Just Another Soldier

by Jason Christopher Hartley

  I told Cesar, “Man, you weren’t kidding. This thing really is quite heavy. And uncomfortable as hell.” “No shit,” was all he said and laughed.

  Once we were done collecting the ordnance and giving the farmers a few bucks, we headed back to our base. I was virtually home free. All we’d do now is clear our weapons at the gate, drive back to the staging area, park the vehicles, and go back to lounging around in the huts. No one need be any the wiser. So long as no one had gone into my hut while we were gone—which no one had any reason to do—I’d be set. I would be the only one who had to know what I had done, and could learn to start living with that. Maybe I’d tell someone someday, most definitely after we returned from Iraq. Maybe just Willy. But his opinion is important to me, so maybe I wouldn’t tell him. Come to think of it, I probably should just keep the whole thing to myself.

  After we got back to our base, we cleared our weapons, but then a wrench was thrown in my plan. It was decided that we would go straight to chow first, then head back to the huts. Since the QRF always had to move as a group in case we got a call, I had no choice but to go to chow. This meant I would have to endure my current level of anxiety a bit longer. I didn’t like this. I just wanted to be reunited with Wazina. I felt like such a piece of shit. But, whatever. I had no choice but to go to chow.

  The QRF staging area is also used as a staging area for the CASE-VAC escort. The way CASEVAC works is nearly identical to QRF. Should anyone need an ambulance, the CASEVAC vehicles escort a field litter ambulance to wherever it needs to go. While the QRF was out, the CASEVAC guys were still at the staging area, and Rubin, one of the squad leaders in the platoon, decided, for whatever reason, to check in on the QRF huts.

  While I was waiting in line for chow, Rubin bursts into the chow tent and announces, “Who the fuck is weapon number twenty-four?! Who’s fucking weapon twenty-four?!” Jesus Christ Almighty. I make it through the whole mission, all the way back to base without incident, and now this? A little mercy would have been nice. Pull me aside, privately confirm to me that I am in fact the world’s biggest asshole, then give me a shitload of extra duty for the next few days and allow me to retain a little dignity. But, no, Rubin was intent on making it a public whipping. A reputation, like politics, is a relative thing, and an easy way to improve your own is to discover ways to damage the reputation of others. And the gossip factor is a plus. I’ll admit, 99 percent of guys take gleeful enjoyment in being the first to discover something fucked-up about another soldier and sharing it with everyone as quickly as possible. I can’t cast the first stone. I like doing it, too. Oh well.

  “Rubin, I’m twenty-four. It’s mine. I took the SAW out today,” I tell him. I don’t know why I even tried to act like I’d meant to take the SAW and not my own rifle. No one would ever buy that story, and no one did. “Never leave your weapon in the hut!” he lectured me. He went on for a while, and all I could say was, “Roger. I know. You’re right. Roger. Do you have my weapon? May I have it now? Thanks.”

  When we finally got back to the huts, I lay down and took a nap. I had the worst dreams of my deployment that afternoon, all a variation on the theme of forgetting my weapon.

  I slept with Wazina in my bed that night, and the next day I gave her the most thorough cleaning I’ve ever given a weapon. For the next three days I pulled a record-breaking number of guard shifts. It actually made me feel a little better, being allowed to be punished like a soldier.

  September 12, 2004

  THE COMPASSIONATE COMBATANT

  It was September 11 and we had an ambush planned that night.

  Three years ago on this same date, I was asleep in my father’s Lower Manhattan loft when the phone rang. I was living there with my friend Tim, who was the manager of my father’s photography studio that was part of the loft space. It was Tim’s grandmother on the phone, and she asked me, “Is Tim okay? Is he safe?” Still half asleep, I told her, “Yeah, he’s okay. I guess, he’s in the other room.” She seemed upset, but I had no idea why she wanted to know if her grandson was all right. “Okay, I was so worried. I just wanted to be sure he was okay.” I hung up the phone and immediately fell back asleep. A few minutes later the phone rang again. My friends know that I have a strict policy to never call me before noon. I picked up the phone and answered with an aggravated hello. “Is Jason there?” It was my friend Felix, one of the guys from my National Guard platoon. I answered, “Felix, it’s me. What’s up?” “Hey man. Terrorists just flew an airplane into the World Trade Center. I don’t know if they’re gonna call us up or what, but I just wanted to call you so you knew.” Felix, like most the guys I know, has a tendency to say ridiculous shit on the phone as a form of greeting, but it was way before noon and I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Exasperated, I told him, “You call me and wake me up just to tell me some ridiculous shit about terrorists? Dude, never call me this early again.” I hung up the phone and went promptly back to being unconscious.

  I wasn’t asleep for more than a few minutes when I woke up again to the sound of the TV. Tim was standing in front of it watching the news. I got out of bed and walked over to him. “Can you believe this shit with the World Trade Center?” he said.

  Both towers had already been hit by the time Tim and I started watching the news. We were looking at the TV and seeing the same massive plume of smoke rise over downtown Manhattan that we saw when we looked out the window.

  The loft was a few blocks east of Lafayette, and I knew there was a good view of the Trade Center towers from West Broadway. As I got dressed, Tim gathered some camera equipment. We both left at the same time. Tim wanted to see how far downtown he could get. I wasn’t eager to head downtown because I didn’t want to get in the way of what I knew was probably an already very chaotic emergency effort. We were both driven by impetus, he as a photographer, I as a soldier. I knew I’d most likely be called by the National Guard and would see what was going on soon enough. We agreed to meet back at the studio in a few hours.

  By the time I made it to the intersection of West Broadway and Spring Street, the street was full of people, most in business attire, many with briefcases in hand, some covered in ashes, all headed uptown. I could see only one of the towers, and it was burning. There was so much smoke I concluded I couldn’t see the other tower because of that. I felt guilty standing there, little more than a lookyloo or a tourist. I saw the people standing in the windows on the floors just below the fire. The towers always seemed so big, larger than anything I could comprehend. But when the people jumped from the windows, they looked too big to be people. It made me realize how close the towers were, that they weren’t nearly as tall as I was convinced they were. I said, “Oh god,” and instinctively wanted to reach out and catch the falling people. I felt so helpless. A woman next to me gasped and covered her mouth and started to cry.

  I hated that I didn’t know what was going on. I wanted to hear what was being said on the news. Not wanting to stand there helpless any longer, I started walking back, hoping to find a bar with a TV or to go back to my father’s loft to get assurance that the fire was under control and everything would be okay shortly. As I crossed Broadway, I felt and heard a great rumble. At first I thought it was a subway train passing under the street, but I knew this rumble was much louder than a train. I quickly walked back to West Broadway. When I looked downtown, all I saw in place of the towers was a clear blue sky.

  Dumbfounded, I stood there and stared at the blankness. The thought never occurred to me that the towers could fall. They have always been a mental anchor for me, the way I determined which direction was downtown when I came out of the subway, the first place I always took friends when they came to visit me so they could see from the top how truly incredible New York City looked.

  Everyone from our infantry company had been called that afternoon and told to meet at our armory in Midtown. As we got off the bus near Ground Zero that night, a city bus Willy had commandeered for us from its route earlier, it was suggested we p
ray. The soldier who was asked to give the prayer was Muslim. The prayer given that night, asking god to watch over his troops in New York City, was in Arabic.

  In the eleven days we worked at Ground Zero, I experienced more than I could really process. For twelve hours a day, I sat between buildings Four and Five, as a perimeter guard of sorts—a painful job, really, having to turn away all the people who insisted they wanted to help in the recovery effort. One day a group of firefighters who had driven from Montana asked to help.

  I’d always thought the island of Manhattan to be more an international community than just simply a part of America. You can walk the streets on any summer afternoon and hear dozens of different languages being spoken, you can eat food from nearly any part of the world, and you can buy items from just as many foreign locations. Why attack the World Trade Center? If the attack was meant to be against America, why not attack something with a name like the American Trade Center? How many citizens from countries other than America were killed that day? What also seemed sadly significant to me was that the number of people initially estimated to have died that day exceeded the number of Americans killed during the American Revolution. While I sat there pondering what I was witnessing, I knew I’d probably be wearing my uniform a lot over the next several years.

  The movement to our ambush site would be a short one, but it turned out to be no less difficult than the last. Late that night, our Humvees drove down a dirt road and we were dropped off next to a vineyard. We crept through the wires and the vines. A dog barked wildly near us. As we continued to walk at a half-crouch, concerned the dog was giving away our position, we came unexpectedly close to the house in the center of the vineyard. A man sat outside smoking. To avoid detection, we moved quickly to the edge of the vineyard and exited the tangled mess.

  We were less than a hundred meters from the location we intended to occupy, but between it and us was an open field, muddy with irrigation water. Jeff was leading this mission. I tried to telepathically persuade him to go around it, but that would have put us too near a large dirt road, the one we were going to be watching. He took a step, sinking deeply into the mud, and began to trudge to the other side. Given that there was neither cover nor concealment as we crossed the field, we went one at a time, waiting until the man in front was at least halfway across the approximately fifty-meter field before the next man went. The guys with the machine guns had it the worst. Jimmy, who was carrying a SAW, fell flat on his face into the mud twice. The mud was incredibly deep, up to our crotches at times.

  The spot we were occupying put us close to a lot of houses and farms. We lay down near some small hills and ravines along a dirt road that was near a bridge that crossed a very large canal. All night we watched as people walked and drove by us. It was a little unnerving being so close to so many people, but we had night-vision systems, and they didn’t. And given that we were now all the color of the dirt, we blended into the environment nicely.

  It was amazing to me how many local men were out that night driving and walking around. Everyone seemed suspicious. For an area that survived almost entirely on farming, there sure were a lot of people who didn’t keep farmers’ hours.

  So much of a soldier’s job involves sitting somewhere doing basically nothing. Sitting in an ambush site is not exactly doing nothing, but it does give one ample opportunity to ruminate. The temperature that night was perfect. We’re trained to lie on our stomachs in the prone position in situations like this, but I’ve never liked how difficult it is to see anything when I’m lying like that. I had found a nice spot to lie on my back, where I could position the gear in my butt pack to make a good backrest. I was low to the ground and I had an excellent view of the field behind us. I’d go so far as to say I was comfortable. There was a slight breeze, and for the first time in several months I wasn’t sweating profusely. I was glad that we had chosen this date to go on an ambush. It seemed appropriate, and I felt a sense of satisfaction and participation. The greatest comfort I’d felt from working at Ground Zero was being able to participate in what was going on. I have always hated having to sit at home when horrible injustices are taking place the world over and not be able to do anything other than watch them all through the distorted channel of information known as television. If there were an organization that responded immediately to human rights crises, a group who would never ask what’s in it for them and on principle would go in by force to places like East Timor and Rwanda, I would join that organization. One of the only ideas I believe in with all my soul is the preservation and protection of basic human rights. For me to entangle myself in the argument of whether or not I should be in Iraq is now irrelevant. We’re here, good or bad. What matters is what happens next. As just one person, one soldier, I know my impact is minimal, but I feel a certain degree of satisfaction being able to participate in a process that is otherwise intimidating and inaccessible.

  Sitting there in the ambush position, I asked myself, How can I contribute positively? It’s a difficult question to answer. There are so many things to worry about that I wish I could do something about. The ancient and interminable conflict between Israel and Palestine. Russia’s gradual decline away from democratic values as they try to cope with the inhumanity of Chechen separatists. Pakistan and India’s potential nuclear dispute over Kashmir. North Korea and Iran, places with horrible human rights records, possibly becoming nuclear powers. And, of course, the process of establishing democracy in Iraq. While I personally cannot have much of an impact on these situations, the United States government can. I can’t be certain that my government will contribute positively to the resolution of this conflict, but I have to have faith that it can. Others may disagree with me, but the organization that can do more for the protection of basic human rights than almost any other is the U.S. Army.

  I give regularly to Amnesty International, the International Campaign for Tibet, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Does my check for twenty bucks really do much to give political and religious autonomy back to Tibet? Not really, but does my vote for the president of the United States or the mayor of New York City really make that big a difference either? The Dalai Lama, President Bush, Mayor Bloomberg—these men don’t know me. But I will put my two bits in when given the chance.

  My nominal contribution to world issues took place when I reenlisted in the National Guard. My first enlistment was just something to do, my first adult decision during high school, something that I knew would piss off my parents. Plus, the opportunity to play GI Joe for a few years was appealing. I tend to believe that people join the military mostly for dumb reasons. I mean seriously, what the hell did I know as a seventeen-year-old? But I believe people tend to stay in the military for good reasons. I work with guys who have pretty diverse personalities and beliefs, but the most common value we all share is a sense of duty. Our country needs a military. Somebody has to do this job, and it might as well be me. Who else is going to do it? You?

  The chances of my personally capturing Osama bin Laden are slim, but I’d like to do something a little more than just simply being in the Army and sometimes sending money to the ACLU. This is something I think about a lot, and it was something I thought a lot about that night on the anniversary of the most egregious affront to human decency I had witnessed in my life, sitting there by that road as I scanned the field in front of me.

  Anytime I think about this I always come to the same conclusion. The best I can do right now is to plant seeds, to treat people the way I would want to be treated. I can think of nothing more important than compassion. I am not a pacifist nor am I a conscientious objector, but I believe there must be a way to be an infantryman and still be able to preserve a sense of compassion. I have tried my best to be honest with myself about my apparently instinctual desire to fight and commit violence, but I also feel unafraid to express my innate desire to bring comfort to those around me. I realize these are diametrically opposed forces, but in combat, an environment fertile for violence, t
here is still a need, and an opportunity, for compassion. So if the closest to a tangible contribution I can make right now is to live by example, to try to foster compassion by simply following the Golden Rule, I am content with that.

  September 11 then quietly changed to September 12.

  September 19, 2004

  Combat is so one-sided when you’re a soldier. You never really get to know exactly what happened from any perspective other than your own. There’s always loose ends, non sequiturs, and red herrings. I’m not a reporter and I can’t go interview insurgents in hopes of painting a fuller picture, so instead I made up (!) a whole story to explain a few things. Yes, that’s right, the following story is total hogwash. Well, some of it’s true. Anyway, the thing is, I’m fucking sick of writing stories about combat. There are only so many adjectives to describe explosions, ya know what I mean? So here’s the story of Raed, the fictional Iraqi. I wish I could meet him.

  Raed

  I left Baghdad University a month before the Americans invaded my country. The government wouldn’t let the school officially end the semester early for this reason, so an announcement was made that the semester would be accelerated and final exams held a month early so a longer period of time could be used on the much-needed renovations that were scheduled to take place on the buildings. The university did need to be renovated. The plaster on the walls sometimes fell off in chunks, and the plumbing rarely worked properly, but not one worker would ever step foot into the school. The renovations were announced in the newspaper, and posters were plastered on street walls for a five-block radius. They trumpeted the prosperity and well-being of Baghdad and how the university would herald the continuing success and ongoing improvements to the country of Iraq over the next several years.