Being There, Page 5

by Bartle Breese Bull

In an alley off the main road the soldiers check out the twisted axle of the car that blew up their platoon leader, Sergeant Huey, last Veteran's Day. As they talk they take pictures of the gaggle of Iraqi children who have gathered before them. "Man," says Doc Krebbs -- whose best friend blew his brains out in a porta-pottie on base and whose platoon leader died in his arms -- "that one's real cute."

Rodriguez kneels to talk to the kids, who shyly come to him with sweet smiles. Literacy in this part of Iraq is 35 percent, even lower than in the rest of the country. The tribes of Anbar province have fought against every regime anyone around here can remember: Saddam, the monarchy, the British, the Ottomans. U.S. intelligence officers in this battle space call the area the southern Alabama of Iraq. The odds are good that these cute children will grow up to be smugglers, petty crooks, or terrorists. The average education level of their parents is fifth grade.

All the members of the 3rd Platoon have high school degrees or GEDs. One has a college degree. "Stay in school, man," Rod-riguez urges the kids. "That's right, little buddy, stay in school. Go to college or something. Be a lawyer or a -doctor. No army! No army! That's what I tell my own son. Van Damme? You like Van Damme? I'm Van Damme. Hey, watch it -- that's my magazine for my fuckin' weapon! You be good, son. Be doctor, be lawyer."

Wade's best friend dies back home in Massachusetts at the age of 25, of lymphoma. When Wade hears the news he seems almost to be in shock. He can't believe that someone so young could just be taken away, even though it happens around him all the time. Rodriguez has decided to take Wade with him on a drive he has to make to Camp Anaconda, a vast American suburb a hundred miles away, home to a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, and 20,000 cosseted, enervated cooks, clerks, and other Yellow Ribbon heroes. Rod-riguez thinks Wade could use a break. The night before they leave, Wade and I talk in the dark on the smoking balcony at the barracks.

Wade: My friend who just died thought I was crazy when I joined the army. I tried college for a year, but it wasn't for me. Then I worked down at the freight docks in Boston. Now I have a career, direction, college if I want it. A -future when it all seemed so gloomy. I love this job. I'm going to go for Special Forces selection with Doc when we get home, but my family's worried for me. I don't really like calling home. I don't like telling them bad news; they feel so helpless. And I don't like telling lies and just saying the boring stuff. So I don't really call. This tragedy with my friend...

He chokes up and starts to cry.

When I left for Iraq he thought I was crazy, and now he's the dead one. It's so fucked up. His dying message to me was, "Keep a smile on your face and an extra one in your back pocket. You never know when you'll need the extra one." I guess I need it now.

We've had a lot of losses around here. Half my original squad has been wiped out. I miss them. It's kind of hard not to be angry with these Iraqis. When we got here, all the little kids and the families, we were throwing candy to them. We're giving them candy or medicine and they're putting bombs in the road and taking potshots at us. My other buddy got shot in the throat by a sniper.

I remember I was at the hospital and the chaplain came out and told me about Sergeant Huey. I was so devastated. This place seems so miserable. And now my best friend dies of cancer. You go through all these emotions here and you don't expect more of it from back home. "Tomorrow is promised to no one." That's what the chaplain told me.

In the evenings Nash sometimes looks through a journal that he intermittently writes. These days he doesn't have the energy to write new stuff, even if he's angry. He just reads old entries like this one, which was sparked by an earlier encounter with Sergeant Duhon:

Situations are strenuous, stressing me out 'til I'm exploding with nothing but hatred. This same hatred that flows through my veins ends up pouring into street drains. Tryin to catch up to a life that keeps runnin' away, but nothing I can do or say to stop it. So I just drop it and start a new one. But I can't, man, fuck I'm tired of these snarling-ass faces putting me in difficult situations in the same fuckin' places, saying I can't stand up and be a man, using their fucking stripes to make themselves seem bigger, fuck that, prove yourselves, throw up when you gotta. You're hardcore, prove it. Swing on me nigga and lose your face so I can show you your true place...beneath me. Like the ground I walk on I'll trample you. We'll see who stands in the end, E-5, E-6 [sergeants' ranks -- Duhon is an E-5] fuck that E-Z the same nigga y'all hate, that's right. Bringing the fight to y'all's doorstep. Still goin' strong, lookin' to knock you Niggas COLD OUT. And still I'm goin' strong.

The night Eastridge left for Korea to get married, I went outside for a cigarette. Nash came up to join me. It was dark out, about 9 or 10 p.m., and almost every-one else was in bed. A couple of days earlier I'd heard Nash tell someone that things weren't too good -- there were problems back home.

Nash: Hey, Bull, what's up?

Me: Not much. How about you?

Nash: I been better, but I've also been worse.

For a few minutes we both smoked silently. I sensed that Nash wanted to talk. After the upbraiding I'd heard Duhon giving him, I wondered how he handled a crisis at home while trying to survive a tough army existence to which he seemed so ill-suited. I had asked around a little about Nash. I'd heard that he had been one of the braver soldiers in the platoon's biggest gun battle, in November, and that he was maybe the top marksman in Charlie Company. Fat as he was now, he'd been a nationals-level wrestler in high school. And he was the youngest in the platoon. But with all his talking about space travel and about his own apathy, I was wondering how far he might go with his mental AWOL status.

Nash: My best friend back home just shot himself. Three days ago. Now I only got one friend left at home who isn't dead or in prison. Just one. Fuck that.

Life is fragile. Now I can see it: Life is precious. You can waste it or you can make the best of it. Why spend it on a corner dealing? Why die on a corner selling coke when I can die for my country? I'm so young. I'm only 19; I got so much stuff in front of me. Sergeant Duhon cussed me out the other night. I thought, "Whatever. Screw you, asshole." You know what? Now I'm grateful for what he said to me that night. Shit, if he wants me to be the best soldier in the platoon, I'm grateful that he thinks I can be. I'm grateful that he even fucking cares.

There's nothing hard about the army. It ain't even that dangerous for a lot of us, compared to home. It's not even uncomfortable. You should see where half the people in this platoon grew up. Or fuckin' prison. I've seen bad things in Iraq, but I seen bad shit at home, too. One of my friends, we were in a car at a red light and four dudes stopped and lit us up. That was okay: Back home I could get revenge. Here I can't do nothing about it when my friends get blown up. After they shot my friend at the traffic light we went to their neighborhood, some ghetto-ass neighborhood, and took them all out. I killed two of them myself, shot 'em dead.

I made a decision a couple of days ago. Like I said, life is precious. I'm signing up for Special Forces selection. It feels so good committing to this thing. I've never seen a future before. It's a sense of clarity like I never had.

We had gone around the corner to talk and were sitting on the hood of a Humvee. There was no moon, and the stars above us seemed un-usually huge.

Nash: When I went to the hospital in Germany I was offered 30 days' convalescent leave back home, and then I could probably have stayed in the States. Even then I said, "Fuck that, I'm going back to my friends." Now they're the only friends I have. The people at the hospital tried to talk me out of it. Then they said, "What part of the service are you in?" I said Eleven Bravo -- the infantry.

They never bothered me again about going home.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHAN RYDENG SPANNER/POLARIS IMAGES

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