Major Conflict

by Jeffrey McGowan, Maj USA (ret. )

  Staff Sergeant White, my sergeant, slid his chair away from the computer terminal, looked up into the nothingness of the drab metal ceiling, and said, “Goddamn, I miss pussy. Been too damn long.” White was a devoted father of two with a third on the way. He was as straight as an arrow and generally very mild-mannered, always impeccably uniformed, and almost obsessed with cleanliness. And he was a highly valued tool in my arsenal, since I knew that when it was time to do the job, he’d be a virtual killing machine. He was indispensable to me in other ways as well. The younger soldiers had a lot of respect for him, so he often served as a buffer between the men and me. Any problem that arose in the field would go to him first. He would then filter out all the bullshit and give it to me straight. He saved me hours of effort. Now he was turning toward me with an expectant look on his face. I tried to busy myself in order to derail the conversation before we got to where I knew we were headed, but it was too late.

  “What about you, LT,” White said. “You have anyone at home you keeping company with?”

  Keeping company with—I had to smile at the phrase. My grandmother used to ask me if I was keeping company with any girls, and my answer was always the same: no. I looked up from my terminal, tried to deflect the question by doing my best imitation New York cool.

  “Nope, no one special at the moment,” I said, smiling a little.

  Moore jumped all over that. “Sucks to be you, sir,” he said.

  Now Moore knew he had a slight tilt with me, but he also knew he was dancing on a very thin sheet of ice. I leaned in, only half serious, and tipped my head at him. “Come again, Private?” I said.

  The track was suddenly quiet. Moore quickly resumed his job of capturing coordinates. He laughed when he finally spoke. “I was just saying, sir,” he said, slowly, “how totally fucked up it must be that the last piece of pussy McCarty got was in this very track just thirty seconds ago . . . sir.”

  Specialist Ranklin was a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced kid from Kentucky, just six months removed from a trailer park. He was checking the chemical-warfare suits. He looked to White at this point and smiled, said, “No offense, Sarge, but when was the last time you got laid?”

  “No offense taken, Ranklin,” the courteous sergeant said. “Just before I left we put the kids to bed early. My wife made us a great steak dinner with some broccoli and potatoes. We had a little wine, put on some easy listening. . . .”

  His face was filled with a sad kind of pleasure, remembering the night with his wife. Looking at him, I suddenly understood in a way I hadn’t before just why the men respected him so much. He was just so honest and good, a good father, a loving husband; he was everything you saw right in front of you, no deception. How I admired that and how I wished I could be more like him! But how could I be? Was it even possible? Not in this army, I thought, not in this war. But maybe in the next?

  “We lit some candles,” White continued his reverie, “got in the bath together, and made love all night long.”

  “Check out the sarge getting all Barry White on us and shit . . .” Moore said, breaking up the soft moment with his own brand of New Yorkese. He started to sing in a big sultry baritone, doing his best Barry White imitation, and there was more laughter all around. The sarge was a good sport and took it all in stride. There was a warmth to the moment that was very special. These were good men I was living with, and I was proud to lead them into battle.

  “What’d you do before we flew, Moore?” White asked then.

  “Went down to Kstrasse with one a my homies from Charlie Company,” Moore said, referring to the red-light district in Frankfurt.

  He stopped what he was doing and looked up to the ceiling as if he were savoring the experience. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about his night in a Kstrasse brothel. I told myself it was because I was twenty-six and Moore was only still a kid, just twenty, and I was way beyond this kind of thing. I realize now that it made me uncomfortable because it was somewhat transgressive, like my own sexuality, outside the accepted norms represented by Sergeant White’s perfectly respectable sex-in-wedlock-with-children, making-love-by-candlelight-in-the-tub-all-night story. He could’ve told the story on Oprah, for God’s sake, word for word. Despite my discomfort, though, I let Moore continue with his brothel story. It was a morale booster, after all, and everyone needed to feel comfortable enough to be open with the other men. That is, everyone but me. But I was leading these men, I told myself, so I had to make certain sacrifices, I couldn’t afford to be quite as open. Which was true, to an extent. All differences of sexuality aside, I still had to maintain a certain distance as the unit leader. And I wasn’t so naive as to think that I or anyone else for that matter would be able to tell a same-sex story among a group of men like this—in the army or otherwise—anytime soon. But still, still, did I have to be this isolated? Did I have to remain this hidden? We might all die together, for Christ’s sake, and soon; yet I still had to lie, in the face of death I had to keep on lying.

  “Asian bitch from . . . from . . .”

  Moore couldn’t remember where his Kstrasse prostitute had been from.

  “Was she Asian, Moore?” Sergeant White said, not looking up from his terminal, but trying to be helpful to the now-stuttering Bronx boy.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Moore said. “Mos def, bitch was Asian. She pulled out all the toys, too, son. Had this red leather mask with this wild bra thing.”

  “Bra thing?” Ranklin asked, sitting up now.

  “You know that shit with all the laces running up to her titties.”

  “Bustier,” I said.

  Moore looked at me, confused. “Bustier, yeah, I guess. I didn’t know it was a French thing. She let us take turns on her. My shit was rock hard behind that French shit she was wearin’, too, you can believe that. Bitch was fine, son, she was talkin’ some a that Chinese shit, you know, lovin’ it and whatnot. I got all up into the guts, know what I’m sayin’?” He laughed and high-fived the men.

  “Then the bitch started to play with her shit, nasty man, nastiness. She had meat curtains. They hung down to her thighs, man, looked like ma fuckin’ car doors all opened up and shit, waitin’ for some Asian mafucker to drive his Toyota out.”

  The men laughed, and there was a slight lull in the track. I knew the conversation was inevitably going to swing my way again. I could cut it off now, if I wanted to, but it was always a balancing act. I didn’t want to cause any friction between the troops and me. In combat the troops need to respect the officer leading them, but they need to respect the individual beneath the officer’s bars as well. I decided the best thing to do would be to make a quick joke to show that I was part of the group but then get out of the track as quickly as possible to avoid any follow-up. So I stood up and grabbed my crotch. “Have to shoot off some missiles,” I said, smiling wide and moving toward the door. The men laughed hard. I think they liked feeling that I could be as raw and out there as they could be. But before I could make my exit, Ranklin asked the question.

  “LT, you married?”

  The whole section was watching and listening closely. I felt so self-conscious I could barely move. Were they catching come unconscious vibe I was giving off? I wondered. Did they know; could they see? How much gaydar were they equipped with? My lie was going to have to be a good one, with details. But the prospect of telling it made me tired. Wouldn’t the truth be simpler? I was LT Jeffrey McGowan, patriot and gay man, ha! Sure, that would go over well! But I knew better, of course, so I smiled wearily and said, “Never married, Ranklin, but was close as hell last year with a girl I met at Speckmaus in Langgons with some buddies a mine. Almost tied the knot but hey . . . whaddya gonna do?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, put out my open palms, and raised my eyebrows in the classic New York shrug, then closed my eyes and let out a small laugh. All the men saw was a guy remembering his ex-girlfriend, but what I saw was a man having all his self-respect slowly drained out of him as the lie factory in his head went into ove
rdrive and the fresh lies spiraled and blossomed out of his mouth. “She was perfect,” I lied, “blonde, five feet ten inches, thin, gorgeous, went to Bryn Mawr, had rich parents with a house on Martha’s Vineyard, and she had gorgeous tits, too, she was perfect . . . except—”

  “Except what, LT?” Moore asked.

  “Except for the meat curtains which looked like fuckin’ car doors—she’d been busy before I met her!”

  The men howled. I was off the hook for now. I rushed out of the track, smiling, relieved. My steps were so quick I was almost running, fleeing the track and the men with whom I would be slinging bullets in just a few short hours. And then I found myself actually running. I was full out running in the darkness now, all by myself, deep into the desert night.

  The farther I got from the track the easier it was for me to get some perspective on the situation, which I was convinced now wasn’t all that unique. I reminded myself that I’d made a choice. I chose to be a soldier and I was going to be a goddamned good soldier even if it killed me (and it might, I thought, if not from enemy fire then surely from the stress of living a double life). But no, I had a job to do, and I was going to measure up; there was no question about that. In a perfect world that’s all that should matter, really. One standard for all. You either meet the standard or you don’t meet the standard; it’s as simple as that. And I was going to meet the standard. I was meeting the standard already, dammit! I’d get beyond these feelings just the way I always had, just the way I’d done my whole life. But I was wrong. I was wrong still, again. And the desert night was silent.

  A few hours later we were on the move, searching out to destroy. We had not yet made contact with the enemy and this was always the most difficult part of the mission. The anxiety of not making contact was rocketing through me like a misguided RPG. We were maneuvering through the Wadi al Batin, attempting to do an end run around and catch them unawares as they retreated to the north out of Kuwait. This was part of an elaborate plan of deception designed to separate the enemy from his command, control, and then destroy his forces down to the last man—divide and conquer, basically. The strategy went as far back as Sun Tzu and his oft-quoted The Art of War.

  Then suddenly, out of the desert stillness—pop-pop-pop —I heard small arms fire. All my anxiety was immediately transformed into a powerful hit of adrenaline. We had already been at MOPP 2, so we were wearing our chemical suits with gas masks affixed to our waists. The second we made contact we’d been upgraded to MOPP 4, so then everything went on—the masks, the hoods, the rubber gloves— and we were a virtual track full of bubble boys.

  A few minutes later, we found ourselves in the middle of a shamal, a violent sandstorm. Ranklin was acquiring target positions, and White was receiving and prioritizing the “gift list.” The gifts were two tons of molten steel and shrapnel. I was coordinating the whole thing, and it was hell doing it at MOPP 4. The weather had turned unbearably hot and humid, and the chemical suits were lined with charcoal, so our bodies were quickly becoming covered in a thick grimy layer of soot and sweat. Despite the heat and the chemical suit, I worked my best to coordinate us into the field of battle quickly and smoothly. I was tense, but fully alive and alert in a way I don’t think I’d ever been before or since. This was it; this was what it was all about. As we feverishly processed the missions, we heard an unmistakable roaring sound overhead. Two low-flying A10s came in to bombard a path for us so that we could then systematically destroy the point of origin of the enemy fire. Again there was more enemy fire, but then the relentless sound of 30mm bullets began raking the earth not far ahead. The sound was that of a giant, muffled chain saw. It was a cruel, raw display of power, certain death heard clearly though not visible at all.

  The radios went crazy. Commanders were now into the horrific ground phase ass-deep. They were stepping over one another on the radio, barking commands. We were now into the second phase of our assault. Observers in the field were giving out calls for fire. My job was to calculate their distance and direction and choose which type of ammunition would be used to engage and ultimately kill the enemy. Once all the guns were set up, I then gave the command to fire. My men were agile and deft as we dumped massive amounts of fire onto the enemy. The more we delivered, the mighty thunder and lightning of Desert Storm, the more frenzied the calls for fire became. Occasionally I could hear the fear in a kid’s voice, and it was heartbreaking, but not one of them cried out or was killed during this ground phase. These young men were scared, but they didn’t let that get in the way of their doing their duty honorably, and of being men before the enemy.

  Every so often there would be a sudden void in communications, the radio would cut dead, and I’d get a horrible, sinking feeling in my gut. These guys were my friends, and I didn’t want to see any of them injured or killed or captured. Silence was ominous; there was almost a kind of negative sound that would ring in the air the moment the radios would go dead, as if echoes of the last set of voices were vibrating all around us. But then the radios would suddenly fire back up, and there those voices would be again, breathless with anticipation, ready to get the next series of rounds downrange. This went on nonstop for hours. We had no time to think about how exhausted, hot, tired, and hungry we were. The conflict that seemed to be ripping me apart just a few hours before as I ran out alone into the desert darkness now seemed like just one small speck on a very large canvas.

  I turned to look out the track and there were men, asses and elbows working urgently, completely focused on defeating the enemy. That was hands-down my proudest moment of the war. If God had chosen for my life to end at that point, it would’ve been all right by me; in my heart I knew that we were righting a wrong, and that all the rest would be sorted out by him.

  The cordite was thick in the air. The darkness seemed to magnify everything. Planes swooped in to drop their payloads after receiving my coordinates, and the sky would then light up ten miles deep in-country. The concussive force that we felt immediately after was that of a solid roundhouse to the chest. It was so impressive that it scared the living shit out of me, though I have to say again that I’ve never felt so totally and completely alive. We were the most lethal killing machine this earth had ever seen. We were invincible. All the rules of society were suspended. This was the thrill, the fantastic jolt, of pure aggression. Our job was to defeat the foe, grind him into dust, no questions asked, and that is exactly what we were doing. During training they used to talk about the lethality of the modern battlefield. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing you can imagine comes close to the reality. Nothing you’ve seen in real life, nothing you’ve seen on a video screen or in the movies, can begin even to approximate the tremendous sound and the sheer, overwhelming force and power of this relentless onslaught. Why this is such a thrill, why destruction even has the potential to thrill, is a question for the philosophers, and one I didn’t even ask myself until many, many years later.

  And just when I thought I’d seen it all, the lethality intensified. The tanks in my brigade changed formation to mass their guns. This spectacle was the most awesome and evil sight I have ever seen. The guns looked like nuclear-fueled pistons slamming back and forth in their turrets; their precision was superb. We were acquiring targets, and they were engaging them from two and a half miles away and subsequently killing them by firing right through solid fortifications. At this point I almost pitied the Iraqis. These guys could never have known this was coming; they were eviscerated, vaporized, swept away like butterflies in an F5 tornado. They tried to fire back but were so quickly overwhelmed that they simply died in place.

  We moved several more times over the course of the next twenty hours. By early the following morning, the men were covered in the thick black powder from the 110-pound rounds, and they were beginning to look exhausted. With all my energy nearly spent, I simply crashed and dozed for a minute or so before suddenly being jolted awake by a massive explosion. I grabbed my weapon and looked out. Apparently, an enemy ta
nk thought to be unoccupied had been bypassed when suddenly it had come to life in an attempt to ambush our track. Fortunately, one of our M1s nearby had seen it swing into life behind us and had blasted it. We moved to check out what was left of the tank. There was a gaping, burning hole where the M1 had blasted through. Through the stink of cordite and burning oil, I could smell the distinctive odor of burning flesh and hair and nails. It’s a smell I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

  I pulled my binoculars out and observed a few commanders from the Third Battalion and Fifth Cavalry, conducting tact meetings. It was oddly comical, seeing all these men, each with the same black ring around his right eye, from peering out of the gun sight of his Bradley. Wondering how I was able to retain a sense of humor in a time like this, I understood the phrase “gallows humor” in a way I never had before. The men looked grim. It was clear they knew we had plenty more fighting ahead of us, and I felt it in myself, the grimness, the starkness of what we were actually doing. In this moment of haggard realism, of heightened mindfulness, with the odor of cordite and death all around me, I realized why every veteran I’d ever spoken to was so reticent about talking about his war experiences. There is nothing glorious about killing to someone who actually has had to do it. There is nothing thrilling about the results of pure aggression left unchecked. We had done our job, performed excellently and were victorious, but there was a price to pay. We had stepped outside society’s protective norms to do our duty. Stepping back in, we would never be quite the same.

  I searched my track to make sure all my men were safe and accounted for. They were, and I was pleased. One by one, they looked at me and gave me the thumbs-up, without a word. Nothing needed to be said. We knew what the black-eyed commanders knew: there was far more to do. We were not out of harm’s way by a long shot.