by Helen Thorpe
Desma poured her heart out to Mary in an email with the subject line “Rough Week.”
Mary,
This is going to be the longest deployment of my life. I hate 90% of these people. . . . I really have no one to talk to. Yes, Charity is here, but I truly cannot talk to her. . . . I hate to bitch when I write; I just need to get it out. I miss having you around. I hope that I have never taken you for granted. I really do feel alone here. I feel trapped, caged, under siege. Like I am drowning and there is no one to call out to. I would give anything to hear your voice. . . . I just wish I had someone else to talk to. Sorry for being such a downer. Thanks for listening. Love Des.
Mary wrote back:
Desma,
Well you know how deployments can be. Being with someone so much can either make you love them, or hate them. It’s definitely not the same as having a relationship here in the states. Over there, you can’t get a break or say that you are busy on Friday. They know you’re not busy. :) I’m really sorry it’s not working. . . .
Keep a journal, listen to music, scream into your pillow, whatever you have to. . . .
I’m kinda worried about when you guys get back. You know how it is when people come back from deployment and they are all buddy buddy. . . . I don’t want to be a damn deployment outcast. I wish I was over there so bad. I would give ANYTHING to be there. Augh!
Anyway . . . I love you girl and I miss you really bad. And you can tell me anything, you never have to feel bad about it.
Mary
In June, after two months of night missions up to Zakho, Desma and Charity’s platoon traded roles with a platoon that had been doing day missions in the opposite direction. Once they switched roles, they started staging at around 3:00 a.m., and by the time the sun was up, they were checking the fuel levels in the trucks, and looking at all the tires. They got on the road by about 8:00 a.m. and generally reached their destination by 2:00 p.m. Sometimes they still went north to Zakho, or maybe just up to Mosul for fuel, but more often they escorted the trucks that had come down out of Turkey on the next leg of the supply run, south to Tikrit—along the route that saw all the action.
The most dangerous moment came about two-thirds of the way to Tikrit, around the city of Baiji. Located on the same highway that continued south to Baghdad, Baiji was a major center of industry. It was home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery, and the site of several major weapons and chemical plants. It also occupied one corner of the Sunni Triangle, a densely populated area of Sunni Muslims who had proved loyal to Saddam Hussein and hostile to the American-led military coalition and their Shiite allies. As Iraq had become consumed by sectarian violence, Baiji had become known for the large number of attacks mounted in that vicinity. Sometimes the insurgents hit the oil refinery or its pipelines; sometimes they hit the supply trucks that constantly passed through the area. Soldiers in the 139th were warned never to drive through the city itself but always to pass around it. The bypass could get congested, however, and frequently they found themselves stuck in heavy traffic as they tried to skirt disaster.
Their final destination was Forward Operating Base Speicher, a military base on the outskirts of Tikrit. When she went to the PX at Speicher for the first time, Desma saw fresh vegetables, frozen meat—ribs, steaks, hamburgers, all imported from Germany. The PX at Q-West had nothing like it. “I’m going to cook!” Desma told Charity. They bought frozen T-bones, corn, and a hibachi. The following day, they invited the guys from the lead scout truck over for steaks how you like ’em. They gnawed at the T-bones while holding them in their hands because they had no utensils but the steaks tasted like home. After that, they grilled about once a week. Usually Stoney and his crew would join them, sometimes other guys, too. They grilled ribs, steaks, chops, sausages; they tried everything that was sold at Speicher. The guys were grateful. It made one day seem less like every other.
On another run to Speicher, Desma spotted a friend from the 113th Support Battalion who said supposedly Patrick Miller was running a motor pool on the other side of the base. Desma got directions and drove over in her ASV. Miller stormed out of his shop with a tight expression on his face, looking like who the hell are you? when Desma stuck her head out of the hatch. “I’ll be damned,” Miller said. He showed her around his shop and walked her over to a designated smoking area. After that, she dropped by regularly. Patrick wrote to Michelle, “I see Des every now and then, they got her driving an ASV, with Charity being her truck commander. She stops by my shop when she is on our base. I guess Charity is driving her nuts. Starting to get a jealous streak when she talks to men. I don’t know. Better go, time for me to get ready for work.”
By July it had ceased to rain entirely, and the shamal winds had picked up. The dust storms were monstrous, and temperatures rose into the 120s. They celebrated Independence Day with another barbecue—hamburgers and hot dogs. At this stage, the men in the unit had accepted Desma and Charity so completely that they no longer viewed the two female soldiers as women who had transferred into the formerly all-male regiment—they were just part of the team. The turning point, as far as gunner Brandon Hall was concerned, came one day that month, after tempers had begun to unravel because of the harsh routine and the heat. Some of the guys started to argue over something stupid in a way that turned personal, and Charity and Desma got up and left. “Mama and Brooksy went back to their CHU and got this big old dildo,” Hall recounted. “They came back and slammed that thing down on the table. ‘Mine’s bigger than all of yours, so shut the fuck up.’ ” Hall marveled at the tool; he had never seen anything like it. Brooks and Elliott were as good as any of the guys, in his view—he had grown to love them each. “Both of those women are more of a man than I’ll ever be,” he said.
A few days later, Desma and Charity went on a night run to Zakho. They figured it would be a breeze—less traffic, less chance of getting ambushed. But a particularly severe dust storm reduced visibility to nothing and their departure was delayed. As they waited to get on the road, Desma visited a Porta-John, knowing that once she got behind the wheel, she wouldn’t have a chance to go until they reached Dahuk. While she was inside the plastic enclosure, the ground rumbled beneath her feet. Five miles to the north, in a culvert that the convoy should have been driving over about then, hundreds of pounds of explosives had blown apart the road. When she drove past the crater, she estimated it to be forty feet across. The dust storm had saved their lives, she believed.
Meanwhile, Charity had begun behaving suspiciously. She quickly closed her laptop whenever Desma walked into the CHU. They went out on a mission, and Brandon Hall told Charity that he had looked her up on MySpace. “Shows what you know,” Desma told BB. “She doesn’t have a MySpace account.” Charity turned to Desma and said, “I have one now.” Desma was taken aback. Why would Charity have opened a MySpace account and not told her? Later Desma found Charity’s page on MySpace and asked for permission to connect; she tried to be patient but days went by and still Charity had not welcomed her. “I know it shouldn’t be a big deal,” Desma wrote to Michelle. “But I don’t understand why she feels the need to hide it from me. It makes all kinds of crazy assumptions come up. I wouldn’t hide anything from her like that. Maybe she is hiding me from the majority of her friends back home, well, how is that gonna work out if we are supposed to be living together then too? I don’t understand!!!!”
Michelle wrote back that she and Billy had recently weathered a similar situation.
I’ve had the same shit in my relationship (I did something bad) and yes we are recovering, but take it from someone that’s done wrong . . . if she ACTS like she’s hiding something, it’s because she IS.
Maybe she’s flirting with other girls online, maybe there’s a resurfaced ex you don’t know about, whatever the case may be, myspace opens up communication with people that you normally would cut out of your life. (How else can I check up on Pete and see which movie set he is working on?) . . . Take my advice with a grain of salt, si
nce I don’t know shit about your relationship except what you just emailed me. Listen to your gut, it’s usually right.
I love you Des.
Desma and Charity never actually resolved the issue. Instead they all switched over to Facebook, and Desma felt better after Charity accepted her request to be friends on that site. Later that same month, Josh sent an email saying that Desma would not be able to reach him on his cell phone because his stepmother had taken it away. Josh confessed that he had gotten in trouble:
You have to call my house phone because im grounded i got caught driving someone car in rockport a couple weeks ago im sorry that i did that and im going to see the probation officer on monday to find out if i can get my licence before im 18 or not. i love you and call the house phone. . . . i love you and ill talk to you when i can bye
What was her second yearlong absence doing to her son? Would Josh have been getting into that kind of trouble if she was at home? Desma wanted to safeguard her children, but they were far apart from each other and the distance complicated everything. That same week, Paige and Alexis told Desma that they had not received a pair of gift cards she had sent. The gift cards were supposed to enable the girls to buy clothes and supplies for the coming school year, and they were the second set to go astray. On July 20, 2008, Desma wrote to her father-in-law to ask if he had seen the missing gift cards, but he had not. Tired of sending cards that did not reach her daughters, and concerned in case someone had been stealing them, Desma mailed the next set to her sister. She mentioned her fears to the girls. Her sister then received a furious phone message from her ex-husband’s sister Joanne. In an email with the subject line “Drama that I don’t have time for,” Desma wrote an exasperated email to her father-in-law:
Not exactly sure what is going on. I sent gift cards to my sister’s house so that she could take the girls shopping. . . . Apparently Joann left my sister a crazy voicemail, yelling about how she is raising the girls, and how little my sister comes to visit. I only sent the cards to my sister because I had sent $300 in cards to your mailbox and they haven’t been tracked down yet. When my sister got the cards, I activated them and asked her to take the girls shopping for school clothes. I didn’t think it was such a big deal. If it is too much for Joann, we need to figure out what needs to be done. I will be home in a few months. I plan on the girls finishing the school year there. With another deployment to Afghanistan looming for 2010, I want to be sure that I am not going to turn them upside down again. Honestly, I know its a lot to take care of the girls. If other arrangements need to be made, please let me know. Love Desma
Her father-in-law, a steady man, sent a low-key reply:
I think we have the issue addressed. Apparently the girls had said that the cards were sent there because they were stolen here. I told Jo that there was probably a difference between what was said and what was relayed by the girls. . . . I don’t see any additional problems. We will keep it under control here. You just be careful there.
Love
Dad
A few days later, Desma heard from Jimmy. Her lease had come to an end, the rent checks she had left were gone, and he had decided to move out. He wrote:
Desma,
Writing to let you know that your stuff is in storage, I will keep the unit paid every month so you won’t loose your stuff, the unit number is 17 and the code is 5860. I havn’t seen the dog I don’t know what happen to it. I put the last check on the electric bill you owed. If your tax check comes in I will put it in the bank. If you’ll send a address . . . I will mail the keys to you. I want to get on with my life and you to get on with yours.
Jimmy
Then Jimmy emailed a series of photographs of belongings that he had not deemed worthy of putting into storage and that he had hauled into the backyard and lit on fire. “He sent me a slide presentation as to how all my shit went up in smoke,” Desma would say later. For June and July, that was her life—constant missions to Tikrit, occasional barbecues, confusing signals from Charity, drama at home. At the end of July, Desma and Charity did another fuel run up to Mosul. It was a relief—a quick trip in the middle of the day, as opposed to a twelve-hour ordeal. The main military post, Forward Operating Base Marez, stood beside a highway, directly across from Forward Operating Base Diamondback. Desma knew that Debbie was stationed at Diamondback, and had once driven around looking for her, but had never found her. This time Charity said she knew where Debbie was working. They walked through the front doorway of the office building wearing their flame-retardant flight suits—Desma’s was tan, Charity’s olive-green—and saw Debbie sitting by herself behind a panel of bulletproof glass. She looked stricken. “She had just gotten off the phone with Jeff,” Desma would remember later. “Maxx had died. And she was hysterical, almost.”
During the lonely months in Mosul, Debbie had missed Maxx terribly. Back in April, she had discovered the therapy dog, a black Lab named Budge, and she had been visiting the dog once a week ever since. She had written in her diary:
It’s a little lonely here at times. I don’t have a close friend. . . . No one is mean just not overly friendly. . . . I’m somewhat depressed but it comes with the territory. So you just move on. I need to get on Budge’s schedule a dog always helps. That’s what was great about Diamond she helped so much to pass the time.
But what she really wanted was Maxx. Or a friend like Will Hargreaves—although he did not have as much space in his life for Debbie anymore. That summer Will had written to let Debbie know that he was going to get married. On Sunday, July 13, 2008, two days after she turned fifty-six, Debbie wrote in her diary:
Will bought Linda a ring and told me he would wait till I got home to get married. He went ahead and did it July 9th. I am mad but happy too. I hope it works out okay.
Well I had my b-day pretty uneventful.
One week later, Jeff had opened the door to the garage and called for Maxx but the dog had not come. He found Maxx lying on the concrete, already stiff and cold. Debbie was so upset by the news that she stayed up all night crying. After she reported for work on Monday morning, ready to prepare the slides for the officers’ weekly meeting, her colleague Kathleen took one look at her puffy face and asked what was wrong. Everybody Debbie worked with knew about Maxx; she talked about her dog all the time.
“Have you slept at all?” Captain Buchanan asked her.
“No, sir,” Debbie answered. “But I’m fine. I’ve got to get the slides ready.”
“I’ll do them,” Captain Buchanan said. “You don’t have to go to the meeting.”
“No, I’ll go,” Debbie said. “It’s my job.”
“You know what? It’s not your job today,” Captain Buchanan told her. “I want you to go back to your CHU, and I want you to try to get some sleep. I will do the presentations today.”
Debbie was immensely relieved. Sleep still eluded her, so she took out her journal.
I lost my best friend (Maxx) yesterday. . . . He probably felt so alone with me not there to pet him + talk to him. I hope he went without pain. He really was my best dog ever. . . . He always snuck in to sleep with me in the mornings after Jeff left for work. . . .
It was so good when I came back the last time to have him home + this time will be very sad. . . . He won’t be in the way on the kitchen floor while I’m trying to cook or be laying in the bathroom after my shower. . . .
I’m so afraid Dad is next.
Jeff said in a phone call that he and Will had buried Maxx in the woods across the street. Debbie fretted about the location—it was not where she would have buried her dog. “I don’t know why he thought that was better,” she wrote. “Jeff said it was under some trees for shade. I still would rather he be in my yard.” She ordered a marble headstone for the grave, and did not phone Jeff again for several days. “I’m afraid of saying something to him + be sorry later,” she wrote in her diary. “I feel like he didn’t pay Maxx enough attention + put him in the garage too often when he probably wanted in. I k
now he wasn’t his dog but Maxx loved him too, but I know Jeff thought he was a nuisance.” She wanted a drink badly, and at the same time voiced a concern about her own drinking.
I have to get a happy face on I’ve got several months to go yet. People are not use to me being sad + neither am I. But I don’t want to be happy. I might have to put his pictures away I can’t say that’s my dog anymore. Because now it’s that was my dog.
I wish there was some place to go + sit + enjoy a cocktail or 2 + it be legal. . . . I wasn’t suppose[d] to be on this deployment I was afraid someone would die again just like last time. I need to find another form of release.