Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  A light goes on in my brain as I cannot help wondering again (more seriously) if DeMarcus Owens came carrying into Germany in a personal fantasy of needing, as a dismount scout, to be ever ready to do battle? Not a gangbanger at all but an immature warrior-to-be?

  I think about it, and don’t think so. A shank is a street weapon, and everything about him said he was a thug out of his element in the army, a gangbanger out to take on not the enemy but fellow soldiers from whom he meant to steal, persons whose throats, as he made clear, he is prepared to cut in the interest of having his way. “Cut your throat, motherfucker!” Issuing the warning to me because I happened to be the one who threw his dumb shank onto the Autobahn!

  At the same time…there’s nothing logical either about a gangbanger choosing the army or the army taking him in. Maybe I’ve been wrong about him. Could it be that he’s a childish soldier who brought along the only weapon he ever learned to respect? But what of his language: “Cut your throat, motherfucker”?

  Just like that, doubt re-floods my mind in awareness that a dismount scout with the mind of a twelve-year-old has carried a weapon into Germany, where, as I’ve been educated by comic books, Nazis might seem to be a lingering force. The problem is that I know I might have been charged with that kind of thinking at age twelve. Carrying a shank. Fantasizing about taking out Hitler or Himmler or Goebbels.

  My thoughts trouble me. The possibility that I’m wrong puts a bug in my ear I’d like to have left behind, just like I’d like to have done with DeMarcus Owens. If I was wrong in the truck, if he was operating under a fantasy of heroism and vigilance, however childish, I’ll have to apologize for tossing his shank, explain my misreading, and hope that we can go on in peace.

  How to find out? I don’t believe I can ask, for there are no words possible that would allow him to admit a truth of the kind. Was he dreaming of heroism? Wouldn’t he tell me to go fuck myself? Was he armed at Knox, before he knew of Germany? Above all, in threatening to cut my throat, he gave no sign that he was preparing to take on the comic book villains of a childish mind.

  How to shake him as a threat that I wish would just go away? In reality, he’s here and presents a danger with which I’ll have to live. Which I attempt at once to do by getting caught up enough in practicing loading commands to forget about him. As midday chow is served to the full squadron in a training exercise for mess hall personnel, I look up, however, from a food line next to garbage cans of hot water in which to rinse mess gear and see him two yards away, glaring at me.

  My inital thought: If carrying was his childish fantasy of heroism, shouldn’t he be over his desire by now to cut my throat? On a brash impulse to resolve things, I say, “Hey, man, still carrying?” My greeting is friendly enough to trigger a grin–if he’s quick enough and willing–but what I see is a sneer, as if I just committed a foolish, cowardly act. Passing nearby, he smirks, acts as if he’s scored points as he utters with venom, “Watch yo back, bitch! Ain’t forgot you disrespecting me.”

  His new threat startles me, to tell the truth. How to be a good soldier in Germany, and to defend myself if I need to be watching my back all the time?

  As the day unfolds and a hundred of us fill a hut for a lecture on night firing, we hear from a training sergeant that as new people out of tank school we should do fine at Graf…had better do fine if we don’t want to be reassigned as mess hall dishwashers. My thoughts remain on my back, on who is behind me, on that certain dismount scout being brazen enough to go for my throat with some newly fashioned shank or switchblade he’s carrying in his boot.

  Yet again I tell myself to forget it. Gangbangers may be dumb, but they’re not that dumb. If a gangbanger is what he is, and not an immature child. Attacking me isn’t something he’ll try in the presence of other soldiers, not to the tune of an NCO talking about keeping in top physical shape if we mean to remain in armored cav as front-line soldiers.

  In a big shed where our mud-bellies are parked, maybe sixty of us new arrivals sit in folding chairs as a training sergeant says more about our mission. He explains that during any given year we’ll go on three unannounced overnight alerts and four announced month-long field exercises when we’ll take our mud-bellies on flat-bed railcars as part of our training. He has us know that it’s no small deal to load 30-ton Bradleys and 60-ton M1A1s onto railcars. Yet again, we’re told that as tankers we’ll need to remain in top physical shape. There’ll be push-ups and sit-ups and more two-mile runs with full field packs and assault rifles than we’ll want to remember. Myself, I have to say, I find the prospect of being in top shape appealing, though I may change my mind when we get into two-mile runs with forty pounds on our backs, plus gas masks, helmets, assault rifles in hand like infantry. All for when we get flushed from our tanks, which will happen whether we like it or not.

  By the way, Professor, do you like this steno pad in place of sheets of paper? I like keeping a journal (your idea!) and find the pads easier to use and mail, rather than having them stacked in my wall locker during inspections.

  Concerning our training, word is we’ll have to drive, load, fire every mud-belly weapon until we can move in an M1A1 in darkness and qualify on weapons in our sleep, which the training sergeant says we’ll be ordered to do without advance notice. Awakened, ordered to tanks and to fire, all within minutes. At Graf we’ll have to fire tank tables as individuals and as crews, and show a capacity for teamwork. At Hohenfels we’ll have to take the commander’s seat and traverse water obstacles, climb steps, banks, curves. Every last one of us, at the risk of being scrubbed from armored cav, will have to master backing our mud-belly onto a car at the railhead. The sergeant says it’s how we’ll do moves in battle, long or short, if the shit ever hits the fan. Rail-loading a 60-ton Abrams with a German Bahnmeister measuring the precise amount of tread overhanding the sides will make men of boys, he keeps saying.

  What we don’t have to worry about, we keep hearing, no matter that it makes up much of our training, is border duty. Not with the Wall down now and Germany re-unified. Most training sergeants don’t buy the rumors about Kuwait and believe we need to remain qualified in personal weapons and maps and tactics because border duty is what made 2nd Cav one of the best prepared of all American units. Hardcore vets say the colonel isn’t about to let our training slide. Border duty made 2nd Cav what it is today, gave it creative leaders and fine-tuned tankers, and there’s no way the edge is going to be lost.

  I’ll say this: If anybody thinks this is the same army that was chased out of Vietnam, they’ll be surprised. The NCOs are smart, the mud-bellies are state-of-the art, the morale and motivation are high. Pity an enemy force, you have to think, if it has 2nd Cav unleashing its power.

  Train, train, train is all we do. Preparing for Graf, every soldier has to qualify on the simulators, some of us twice, once with a TC as a pair–commander and gunner–and once on our own, as if the TC is dead or disabled. “Use the simulators for motivating your candy asses and sign up for practice times to sharpen your skills,” the training sergeant keeps saying. “Simulators will be open for business day and night with Graf and Hohenfels coming up.”

  Myself, I’m fine with this. The gangbanger has been out of sight and mostly out of mind, training elsewhere with other dismount scouts. At the same time the training sergeant calls me aside and says, “Lieutenant says if you don’t hack it as a gunner on the simulator, don’t sweat it. You’ll be reassigned to another vehicle as loader before we go to the field, to avoid any embarrassment.”

  Embarrassment? For me? The lieutenant? “Don’t worry, Sarge,” I say. “I’ll qualify.”

  It’s then that the platoon sergeant calls a sit-down and explains something many of us have yet to learn. “Everyone in 2nd Cav,” he says. “When you salute you include a greeting. Junior soldier says ‘Always ready.’ Senior soldier returns, ‘Toujours pret.’ That way the colonel himself is the only one in the regiment who always says ‘Toujours pret.’ This is okay, because the colo
nel is a standup guy. Understood?”

  “Understood!” we call in return.

  It’s in that moment, to my surprise, that an emotion grips me. Esprit de corps, I guess. It’s hard to explain. I know only, again, gangbanger notwithstanding, that there is cohesion, that the training is making us into a well-oiled machine, that any enemy taking us on will regret it.

  The lieutenant says, “Murphy, I think you’ll do fine. You don’t, it’ll be okay. No big deal.”

  “I’ll do okay, sir,” I tell him.

  “Bring that swagger,” he says.

  “Don’t worry, sir. Will do.”

  So I hope, I tell myself. Word has it that some soldiers are good in practice and sort of freeze when the ammo is real. Not me, I trust, knowing there’s no way to know until the time comes…if it ever does.

  In the gunner’s seat one night in the simulator, fixing forehead to the headrest, eyes to the screen, hands to the grips, right forefinger siding the trigger, I call for a program to roll. I’ve gotten in numerous practice sessions and am checking the full gunner’s sequence. There’ll be no three-plane movement this time, and no likely need, I trust, for a sickness bag. The SFC running the computer panels instructs me as always to call “Identify–on the way!” when I’m ready to fire like a gunner in an M1A1. My method of assuming focus is to lift slightly from the seat of my pants, to acknowledge that I’m being graded, to take a breath, lock in my focus, urge myself to be into it, and call, “Ready, Sarge!”

  The program starts. A stream of images flows over the screen and as I trace with the crosshairs, I call, “On the way!” and squeeze the trigger. Re-positioning, I call and fire again! Re-positioning, I call and fire again! Bypassing friendlies and slipping like a fish through the quickly flowing images. Taking out one target after another and slipping between obstacles and friendlies. Confidence rises within and I feel good, in control, knowing that I’m performing well in a peekaboo task I mastered in the ring and at armor school, a task for which I have a knack. I had not known, not until the first sergeant told me so, that I was a fast gun, that I could be a top gun, though elsewhere in my mind I’ve known it all along and have been waiting for the army to confirm my particular talent with test scores by letting me fire at targets as a way of making it real.

  “Too good to be true…you fired this program before?” the SFC wants to know, coming from the chamber of consoles and instrument panels. “Let’s try another program. Gonna feed in something more difficult.”

  Let her ride, is my thought as I settle into the gunner’s position, then re-raise my butt and re-psych my focus. As the program unrolls faster with more complex hills, friendlies, obstacles, I flow with it, calling “On the way!” Taking out one target after another, I work inside-out, then outside-in as we learned at Knox, letting no enemy escape. It occurs to me that my hand-eye from the ring is natural, a secret weapon, a skill on which I can rely if I’m going to confirm the lieutenant’s intuition in making me alternate gunner sight unseen. Bent into it, reading the images, calling orders in the firing sequence, I deliver lethal punches like relentless jabs, crosses, uppercuts.

  Alas, I have a gift; I’m a natural gunner.

  The SFC reappears and I know from his grin that I’ve scorched the challenging program. “Man, are you for real? Where did you come from, the wild west?”

  I struggle to be cool but gurgle with happiness as the sergeant questions me. “You’re new in Geo, right? Alternate gunner? Got the basics, that’s for sure. I’m going to run something that will bring you down to earth. What’s your motion sickness tolerance? You ever buckled? What’s your name again?”

  “I been good with motion sickness,” I say and tell him my name.

  “Barf bag’s right there. Make any messes, you get to clean ’em up.”

  Never having been seasick or airsick, and not having eaten since evening chow three hours earlier, I suffer no sickness in the program he runs. Far from sick, I continue to feel ever more aggressive, thrilled to discover that I have a gift, pleased with the pay-off at last upon the hundreds of hours over five years given to hand-eye, shadow boxing, bag work, sparring, facing opponents in the ring where all focus had to become automated, rapid fire, coordinated. Zap-zap-zap!

  Urban targets roll over the screen. Riding the gunner’s position like a man possessed sticking to a bucking bronco, I take out all that I can while remaining unaffected by motion sickness. Far from hitting every target, I take out maybe one in three as enemy armor turns corners at high speed, disappears, reappears, zips between friendlies and barriers as I call “On the way!” and “Whoops, took out a friendly!” in taking out all that I can.

  When the bucking bronco has run its course the SFC comes around with his clipboard and pulls up a folding chair to talk. “You’re a hell of a gunner,” he says. “I’ll be telling Lieutenant Kline that Billy the Kid is in town! Tell me your method. Do anything special? We’re always out to learn new tricks. What’s your secret in shooting so accurately and consistently?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Hell yes, I want to know!”

  I have little wish to confess having trained so long in a gym, as if I wasted my early adolescence working on speed bags and sparring, combining hand, eye, and head movement to pop rapid-fire blows over and over and over.

  “I get into it,” I say, trying to respond with seriousness. “I did some boxing, and the hand-eye is similar. I don’t quite sit on the seat. Try to use my whole upper body and have my hands move in concert with my eyes rather than pausing to tell my hands what to do. Does that make sense? Mind, hands, eyes moving as one? Not sitting. Being hyper focused? You know? Like typing as fast on a keyboard as you can but continuing to think. Does that make sense?”

  “I’ll be talking to the range officer. He’ll wanna interview you. Tell you this: However you do it, you’re good! Fast guns come along every once in a while. I’ve seen some great ones, believe me. Have to want to do it… as I can tell you do. Perform with ammo like you have on the simulator, Ivan better watch his Rooski ass, I’ll tell you that. These morons in Kuwait…though I don’t think there’s much chance we’ll be shipping armor from Germany to the Persian Gulf! Pity the bastards if we do, is my feeling, because I’ll tell you, we are loaded for bear. Equipment and technology are surreal. 2nd Cav…is far and away the best I’ve seen in twenty years. Firing like you can do, you’re going to deal some big-time hurt.”

  If the gangbanger is within this 2nd Cav category as a dismount scout, I don’t know. I’ve seen him a couple times at a distance and would like to know if he’s good at what he does. Or if he remains a street punk who doesn’t perform. A street punk is what he remains to me, not an immature teenager harboring childish dreams of heroism but a thug envisioning gang life on the streets when his enlistment is up.

  Myself, looking past my lingering worry of being blindsided by him going for my throat, I remain happy. Last week the lieutenant said to me, “From what I hear, you’re making me look like a prophet.”

  When I pair with the lieutenant in the UCOFT simulator for sustainment training (TC and gunner simulating together) I score high yet again and am pleased to receive praise from the man. When we finish the ‘gate exercise,’ a TC/gunner course that includes triple motion and distances and coordinates, using all weapons, including coaxial machine gun fire and calling for high-explosive-anti-tank (HEAT) and high penetration (Sabot) rounds, and score what would earn ‘distinguished’ in the field, the lieutenant, like the range officer, says he wants to know more about my method.

  Flattered to be interviewed by these officers, coming to realize that army life in Germany exists on a more level playing field even than training in the States, I try as before to explain the total-immersion hand-eye-mind that is apparently my special gift. When I add that it’s sort of what boxers do, the Lieutenant says “I can see that,” and doesn’t press me on my past, while saying, “If we deploy to Kuwait, you need to know that Sergeant Noordw
ink may not be coming along, given his uncertain plans not to re-enlist. Also, that I’ll be putting you in for E-4 based on your shooting skill. I’ll be trying at both Graf and Hohenfels to get you more snaps. Rounds get hot, which they will, I don’t want you letting me down.”

  My only mediocre scores come on an emergency alert firing when I’m awakened from a deep sleep at midnight and told I have ten minutes to get my ass into a gunner’s seat in a simulator to return fire. Two NCOs are at my bunk, shaking me, a flashlight in my face, saying the Rooskies are coming over the hill in big numbers and I need to kick ass or die young.

  My problem, I realize as I debrief my performance later, is that I was deeply asleep. If they had shouted me out at 0200 or 0300 I think I’d have surfaced more quickly and done better. As it was, I was groggy and unprepared, not unlike situations that promised to come up on sleeping in The Claw. Jumping into fatigues and cap, jerking on and tying my boots, leaving on the run while trying yet to awaken and tune into the challenge, one shoelace flying, needing to be re-tied, I remained druggy-drowsy on plopping into the gunner’s seat, the program coming at me like a runaway train, and though I passed with an adequate score, doing as well as anyone under similar circumstances, I see, post-program, that I was out of sorts and not in focus, was sucker-punched as if on a dark street, making my method and scores suffer.

  The NCO, joining in, is not unkind. “Murphy, good to see you’re human,” he says. “Gives you something to work on before going to the field. Top guns need to push right through sleep deprivation, shake it off in seconds, enter the zone and return fire. Rooskies ever make a move, speed of response will mean life or death. You’ll figure it out. You got the fundamentals. Hang tough.”

  Rooskies or Kuwait? NCOs keep coming around to recognizing Kuwait as a possibility for combat units from Germany. Giving some added evening hours to reading in the library, I begin to see why. Every magazine and newspaper mentions Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and Kuwait. Things many of them say about Saddam’s elite forces are scary. The numbers, the weapons and ferocity. But where do they get their info? What makes them think the U.S. Army is weak? It’s not how it looks to me here in the presence of state-of- the art weapons and mud-bellies, disciplined training, alert NCOs, and commanders.