by Helen Thorpe
“But why a tree?” Akbar asked.
The soldiers were perplexed. Akbar had given them lessons in the history of Islam, he had told them all about Ramadan, but nobody could answer his one simple question.
“We have no idea,” Michelle admitted.
Thanksgiving fell on November 25, 2004. Morale, Welfare, and Recreation organized a scavenger hunt, a flag football game, a volleyball tournament, and a horseshoe toss. The dining facility served corn on the cob, seasoned green beans, peas, broccoli with cheese, mashed potatoes, corn bread dressing, glazed sweet potatoes, four kinds of gravy, smoked turkey, roast turkey, turkey breast, glazed Cornish hens, baked ham, grilled steaks, steamed crab legs, and buttered lobster tail. The commander of the post invited Rambo to join them. He had never entered the dining room before and looked visibly uncomfortable. Then soldiers started waving and calling out thanks. “Thanksgiving! The DFAC personnel put on a very lavish spread it was really nice,” wrote Debbie. “Even had an ice sculpture.”
The following day, however, an Afghan man opened fire on a convoy as it was leaving the post. A French soldier shot and killed the man. The stark juxtaposition of the fatal shooting, coming so soon after the holiday meal, jerked everybody back to reality. The cooks had done a magnificent job of transporting them to some other place, but in fact they were still living in a war zone. To lift her own flagging spirits, Debbie was now hiding a puppy in her tent. Shortly before Thanksgiving, the armament team had been working at the ANA depot when they had heard shouting. Outside the depot, a group of children had been trying to sell some soldiers a puppy for $2, but the soldiers had refused to buy the dog, and the children had begun abusing the puppy. Debbie wrote:
They were throwing her in the dirt and against the wall. She doesn’t seem to be hurt but was very traumatized + shook all night. . . . She is probably only 3 weeks old. No teeth yet + her eyes barely open. So I’ve been feeding her with syringes + a formula they made up. She’s up about every 2 hours. But she is so much better she has a lot more energy + her eyes are starting to shine so I hope she will make it. . . . Her back legs are weak so we hope there was no nerve damage.
They named the dog Diamond. A woman in Finance cared for Diamond during the day, and Debbie cared for the puppy at night. Every morning, before she met the rest of the armament team, Debbie secreted Diamond in a box and carried her over to Finance. Every afternoon, as soon as Debbie finished her shift, she returned to pick up Diamond. The puppy required constant attention and could not be left alone. She also offered Debbie unconditional love. Debbie no longer went down to supply to drink, and no longer wrote about booze in her diary. She only wrote about Diamond.
Well the baby is doing quite well I’m still Auntie Debbie the night nanny. Her back legs are moving great she has some sparkle in her eyes + is cutting some teeth. It’s been tiring but worth it. I get up every 2–3 hours to feed her. . . . It’s so nice to have her close by. I miss my Maxx a lot.
A few days later, Debbie’s tent was ransacked again by staff sergeants who were continuing to search for the missing morphine, but Debbie got a heads-up and hid Diamond in another tent. The puppy required regular exercise, and it was hard to walk a dog and keep the animal hush-hush, so Debbie started getting up at four in the morning to walk Diamond around the post—an hour at which the only other people she encountered were the married soldiers who were sneaking out of tents in which they did not belong. None of them was likely to turn her in. Michelle found it hilarious that she was hiding Ben Sawyer, and Desma was hiding Mark Northrup, and Debbie was hiding Diamond. (“Her illicit relationship was with a dog,” said Michelle drily.) “Baby girl got her first bath today,” wrote Debbie in her diary shortly after Thanksgiving. “They are supposed to do a bed check tonight around 1:30 to make sure no one is practicing intercourse not sure what to do with Baby girl!”
It got cold and then it got colder. By the middle of December it was often dipping down into the twenties at night, and sometimes only climbed up into the thirties during the day. “Our heat acts like it’s going out,” wrote Debbie. “And no heat still at work.” Patrick Miller complained that his people needed heat, and was told that a heater would be forthcoming, but weeks slipped by and it did not materialize. The armament team began burning old butt stocks inside the warehouse to keep warm. They mailed care packages back home and they also sent money. “Here is the money you needed,” Michelle wrote to her father. “I hope it helps.” Desma had been sending home child support to the people who were caring for her children every month, and now she mailed gift cards as well. Debbie sent money to her daughter, her brother, and her parents after they ran into various financial difficulties. “Jeff’s worried I’m going to give all my money away before I get home,” she wrote in her diary. “But it’s my family + hard to say no. I really just want all my bills except mortgage to be paid off then I can concentrate on the next few years + try to retire early to enjoy. I don’t need much just no bills . . . + Jeff if he decide[s] to stay.”
The new post office opened in time to handle the holiday mail traffic. Every day for several weeks, trucks full of packages arrived, and the post office had to round up volunteers to unload all the boxes. The soldiers also flocked to the new PX, which carried a greater selection of magazines, food, DVDs, CDs, television sets, microwaves, refrigerators, Xbox consoles, PlayStation 2 consoles, and video games. Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as president of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004, and both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived for the ceremony. Usually fighting ceased during the country’s harsh winters, but US military leaders announced that because the Taliban was planning to disrupt the upcoming parliamentary elections, they were sending special forces out on raids throughout the winter. The midwinter push was being called Operation Lightning Freedom.
Ten days before Christmas, the Taliban retaliated with a series of attacks across Afghanistan. Mortar rounds rained down on a US base in Paktika Province; a rocket blast wounded other soldiers in Kandahar; inside the jail at Pol-i-charkhi, prisoners waged a ten-hour uprising during which inmates seized an AK-47 and killed four Afghan National Army soldiers. The next time the armament team went there, they were told they were not allowed to bring Akbar Khan inside the dining hall. Miller surprised the rest of the team by announcing that if Akbar couldn’t eat in the dining hall, then none of them would. They ate lunch together out in their vehicles. It astonished Michelle; she had not expected Miller to evolve. But the daily contact with Akbar was having an effect on all of them—constant proximity to an Afghan who possessed so much dignity had changed the way they perceived Afghans in general. Even Miller did not make the same kinds of jokes about hadjis anymore. Akbar had brightened their days and they could no longer imagine their time in Afghanistan without him. Gift-giving was a significant part of Afghan culture, Akbar told them, and if they exchanged presents at Christmas then he wanted to give them something, too. But he puzzled over what would be appropriate. Were feminine things like earrings okay to give to a female soldier? Or should he get them knives?
Soldiers left Camp Phoenix to bring food, clothing, and medical supplies to families living in Kabul’s crowded refugee camps. Michelle visited a local orphanage, and painted desks inside a school. She also started volunteering with a medical team that was providing health care to women living in local villages and refugee camps. Michelle played with their children while the mothers saw the medics. It was a small thing, perhaps, but later she would recall those moments as among the most rewarding of her life, and would search for a kind of work that would give her the same feeling of fulfillment. Soldiers who belonged to a different unit in the brigade got caught up in the story of a sixteen-month-old Afghan boy who needed heart surgery, and raised thousands of dollars to fly the boy back to Indianapolis to have a potentially lifesaving operation. Many people in Indiana attached great importance to the soldiers’ effort, but Afghanistan was a place of harsh realities, and the boy died two da
ys after returning home. The soldiers wanted to do good but it was not always easy to know how best to realize their intentions.
The air over Kabul grew acrid from smoke, because people were burning trash to stay warm. To cheer up the homesick soldiers, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation announced it was conducting a competition to see which tent could mount the best holiday decorations. It appalled Michelle to see generators being used to power Christmas lights when all around Kabul children were literally freezing to death. How could her colleagues happily fill the generators with fuel to light trees and displays and to pump air into blow-up Santa dolls? Michelle went on a tirade about it one day at work. “For some people, that’s a morale lifter,” Debbie tried to tell her. But Michelle would not listen. “It’s so wasteful!” she cried.
Homesick, Michelle signed up for a video conference with Pete, Veronica, and Colleen. On the morning of the call, she woke early, and got dressed for work as usual—desert camo, ballistic vest, bulky Kevlar helmet, M4 assault rifle—then walked across the post to an office for the videoconference. There they were, waving at her, Pete and her two best friends, wearing homemade knit caps and stoner outfits. They had never seen Michelle in all of her gear. They had seen her in uniform, but they had never seen her carry a weapon. They should not have been taken aback, yet they were—the sight of her with the big gun, it was shocking. Plus, there was a glitchy time delay, and they kept interrupting one another. They tried for holiday spirit—“Merry Christmas!” Pete called out—but the call was an abject failure. They had hoped it might stitch them back together again but instead it left them feeling ripped apart.
The Indianapolis Star asked enlisted men and women to describe what they missed about home. One soldier said he missed being able to drive a car by himself. Another missed his La-Z-Boy recliner. The soldiers missed being able to watch football games at a normal time of day, missed arguing with their children, wearing civilian clothes, and ice cubes. They missed their own bathrooms. They missed Little League games and shopping on Black Friday. They missed fixing breakfast for their families on Sundays, and catching the holiday performances at their kids’ schools. They missed spending hours finding the right Christmas tree and wrestling the tree into place and hanging ornaments on its branches. They missed shoveling their driveways.
One soldier from Camp Phoenix told the newspaper that the soldiers who were stationed there could look back over the months they had spent in Afghanistan and feel a sense of accomplishment. They had helped ensure the safety of the presidential elections, and they were training soldiers for the Afghan National Army. In their spare time, they had also tended to the sick, built schools, and brought clothes to refugee camps and orphanages. They believed they were making Afghanistan a better place. That month, residents of Indiana had sent tons (literally) of toys, clothes, coats, and blankets that the soldiers had distributed. “I realize that this may be the best example of the spirit of the season on Earth,” wrote one soldier in a letter to the Indy Star.
Desma shopped for Christmas presents online. She got Alexis and Paige each a GoGo My Walkin’ Pup, by FurReal Friends, fluffy white toy dogs that could walk and bark. She got Josh a new, tricked-out bike, had it shipped to his dad’s house, and made sure his dad put it under the tree. There was no good time to call, given her work schedule, so she just phoned when she could, and wound up waking Josh in the middle of the night. It was two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve where he was, and he was only eleven, but Desma told him to get up and look under the tree. “Open up your presents, boy!” Desma said. “I got to go to bed.” Josh was still half asleep and got confused by the box. “There’s a bicycle inside,” Desma assured him. “It’s in pieces, but your father will help you assemble it.” Once Josh woke up enough to realize that he was talking to his mother and she really had gotten him exactly what he wanted, Desma heard the sound of glee in his voice, and that was all she needed for Christmas.
Desma gave Michelle a clay pipe with a painting of a lizard on it that she had picked up in Cancún. Michelle gave Desma a bottle of Ralph Lauren “Romance” perfume. Ben Sawyer gave Michelle a large blue Yankees T-shirt, because the Yankees were his favorite team, and Pete mailed Michelle the final season of Sex and the City, because it was her favorite show. Michelle devoured the entire season in just one week. The DVDs got handed from bed to bed and only after the whole tent had watched the final season (by which point the DVDs were getting passed around the rest of the post) did Michelle and her tentmates finally talk about the surprise phone call from Big to Carrie.
Always outrageous, Desma also ordered vibrators for the entire tent, although the box got lost in the mail and did not arrive until after the holiday. When it finally came, she handed everyone a vibrator and announced, “You bitches need to chill the fuck out.” The vibrators were small but powerful, with three rotating balls on the business end. Desma called them pocket rockets and promised they would deliver a real kick.
“Why would you buy this for me?” one of the other women asked.
“You need an orgasm worse than anybody I’ve ever met,” replied Desma.
Michelle and Desma discovered that they could turn the vibrators on and race them down the aisle between the beds. Mary was still struggling to get the batteries inside her machine when Smitty walked into their quarters and announced he was doing a walk-through to see if they had any men in their beds. “Hey, Smitty!” Mary called out. “I need help! Can you open this battery compartment?” She thrust the sex toy at him. Smitty turned red when he realized what it was but got the vibrator working before he left. The vibrators, the flamingos, the vodka, the Article 15—Michelle revered Desma. Without her, spending Christmas at Camp Phoenix would have been simply too grim.
Over in Debbie’s tent, many of the women had gone home on leave, and she felt even more grateful for Diamond’s company. “Diamond is growing I can’t make her stay in the box,” she wrote at the end of December. “She is my sanity saver she’s my angel that’s helping me through each day.” At the same time, Debbie worried that Diamond would soon be discovered. The more active the dog became, the harder it was to prevent her detection. Debbie was not the only person who was hiding a pet—three other dogs and two cats had secretly been adopted by lonely soldiers—but it was against the rules. Meanwhile, Debbie felt increasingly homesick. “This is my first Xmas [away] from home it seems weird but then many soldiers before me have survived,” she wrote. “I will too.”
A big storm hit Indiana and Jeff wrote an email to say they got about twelve inches of snow. He was dreading the task of shoveling the driveway. “The wind is blowing, going to drift the snow, it is just 1 degree out,” he wrote. “Twenty max today, and I got to get the truck out. Wish you were here we could cuddle up and not go out for 2 days.” Debbie longed to be home to see the drifts out of her very own windows. She wrote in her diary, “Wish I was snowed in with him we would be snuggling.” She did not have time to get depressed, however, as the armament team worked right through the holiday season. Afterward Debbie wrote, “Well what a week Xmas was okay just not home. We worked hard at the depot. Went through the rest of weapons stayed all day it was really cold.”
Debbie’s mother had mailed her a box of the old-fashioned peppermint sticks that Debbie always bought every year. They were the fat kind, with a hollow center. When she was little, Debbie’s grandmother had taught her how to push the peppermint sticks into an orange and suck out the juice, and when Ellen Ann was little, Debbie had taught her daughter the trick, too. One day, Debbie brought the peppermint sticks and some oranges to the ANA depot, where she taught Michelle, Will, Patrick, and Akbar the same family tradition. They thought she was crazy until they tried it. Later, after they all got back home, that moment when Debbie had taught them to suck orange juice up through a peppermint stick would become one of the highlights of their time in Afghanistan, a little moment of joy they would treasure. The days had grown short and the nights were bitter, and they could not even
agree about whether it was right to plug in a string of colored lights, and they had traveled miles and miles from who they used to be, and any hope of resuming their former lives now seemed tenuous, but in the coldest, darkest hours of their deployment, Debbie gave them the taste of peppermint and orange, winter sunshine in their mouths. They used the memory of that occasion to sustain themselves later, after much darker things happened.
5
* * *
Easter
WHAT WAS STRANGE about living at Camp Phoenix that year, as far as Michelle was concerned, was that you were neither safely at home nor properly at war. You were betwixt and between. Crazy things could happen—sometimes people strung piano wire across the road outside the post, sometimes RPGs whistled nearby—but Michelle could now see just how safe she was inside her tent. By the start of 2005, she had reached the midway point of her deployment, and she dared to hope that the support battalion might fulfill their year at Camp Phoenix without a single person getting hurt. She knew that the infantry soldiers they served alongside took much greater risks and saw much worse things than did the soldiers in her own unit. At the chow hall, they heard stories about the missions those soldiers went on, usually in the dead of night—breaking down the doors of people’s homes, or ambushing insurgents holed up in the nearby peaks around Kabul. Most of the real action took place far away, but when they heard of an Al-Qaeda cell in the vicinity, the infantrymen at Phoenix were dispatched to capture or kill alleged members. Women never went on those missions, although anybody who left the post could encounter a land mine or an IED. Back in the United States, the idea of women being exposed to the worst hazards of war continued to be controversial. On January 11, 2005, Bush declared that the modifications being contemplated did not constitute any fundamental shift in position. “There’s no change of policy as far as I’m concerned,” Bush told the Washington Times. “No women in combat.”