Ryan Smithson

by Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI

  Now, though, I don’t have that excuse, and she knows it.

  “It’s okay now,” she says. “You’re home.”

  “Until my next tour,” I say.

  This statement shoots straight up her spine and into her tear ducts. She sees that combat, though something that is currently far away, is still a close part of my reality. I’m still in the army. And she sees that I don’t want to talk about it. My father already knows this. He washes down some pork with a sip of beer.

  “Yeah,” says Mom. “That’s true.”

  My parents want me to open up, but being the understanding people that they are, they refuse to step any further into my minefield. I’m not sure if it’s fear of what they might find, if I’ll end up exploding. They look into my eyes and they see dark secrets. They know there are parts of me that may never come out.

  My father remembers talking to his grandfather about World War II. Gramps rarely talked about it, but when they sat in the VFW among other vets and a few beers deep, he opened up. My father loved when Gramps talked about the war. Even though the stories were thirty years old and even though it seemed to bother him sometimes to tell them, the stories were entertaining and exciting.

  My father looks at me now with that same degree of hope. The hope that I’ll loosen up and share with him what I’ve seen and what I’ve learned. Not the blood and guts; he can get that on the evening news. Dad wants to know the lessons I learned from such a unique, worldly encounter. He wants to know what I was thinking about in my bunk at night. He wants to know if I remembered the first time he took me skiing.

  “Is that what you thought about, Ryan?” he wants to ask.

  He wants to know what it feels like to attach ammunition to my chest and roll out of a gate in a cheaply armored truck. “Weren’t you scared?” He wants to understand the life of a soldier. “Is it the same as when Gramps was in the navy?”

  He steps through my minefield with these questions. Each a possible trigger. He doesn’t want to ask pointed, direct questions. But he wants to know.

  And I wish I had the strength to answer.

  Little do I know, literature is what will set me free.

  See, I’ve always seen books as an escape. I read almost every night in Iraq, because every night I tried to get away. I would lay my military flashlight across my chest. The flashlight’s red glow illuminated the pages. Up and down the light went, rising and falling with my breath.

  It would turn the white pages into a shade of dark pink. The letters would become golden brown shadows, and the words formed by the these letters would resemble something alive and moving.

  Every book was alive as I read it, lying in my sleeping bag. I wasn’t in the godforsaken Middle East fighting a war. I was in my own country: a country of the mind.

  I wasn’t a soldier, a GI Joe Schmo. I was the words on paper.

  The smell of a book is the best part of reading, because it makes the escape tangible. Each has a different aroma, and the smell always seems to reflect the story. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne smells like cold metal and sea salt. A faint aroma of old cigarette smoke and playing cards rises from the pages of Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King. And even in the blazing hot sun, I could smell the pure white chill of the Arctic as I turned the pages of Deception Point by Dan Brown.

  Each book provided an escape. Each in its own way reminded me that there was much more to life that I had yet to experience. Each gave me hope and faith that I would experience more in my life.

  High school defines literature with terminology: metaphors, similes, imagery.

  But experience defines literature as more than words on paper. Not just escape, but more important, words that have the power to heal.

  I am in my second semester of college before I even think about writing down my experiences. For a whole year I’ve avoided talking about the year I spent at war. And this means I’ve hidden from writing about it.

  In English Composition II my professor gives us an essay assignment. It’s a creative writing piece in which we have to describe a time when we saw something destroyed. I sit in my seat looking over the handout she gave us. It’s printed on yellow paper.

  “Minimum three pages,” it says. “Double spaced, Times New Roman, 12-pt. font.”

  I read and reread the last line.

  “…saw something destroyed.”

  The phrase sticks out at me like a knife. Like the barrel of a hand-me-down Kalashnikov from the Cold War. Like Haji trying to kill me with it.

  Something destroyed. That’s exactly what happened in Iraq. The bombs and blood and guts, sure. But more than that. It was my destruction.

  So I sit down to write a three-page paper about one of my missions in Iraq. My fingers move across the keyboard in the community college library faster than I’ve ever seen them do before. The story just pours out of me. No effort at all, like the story was just waiting to be told.

  Pausing for a breath, I scroll back through what I just wrote. It’s over twelve pages long. And I feel like I could write two hundred more.

  Over the next week or so I edit and re-edit the essay. Leaving just the meat of the story, I finally cut it down to eight pages. But still, something’s not quite right. I read it over again, trying to find what’s missing.

  Then it hits me. I need a theme. I need to show what was really destroyed. Not just the bombs. Not just the death. I need to show what was destroyed within me.

  I realize that it’s the innocence of my childhood that was really lost over there in the vile, churning stomach of Iraq. And it’s the soldiers with whom I lost it who really understand.

  So I weave a nursery rhyme into the essay. I modify the nursery rhyme so it fits with the theme of war, the theme of Iraq. And I call the piece “The Town That Achmed Built.”

  My professor reads our first drafts and makes comments.

  “Ryan,” she says to the class typing away in the computer lab. “Your turn.”

  I get up from my computer and go to her desk.

  “Is eight pages too long?” I ask.

  “No, it’s fine,” she says, taking the essay. “Have a seat.”

  She begins reading the piece. I see her back straighten when she reads the phrase, “dismembered people.”

  When she’s done reading, she places the paper on her desk and says, “Ryan, this is amazing.”

  “Thank you,” I say. She doesn’t even know it, but she’s the first person to read it.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” she says, “are you seeking any sort of therapy?”

  I shake my head. Then I point to the essay.

  “That’s my therapy,” I say.

  She smiles.

  “At the end of the semester I have the students take turns reading one of their essays,” she says. “Would you mind reading this?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, butterflies suddenly flying around inside my stomach.

  “Think about it,” she says.

  That night I give the essay to Heather. She reads it, tears up, and says thank you.

  “It means a lot to me, Ryan,” she says. “That you shared that with me.”

  I nod, and she hugs me.

  “Well,” I say. “Sharing stories is the point of having them.”

  At the end of the semester, when my turn comes around, I read “The Town That Achmed Built” to a class full of college kids. Before the first paragraph is over I’m sniffling and talking through tears.

  I take a deep breath and look to my professor. She nods her head, urging me to continue.

  While I read, I can’t look up from the page. I have to stop every few paragraphs and wipe tears or take a controlled breath. It’s not so much that the story is too sad. It’s just that reading it in front of people is overwhelming. And there’s this tremendous weight like my heart is being squeezed by my lungs. Think of a boa constrictor stuck in your chest.

  But I notice with every page the weight lifts a little. Think of a boa co
nstrictor letting go, wriggling away to find an easier meal.

  Ever wonder if there are little cancer cells just growing and multiplying inside of you? Ever wonder if you’re stronger than they are?

  That’s what reading this story is like.

  I look up and the circle of college kids is staring at me, jaws hanging open. None of them even knew I was in the army before today. All at once, in their eyes, there’s understanding. Respect. Faith. One of them raises his hand.

  “I just want to say,” he starts, “that you gave me a whole different perspective on what’s going on over there.”

  And I look to my professor. She nods her head and smiles at me. With her eyes she says, “I told you it was a good idea to read it out loud.”

  As class dismisses, people stop to shake my hand. They thank me. These college students are actually grateful for what I did.

  It’s funny, but all I did besides sit in a dump truck during the ambush was write a story about it. It’s funny, but the story is what matters. The story is what changes, at least for a moment, the way these people feel. And what an empowering sensation it is to share it.

  After the semester ends, with my professor’s encouragement, I begin writing about all the experiences I’ve had as a soldier. She helps me edit the pieces, send them to small journals for publication, and eventually, to organize them into a book.

  Each piece I write I give to Heather. Then to my parents. Slowly I feel comfortable talking about Iraq. And slowly, the more I talk about it, the more I realize that it’s the words that save me.

  They are only words, words we use every day. But they are the words of a heart, the silhouettes of a generation. They are my silhouettes. In between these words, there’s the resilient silence of humanity. This is my silence.

  THE INNOCENT

  While I’m in college, I get a job at a before-and after-school program for kids. It’s a perfect college job because the hours are in the morning and afternoon. I can go to class in between, get enough hours to afford my bills, and still have the nights and weekends. Not to mention we get paid for snow days.

  Today we take a trip to the New York State Museum in Albany.

  The ten children for whom I’m responsible are walking (single file, using inside voices) through the carpeted, snaking hallways.

  We’ve passed the fake Iroquois Indians picking fake vegetables and warding off fake woolly mammoths. We’ve also walked through the woodland creatures exhibit. There, fake bobcats perch on a fake rock. And the rack from the fake moose epitomizes the grandeur of the Adirondack region. In another exhibit we’ve already passed fake ducks are split in half by a sheet of glass, apparently the surface of some imaginary lake.

  We’re in another exhibit now, a new exhibit, one that is anything but fake. But it’s the only one I wish was. I wish I didn’t understand this exhibit the way I do. I wish there wasn’t a reason for this exhibit.

  I wonder how in the world five years have passed already. How in the world did this crumpled piece of scrap metal go from iron ore in the ground to an I beam in a skyscraper to a display under glass in the New York State Museum?

  This is my second time viewing this exhibit. I cried the first time I saw it, but today I have to retain my composure. I’m in charge of ten kids.

  Leading kids is often like leading a platoon. I have to be sharp, decisive, and one step ahead. I have to be confident, admirable, and humble. I have to be respectful, compassionate, and disciplined. I have to be funny. I have to be strong. Or they’ll walk all over me. So I don’t cry.

  I hold it in and supervise the kids as they roam around the room full of rusty bolts and torn airplane tires and a torched fire truck and quotes from George W. Bush and the American flag. It’s the American flag, the flag that is tattered, stained, and outlined with frayed edges. But it’s the flag, our flag, and it still flies, even if it’s no longer watching over Manhattan.

  The flag, like everything else in this room, seems to be smoking. The kids don’t see the smoke. They are the innocent. But I see the smoke as if I’m running from it.

  I’m reading a plaque that lies next to a smoking firefighter’s helmet. It explains how the brave men and women of Engine such-and-such took such-and-such casualties. There’s a word I hate: casualty. Why is it casual?

  I stop reading because the smoke fills my eyes.

  A little girl is standing next to me. Emma is in kindergarten this year. She’s “one of the good ones.” Her parents are funny and smart and friendly. They take the time to show Emma and her brother, Peter, the important things in life. Emma loves to tap-dance and go to Tae Kwon Do practice. She loves to color and to play kickball. She loves to laugh and dance and play dress-up. She is the innocent.

  She looks up at me with giant brown eyes. She seems confused. There are other families here, walking among our field trip group, and they seem to choke on the smoke like I do. But Emma’s not choking.

  She looks at the yellow fireman’s hat next to me and then at the flag. Then she looks back to me.

  “What happened, Ryan?” she asks.

  The way she says my name breaks my heart. It tears my heart right in half, because I quickly do the math. Emma is barely five. She was born after the Towers fell.

  Until now I considered these kids part of my generation. But they are not. My generation has already lost its innocence. I remember exactly when it happened, actually. The very day. The exact time is written right here, in fact, on plaques in the New York State Museum.

  I wonder how I can retain Emma’s innocence, how I can protect her generation. I cannot.

  “Some very bad men attacked our country, Emma. Down in New York City,” I say. “They don’t like our country so they killed innocent people.”

  “But why?” she says. She looks around. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I say.

  Then we stand for a minute, Emma contemplating how humans kill one another to prove points. Me still trying to figure that out myself.

  “You know how the other kids talk about me being in Iraq, Emma?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “This is why I went.”

  But really, if you ask me why I did it, why I volunteered, why I ran toward the danger when so many of my generation ran away, I’ll rummage through an old army foot locker. I’ll dig around between the handwritten letters and the Desert Eagle flip knife. I’ll move the Army Commendation Medal aside. I’ll even dig past the folded American flag Heather would have gotten if I died.

  Then I’ll find Bazoona Cat.

  I’ll hold it for a moment, petting its soft fur, remembering the little boy who taught me Arabic. And then I’ll place it in your hand.

  You’ll look at it with a curious sort of disgust. It is rather ugly. That’s the first thing you’ll notice. All its sentiment means nothing to you, and you’ll hand it back like spoiled fruit.

  I’ll just smile because I know how much you can’t understand, no matter how many words I use to describe it. But inside my heart will ache. I’ll give up trying to explain the creature and just pet its soft fur.

  You’ll wonder how I can chalk up my involvement in the war to this hairy, gross little object. You’ll wonder how I can justify everything that happened to me in Iraq with this stupid little rabbit’s foot that resembles a cat. You’ll wonder if I heard you right the first time.

  “Why’d you do it?” you’ll ask.

  I’ll hold up Bazoona Cat and say, “This is why.”

  GHOSTS OF WAR

  It’s not until I come home from combat that I realize what the drill sergeants were trying to tell us when they said, “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.”

  It’s something so easy to write as words on paper, but it means nothing until you’ve seen it.

  Without faith God is nothing, Allah is nothing, Buddha is nothing.

  Without faith we are nothing.

  Flying down a desert road from Ku
wait to Iraq, I watch humanity’s evil in the form of children begging for food. Sitting in a dump truck in downtown Samarra, I see evil littering the sky with pieces of children. Walking to chow in Abu Ghraib, it’s airburst mortars; flying down a torn-up dirt road, it’s fake explosives. As I salvage parts from a Humvee or stand for taps at Joe Nurre’s funeral or stand in front of a fence at Ground Zero, I cannot escape it.

  I am human. I am evil. But I am also beautiful. I can do great things, but I can do evil things. I can save myself. And I can save the world.

  “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.”

  I never once stand in a foxhole in Iraq. But I see people die, I know of people’s deaths, and I understand that it’s something caused by the hand of another human being. I don’t know if I’ll be alive tomorrow.

  All I know is that humanity’s evil exists. I know of humanity’s beauty. And the only thing of which I can be sure is that there is something more.

  The bullets fly, the mortars fall, people die, evil triumphs, and it is all somehow beautiful. Not on the surface. It’s ugly at face value. It’s terrifying and horribly ugly.

  But underneath and between the lines, that’s where it’s glorious. It’s magnificent and perfect there, this place that has no words, this place that is beyond. This place where things are more than they seem but cost less than they’re worth.

  This place is beautiful. This place is war.

  War has been glorified in our culture, and for so long I assumed it was a sick obsession with death and evil. After seeing war, after experiencing it, I know how much deeper it goes.

  War is hell, but war is also paradise. War encompasses all that we are, all that we were, and all that we will be. I look at war, my war, and I see past the blood and guts and bullets and bombs.

  I see the soft things that hide inside the casings of bullets. I see the hint of light at the top of a mushroom cloud. I see the devils inside the dust. I see the hunters being hunted. And the moon dancing on waves, the sun dancing on dust.