Soldier Girls

by Helen Thorpe

  Michelle spent a lot of time smoking cigarettes, mostly with Desma. Oklahoma showed them Camel Rock, a piece of concrete jutting out of the ground that was the designated smoking area, and in the middle of the night when they could not stay inside the stifling tent any longer, they would head over there. They often waited for the dawn together, or just walked around in circles. It was an entirely different night sky than the one Michelle knew; she saw more stars than she had believed existed. Eventually she learned not to point out shooting stars because they flew by so fast that invariably the other person would crane up asking where to look in that immense carpet of light.

  Michelle found it hard to sleep because the soldiers had been ordered to take Lariam, a potent antimalarial. The pills were handed out in the chow hall, right next to the silverware. Lariam caused unusually vivid dreams; people also complained of Lariam inducing hallucinations, paranoia, and psychosis. Other soldiers said Lariam caused brain aneurysms, but nobody knew if that was true. Desma announced proudly that Lariam gave her highly realistic sexual dreams, in full color, but Michelle felt as though she had bugs crawling over her skin. Because they had been alerted to watch for insects such as camel spiders, which could grow as long as six inches, Michelle had a hard time ignoring her hallucinations. She grew afraid to thrust her feet down into the bottom of her sleeping bag, then afraid to enter her sleeping bag at all. After a few days, Desma started giving Michelle other pills—muscle relaxants, sleeping pills, antianxiety medication—to help her get some rest. Michelle fell in love with Vicodin, an addictive narcotic that she started taking nightly. After Desma ran out, the medics provided her with a regular supply. “It wasn’t hard to get a prescription,” Michelle said later. “They were handing that stuff out like candy.”

  Their new home had originally been constructed as a Soviet air base, and they found it a spare, utilitarian environment. After the Soviets had withdrawn, a local tractor trailer company had used the area as a junkyard; one year before the soldiers from Indiana arrived, NATO had leased the property and turned it back into a military installation. Now a sea of dark green tents spread across two and a half square miles of concrete, interrupted by islands of tan prefabricated buildings. Everything else was made of plywood. “If you think plywood is one-dimensional, then you haven’t been to Camp Phoenix,” wrote Diana Penner, a reporter for the Indianapolis Star who visited during their deployment. “There is nothing, it appears, that plywood can’t be used to create. There are desks and bookcases, phone cubicles and computer stations, chests of drawers and armoires, chapel pulpits and a smoking gazebo, signs and entire dwellings.” So much plywood meant strict fire codes and weekly inspections. “A base fire station is now under construction,” added Penner. “It also is made of plywood.”

  Eight hundred soldiers from seven different countries were stationed at Phoenix. They spoke a babel of languages and wore camouflage of different patterns but all belonged to the Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix III, an international military organization formed to train and mentor Afghan National Army soldiers.

  Ever since the United States and its allies had failed to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, they had been searching for him in the mountains of Afghanistan, primarily along the country’s border with Pakistan. Between Afghanistan and Pakistan rose the formidable peaks of the Hindu Kush mountain range, some reaching more than 25,000 feet high, most shrouded in perpetual snow. The terrain was so harsh that the mountain range had gotten its name—literally, Hindu Kush means “killer of Hindus”—from bloody journeys of the past in which large numbers of captive Hindus had died while crossing over in the hands of slave traders.

  The American soldiers had not found bin Laden anywhere, but they had gotten entangled in a series of difficult conflicts with various of his supporters. It was hard to tell how the war was going, exactly—it just kept dragging on, one firefight after another waged across remote and inhospitable mountain valleys. Meanwhile, the Bush administration had become preoccupied with the question of how to secure the rest of Afghanistan and make it a less friendly place for bin Laden’s supporters, such as the Taliban. To that end, it was now working with their NATO allies to build up the Afghan National Army.

  Every nationality in the coalition had their own particular specialty. The French soldiers removed land mines, wearing special footwear that everybody called “egg boots,” while the Romanians knew the most about Soviet weapons. Their foreign colleagues had notably different habits; Debbie got a kick out of watching the French soldiers do their PT exercises, because the French soldiers were wearing the smallest nylon shorts she had ever seen on a man. “Not a sloppy French guy,” Debbie said approvingly afterward. The classes for Afghan soldiers were held at a variety of locations around Kabul, and usually they were led by American instructors. The 113th Support Battalion maintained the vehicles that American soldiers used when they traveled to the training locations, and also repaired or replaced any broken weapons, night vision goggles, and other equipment. All told, the NATO coalition was training and deploying almost ten thousand Afghan National Army soldiers per year. The governing idea was that someday Afghanistan would have a stable democracy and a military capable of warding off threats to stability posed by groups like Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and they could all go home.

  Michelle and Desma explored the post together. They found Morale, Welfare, and Recreation, known to everyone as MWR, where soldiers congregated to watch TV or play pool, Ping-Pong, foosball, and video games. There was free water and free microwave popcorn. The post also featured a small library and a Green Beans coffee shop. They found the phones, the Internet computers, and the gym. A large outdoor bazaar took place every other week on Fridays. Michelle saw jewelry set out in red boxes lined with white fabric, cashmere throws, marble tea sets, and ornately patterned wool rugs in rich browns, reds, ochers, and deep midnight blues. She bought a hand-embroidered silk tapestry and a postcard of a man wearing a turban. “I guess I spoke too soon; I left Germany about two hours after I called you,” she wrote to Pete. “I am okay, things aren’t too bad here. A little boring. The altitude kind of sucks. But the mountains are breathtaking. I have seen so much already that I will never forget. Please try not to worry, I don’t think Camp Phoenix is very dangerous. I love you I really do. Write soon.”

  She received a letter the following day that Pete had put in the mail two weeks earlier. “I got your letter today,” she wrote back. “It made me cry. I feel how far away I am now. In time and in distance. I miss you so much. I feel like when I get home everyone will have a new and different life without me in it. . . . I hope we can just pick up where we left off. I am so sad right now.” Before she sealed her letter, Michelle thought of all she had forgotten to pack, and added a hasty postscript:

  My wish list:

  nasal spray

  Visine (a shit ton)

  lipgloss or chapstick with SPF

  really good lotion (Aveeno)

  Beach Blonde Wavemaker

  She hoped the last product would help her deal with her hair, which had lost its curl in the dry air. It was ridiculous to fret about her appearance while living in a combat zone, she knew, but she had to wear an ugly uniform every day, and there wasn’t much left that made her feel feminine. Another woman in her tent was compulsively applying makeup for hours at a time. Later that week, Michelle mailed Pete the silk tapestry she had found at the bazaar, telling him someday they would hang it up in the house they were going to share in Bloomington. Pete mailed Michelle all of the items on her wish list. He also sent a sand bucket, since she wouldn’t stop talking about how sandy it was. Michelle used it as her shower caddy. The women’s showers had been constructed inside of a shipping container; everybody called them conexes. The showers did not drain well, and Michelle kept having to clear large clumps of other women’s hair. The latrines, which were located elsewhere, flushed with a kick pedal. Then somebody found a viper by the latrines. It was just a small snake, but supposedly that mea
nt they should watch out for the rest of the nest. Over in Debbie Helton’s tent, somebody caught a rat—the trap snapped closed loudly in the middle of the night, causing a ruckus. A few days later, Debbie told everybody excitedly that she had just seen her first scorpion. Michelle knew she was supposed to worry about the Taliban, but it was the snakes and bugs that she could not get out of her mind.

  The altitude and the sand and the wind and the Lariam and the pills and the lack of sleep transported Michelle to a place of sun-drenched surreality. She showed up for work as instructed and did as ordered, but she could not have said what she was doing. There were hardly any weapons to fix, and Patrick Miller, the ex-marine who was now in charge of armament, grew testy as he struggled to figure out how to keep his crew busy. Michelle used the spare time to write letters. “Hey! How are you doing?” she wrote to her father. “I hope this letter finds you well. I am sitting at the shop where I work with nothing to do. This deployment isn’t anything like I imagined. Sometimes I have work to do but I spend most of my time sitting around bored off my ass.”

  Back in Indiana, the previous summer, Patrick Miller had been friendly to Michelle—sharing his dip, confessing his unhappiness—but after they got to Afghanistan, he became an entirely different person. He himself said that he had been Patrick Miller when they had horsed around, but now he was Sergeant Miller instead. Sergeant Miller seemed frustrated with the state of affairs in general and with Michelle Fischer in particular. Michelle kept showing up late, and when she did arrive, she was sulky. Miller annoyed her with his driven, promilitary attitude. He was a slight man with a buzz cut and an Alabama twang; they were about the same height. “Huge Napoleon complex,” Michelle would say later. When she showed up late yet again, Miller threatened to give her a written reprimand. She said insolently, “Go ahead, write me a counseling statement, I really don’t care.” Miller cursed her out fluently, berating her until she broke down. The rest of the armament team could see both sides: on the one hand, Sergeant Miller was used to the discipline of regular military life; on the other hand, Michelle Fischer had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and had not seen 9/11 coming. Even Debbie Helton—who had arrived bubbling over with enthusiasm and kept saying that Afghanistan was the single most exciting thing that had happened in her entire life—could see that from Michelle’s point of view the yearlong deployment looked like a raw deal.

  Debbie’s journey to Afghanistan had been uneventful. Her group had stopped in Ireland, where one commander had told them they could have a pint and then another had nixed the idea, which had disappointed Debbie. Then they had flown to Budapest, and the following day to Kyrgyzstan. “The days are drifting together,” Debbie had written. “I’ve had little sleep.” She had strapped herself into a harness inside a green C-130 Hercules headed for Afghanistan, full of exhilaration to be leaving the civilian world behind. Even the steep plunge of the combat landing did not dismay her. “What a wild ride that was,” she wrote. “During descent because of pressure your body feels like it’s becoming squished down completely.”

  In the open-air trucks that picked them up, she grabbed a seat next to Will Hargreaves. Everything in close proximity was pale tan. But the mountains—Debbie had never seen anything like those twilight-colored peaks.

  “Well, you finally finagled a way to get here,” Will teased. “You probably did something to the guy who collapsed to get his spot.”

  “No I didn’t!” she laughingly protested.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Not really scared, just anxious to see how this fits together. I wish John Wayne was here.”

  They were the last group to arrive, and they found the rest of the battalion already in full swing. Debbie was grateful to be given two days to acclimate before she had to go to work. At the Green Beans coffee shop, she ordered her first chai tea and, charmed by the taste of cinnamon and nutmeg, soon returned for more. The bazaar captivated her. “Has many great things to buy not too expensive,” she wrote. “Cheap like Mexico.” She decided to save up and buy all of her Christmas presents there. For a few nights she was assigned temporary quarters in a tent filled with strangers, but then Oklahoma pulled out. On Saturday, August 7, 2004—three days after Debbie had arrived, and almost two weeks after Michelle and Desma had gotten to Camp Phoenix—Indiana shuffled people around into more permanent berths. Debbie and her friend Gretchen found a spot together in a tent with some medics from Charlie Company and a noncommissioned officer from Alpha. (Gretchen Flood had gotten married right before they left for Afghanistan and had changed her name to Gretchen Pane.) Because their tent was an amalgam of women from different ranks and companies, at first it lacked cohesion. Later Debbie would become grateful for the level of maturity inside her tent, but at the beginning she found the atmosphere slightly strained, as the women did not trust each other entirely.

  The American troops at Camp Phoenix were banned from drinking (although the Europeans were not), and if they wanted to go on a bender, they flew to Qatar. Nevertheless, Debbie had smuggled in miniature bottles of whiskey, hoping to make herself a cocktail. Once she got her permanent housing assignment, however, she realized it would be unsafe to expose herself as a drinker, so she kept the bottles hidden inside a coffee can. At the end of her first day in the new tent, Debbie longed for a drink but did not make one. “Boy a cocktail would be great,” she wrote in her diary. “No ice cubes yet I know there has to be some somewhere.” The following evening, Debbie did manage to fix herself a drink. “Finally found some ice had a cocktail it was great. Hope I get to take that time to Qatar I’ll be at the local bar if needed.” While Debbie considered the Afghanistan deployment a privilege, it was hard to sleep in a tent with nine other women, and a drink helped ease anxieties that she kept well hidden. At the same time, she relished her new surroundings. “At night the wind really comes up strong can’t hardly sit outside very well too much sand in the air. Go to MWR a lot, great tea. Call when I can. Haven’t done the Internet yet. Stars are beautiful because of the altitude.”

  Michelle moved into a ten-person tent that she had to share with only nine other women, including Desma and Mary. Michelle and Desma had requested that Debbie Helton become the senior person in their new tent, but instead they wound up with Sergeant Karen Shaw. Karen’s moods swung in arcs so epic that Michelle wondered if she was chemically unbalanced. Desma started calling her “Shock and Awe Karen Shaw.” The other women sharing their tent included a churchgoing soldier named Stella Brown; Jaime Toppe, who was even more devoutly religious than Stella; Caroline Hill; Katie Elkins; Elizabeth Ziegler, known as Ziggy; and Betsy Merrick. Mostly they were mechanics or worked in supply, with the exception of Jaime Toppe, who served as the unit’s public affairs representative.

  Now that Oklahoma was gone they could use the top bunks for storage. Desma and Mary snagged opposing bunk beds right by the front door, and Michelle got a bed next to Mary. Caroline Hill got the bed next to Desma, across from Michelle. The next two opposing beds were occupied by Karen Shaw and Jaime Toppe, then Stella Brown and Ziggy after that, and finally Betsy and Katie. From the get-go, they had friction. “Catty, catty, catty, catty, catty,” Michelle would say later, describing the atmosphere inside the tent. “I mean, we had probably six feet by four feet of personal space.” The tent was divided politically, too, with Michelle representing its most liberal occupant, and Jaime Toppe its most conservative. And the women did not agree on what was socially acceptable behavior, either, with Michelle, Desma, and Mary condoning activity such as smoking pot, and Jaime and some of the other women disapproving of that kind of behavior. How they were going to get along for twelve months remained an open question.

  Yet Michelle felt elated to be sharing a tent with so many fewer people. She could still hear every cough and rustle, but she got an empty top bunk where she could store her gear, and a shelf with a bar to hang up her uniforms. She unpacked at last, and put photographs of Pete and Halloween next to her bed, where she could look at them
every evening. A few days later, when the staff at the chow hall baked a large cake for a birthday party for some of her coworkers, Michelle went to the party and had a decent time. “Everyone is in good spirits about being here, finally,” she wrote to Pete. “Of course I still miss you desperately. . . . [I]t’s really hard for me when I think of you because I can feel how slow time is. No one else in the world matters.”

  It was immediately obvious to Michelle that Camp Phoenix was not the kind of place where it would be safe to wander around late at night in an alcoholic stupor, uncertain of the location of her tent. Entire zones of the post belonged to all-male infantry units, and anybody who showed up there in an incapacitated state would be considered fair game. She saw that the brain-numbing partying she had engaged in back at Camp Atterbury would make her vulnerable, and consequently she stopped drinking. Instead she became more and more reliant on the pills she took once she was safely inside her own sleeping bag. But the same pills that helped her lose consciousness at night also left her groggy in the morning, and upon waking she had to fight off the gloom of remembering where she was. And so even as she started to feel more at home, she still kept showing up tardy for work, and Miller kept going ballistic until she broke down crying. It became their daily routine.

  Michelle started visiting the gym right after work, where she trod up and down on the StairMaster for an hour at a time, then lifted weights. The furious workouts funneled stress out of her body and made it easier to fall asleep. She decided that her weight was one of the few things she could control, and started tracking it compulsively, determined to shed pounds. Then Miller announced they had some guns to repair. “I got my first broken weapon tonight!” she wrote to Pete. “I was pretty excited, I’ll actually get to do my job tomorrow.” They were all relieved to have work; even Debbie had begun to worry that the biggest challenge of her deployment might be boredom. She had been distracting herself with a mystery novel by Iris Johansen, but to her astonishment she finished it after only a few days. “Amazing,” she had written. “Usually takes me one year to finish.” After they got busy, Debbie happily changed the butt stock on a damaged M4 assault rifle and organized toolboxes.