QRF

Saturn on a line
A thing of fire and strings and wire
Spin above my head and make it right
And any time you like
You can catch a glimpse of angel's eyes
All emptiness and infinite...

-Duritz


Half an hour after dinner chow I'm in the can with a copy of FHM magazine, the UK edition. It amuses me to read British publications, which we get a lot of while deployed. Their baffling slang both irritates and fascinates me ("taking the piss" means "screwing with", they call soccer football, buddies are called "blokes" or "mates," etcetera) and it's interesting to me how often they reference the US in every article. And how much they get wrong. I look through a photo-essay by a brit photog who rode along with some Dustoff guys from the 82d in Afghanistan. He calls them Marines, puts Ft. Bragg in a completely different state, and seems to think that every single member of the 82d is an air medic.

I have read through about half the magazine when we get an IED call. The platoon sergeant comes and gets me in the latrine and two minutes later we're speeding to the linkup point with the QRF. As we're driving along and I'm handing my 240 gunner some zip ties so he can secure his ammo can, it occurs to me that I can remember literally nothing I just read. It amuses me at first--silly pulp magazine, a Cosmo for the modern effeminate grey-collar man, of course it wouldn't even make a dent in my formidable brain!--but then it starts to alarm me. I concentrate for a few minutes and still can't remember a single thing. There was an article about a movie, I think. Something about soccer, but I can't remember anything more specific. Some "interviews" with attractive women in bikinis, but I can't recall what they look like or the answers they gave. I think, is this what happens when I go outside the wire? I get so excited I black out the last few minutes of my life?

We arrive at the linkup only to be told we've been put on standby and may not roll out. Over the next three hours we sit around waiting on the word to go do God's will. It never arrives, and around 2300 we're stood down. I realize driving back that I can now remember the articles I've read. The movie article was about "Takers," with Paul Walker and that guy from The Wire. The soccer article was a creative "who has the crazier life" matchup between two well-known partyboy soccer players. The interviews were with a girl from Smokin' Aces 2 and a nobody they found in Camden. I guess it was the excitement. Now that it's drained out of me, my analytical mind is working again. It is a letdown.

This war is boring.

Fine, You Asked For It

"Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;
Mine be the handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold -

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told."

-John Masefield


Alright, everybody, stop asking about it. I'm updating this beast.

The flight over was long and boring and we stopped in Germany. Got a 23-hour layover in Ramstein, which gave me just long enough to sleep and take a shower and get a couple meals in. Then we flew down for the final leg. I met the company we're replacing and the last couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity switching out their property, assuming their battlespace, and sliding into their place in the batting order, so to speak. Our AO is quiet now but I'm not sure that will last--either the quiet or that we'll stay here.

Our new kids, the ones who haven't deployed before, have been amusing to watch, as I assume I was on my first tour for the old hands. They are continually amazed by things like the heat and the scorpions and the dust. It makes me feel old that I'm jaded to such things.

The living facilities are actually very nice compared to my last tour. I told Nick during a phone call, if you have to deploy, deploy as a bomb tech. We take care of each other. I'm living in an old prison left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Sure, I know probably every one of our rooms had someone tortured and murdered in it, but they are solid, stone rooms which keep the heat out pretty well and don't let a lot of dust in if you're careful to turn the AC off whenever it gets bad outside. The compound is completely enclosed and we even seal the gates at night, so literally nobody gets it who we don't want. During my all-too-infrequent downtime I like to go up on the walls and think what a great place it would be to defend against zombie hordes.

We have our own latrine trailer (unisex, much to the dismay of our females) and a VERY nice shower trailer (NOT unisex--each gender gets its own time period for showers). We have our own MWR room with four computers and even a wireless router with a subscription service available. I paid ninety damn bucks for a month of the wireless and my connection is pretty bad. Skype keeps dropping when I try to talk with Jen and Clyde. I do have to say, though...ninety dollars is worth it to see my son, even if it is a bad connection with low framerate.

I am doing much better with missing Jen this time--it's not a lesser pain, but it is a familiar one. I was completely unprepared for how crippling my yearning for my baby boy is, though. I sometimes have to consciously put him out of my mind or I won't be able to concentrate. When he saw me on Skype, he smiled at me, and it just about tore my heart out. It's funny, I've been fighting to go back to war for years, and they finally give me a tour right after my son is born. That is the only thing I regret about this deployment. The rest is awesome. I get to blow stuff up, lead soldiers in combat, go outside the wire pretty much whenever I want, I have very little accountability, I can choose my missions, I get to work with brave and crazy Iraqis...and I can't play with my Clydefrog. There's the rub, right?

More about the Iraqis later.