FUBAR: A Collection of War Stories

by Weston Ochse

  I couldn’t help but flash to the SEAL Team 666 novel I was editing, Age of Blood, the electronic file sitting open on my laptop. I stared at it and two things occurred to me at once. The first was that I’d gotten a scene wrong. My SEAL team members had to be more scared. After all, I was scared and I had all of this military experience. The second was whether or not there was going to be another, follow-up attack. We’d learned over the years that terrorists loved to set off one bomb, wait for first responders, then set off another. I was still waiting on the other when the Big Voice came over the loudspeaker.

  The Big Voice, as we call it, comes from the loudspeakers only when there’s been an attack. The first Big Voice notification came from the embassy. The sturdy tenor of a young marine ordered, “Camp Lockdown! Shelter in Place!” This meant to lock our doors, get our weapons ready in the event of a breach, and stay where we were. I checked my Sig Sauer P229 pistol, considered chambering a round, but decided against it. Then I locked my door, returned to my chair and sat. I remember staring at the screen, but the words swam in front of me.

  Was this fear? I’ve been afraid before, but it had never felt like this. Is this what David Drake and Joe Haldeman felt in Vietnam? Is this what John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway felt in WWI?

  Then I put a name to it. It wasn’t fear. It was wonder. Through all twenty-nine years of my military service, I’d never heard an explosion this close that wasn’t part of training.

  I might have jumped a little as the second Big Voice came on. This was from ISAF HQ. A woman’s strong voice said the same thing the young marine had, only closer and louder, reminding us to Shelter in Place. I listened in the silence for another explosion.

  As I was able to assimilate the moment, I thought once more about my fictional SEALs. They were the pointy end of the spear, as we say in the military, meaning they were the first to be deployed by the Department of Defense, the first to do the dirty work, to get bloody. By their very nature they’d been to bad places and done dark things.

  Regardless, they needed to know fear. Although they might have experience combating conventional forces – humans – they lacked experience battling the supernatural. In the face of a ghost or a devil anyone would be scared, even the SEALs of Triple Six.

  But there is more to fear and bravery than that. Professor Lawrence Broer in his book Vonnegut and Hemingway: Writers at War, referred to Hemingway’s “emblematic hypermasculinism,” which I define as the artifice men (and women) create to survive those things that must be done in war. During peacetime, this hypermasculinism, without the backdrop of war, seems so exaggerated as to be hyperbole, almost laughable, if one hasn’t experienced similar posturing in military organizations. David Drake and Joe Haldeman have excelled at creating fictional soldiers who’ve been there and done that and weren’t afraid of anything. John Dos Passos proved to be a master at representing the gallows humor associated with war in Three Soldiers.

  All this is hypermasculinism.

  Combatants have been puffing out their chests and laughing at danger for thousands of years, even if it was merely a method to keep them from going mad. So it wasn’t far-fetched that my fictional SEALs might not be as afraid as their author had the potential of becoming.

  That day, the second explosion never came. But later in the week, I awoke early in the morning to the Big Voice once more telling us again to Shelter in Place. I checked my weapon and my door and lay in bed listening to the sounds of RPGs. I counted ten of them before I fell back asleep.

  That afternoon, I postured with my coworkers. We joked. We talked about how many of the rocket-propelled grenades we’d heard. I made a crack about falling asleep. We were hypermasculine. We were as brave as my fictional SEALS, but we’d only discovered this bravery because we’d found a way to fill the fearful silence with our own laughter.

  I’ve spent twenty-nine years in military service, but this is my first real war. I changed entire passages in the novel during my edits, something I wouldn’t have done had I not been here in Afghanistan. I’m already thinking about the next one. My idea of fear and my understanding of Hemingway’s hypermasculinism has changed. No, that’s not right. I’ve been changed by them. Sometime during the silence I became a different writer. I learned a little bit more about fear than I should have, hopefully enough to fill my work with a better understanding of what it is that allows men and women to survive the insanity of war.

  * * *

  Notes from the Author: I still think of the Big Voice now and then. I remember the feeling of hearing explosions and gunfire and knowing people were dying. It’s a terrible feeling. The only worse thing is to see it in the flesh, to be a part of it. Of course if you hear it and see it long enough you can become desensitized. By the time I left Kabul, I’d barely even notice the sounds, rolling over in my sleep as if it were a dream. But of course it wasn’t. Explosions happened. People died. And I slept.

  On Tranquility Tides I Ride

  For Brian Keene

  Prologue

  IRAQ 2006. Four years into the Iraq War and three thousand U.S. service men and women will have been killed in Iraq. Sectarian violence increases as Iraqis fight Iraqis. By the end of the year more than thirty-five thousand Iraqis will be dead. By March, more than three hundred mysterious bodies are found in and around Bagdad, many of them headless, all of them tortured. Suicide bombings continue, IEDs are more prevalent, and for the infantrymen commanded to walk the streets and play at being policeman, life is a revolving hell.

  – 1 –

  NATHAN’S CELL PHONE vibrated with another SMS from his brother, Cal. He couldn’t look at it. Not now. Instead, he drifted on the cool blue water of the Olympic-sized swimming pool in the back-yard of Saddam’s captured Sammarah Palace. His skin tingled along the line where air met water. He stared skyward, gazing at the wide full moon above him. Here in Iraq, he was able to make out more detail than he was used to in his native home of Southern California. He could clearly see the undulations of the Moon’s valleys and mountains. The wrinkled ridges and scarps were like puckered scars. Copernicus Crater was a great wound on the upper third.

  But his gaze passed these by as he searched and cataloged the many marias, or seas of the moon. Mare Anguis. Mare Crisium. Mare Nubium. Mare Ingenii. Maria Tranquillitatis. So many times, as he lay atop his surfboard just off Dana Point, too tired to surf, too wired to leave, his brother would tell him of these special places of the moon. At first Nathan had used their scientific names, the words arcane and magical to his young ears, as if by speaking them he was conjuring some tidal spell. But as time progressed, Nathan learned to know them by their common names, just as he would a friend. The Sea of Serpents. The Sea of Crisis. The Sea of Clouds. The Sea of Cleverness. The Sea of Tranquility. And all the rest.

  His phone buzzed again.

  “Most people spend their days oblivious,” Cal was fond of saying. “They think everything happens just so. They don’t realize that without the moon, our seas would be great stagnating pools of salt.”

  And after surfing for a time, they’d drift and stare at the celestial body. If they were lucky, the clouds would part and one of the seas of the moon would be revealed. There was an indisputable magic when that happened, floating in one sea and staring upwards and another.

  “Just as the moon creates the tides here on Earth, we create the tides for the seas of the moon,” Cal had once said.

  “But there are no tides on the moon,” Nathan remembered saying. “Those aren’t really even seas.”

  “Hush your mouth, Little Bro,” said Cal, turning serious. “You have to pay attention to the seas of the Moon. The Earth and the Moon are locked in a very special relationship, Natty. Look to it and you’ll see.”

  Nathan put the phone on the edge of the pool, rolled off the float and slid into the water. He sunk slowly to the bottom and hung there as he cried. His tears mixed with the wa
ter. He sobbed, his shoulders hunching to hold him down.

  His brother had died yesterday. The company commander had called him into his make-shift office yesterday afternoon and told him the grim details. The words undertow, rip tide, and drowned kept swirling about in the bubbling surf wash of Nathan’s memories as he envisioned the long lean form of his older brother in his red wetsuit carving madly across a wave. They loved to surf at night. They loved to surf the storms. They’d never been afraid to die. If anything, they’d been afraid to live without the possibility of surfing. Most certainly, they’d never been afraid of the water.

  His brother had surfed for thirty years and other than a broken ankle and a hundred or so bruises, nothing bad had ever happened. Nathan couldn’t help but wonder how he’d died. He couldn’t help but wonder that if he’d been there, his brother might have lived. He also couldn’t figure out why he was still getting texts from his dead brother.

  Nathan pushed off from the gold tiles lining the bottom of the pool. When he made the surface he gasped for air. He tried not to think of the moon and what it reminded him of, but the images didn’t stop. His jaw clenched, he swallowed hard. He wanted a beer. He wanted a margarita. Hell, he wanted anything other than the nothing taste of bottled water and the grit of desert sand between his teeth.

  He pulled himself to the edge of the pool and picked up the phone. He dialed up the SMS. It was a picture. He opened it and watched his brother appear on his phone, standing beside a palm tree giving him the double shaka and a smile.

  Gunshots rang out from beyond the security wall on the western perimeter of the Morale Welfare and Recreation compound. The thak-thak-thak of enemy AK-47s were answered eagerly by the thunka thunka of 50 Caliber machine guns. For several seconds each sound debated, and then finally, with some sputtering, the fifty cal won out.

  He checked who the text was from and confirmed it was from his brother. It was the third such message he’d received, each with a different picture. He did what he’d done before. He returned the call, only to find that the number he’d just received the SMS from rang and rang and went to voicemail. And there a voice from the grave greeted him—Hi, this is Cal. If you’re hearing this, I’m off surfing. Hang tight while I hang ten. I’ll talk back when I’m done. Laters.

  – 2 –

  WHY DON’T YOU join up with me? Nathan asked his brother.

  I got something against killing people.

  I do too, but I want to serve my country.

  Then serve. Don’t drag me into it.

  So you’ve decided?

  This is your war, Cal said, pointing towards the waves. Mine is out there.

  – 3 –

  NATHAN HAD DROWNED his sorrows in the pool as best he could, but now it was time to get back to work. Staff Sergeant Nathan Johnson had a squad to lead. Sooner or later they’d be asked to go out on patrol. He didn’t want anyone else to lead his men.

  After showering, he got his gear together. Checking out of the MWR area around the palace, took a few moments, but once he’d paid his bill, they let him leave. It was a HWMMV ride and three hours before he returned to Victory Base. They checked his pass at the gate, then let him enter. He hopped a golf cart to company headquarters, where he immediately went in to see the first sergeant.

  “You got your head clear?” Top Nugent asked. He didn’t look up from his duty roster, but gestured with a hand holding a pen for Nathan to sit in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

  Nathan sat, removed his helmet and placed it by the M4 on the floor beside the chair. “Clear as it’s gonna be, Top.”

  “You and your brother were close, I take it?”

  “None closer.”

  “Why didn’t you join together?”

  “He didn’t want to kill people.”

  The First Sergeant looked up and chewed on the end of his pen. “Shit, Johnson. None of us want to kill people. They call those sorts of people murderers. We’re soldiers. We only kill if we have to.”

  Nathan seemed to think about the words for a moment. Then finally, “I don’t think he appreciated the distinction.” Changing the subject, “We got a mission coming up?”

  The First Sergeant made a face and started to shake his head.

  “Come on, Top. I need to get out there. Staying in here gives me too much time to think.”

  “Maybe thinking is what you need.”

  Nathan shook his head. “It’s the last thing I need.”

  Top Nugent reached across his desk and pulled a blue folder out from beneath a Styrofoam food container and a Road and Track magazine. “Read this. Current intel on the buildings just north. We’ve been getting potshots from mortars. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be sending out squads. If you’re up to it, your squad might as well be one of them.”

  “We’re ready. Queue us up, Top.”

  The first sergeant nodded as he wrote on his duty roster. “You’re team’s leaving at noon tomorrow for a six hour patrol. Mission brief will be at 1000 hours.”

  Nathan grabbed his helmet and his weapon and stood. “Thanks, Top.”

  The First Sergeant grimaced. “You want to thank me, then you and your men come back alive.”

  – 4 –

  NATHAN OPENED THE door to the squad room and was greeted by an assault of wet underwear to the face.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Oh shit, it’s Sarge,” Petey’s voice crowed.

  Nathan took a step back and peeled a pair of wet underwear from his chin strap. He scanned the room with narrowed eyes. Five of his six soldiers were climbing to their feet, fear and embarrassment laced on each of their faces.

  Petey stood first, all hundred and thirty pounds of him shooting to attention, his face rigid with shock. Although the Kansas City boy had an easy smile, terror lived equally in his expressions; a comment perhaps on where he came from and what he was escaping.

  Darnell Watkins got to his feet second. From Detroit, he was the eternal optimist. But the look on his face said Abandon all hope ‘cause we just fucked up.

  Smittie, Boots and Frisbee stood next, each of them in a sad state of dress.

  The sixth member of Nathan’s musketeers was missing.

  “Where’s Skinny?”

  “Here, Sarge,” said a tall lanky kid with a western accent. Like a strand of barbed wire in the wind, he slid by Nathan and into the room. “I think they were expecting me, Sarge.”

  “They fucking better have been expecting you, Private.” Nathan removed his helmet and tossed it on his bunk by the door. “Which one of you ass clowns came up with this bright idea?”

  They all looked at each other, then as one, they raised their hands. They might be ass clowns, but they were his ass clowns. He’d taught them the idea of shared responsibility a while ago, making each of them read Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers. All for one and one for all. Their motto had kept them alive, just as it had now. After all, he couldn’t kill all of them. Even if he wanted to.

  “Private Watkins, get this cleaned up.”

  “Uh, that’s Sergeant Watkins, Sarge.”

  “A sergeant wouldn’t have let that shit happen, now would he?”

  Watkins shook his head sadly. “A good sergeant would have stopped it before it started,” he added.

  “You want me to treat you like a sergeant, then you have to earn it.” Nathan put his hands on his hips and took in his motley crew. “Saddest collection of ass clowns I’ve ever seen, don’t you think, Watkins?”

  “Absolutely.” Watkins straightened and turned to the others. “You heard the staff sergeant. Get your asses in gear and clean this shit up.”

  Nathan grabbed his helmet, and left. They didn’t need his attention. He headed for the Exchange, where a barber shop was set up beside a coffee shop. The line for haircuts was shorter, so he stood in this one, his eyes
downcast so he wouldn’t have to make conversation.

  He’d been in line about five minutes when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He tried to ignore it, which was hard. Having a phone was off limits. He’d worked out a deal with Top Nugent that he could have his, but it wasn’t something he should let other people know about. The com guys had reestablished much of Bagdad’s cell service. With his international sim card, it was easy to talk to the states. Except that hardly anyone else in country was able to do what he could do.

  “You gonna answer your pocket or is that an egg timer?” a haggard Master Sergeant asked, standing in line behind him.

  “It’s an egg timer,” Nathan said, glancing at the line, then peeling away. He made his way down the concourse, past the post office where soldiers were busy sending home packages of Iraqi swag. He eventually found a corner. Turning to conceal his movement, he pulled his phone from his pocket, noted the picture of his brother waving double shakas and toggled the message.

  What’s up, bro? Kill anyone lately?

  Nathan’s gut tightened. He re-read the text, hearing his brother’s voice. It was absolutely something he’d say. But it couldn’t be him. It must be one of his friends deciding to play a practical joke. What a fucking joke.

  Nathan hurried out the door and found his way to a long row of light blue porta-potties. He jerked open the door, made sure the seat was down, then sat, locking the door to give him privacy. He was only vaguely aware of the stench and heat through the anger that had been growing. He pulled out his phone and called his brother’s number. Once again it went to voicemail.