Ryan Smithson (15 page)

A
group of kids surround us. Our convoy is stopped momentarily, and the dirt is flying through the air. Not a sandstorm, just the wind blowing dirt in the desert. As always the sun is out and I hold a semiautomatic rifle as I talk to the local kids. They are telling us about their lives. Their innocent lives.

“Farm,” one says, pointing to the vast desert.

“You live on a farm over there?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. “There. We…” He makes a shoveling motion.

“Shovel?”

He shakes his head. He gets on his knees and pats the ground.

“You grow plants?”

“Yes.”

“What types of plants?”

He shapes his hands into a ball about the size of a basketball.

“Water…?” he says.

“Watermelon?”

“Yes!” he says, excited. “Watermelon! Very good, yes?”

“Yeah, I love watermelons.”

The boy, his brothers, and his friends are so excited to hear this. We, the American GIs, might as well be from a different planet. The Iraqi kids look up to us in a way I can’t describe. They understand how lucky we are to be from America. They understand better than we do. Still, they try to give us anything they have. It’s appreciation. It’s their culture.

“You want watermelon?”

“No.” I laugh. “No, thank you.”

“I run…” he says, pointing toward his farm. “I run. Get melon.”

“No thanks. Maybe tomorrow,” I offer. “Tomorrow…if we’re here.”

I know we won’t be.

He nods his head with enthusiasm. I know he’ll be standing here tomorrow holding a watermelon, probably a dozen watermelons. Our convoy isn’t running this way tomorrow.
But he’ll be standing there, waiting, holding watermelons for the Americans.

Another boy rushes to the front of the group. He has no shoes and he looks as if he’s been learning the backstroke in a pile of dust. He wipes the sweat off his face with his dirty white robe and motions to his mouth.

“Water?” he asks.

I know he’s been working in the fields all day. All of these kids have been. I remember being their age: nine or ten. Work was a distant concept, something moms and dads did to pay for drum lessons, cable television, and summer camp. These children work because their families can’t survive without it.

They work because the top 5 percent of Iraq’s population—those who have money, land, and power—don’t have a reason to care about the other 95 percent.

I grab the kid a Gatorade from the cooler in our Humvee. It’s dripping water, and just the feel of its cold plastic is a relief from the 120-degree sun.

The boy holds up the orange sports drink proudly, like a trophy, his smile wider than his face. His friends look at him as though he’d made the venture into manhood. They look at him like American boys look at the kid with the newest video game system.

Before the Americans came to Iraq Gatorade for these boys was unheard of, a dream, nonexistent. Water that
tastes like flavored sugar? Juice that doesn’t come from a fruit and made from water not pulled from the Tigris River? It was unreal and unobtainable.

This American Schmo pulls it from his Humvee like pocket lint. I hand out a half dozen Gatorades and water to the kids, who are trying to sneak peeks inside the Humvee.

One of them comes to me and holds out a small fuzzy object. It’s white and appears homemade. He holds it up, showing it off.

“Can I see?” I ask.

He places it in my hand. It looks like a rabbit’s foot but slightly modified. The top of its hide is pulled into two pointy ears and small beads are glued to the front for eyes. It even has pink stitching that makes a triangular nose. The baby soft, white fur extends from the bottom, creating a sort of fluffy dress.

It reminds me of the tissue-and-string ghosts I used to make in elementary school around Halloween. In an ugly sort of way, like a baby pug, it’s remarkably cute. I can’t tell if the little craft is designed to be a cat or an owl.

“Is it a cat?” I ask.

“Bazoona,” the boy replies.

“Bazoona?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean cat?”

“Bazoona.”

“Owl?”

“Bazoona.”

“Like hooo-hooo.” I mock an owl.

“Mreeow, mreeow,” he says, and claws the air.

“A cat,” I conclude.

“Bazoona,” he corrects.

“Bazoona?”

“Yes.”

“In English: cat.”

“Cut,” he repeats. I smile at him.

“Mreeow, mreeow,” I say. “Cat.”

“Cut.”

“You got it.”

“In Arabic: Bazoona,” he says.

“Bazoona.”

“Yes,” he says, smiling. “You got it.”

He gives me the Bazoona Cat in exchange for a Gatorade. The other kids admire their friend for learning some English from the American.

In all honesty, these kids shouldn’t be this close to us and our Humvee. Our higher-ups would throw a hissy fit if they knew how we acted out on the road.

“Keep the kids away from you,” the commander tells us at every briefing he attends. “The insurgents use them for attacks, and they are not to be trusted. And do not throw
them water or MREs from your vehicles. I don’t want any kids getting run over on one of my convoys.”

We glare at him.

“I know. It breaks my heart, too.” He tries to reason with us. “I want to give those kids as much water as I can spare. But that’s not the SOP.”

The thing about the commander is he doesn’t convoy around with us enough to know what’s going on in this war. He gets intelligence reports and memorandums, and as far as he’s concerned, the words they contain are sacred. To him rules are rules, because that’s his job.

But it’s not ours. We GI Joe Schmos, we’re used to breaking rules. We’ve seen the human side of this war. We’ve seen enough hate and ignorance in this country to look past memorandums and standard operating procedures. And we understand a thing or two about psychology.

These kids are the future of Iraq. They’re the ones who’ll decide whether or not this war means anything. Not the commander. Not American politicians or the press. It’s the children who will always remember the Americans who stopped by their farm and handed out Gatorade. And they will remember that they weren’t just Americans. They were American soldiers.

At the end of the day it’s our job to make sure there are more kids who identify us as the soldiers who are generous as opposed to the soldiers who destroy villages. One day at
a time, one child at a time, that’s how we make a difference. That’s the only way we can come out of this mess feeling like it’s worth something.

Preserve the innocent. Protect those who deserve it most.

Sometimes I get out the fuzzy little rabbit foot. For a minute or two I sit smelling it, remembering the dirty farmland kids and the boy who taught me some Arabic. I taught him some English and we called it even.

W
e convoy to Q-West one perfectly normal day. Bravo Company has its own convoy trailing behind us about forty-five minutes.

The thing that sucks about convoying for five straight hours is the padding in military vehicles might as well be plywood. And the small cabins packed full of basic necessities, coupled with the uncomfortable and heavy body armor, provide little room to shift weight. We try anyway but to no avail. Our asses go numb after the first hour.

And the second worst part is we drink gallons of water every day, not to mention Red Bull and coffee. So five hours with no pee breaks is impossible. We piss into empty
bottles and toss them out of the truck.

But it’s August. We’re so used to this lifestyle we could do it in our sleep.

Upon arrival at Q-West we drive our convoy straight to the chow hall. There I see some of the Bravo guys who weren’t on Bravo’s convoy. Since February most of us have been rotated to Q-West. For a while we rotated a few guys up here every couple of weeks.

The first person I see is Juan Hernandez. He’s an equipment operator, too, and we worked together back in February. Among other jobs, the biggest one was barricading the ECP (Entry Control Point) that serviced the camp.

An ECP is simply a gate where convoys or other personnel enter a high-security camp or FOB. Without fighting your way through the perimeter, there’s no other way into a military post. Hernandez, I, and a few other soldiers from B company fortified the main ECP to the camp with Hesco barriers.

Hesco barriers look like 4x4x6-foot sandbags attached to each other, wrapped in wire mesh. They stand upright, tops open, and engineers use bucket loaders to fill them with dirt. The dirt to catch bullets.

“Hey, Hernandez!” I yell as I approach him in the chow hall’s gravel parking lot.

“Hey, Smithson,” he said. “How are you?”

“Same shit, different day. You?”

“I’m all right.”

Hernandez seems distant, but this happens when you’re in a combat zone. A lot of us feel distant. Distant from family. Distant from love. Distant from life.

So I don’t think anything of it.

After getting our meals we sit down with a group of Bravo guys.

“Hey, Smithson,” says Sergeant Stone. “Good to see you. How’ve you been?”

“Good, Sarge,” I say. “Starving.”

As I eat, I notice the whole group seems distant.

“You guys all right?” I ask them.

“You didn’t hear?” says Hernandez.

I shake my head.

“Sergeant Conklin died today,” he says. “He was on the convoy behind you.”

“Oh, man,” I say. “IED?”

Hernandez nods his head.

Ten months into this tour we haven’t lost anyone, and now, out of nowhere…

“Was he the one who worked out a lot?”

“Yeah, he was on that ECP mission with us.”

“And he was a sergeant?” I say.

I try to picture the sergeants of B company, those with whom I worked back in February. “The only sergeants I
remember out on the ECP are Stone and that crazy old guy, what is his name?”

“Blake.”

“Yeah, Blake,” I say.

I had almost forgotten. Blake was a fanatical old man. Picture Christopher Lloyd wearing a desert Kevlar. Picture him laughing with an unfiltered cigarette in his mouth and jabbing at your ribs. His eyes are decorated with crow’s feet, and his unbuttoned chin strap swings around as he laughs.

I want to share the memory. I want to tell Juan Hernandez all about it and laugh with him, but the painful look on his face stops me.

“I think he made sergeant after you left,” says Stone. “You’d know him as a specialist.”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember him,” I lie.

I remember that Jim Conklin worked out a lot, but I don’t remember Jim Conklin. He is these guys’ brother, he died forty-five minutes behind me, and I am ashamed that I can’t recall a single moment with him.

We sit in silence for a while reflecting, eating, wondering about life and war and peace and death.

“You guys okay?” I ask Jim Conklin’s brothers. They shrug. Really because they don’t know. Reality hasn’t set in yet. It’s even too early for shock.

Then Stone says, “People die.”

He shoves a piece of army steak into his mouth and chews.

I am shocked at the insensitivity. I try to place myself in their shoes. I picture losing someone like Sebastian Koprowski or Todd Wegner, Scott Moore or Jesse Smith, Josh Roman or…anyone. I almost cry at the mere thought. And this guy shrugs it off with “People die”?

I mean, for Christ’s sake, show some emotion. Your fellow soldier was just bombed to death.
Our
fellow soldier. And some ignorant
haji
flipped the trigger. What happened to vengeance and spitefulness? What happened to hate? What happened to winning the war?

Then it hits me: Showing emotion shows vulnerability, and vulnerability gives into the fear. It’s not a macho thing. It’s about the need to survive. That’s what terrorism is all about: mortal fear. If we let the fear take over, we lose. We can’t lose. We have to stay strong. There’s a time and place for grieving, and it’s not in the chow hall eating boot leather covered in A.1. steak sauce.

People die.

Insensitive. True.

This is a war. We forget that sometimes. A hundred successful convoys and you tend to forget. Before I left the States a thousand and one people told me to avoid getting complacent, especially those who served in Vietnam. We never really become complacent. Our eyes are always open,
always ready, but sometimes we do forget that we’re in a combat zone.

B company lives in old airplane hangars. Cots and wall lockers are scattered across the hangar’s concrete floor. Some have towels or ponchos strung up with 550 cord to provide privacy. Some have stuffed animals from girlfriends and wives. Some have TVs. Some have laptops. Some have pictures and birthday cards and nonperishable food.

And everything is needlessly camouflaged. The army-issue brown towels, the army green cots and socks and ponchos, the tan wall lockers and desert boots and desert uniforms. The place is decorated in the classic style that is the army. It’s ugly. It’s beautiful.

Hernandez points to a locker that looks like all the rest and says, “That’s his.”

I can’t remember who Conklin is. I can’t put a face to the name, so Hernandez shows me. Conklin’s tan wall locker is covered with pictures. Most are of his family. Some are of him and his B company friends. I study the pictures carefully, trying to hear his voice in my head, trying to remember a conversation we had.

In his pictures Jim Conklin is young and full of life. He smiles in every one. Pictures of soldiers in a combat zone rarely have people smiling. But Jim seemed to be a genuinely happy person, and now I remember what he looked like. But there’s still a problem. I can’t remember
who
he was.

Conklin’s bed is made. It’s a cot with a sleeping bag on top, so maybe “made” is an overstatement. His bed is neat. The brown T-shirt he used as a pillowcase is covered in drool stains. Some of his friends have placed his rosary neatly on his army brown pillow. Conklin was a devout Catholic.

One of his friends, the guy on the cot next to him, takes a break from a PlayStation game. The screen is temporarily frozen, and the level is loading. He looks down toward the neatly displayed rosary and stares. He stares at Jim Conklin’s empty cot.

What is he thinking about?

He’s remembering the smell of Conklin’s aftershave, the sound of Conklin’s voice, maybe a conversation they had. A philosophical conversation about life and death because that’s how soldiers sometimes talk to each other.

He doesn’t cry; he doesn’t even really look sad. He looks thoughtful. He just stares, in an unguarded moment, as if nothing else in the world matters. Not the hangar, not the video game, not the heat, not the war, not anything.

He’s wondering where Jim Conklin is now, how he can just be…gone. He’s wondering what Jim’s parents are like and how his mom will carry on after she gets the news. He’s wondering how
his
mom would carry on if she heard similar news. He’s wondering why it hurts so much.

He learns things while staring at his dead friend’s empty cot. He learns that life is not everything he thought it was.
He learns what war means. He learns what peace means. He learns that death is nondiscriminatory. He learns that after ten solid months, James H. Conklin will not walk through the hangar door later tonight. He will not stow his gear and share a meaningful conversation while he unlaces his boots. He will not rub foot powder into his cracked feet, read a chapter in a book, and then drool on the brown T-shirt he used as a pillowcase.

Not tonight, not ever again.

A week later, we make another LOGPAC up to Q-West. For supplies, sure. But mostly we go for Jim Conklin’s funeral. A hundred people sit in fold-out chairs.

They start with a slideshow full of pictures of Conklin. It’s to the song “Forever Young.” Jim Conklin was twenty-two when he was blown up. “Forever Young,” indeed. A piece of shrapnel from an IED is what did him in. It was on August 21, nine days before my birthday, fifteen after his. Jim hardly knew what hit him. He died of shock, says the medic from B company.

I say he died from joining the army.

A guy who was twenty-two, liked by everyone, smart, athletic, funny, charming, hard working, and whose voice I can’t hear in my head, has died. And I was on the road forty-five minutes ahead of him, pissing into a bottle when he was killed.

Here I am at a man’s funeral and I hardly knew him. Why didn’t I get to know him better? What the hell is wrong with me? Maybe I should have seen it coming. How could I have seen this coming? Ten months into the tour and we haven’t lost a single person. Then we lose Jim Conklin.

I sit in my fold-out chair. One of Conklin’s buddies goes onstage. He has a guitar, and another guy holds up a microphone so we can all hear the words to the song he wrote. The guy singing, he’s holding back tears because he’s not vulnerable.

It dawns on me that Conklin died five days ago. This guy wrote this song in less than a week. That’s pretty impressive, and I respect it. It doesn’t draw tears, really. It’s not that good. But it’s a song about a fallen soldier. It’s exceptional.

He leaves and a couple soldiers who were closest to Conklin say a few words. But I don’t know them. I know their names; throughout the tour, I’ve worked with all of them, but I don’t know them. They know Jim Conklin like a brother. Their speeches draw tears.

But I don’t cry. The crowd is sniffling, but I hold mine back. Vulnerability, sure. Detachment, sure. But it’s more than that.

I hardly knew Jim Conklin. I worked with him, yes, for two weeks in February, but I don’t really remember him. I
am ashamed, and this is why I hold back tears. I feel like crying, but I feel like it’s not my place to cry.

Jim Conklin’s real friends have gone through hell since he died. This hell will always be a part of them, and I don’t share that. I’m not entitled to share tears. I told my friends from Bravo company, I told Jim Conklin, that I’d come back.

“It was great to work with you,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.”

They truly are an exceptional group of people. I told them I’d volunteer to come back for another rotation at Q-West, but I never did. There were a lot of other missions going on, and I got lost in the mess. I could’ve told Renninger to send me back, but I didn’t. I betrayed them. I betrayed Jim. Now he is dead, and I’m not entitled to tears.

His best friend is done talking, and the whole room sniffles.

I stare at the M16 up onstage. Jim Conklin’s rifle, upside down and wearing his Kevlar and dog tags, standing alone onstage. A small box sits beside it on the ground. It has a clear face, and inside, arranged neatly, are all of his medals and awards. An eleven by fourteen framed portrait of Conklin in his dress greens sits on a stand.

Bravo company’s first sergeant, the enlisted soldier who works directly with the commander, takes the stand and does what’s called the “Last Call.”

“Staff Sergeant Holmes,” he says, reading the names off a paper.

Somewhere in the crowd: “Here, First Sergeant.”

“Specialist Carlton.”

“Here, First Sergeant.”

“Sergeant First Class Blake.”

“Here, First Sergeant.”

“Sergeant Conklin.”

And the whole room is silent.

“Sergeant Jim Conklin,” the First Sergeant says again.

No one says a word.

“Sergeant James Henry Conklin.”

Nothing.

And then he tells us to stand for the twenty-one-gun salute. Seven people stand at attention off to the left. Someone standing beside them gives orders, and they each fire three synchronized, blank rounds at the ceiling.

Jim Conklin did not die in my arms. I didn’t witness his death. I didn’t call in the “nine line” report to have him medevaced out of the kill zone. I didn’t know him. I forgot who he was, and I can’t hear his voice in my head. I told him I’d volunteer for another rotation and I didn’t. Maybe I would remember him better if I’d come up a second or third time, but I didn’t.

We stay standing while someone plays taps.

The first set of three notes is played. They’re slow,
precise, and perfect. My bottom lip quivers, but I am not entitled to tears.

The second set of three notes is played. My eyes water, and the room turns blurry.

I didn’t know him, this true GI Joe Schmo, this hero. He is not my family or close friend. I cannot picture a moment of interaction between the two of us. I know who he is, but I don’t know him. His existence meant nothing to me. And at this moment his existence means everything to me.

Picture a fence in New York City. Picture being stuck in it.

My eyes are blurry, and I choke on my own tears. I feel as if I’m trapped in rubble, and the weight of James H. Conklin’s last good-bye is overwhelming.

I shed tears I don’t deserve to shed. I’m not entitled to tears, but they come nonetheless. They are not quiet, respectful, funeral tears. They are tears for a fellow soldier, a brother I hardly knew, and I sob like a baby. I bury my face in my hands like a mother who puts flowers by her dead son’s picture, like Jim Conklin’s mother.