ever, and for those of you who do not know, Iraq’s army is the fourth largest in the world, so it would be a tough fight.
“I called you all here to let you know about the situation and to inform you that we must be ready to deploy as well. The word has come down that we will be called upon to backfill units if casualties occur, and we may even go ourselves. Right now there is nothing but a thin green line of paratroopers standing in the way of a mechanized force that is equipped with Soviet weapons. The focus of the entire army is to build up to combat power as quickly as possible in order to handle whatever comes next. We must be focused and ready to do whatever we are asked to do. As more information flows to me, I will pass what is not classified down to you. At this point I will take some questions. The S-Two will—Deuce, where are you?—okay, the Deuce will help me out answering your questions since he’s been doing his homework over the last several hours.”
The Virgin Mary herself could have walked into the room at that point, and to a man we would have completely ignored her. Iraq? I’d heard of it but wasn’t sure how big the border with Saudi Arabia was; as for Kuwait, all I knew was that it was jammed somewhere among the Arab Emirates in the Gulf. My first instinct was to think we were interested in protecting Kuwait because of the oil, but then I remembered that the United States had a policy stating that any alteration of existing borders in the region would be viewed as a threat to the interests of the United States. This was one of the few times my political science degree from Fordham came in handy. I’d taken a course in Middle Eastern politics and so was pretty familiar with the geography and the issues.
After the initial shock had subsided somewhat, the room began to come to life and hands shot up with questions for the commander. The questions were all over the place, from the basics like where these two countries were and what languages were spoken, to the weapons they had and who ruled them. It wouldn’t be the last time we’d discuss this, obviously, but it seemed as if everyone was straining at the very limits of his comprehension in order to process what was happening.
The possibility of our going to war was the most exciting thing I’d ever heard. Images of glory, of being tested in combat—not just winning in a training exercise, but fighting against an actual enemy—is what every real soldier dreams of. Finally, we’d have the chance to cut our teeth, to test ourselves in the ultimate arena. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that with the fourth-largest army in the world, the Iraqis had all the toys to give as good as they got. It had been twenty years since our army had engaged in a conflict of similar size and scope. Panama, which had occurred just months before, had been too small to be of any major note. It was only when mechanized forces were in play that a conflict took on a certain grandeur, if you will. The brute power of even one mechanized brigade is truly awe-inspiring. The entire mechanized force of the greatest army in history on a rampage would be something beyond words, and surely something that would warrant more than a footnote in the history books. I had no doubt we’d be victorious, none at all.
But beneath this élan and sense of invincibility there was the more thoughtful and questioning part of myself, one that even then began to think about casualties and to wonder, too, if the lessons that Vietnam had taught us would be applied. But this would be a question for the generals and the historians. Just then, all I knew for certain was that the undertaking would be enormous and that we were about to begin a brutal couple of months preparing for battle.
Looking around the room at my fellow officers, I couldn’t help but see them in a new light. Up until now they were simply young men like me, little more than college kids, really, but now, as the reality of the news sunk in, they seemed to age before my eyes. No longer simply the fun-loving, hard-drinking knuckleheads I’d bonded with, they began to look like soldiers, serious professionals who’d heard the call and were now prepared to do whatever it took to make sure the United States came out on top.
We all knew what war meant in theory. We’d all studied the battles and walked the sites where they’d been fought, but now we’d be experiencing the real thing. And we all seemed to realize instantly that the mental process of steeling oneself against the prospect of whatever was thrown up at us had to begin right away. Blanks, computer simulations, and referees had done what they could to keep us as prepared as possible in peacetime, but now the real training would begin in earnest. We had to know our jobs cold and be able to act effectively in any and all situations in which we found ourselves.
I knew that one of the big things hanging heavy in my fellow officers’ minds was the prospect of chemical weapons. The commander had mentioned that the Iraqis were known to have them and to have actually used them against their own people. He tried to reassure us that our equipment could handle anything they threw at us, but it was clear that few were convinced. NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) training was one of the things that officers blew off regularly, for two reasons, I think. The main reason was just the sheer unpleasantness of the training. Imagine gardening, in the middle of one of the hottest afternoons in August, wearing a heavily padded coat, with a dozen layers of cellophane plastered across your
face. Imagine so much sand getting caught inside the mask that you end up feeling it in your teeth for days. The second reason was, I think, the knowledge that one wrong move and all these elaborate precautions would prove to be futile. There was something particularly dreadful about imagining it, too, something just so qualitatively different from imagining, say, bullets and shrapnel, that some soldiers just weren’t willing to face it.
The commander took questions for about an hour, and when it appeared that we were all talked out, he dismissed us, instructing us to keep the troops informed and to let them know that more information would be forthcoming. As we got up to leave, my buddy Duncan came alongside of me and said, “Dude, you know we’ll never go. They would never pull troops out of Europe.” Normally I would have agreed with him, but somehow I felt that this time was different, this time all bets were off.
Over the weeks that followed, the situation worsened. The president used every means, short of combat itself, to signal to Saddam Hussein that the invasion would not stand. Preparations were fast and furious as the machinery of war went into high gear, moving forces halfway around the world to reinforce the thin green line in the sand.
Finally, about a month later, when it became clear that only a lot of body bags filled with Iraqi soldiers would convince Saddam to pull back from Kuwait, word came down that we were going in. My friend Duncan had been wrong, and my hunch had proved correct. The Pentagon decided to deploy an entire corps into the theater to provide the coalition with a credible offensive punch. After we found out our unit would be going, everyone had a newfound spring in his step, and morale was very high. We were going to kick ass! Differences dropped away as we bonded over the higher purpose of deploying, fighting, and bringing everyone home safely. In an effort to reduce stress and keep morale high, the chain of command made sure soldiers’ families were included whenever possible. Married officers went out of their way to invite single officers like myself over for dinner as often as possible, a gesture that was deeply comforting to me at the time.
The next few months were like taking a dozen rides back-to-back on the Cyclone at Coney Island. There was so much to do that it was hard to find time to sit down and examine all the feelings swirling around inside me. I decided it was time to do just that when, one day, as I was watching my driver perform maintenance checks on the Hummer, I suddenly wondered what I would do if his head were blown off right in front of me. Talk about wanting to be prepared for every single scenario. Some things were just unknowable, I realized. Some things you just couldn’t be prepared for. Like the boy on the rock, like the young German dead in his Mercedes, there would always be things that didn’t make sense, that fell outside the narrative— horrible loose ends, tragedies that you’d discover your reaction to only after they’d occurred.
And, I realized, the only antidote, the only salve for this strain of senseless tragedy that so often infects the world, is love, family. And even that treats only the symptoms; it’s never a cure, for these things are, by definition, incurable. Still, they’re made bearable by love and family and that may be as good as it gets. Where was the love in my life? I asked myself. Whose arms would hold me when I returned from the war? Naturally, I thought of Paul during these moments. But even as his face materialized in my mind, even as his arms reached out to embrace me in some imaginary homecoming, I realized what pure fantasy the whole thing was. And, realizing this, I became overwhelmed with a sadness that seemed to reach into the very core of my being. In an ideal world I would have been able to have a relationship. But the world I’d chosen to live in, the world of the U.S. military, strictly forbade the use of my particular antidote; the love I wanted was against the rules. I was, in fact, a criminal. The irony of my situation was so incredibly galling to me! Here I was, ready to put it all on the line in the service of my country, willing to pledge my blood and breath for the United States, and yet I faced dying, I faced meeting that pledge a liar, a cheat, a criminal. Even if I had a lover, even if Paul and I had been together for years, all our communication would still have to be camouflaged in the most bland and platonic terms. If I was killed, he’d have no rights, receive no benefits, be handed no crisp widower’s flag. I could earn ten thousand Purple Hearts, but still there’d be no Paul standing on the tarmac, waving a little flag, waiting to embrace me, to kiss me hard on the lips, when I returned home from the war. Why did it have to be this way?
Did it have to be this way? Everything I’d been taught, from St. Joan of Arc through Archbishop Malloy, every Catholic pronouncement on the subject, every faggot joke I’d had to endure by a straight man who couldn’t imagine that a gay man was actually standing next to him, all of this told me that if you had to ask the question there was something wrong with you. But still, there it was. I was off to war, and there the question was. It was so simple and so powerful, so replete with common sense, why on earth could no one in the Pentagon see it? I could meet the standard, I was popular, I was accepted by my peers; my blood would shed as red and as easily as the straight soldier’s fighting next to me. Why was I forbidden to be the person I am? Why could I be a soldier but not a man?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
War for Love
By the time my birthday rolled around in November, the stress of anticipating our departure was beginning to take its toll. The flow of troops into the theater was a twenty-four/seven operation, but it was constantly changing as new information became available to airlift command and priorities and strategies were suddenly reshuffled and shifted. We were given departure dates and times only to have them changed at the last minute. Wives and children, having made their tearful good-byes, would be told suddenly that the soldier would have another three days, or a week. I’m sure that everyone was relived to have a little more time, but it was also emotionally wrenching to have the departure date shift so arbitrarily.
The initial rush over the news had slowly been replaced by a kind of measured anxiety, as—in our minds—the war became less like a state championship game or the Super Bowl and more of a reality. We were going to war. None of us had done that before. Feelings of invincibility had gradually given way to an anxious confidence that tried to take into account all possibilities. And there were so many— so many more contingencies, it seemed to us—that soldiers in previous wars hadn’t had to consider, most notably the threat of chemical warfare.
Indeed, this question of the chemical-weapons threat posed by the Iraqis was the main source of the anxiety many of us were feeling. It seemed that no matter how much training we endured, how many contingencies we planned for, it would never be enough. Like I said before, the threat of chemical attack produced a level of dread in us that I think was simply of a whole different degree from the kind of anxiety caused by old-fashioned bullets and artillery. We tried our best, however, to keep that anxiety under control and to bear in mind the fact that we were still the most advanced and powerful army in history.
As the day of my own departure drew near, the swelling numbers in the desert became increasingly impressive. This would be, we knew, a major conflict. Some in the unit were predicting that we’d see epic battles on the level of Kursk in World War II.
Weekends it was the four of us, mostly—Lostrapo, Barigilia, Brooks, and me—Friday nights at Der Speckmaus, and Saturdays at some place in Alt-Sachsenhausen, maybe, or in the city center. We’d all become very close, like brothers, really, and the Iraq situation had only intensified our bond. I was certain that I’d do anything for those guys, no matter what.
The weekend after Thanksgiving I got a call from Paul. I was overjoyed. Just hearing his voice again sent my morale totally through the roof. He filled me in on what he’d been doing over the summer and then let me know that his unit would be deploying a few days before mine, supposedly in the next few days. He suggested we get together before he got the word to report for departure, and I said yes without even thinking. We agreed to meet at Kyalami’s since it was the place we’d first met. When I let the guys kno
w that I wouldn’t be around for our usual Friday-night session at Der Speckmaus, I caught a rash of shit for it but was able to get away nonetheless.
I was so excited about seeing Paul that I drove to Frankfurt directly from work to make sure I wouldn’t be late. As a result, I found myself in Frankfurt two hours early, unsure how to pass the time. The waiting was excruciating. I figured I should put something in my stomach, so I went to a café and tried to enjoy a pilzraum schnitzel and Weizen beer. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop hearing his voice on the phone, imagining his face and body in front of me at the bar. But he has a girlfriend, an accusing voice would suddenly pop into my head, and then I’d measure this against the look I’d seen in his eyes, the feel of his handshake, a particular turn of phrase he’d used, and I’d find myself flummoxed once again, right back where I’d started from, that is, as confused as ever, and if not in love, then, at the very least, immensely infatuated.
Leaving the café, walking out into the brisk Frankfurt evening, the accusing voice would morph from pointing out Paul’s supposed girlfriend to pointing out the threat our relationship posed to our respective careers as army officers. It was so doomed, I thought, trying to walk off the heavy German beer and failing to be inspired by the high Christmas spirit filling the narrow streets.
And then, all at once, the streets came alive; they’d sparkle and shine with silver bulbs and bright-colored lights, with the smiles of happy Germans strolling arm in arm—a Christmas card, honestly— as all my feelings for Paul would erupt unbounded by the lies of imaginary girlfriends and by the threat of expulsion and ruin. Love triumphant buoyed me up and carried me in its arms, stupid with desire, all the way to Kyalamis.
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