Form 189

One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd,
Dying as their father died,For the God their foes denied; -
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
-Byron

Praying while something is going wrong, or when you think something is about to go wrong, is harder than one would imagine. Adrenaline courses through your veins, and your pupils dilate; and you go almost deaf as your brain diverts energy, like Scotty on the Enterprise, from your ears to your eyes, which are much more important in a crisis. Body rebels against mind and you are not able to stop taking in information from every available source at an enormous rate. This is why people who’ve lived through hairy situations remember them so clearly. It makes it very difficult to concentrate on anything but survival. Praying is not integral to biological survival, so you have to try to pray in the midst of this massive influx of information, and while your brain is prioritizing said information. It is even more difficult if you are in a position where you have to communicate a sitrep to your commander, or coordinate a defense. Things around you and from your training leap to your mental lips unbidden, and your confuse the messages in your mind, so your prayer goes something like: “Our Father who art in twenty-seven in the magazine and one in the chamber, hallowed be thy earplugs and eye protection. Thy Beef Ravioli MRE come, Thy will be done, on saltpeter chewing gum as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our Line Sierra, four pax, and forgive us our Line Alpha, possible VBIED as we forgive those who Warning shot, fire a warning shot, dammit! Lead us not into somebody’s got a hot mike, get off the net, and deliver us from wait, wait, it’s just a bunch of old women in a van. For Thine is the Son of a BITCH, we almost shot them, what the hell are they thinking, and the power, and the glory, forever and dammit, the people in this country need to learn to drive like civilized people, Amen.” I’m sure God understands. I hope I haven’t offended Him, or accidentally cursed while praying, or something like that; but a couple of seconds later, I can’t even remember what I was praying. Was it the Lord’s Prayer? Was it the Count Me Among Thy Saints? I don’t know.

We are apparently safe again—were safe all the time, and don’t I feel like a jackass—and I come back to my senses. I find myself in a scalding truck on the Highway of Death, hurtling toward Taji, and immediately the conversation between the driver and the TC picks up where it left off. Who would win in a fight: Blade, the girl from Underworld, or Vampire Hunter D? Sgt V, the driver, has the moral high ground in this conversation, since a) he saw Underworld 2 while home on leave, and b) his wife sort of looks like Kate Beckinsale. Sgt T, the TC, raises the important point that Vampire Hunter D has an eye in his HAND, so that proves how badass he is. From what I remember of Vampire Hunter D, I don’t recall if this is true, but if he’s lying, he’s good at it. They lapse into silence as each prepares his next mental salvo. The gunner, Pfc E, leans down from the turret and yells that what the hell, Sergeant, why are you even arguing about it at all? You know Spawn could kick all of their asses at once. The NCOs know that they’ve been bested, but are extremely unhappy that it is at the hands of a Pfc. They tastefully ignore the Pfc’s statement, and change the subject to questioning the intelligence, upbringing and ancestry of anybody who enjoyed the movie Brokeback Mountain. This is not a controversial enough subject, however—we are all in agreement too readily—and so the argument changes again, to whether or not Will Smith ever played a gay character. After about half an hour of deliberation, we arrive at the conclusion that he did, in the movie Six Degrees of Separation. This lowers the collective esteem of Will Smith inside our HMMWV, and they start demeaning other, heterosexual roles that he has played as well. However you feel about gay culture, they say, you have to admit that I, Robot was one of the worst movies ever made. He was part robot in that, they say.

We may as well be part robot, they say, with all this damn gear. Thirty to forty pounds of armor, depending on what size you are. A K-pot that is much lighter than the old ones, but still gets heavy after twelve, eighteen, twenty-four consecutive hours. Ballistic eyewear, even: a video circulates every once in awhile of a truck being blown up, the driver staggering out of his smoking vehicle, and taking off his glasses, which have stopped so much shrapnel that you can’t see through them. Tiny pieces of twisted metal embedded in the actual glass. He has minor wounds on his face. Rumors make the rounds of another IED which blew right under the engine of a truck, spraying piping hot engine fluids all over the inside of the cabin. Both driver and TC apparently suffered second and third degree burns on their faces—except for their eyes, which are protected by their ballistic sunglasses. Oakley, or Wiley X, or whatever company produces those glasses, saved the eyesight of those people. I know this rumor to be true, because I was there. I don’t say this to the two arguing soldiers as they return to our vests, and another video that is circulating, and that I have seen, of a medic that is shot in the chest with a .50 caliber rifle—and gets up, chases the stupid Haji down, shoots him, and then treats him. All of this gear is so damn heavy, they agree, but it goes to show how liberal the news is when they tell Americans that we don’t have enough armor.

The reason people are dying here is not because of their armor, or lack thereof. It is because people try to kill them. People in the states go out and drive on the highway every day, and they don’t die, and do you know why? they ask. It’s not because they’re not wearing armor. It’s because people don’t try to kill you on I-45, or I-40, or the Nashville loop. Why won’t people back home listen to how stuff really is, they ask. Why won’t people let us fight the war like it needs to be fought, they ask. Why do people insist on getting angry over the “torture” of detainees (if we want to slap around a guy who just murdered one of our buddies, dammit, his blood on our uniforms says we earned it), they ask. Why won’t people stop listening to the news, the CNN, the MSNBC, even the Fox News is sometimes way off, and start listening to us, they ask. Why won’t people see we’re winning this, they ask, as we roll toward Taji, a lone American truck in a convoy of smart, tough, freedom-loving, battle-hardened Iraqi soldiers.

I am still wearing my armor as I type this.

The Zed Word

I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drank your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
-Kipling

I watched Domino. It was pretty good, I guess. I am not sure what to think of Keria Knightley as an actress. She was decent in Pirates of the Caribbean. I thought about doing some bounty hunting in college. My best friend's wife--I find it hard not to call her my sister-in-law--anyway, her mother is a bail bondsman (bondsperson?) and some of our friends did some work for her. Running down people who'd skipped out on their bail, that sort of thing. Never any mercenary work or reality TV, like in the movie.
I finished From Here to Eternity. It was not bad. I particularly liked the part with the attack on Pearl Harbor. I never identified with too many of the characters, but if you subscribe to the book's philosophy, I guess this means I am out of touch with common soldiers. I don't believe this; I work closely enough with them every day that I know who they are. Their needs and wants and aspirations are very similar to mine. To all of ours. I still am not happy with the way officers were all portrayed as backbiting political jerks. Everybody is entitled to his opinion, I guess.
I am now reading Jarhead, because I wanted to see if the book was as pointless and political as the movie. I guess it is, in a way, but the movie really screwed things up. It is a very difficult book to adapt to the screen; whoever did it obviously failed. But that doesn't make it a great book. Swofford is very self-deprecating and modest, but I get the feeling that it's a coverup for being really full of himself. I wonder if the book has been ghostwritten. Is it possible that he's the only well-read, smart Marine ever to be in the Corps?I can see how many people looking to make cheap political capital on the subject of war may be enamored with this book; but it is not an anti-war book, as much as people like Mark Bowden may want it to be. Swofford questions his commander in chief and the shady connections to big business that his war has back home; he is affectedly jaded about the whole ordeal; but we all are that way. We all hate this job and this place. But it is also the life we've chosen, and a necessary if not noble calling. I have little patience with warriors who hate war. It is tough and brutal and soul-sapping, but this is what we signed on for. Anybody who has any illusions about it being romantic or easy is an idiot. Maybe it gets better toward the end, but I don't know. Again, I am having trouble identifying with the protagonist.
I guess it is difficult to measure up to the great books that have gone on before. I am still looking for something that makes me as proud to be a soldier as Once An Eagle.

Dogface

They had paid a thousand men,
Yet they formed and came again,
For they heard the silver bugles sounding challenge to their pride,
And they rode with swords agleam
For the glory of a dream,
And they stormed up to the cannon's mouth and withered there, and died. . . .
-Burnet

Pretty soon: halfway. Pretty soon.

I am reading From Here to Eternity. It is apparently one of the best books ever written about the Army. I really don't see it. It is a good book, but it is not a very accurate portrayal of a soldier's life. Maybe that's how it was in 1940. Not now. Two things in particular strike me as inaccurate about the book. Firstly, officers are not all as evil as the book makes them. Some are idiots, and some are liars, or micromanagers, or incompetent, but officers are not in general despicable. Secondly, I have never even heard of soldiers going to prostitutes. That is stuff that movie soldiers do, so that the writers can again subtly insinuate how soldiers are nothing but degenerates with guns. It may have been the case before WW2, when soldiers were not nearly so respected; but now, if you're a soldier, it's pretty easy to get a girl.

After this book I will start on Jarhead. I am not that optimistic about it since the movie was so bad, but I am determined to find out if the book is just as bad. And it seems like a quick read. It was written by a Marine, after all. It can't be above a fourth-grade level.

We have a memorial tomorrow morning. It is raining snakes and pitchforks, so we will probably have to have it inside the maintenance bays in the motor pool. I am hoping that it goes off well.

I can't stop thinking about EOD. I am getting so upset lately at the inefficiency and politicking around here. And the babysitting. Nobody in EOD is less than an E5. It will be so much easier to get things accomplished. It's probably over two years away, but I can't stop thinking about it. I probably just need to relax. Having problems sleeping again. I had a dream that I was a serial killer, of all things. Your mind does crazy things when you're keeping a very odd schedule due to mission tempo, and have to force yourself to get a couple hours of sleep at odd hours. It probably didn't help, though, as far as that dream is concerned, that I just got through reading two books about serial killers. I need some nice, light stuff to read. I need some Flashman or Douglas Adams.

All Okay, Jumpmaster

As sentinel you guard the gate
'Twixt life and death, and unto death
Speed the brave soul whose failing breath
Shudders not at the grip of Fate,
But answers, gallant to the end,
"Christ is the Word -- and I his friend."
-Letts

I “rented” three movies from the MWR bunker. Not at the same time, but Cradle 2 The Grave makes three. It also makes the third one that is scratched just enough so that the movie freezes exactly at the start of the climax, and the only thing you can do is skip to the next chapter and try to rewind. I love watching what happens in the end in rewind. All movies should be viewed this way. It would save lots of people the hassle of having to hold it in near the end of the movie, when the extra-large diet coke you invited in wants to leave.

I enjoy talking with chaplains. They always have interesting stories to tell. Some hilarious, some inspiring, and a few that make you tear up. Ours is a huge Simpsons fan. He is a Texas boy, like me. I have met better chaplains, I think, but he is pretty good. I have not heard his preaching, but he does a good memorial service. We have a Catholic chaplain who comes to give mass once or twice a month. There is a huge shortage of chaplains in the military right now—age and health regulations are basically ignored for them. If you are eighty and have one lung, but are an ordained minister, then dammit, you can become a chaplain. And I think that’s great. This is a very spiritual undertaking, this strapping on your armor and rolling off to war. Sometimes you are amazed to discover a good idea that the army hasn’t managed to screw up; the chaplain corps is one of these.

Of course, our chaplain sometimes doesn’t like his job. He hates—HATES—the fact that he’s not allowed to carry a weapon. He carries several razor-sharp knives to make up for it. We joke with him, and tell him that he should be able to use his Bible like a weapon, and kill Hajis with it. Like the priest units in Warcraft or Age of Empires. Ha. Privately I think that if there were a touch-and-go situation outside the wire and he was there, he would pick up the first weapon dropped by one of our guys and use it himself. I can see him doing that. But the chief of the Chaplain Corps said they wouldn’t carry weapons, so for now he’s stuck.

My second-favorite scene in Band of Brothers (the first being when Speirs runs right through the company of German soldiers) is when the guys are trying to take a town and are getting pretty chewed up. Several of them take cover behind a building, away from the deadly crossfire out in the street. They are amazed to look over and see a chaplain striding around purposefully, completely oblivious to the hail of bullets around him, giving dying soldiers their last rights. And possibly the only (seriously, the one and only) good scene in the otherwise horrible movie Pearl Harbor is the shot of the chaplain wading out into the water to bless the dead men floating in the harbor.

The say it is not politically correct to call this war a Crusade. I would argue that rather than insult the Arab world, it insults our war—we are nothing like most of the corrupt, greedy Crusaders. But look at the hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-scary reaction of the Arab world to some CARTOONS and tell me there isn’t a Crusade-esque clash of civilizations coming. I am glad chaplains are here to keep us focused spiritually. We need all the help from God we can get; and we need to constantly be reminded that this conflict is just the earthly manifestation of a greater one taking place in realms we can’t see.

Yellow Brewery

Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes,
As slow mists parted over Valmy fell,
As once again her hands in high surprise
Take hold upon the battlements of Hell.
-Chesterton

I am having a lot of problems getting up in the morning. I think my morale is very low. This has nothing to do with how the war is going; I am very pleased with our overall success, at least in this AO. I can’t comment on the rest of the country. But no, this has to do with how things are going here, inside the wire. It’s the routine.

During the beginning of the whole “soap opera” I spoke of a few weeks ago, a superior told me to beware of what he called a “professional depression.” He said that a similar set of circumstances led him to question many of the aspects of our profession, and to see only the bad in the people he worked with and the way our system works. I kind of ignored his warning, and not because I thought it was baloney, but because I didn’t see any way to avoid it. And he was right. I have become dissatisfied with the whole thing.

It’s not like the picture they paint you. You wait your whole life to go to war, and then they run it like you’re in garrison. You train as hard as you can to learn how to lead soldiers, and then all opportunities for leadership get micromanaged right out from under you. You spend a lot of time and effort learning your particular specialty, and people who know nothing about your job tell you how to do it. You build up this image of noble, elite warriors of the new empire, you learn to worship and revere soldiers, and then you go to the latrine and some bastard has peed all over the toilet paper, or you find out one of your soldiers isn’t paying child support, or somebody gets drunk from some booze they got from somewhere. You spend a whole year training to kick in doors and fight through ambushes, and then have to sit through meetings that sometimes last for six hours. You get your legs kicked out from under you by the very people whose mission it is for you to support.

I chose this little four-year detour (instead of going right to EOD) because I thought that it would be rewarding. I thought I would get the chance to lead. But I’m wondering if anybody really gets that chance any more. I have said before that I think the Army needs more leaders and less managers; but are so many systems in place that enforce a managerial approach to war that it is impossible to go back?

I have not been entirely fair, I guess; up until this last summer, I loved every minute of it. I just need to change jobs, move to a new command, and face a new set of challenges. I hate stagnating. I hate not going anywhere. I guess it’s not very long now, though. Only seven more months and I can move to a new position. I just have to suck it up for now.

New Variants

We are building a religion.
We are building it bigger.
We are widening the corridors and adding more lanes.
We are building a religion--a limited edition.
We are now accepting callers for these pendant keychains.
-Cake

My wife, Jen, sent me a new XBOX. God bless her. I have been wasting lots of my spare time playing Morrowind (possibly the best RPG ever made) and watching movies. I just watched City Hall. Not great, but not bad. I do not like John Cusack lately, but this was made before he became a walking political endorsement. And I always like watching Pacino. I think it may be hard to get him to explore new emotional territory as an actor, but when you can achieve it, it is a great thing. I also realize every once in awhile how very much like Chris Walken he is. Although I think Walken would be a lot more fun to go to a bar with.

I am also using my XBOX, along with my warrant's, to host Halo tournaments several nights a week. A few of us in the battalion get together a couple nights a week, away from our bosses, and just blow the hell out of each other. It is kind of funny that we spend many of our days wishing we were back inside the wire, away from guns and things that explode; and then when we get back, we can't wait to shoot and throw grenades at each other in a video game. On the other hand, maybe it isn't funny. We are professional warriors. Maybe it makes sense.

One of my very good friends is getting promoted tomorrow. I will now have to call him by his rank in public. He is far too nice to put up with it for long, at least in private, but I know I can always do it to get a rise out of him. It is weird to see your friends promoted above you. I guess it happens to everybody eventually.

I have been proofreading and giving notes on my best friend Nick's book. He sent me the draft, and it is a very good story. I am a little afraid of hurting his feelings, but he told me to be absolutely heartless. So heads up, Nick. You asked for it. I am only hoping he will be as heartless with drafts of my books. I plan on slamming out my first one when I get home. I'll take a couple of weeks of leave, and for one of those weeks I will lock myself in my study and just write. I'm trying to get the prewriting done for the first one and hopefully a second one while I'm here.

I see the Seattle football team has been trying to steal the "12th Man" concept away from us. I would be angry if I weren't so amused. What 12th Man will the Seahawks get from a Seattle fanbase? Niles Crane? Bill Gates? The desiccated corpse of Kurt Cobain? Between the meth and the Starbucks, I'm surprised anybody in Seattle has the attention span to attend an athletic event. I'm sorry; I shouldn't badmouth Seattle. It's just that I've never felt like I had a team in the Super Bowl before. Now I have one--whoever the hell the other team is. I want to see whatever team that is punish Seattle for daring to call themselves the 12th Man. Who is it, playing against Seattle? The Bears? The Knicks? The Manticores? I don't even know. But I'll be rooting for them. Go Manticores.