But what does any of this have to do with the dead family, you ask? Well, nothing directly. It’s just another one of those things I’m having difficulty reconciling in my mind, I guess.
April 25, 2004
WOMEN IN THE INFANTRY
A topic of discussion that I always seem to find myself embroiled in sooner or later once people learn that I am in the Army is that of women in the infantry. My feelings on the subject are very conflicted. Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly how I feel, it’s just that I wish I could say that I felt differently.
I agree with the policy that women cannot be in the infantry.
The topic of women in the infantry is a very tricky one and is the one thing in my personal philosophy that I am sexist about. I see that there are two reasons why women are not allowed in the infantry (or most other combat arms jobs). The average grunt is fairly in touch with his primal self and therefore wants generally only two things: to fuck and to fight, in that order. And the main reason they fight is to be tough and therefore attract more women with whom they can fulfill their desire to fuck. As soon as there are any women within spittin’ distance, prime directive number one kicks in, and all things, especially job discipline, go straight to hell. Anyone who thinks this is stupid is right, but is also an idiot if he thinks this will ever change. Grunts are grunts. The thinking man finds meaning through some sort of higher pursuit. The grunt finds meaning through fucking. And if he can do some fighting between coital sessions, that’s cool too.
The second reason women are not (and should not) be in the infantry is as equally based in the primal side of human existence as the first. Women can’t do a grunt’s job worth a shit. I wish I were wrong about this because it goes against all my notions of gender egalitarianism, but it’s the truth. I have trained with women on many occasions, and I can only say that their presence completely alters the training environment. Not only are the guys distracted for reason number one, but also the intensity level of training is shot all to hell. Your average female will not push herself in training the way a man will. I’ve seen guys in training literally push themselves until they die. I saw a guy finish a PT test two-mile run then collapse and die from a burst aorta. I saw a guy march in the sun until he collapsed from heatstroke severe enough to give him brain damage. I’ve seen guys march despite broken bones, dislocated joints, and torn ligaments. Dying in training is dumb, but it is a testament to the degree to which a soldier is willing to push himself. In all my experience training with women, I’ve noticed that their commonsense gene (which guys seem to lack, thankfully for the military) kicks in and they say, “Fuck this, I’m not gonna kill myself doing this.” I’m sure there are women out there who probably are hard enough to train themselves to death, but in a society where men are raised with the incredible force of macho peer pressure, men who will push themselves like this are much easier to find than women who will.
And I haven’t even yet gotten to the fact that your average man is much physically stronger than your average female. Even if female humans were as strong as men and willing to push themselves to the same extent, there will always be Reason One. There are, like, four women at my little base. The other night, the QRF had to move out, and we couldn’t find three of our guys. We ended up leaving them, including a .50-cal gunner. Turns out they were asleep in a room with one of the girls who lives near the QRF staging area. (Note: The QRF staging area has since been relocated.)
There may be a time when these factors don’t matter as much and women will be in the infantry. In the meantime women can always join the MPs—what they call the “chick infantry.” In combat, MPs end up doing most of the same stuff as the infantry, at least in Iraq.
Other issues with women in the infantry:
menstruation and vaginal health—Living conditions can be very harsh, and having to deal with, say, a yeast infection while going without a shower for several months can be very difficult, I imagine.
rape—(especially if captured)
pregnancy—There is no time for prenatal care in the field.
breasts—If they are large enough to get in the way of wearing gear and body armor, low-crawling, and the other physicalities of soldiering, you are totally ineffective as a grunt.
I wish I had more things positive to say about women in the infantry, but there are so many things that make it not a very good idea. Women deserve equal opportunity, but equality in certain combat jobs may not make the best tactical sense.
April 28, 2004
In preparation for the scores of anticipated refugees who would flee Fallujah, our battalion recon’d an old bunker complex not far from Fallujah as a place to temporarily accommodate them. The bunkers and buildings at this complex were really spread out, more so even than the old ammo bunkers where we live. Gas masks and gas mask filter canisters were found littered everywhere. Rumor has it that the people who live in the area won’t graze their animals on the complex because when they have in the past, entire herds have gotten mysteriously ill. The buildings we cleared were very strange—incredibly high ceilings with tiled walls—and they reeked the way I would imagine old slaughterhouses reek. Outside, there were what looked like enormous pump tanks that had been ripped out of the buildings. Kirk said, “Thank god I already have kids, cuz you guys are fucked! When we get back and you guys have kids, they’re gonna be all fucked up. Ha ha!”
While we were there, a First Infantry Division guy shot himself in the foot. This was the first time I’d seen a wounded soldier firsthand. It was a little disturbing to see one of my own on the ground, bleeding. Then I got over it. We waited about thirty seconds before we started making fun of the guy. Matt treated him. He had shot himself perfectly between his fourth and fifth toes, a very lucky shot. A medevac chopper was already en route, and there was no use in canceling it, so toe-blaster got a free ride. Like any soldier, I am constantly checking to be sure my weapon is on safe. And on top of that, you should never have your finger on the trigger unless you are ready to let loose hell on bad guys. How this guy, a full-time soldier unlike us National Guard shitbags, managed to do this is embarrassing. He was a private. I felt so bad standing there, looking at him, trying to decide whether or not I should take a picture. I didn’t feel bad because he had been shot or because I was contemplating doing something in bad taste like take a photograph; I felt bad because this guy’s pain was going to last a lifetime, being a soldier who shot himself in the foot. He wasn’t even doing anything at the time. He wasn’t getting on or off a vehicle; he wasn’t running to an objective or clearing a building. He was just standing there and, BLAM, all pretense of professionalism right out the window.
Oh yeah, and another thing: This is the same complex where that Hamill guy had been held prisoner. He escaped a few days later. How cool would it have been if we had found him? It kills me that we could have; we just hadn’t gone to the building he was in.
May 2, 2004
We did a raid today. As we cleared the house, we corralled all the women and children and put them into one large room. The guy whose house it was had four wives, two of whom were pretty old and two of whom were pretty young and really attractive. The old wives were weeping, the young wives were pissed, and the kids were excited to see soldiers. It was a little comical to burst into a room to see the young boys grinning from ear to ear and with their hands in the air, like we were playing cops and robbers. I had written on my arm the phrase “Et med ded,” which is supposed to mean “Lie down.” It didn’t work. Everyone in Iraq just squats.
Raids are so strange. The first few I did, as I would perform the search of a room, I’d try to put things back in place when I was done. Then I realized how much of a waste of time this was. I was just looking for a way to ease my guilt for having invaded someone’s home. After missing a hidden weapon once that someone else found because I was being too “nice,” I decided to check my politeness at the door and search for the weapons that these guys were trying to kill us with, like I wa
s fucking supposed to. I still feel bad; I just make a bigger mess now. If this lady is sad now knowing that we’re taking away her husband and sons, she’s gonna be livid when she sees that her home looks like it got hit by a tornado. They hide the weapons pretty well, so we really have to tear things apart to find them. This house had a lot.
May 7, 2004
Since truck driver Thomas Hamill was held captive in the bunker complex on the outskirts of our area of operations (that we now refer to as the chemical plant), I suspect our battalion commander wanted to see what else was there. Recent intel intimated that chemical weapons had just been discovered there by a local. My conspiracy theory was that we had been sitting on some chemical weapons for months, and an opportune political moment awaited for some New York boys to “find” them. Most of my platoon donned their protective masks and spent the day clearing bunker after bunker, finding nothing.
Since the area where they were working is a ways from our base, a retransmission site had to be set up about midway so that communications could be maintained with our tactical operations center. My duty for the mission was to guard the retrans site, located at the top of a large underground bunker along with about a squad’s worth of men. Given that we were sitting on a bunker that was not secured in any way and was left open for anyone who might happen upon it to hole up in it, we decided it was best to clear it. All I can say is, Holy shit. This thing was enormous. It was probably the most exciting and spooky thing I’ve ever had to clear. It was completely dark, and we had to navigate through the structure entirely by flashlight. Long corridors, hundreds of rooms, massive iron doors like the kind on bank vaults. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it had been a research center of some kind. There were rooms that were most likely used to house network servers long removed by the invading force. Conduit trenches ran from room to room under removable concrete tiles, most likely used for network cables. There were a lot of small rooms that looked like they could have been offices, a lot of medium-size rooms that looked like they used to contain a lot of equipment, and a few larger rooms full of petroleum-like sludge and water (perhaps lubricant?) in the compartmental areas in the floor. This was possibly the location of some since-removed industrial equipment and machines. The main entrance into the office complex, deep within the heart of the bunker—an architectural security plan probably borrowed from the Egyptian pyramids—was where the massive metal doors were. There was an intermediate vestibule area with a small round portal one could look into or fire into should the person entering be deemed an enemy, an idea borrowed from medieval castle architecture. This structure was the kind of thing that David Macaulay would do a book on. Or better yet, it was like something created by video-game designer John Romero. I felt like I was playing Doom. I am not joking when I say that all the hours I spent pissing my life away playing Quake were actually not wasted at all. The techniques used for any first-person shooter to safely and systematically go from room to room translate over to real life in situations like this. The next time your mom lectures you about the time you waste playing Half-Life, telling you that there is no benefit whatsoever in it, tell her that if things keep going the way they have been, you’ll most likely serve time in the Army sooner or later, and being familiar with basic room-clearing concepts could save your life. But then she could just as easily explain how algebra skills are necessary to accurately call in indirect fire missions and that you should finish your homework.
We spotted some figures on the horizon. Didn’t look like enemy. Wait, it’s a bunch of kids. One of them is carrying something. They’re coming toward us, I think. Let’s see what they want.
I don’t know where these barefooted kids could have come from. There weren’t any houses for at least a couple of miles. Unbelievably, they had carried a complete tea set to greet their temporary neighbors. A pot of tea, two saucers, two small shot glass–size glasses, two small stirring spoons, and a pot of sugar, all served on a large metal platter. The tea was hot and fresh. They also brought several loaves of unleavened bread. We all squatted down, broke bread, and had a perfect Middle Eastern moment. This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen; it was sublime. Of course the whole ploy was to see what they could weasel from the soldiers, but we were happy to oblige. We dumped onto them as many MREs, bottles of water, and bags of candy that they could carry. They were tempted to leave the tea set. Then one of the girls carried it back on her head.
May 12, 2004
Today’s mission was to escort payroll money from our base to the town bank so people like the ICDC guys and the police could get paid. Iraqis have no concept of waiting in line, so the whole process was a melee. After we were done paying them, we fired a bunch of them. All this madness took the better half of the day.
While the payroll fiasco was going on inside, we stood outside to secure the building. Kids mobbed us annoyingly. They try to sell us high-quality knives and sunglasses that have fallen off Halliburton trucks or been stolen from other soldiers. I bought two DVDs with the name “Ballone” handwritten on them in black pen. Then they bugged us to give them stuff. Their English is getting better, too. “Mister, Mister, gimme gimme.” I got fed up with it and was telling one kid, “All you kids know how to say is ‘Gimme this, gimme that,’” to which he replied, “Gimme shit. You my bitch.” I was nonplussed. Another kid pointed at my chest, saying “What’s this?” Thinking he was asking me about my ammunition, I looked down and he flipped my nose. So I tried out some of the grappling moves on him we had learned at Fort Drum. This didn’t phase him, so I just kicked a few kids in the shins and threw rocks at another. Any ideas I ever had of coming back to Iraq to help with education were killed on the spot. What these kids need is a good spanking and to go to bed with no dinner. Wait, they already get that every day. What the hell am I doing messing with kids? I thought that the infantry was all about running around in the woods and trying to kill enemy soldiers, not about being made the bitch of a band of unbathed sandal-wearing eight-year-olds. When I was discussing this with one of the guys in my platoon later that night, he said, “That was your first time in town? Ha ha! I don’t mess around with the kids anymore. When we go into town, we take sling shots and paint balls. Fuck those kids. This one kid I hit was wearing a man-dress and was pissed; he thought I’d ruined it. He was yelling, ‘Fuck you! You my bitch! Suck my cock!’ but once we showed him it was paint that easily washed off, he was all ‘You my friend!’ Fucking kids.”
May 13, 2004
When we first got to Iraq, it was easy to find things to write about because everything was new. Now that we’ve gotten into a pretty good work rhythm and have captured most of the bad guys in our area, things have gotten a little routine. I look at all we do during a week and it’s more exciting than any five years of my life before Iraq, but I still can’t help but admit that I think we’re getting used to it.
A friend of Willy’s sent him the complete series Freaks and Geeks on DVD. I had to liberate those DVDs from Willy; he wouldn’t have understood suburban teen angst. I watched all eighteen episodes back to back, taking a short break in the middle to sleep for three hours and to go on a raid. It breaks my heart that something as optimistic and genuine as a show like that could be so completely dismissed by the majority of TV-watching America. Who is creating anything worthwhile anymore? We need to encourage this kind of thing, not discourage it by worshipping vapid garbage like Friends. The raid went fine, by the way.
May 25, 2004
AN IGNORAMUS ’S TIKRIT PALACE TOUR OF ART
Duality is implicit to mortality.
This is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. One of those basic but mysterious principles of life that we spend a lifetime trying to unravel, understand, then knit back into something meaningful. I love talking about duality and the math behind systems of opposition and pseudo-intellectual things of this ilk, but with most any group of people you bring this sort of thing up with you get everything from polite smiles—the same ones you’
d give a child who says he wants to be an astronaut, a fireman, and a doctor when he grows up—to simple dismissive eye-rolling. Trying to subtly segue into a dialogue about anything even remotely philosophical with an infantry platoon is an exercise in futility.
Anyway, something I always surprise myself with is how I am able to simultaneously feel both bummed out and excited every time we get called to go on a mission. Most times I’ll be geekin’ out on my laptop, engrossed in what I’m doing, and while I work I’ll be planning, in the back of my head, how I’m going to allot my time to the various tasks I want to accomplish—weapon cleaning, laundry, reading, responding to email, writing, editing photographs, showering. Then someone will come in and say, “Get dressed! We have a mission. Team leaders and above, op order in fifteen mikes.” Then there will be that initial feeling of terrible disappointment, knowing that how I will be spending my time is now dictated by the caprice of a mission—that reaction of laziness denied. I’ll think to myself, “Dammit, I don’t want to have to do anything right now. I was totally chillaxing. Now I have to put on all my shit and go raid some stupid house that won’t even have anything in it, get all sweaty, and then go to bed late as hell. Ugh.” But not one second later, the childlike soldier excitement will kick in. “Fuck yeah! I think it’s my team’s turn again to do the initial entry. Wait, maybe I can be on the breach team this time. Hell yes! I’m gonna smash the fuck outta that door! It’s going to be awesome! What if we make contact? Oh god, this could be so cool!”
Another dichotomous pair of desires regarding this whole combat experience thing are living conditions. When soldiers tell stories, the ones they are most proud of are those that involve things sucking. Black Hawk Down would not have been nearly as interesting if everything had gone as planned. You never hear soldiers say, “Man, basic training was so easy. I had the easiest training cycle ever.” “No way man, my training cycle was way easier. Shit, it was so easy, we got off every day at four. And the drill sergeants didn’t even yell at us. They politely asked us if we’d please do push-ups and shit.” Hell, we want our soldiering experience to suck as much as possible. We’ll never openly say this or admit it to ourselves. You can’t want things to suck. That would be stupid. It’s like you want it to suck, but you don’t want to go so far as to ask for it to suck or to purposely make it suck. But the more it sucks, the better the stories. The whole idea is for it to suck so you can try to make it suck less. That’s the whole game.
Just Another Soldier Page 9