Authors: Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year-Old GI
Tags: #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Iraq War; 2003, #Iraq War; 2003-, #Personal Narratives; American, #Social Issues, #Military & Wars, #United States, #Smithson; Ryan, #Soldiers, #Biography & Autobiography, #Soldiers - United States, #General, #Juvenile Literature, #Biography, #History
“H
ey, Smithson,” says LT.
“Yes, sir?”
“What’s the best part about being in Iraq?”
“One way or another, sir, you know you’re going to leave.”
“That’s right,” he says, smiling.
This is the last thing we say while our feet stand on Iraqi ground. As the plane lifts off of Anaconda’s runway, the whole plane erupts in applause and cheering.
When we land in Kuwait, again the crowd cheers and we unload the plane. We’re led to a tent where we’ll be spending a few hours before our next plane takes off. Here’s that familiar, windy place we remember from twelve months ago.
This camp has soldiers coming and going at all hours of the night. But no midnight chow. So, as the rest of the company stays back at the tent, EQ platoon sets off to find some food. We’ve been eating MREs for the last year. We would rather not eat them while we wait for the plane to take us home.
After fifteen minutes of walking we find the chow hall. It’s closed, but there’s a back door open. So we help ourselves. Etiquette goes out the window when you’re hungry. And when you’ve just survived a year in Iraq.
The door leads to the kitchen. It looks recently tidied up and cleaned. So there’s not much food lying around, but there is a large basket of fruit and another basket full of chips.
“Take what you can,” says LT.
We’re all grinning at the absurdity of stealing fruit and chips from a chow hall, but we’re doing it anyway. I look at LT, and he shrugs.
“Shouldn’t have left the door open,” he says.
A guy comes out from the front of the chow hall. He looks like a cook. He’s not military, so we pretty much ignore him.
“You guys can’t be in here,” he says. The look on his face is priceless. Imagine the look on a homeless man’s face when you start reading the newspaper he’s using for a blanket. There are more than twenty of us, and he knows he
can’t stop us. So we grab what we can and walk out the door.
“Thanks,” Scott Moore tells him.
“This is so out of character,” I say to Moore.
“Oh well.”
He takes a bite out of an apple.
“Did I tell you about the last time I was in Kuwait, going home on leave?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“You told me,” says Roman. “In the shower trailer?”
“Yeah,” I say. Then to Moore: “You know at Camp Doha, they have those, like dozen, shower trailers lined up at the end of the tents?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“The place was real busy. Tons of people going on leave…”
On my way to the showers I pass a guy walking to the tents.
“Go to the one all the way down at the end,” he says. “There’s almost no one there.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say.
And I start walking down the long length of trailers. As I pass each one, there are less and less soldiers going in and out of them. When I get to the last one, I walk up the stairs to the trailer’s door.
Opening the door, I see that the whole trailer is empty. There are four or five shower stalls and four or five toilet stalls.
“All right,” I say. “I got the place to myself.”
I have to take a quick whiz, and I notice there are no urinals. Kind of weird, but you never know how equipped the facilities in the army are going to be. Not thinking much of it, I use one of the stalls. Then I take my time and get undressed. I start one of the showers and smile to myself in the mirror. Just a few short hours and I’ll be heading home.
After a long hot shower I get out and wrap a towel around myself. I lather up and start shaving in one of the five sinks.
The door opens, and I look over to see who ruined my privacy.
It’s a female.
She doesn’t look in my direction, just turns and walks to one of the bathroom stalls.
I wonder if she knows she’s in the wrong trailer,
I think.
I look at the stalls again. There are no urinals. And then things start to click.
I’m the one in the wrong trailer. There’s always a female shower trailer among the male trailers. And it’s usually the one on the end. The soldier who gave
me the advice wasn’t trying to trick me. When he said the trailer “all the way at the end,” he assumed I would go to the last
male
trailer.
I rush to put my shirt and shorts on, and I realize my face is still half full of shaving cream. I look at the stall to which the female went. Then I look back in the mirror. Back and forth until I decide I might have enough time. I don’t want only half my face shaved.
I run the razor over my chin and neck so fast I cut myself twice. I throw on my shirt, stuff my toiletries back in my little bag, and rush out the door. On my way back to the tent I start laughing hysterically.
“And no one ever knew the wiser,” I say.
“I can’t believe you did that,” says Josh Roman.
“I can,” says Scott Moore.
Back at the tent EQ enjoys its pirated food. Some of the company tries to nap for the few hours we have, but we mainly stay up. We may talk briefly about going home but mostly we talk about the past year.
It’s funny. When you’re at war, all you talk about is going home. Now that we’re going home, all we talk about is being at war.
“Man, our first time in Kuwait seems like forever ago,”
says Seabass. He’s sitting on the floor across from me eating barbeque potato chips.
“I know,” I say.
“All I can remember about Camp Virginia is the smell of it,” says LT. “That fried, sandy smell of chow in the desert.”
“The diesel fuel and grease,” I say.
“How many times did we PMCS those friggin’ dozers?” asks Koprowski.
“Too many,” says Josh Roman.
“Hey, Smithson,” says Neil Munoz from a little ways down the line of cots. “How about the smell of my shit?”
I laugh.
“I forgot about that,” I say.
“Dude,” says LT. “You wiping your boots off with a rock. That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
“What is this?” asks Zerega.
“You never heard this story?” says LT. “Oh, Smithson, you have to tell him.”
“All right,” I say. “Remember when Roman, LT, Munoz, and I got called for that range watching detail?”
“Yeah,” says Zerega. “While we were armoring the twenty-tons.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Well, LT and Roman were in one Humvee and Munoz and I were in another….”
Kuwait, besides for acclimatization and ship unloading, is for training. One of the training ranges is where this story takes place. We’ve already been to this range for unit training. And now we are back to act as security guards.
The range is a fake town. A mock convoy full of apprehensive soldiers drives through every thirty or so minutes and fires at pop-up targets. Some of the targets are angry-looking people wearing masks and holding weapons. Others are of smiling families.
The mock convoys drive through the mock town, firing at mock targets, avoiding firing at mock families, and weaving from mock IEDs. Then they park in a box formation and hold an AAR. Each convoy comes through three times. Think crawl, walk, run. The first time, crawl phase, that’s a dry run. No rounds are used. The second time, walking, that’s half speed, blank rounds. The third time is full speed, running with live rounds.
And then there’s the range watch. On this half of the range the range watch is Munoz and I. We sit three hundred meters away from the fake town in our Humvee watching the desert be flat. Really we’re watching for safety reasons. And by safety reasons, I mean camels. Plus, sure, if someone gets shot, we have a handheld radio to contact range control.
But mostly we’re here for camel watching.
LT and Roman are off toward the beginning of the range. Two whole days. Guess how many camels. You got it. Not a one. So we take turns between dozing off and watching the route.
There’s nothing around for miles but the range and a six-foot sign that says
RANGE
2. We’re parked right next to the latter. It’s December, and it’s pretty cold out. During the day it’s about fifty degrees, and during the night, it gets down around thirty. And that damn wind, it never stops. Though, because we sit in a Humvee all day, the elements are tolerable.
“Oh, man,” says Munoz. “I gotta shit.”
He shifts around in his seat trying to hold it in. For some reason no one has thought to place a port-a-john at the range watching point. That’s the army for you. Eleven hours of sitting in a Humvee, munching MREs, and no toilet.
“Better hold it,” I say.
I put my nose back into a book. And he does hold it, but there are six more hours out here. So he gives up. A convoy just drove through the mock village and sits three hundred meters to our left holding their AAR. I am the driver, and we face the desert so that the passenger side of the Humvee can’t be seen by the parked convoy.
“All right, I’m going for it,” announces Munoz.
“Have a good one,” I say.
You always keep toilet paper in a Humvee. Golden rule. So Munoz grabs the roll and glances out my window to make sure the convoy is still parked. He opens his door and squats on the passenger side. He holds the edge of his door and uses it to brace himself so he can sit like in a chair. All I can see is his head out of the backseat passenger’s window. So I think his boom-boom will end up somewhere next to that door.
He finishes up and pulls himself back into his seat.
“I can’t believe you just did that, Sergeant,” I say.
“Gotta do what you gotta do,” he says. “Just watch out on this side. I pushed some dirt over it, so don’t step on the mound.”
After a few more boring hours of reading, napping, and getting to know Munoz, I have to pee. The wind blows from the left, where another convoy has rolled through, camel free, and is parked in a box formation at the end of the mock town. So I stand at the rear of the Humvee with my back to the wind so as to avoid spray-back. Peeing into the wind is a mistake you make only once.
Munoz leans his head out of his window.
“Watch out for my shit,” he says.
“All right,” I say, looking down at the small mound of dirt on the ground outside the back passenger seat.
I laugh and continue my stream. When I’m done, I shake off and button my pants. I look out over the flat, brown desert. Seeing the curve of the earth makes me laugh and shake my head. I decide I want a cigarette. Now, I don’t really smoke, but this is a stupidly dull detail. Smoking is something to do besides read and nap.
People wonder why soldiers smoke. This is why: because two days of range watching is enough boredom for your whole life.
I pull the lighter from my pocket and try to burn the cigarette hanging from my mouth. The wind blows hard, and the lighter’s flame won’t stay up. I turn my back to the wind and try some more. This still doesn’t work.
The Humvee is built like a sort of pickup truck. The wind rushes right over the back half. So with my back to the wind I move to the left, finding cover behind the taller, rear passenger seat.
With the cigarette lit I stand up and gaze at the curve of the brown earth. I inhale a few times.
Iraq can’t be this boring,
I think.
I fuss around like people do when they’re bored, when they’re smoking. I shift weight from one foot to the other and twist my feet in the dirt.
Uh-oh,
I think.
Please tell me it’s farther left.
I slowly lower my stare to my feet. There between them is light, desert brown sand swirled like ice cream with dark, Munoz brown shit. I lift my feet and look at the bottoms. The treads are packed with sticky, recycled army chow.
I look around for a place to wipe it off. The only thing around besides the Humvee is the Range 2 sign. It stands off to my right like a pillar. It’s a pretty large sign supported by four by four posts. On one of these posts is where I rub my shit-covered soles.
Munoz sees me and pokes his head out of his window. Then he looks back at the trampled mound he made. His laugh is hearty, from the belly, just like his crap.
“You stupid ass,” he says.
I wipe my boots off the best I can on the Range 2 signpost.
When we get back to the range control station, where we sleep in the Humvees, we meet up with LT and Roman. Of course Munoz is eager to tell
the story as I pour water on my boot and scrape the treads with a pointy rock I found.
“So LT’s about to fall over laughing—”
“And then”—LT takes over the storytelling—“Smithson says, ‘You eat corn yesterday, Sergeant Munoz?’ I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life!”
LT wipes the tears out of his eyes.
Soon the company is led outside to another runway. This time, we board a commercial plane, like the one on which we came over. Instead of Germany, this time we refuel in Ireland. Then we board the plane that will take us to Fort Bragg.
The moon shines out the window. The waves in the Atlantic break up the moonlight, making it dance around thirty thousand feet below us. There are a few overhead lights on in the plane, the ones you use to read, that give some of the cabin an orange glow. Most of the plane is sleeping, dreaming of home. A bunch of us from EQ platoon, we stay up.
We reminisce about the year we wished away, the year that would never end, the year that’s over now.
“LT,” says Marc Zerega, “you want to talk about falling over hilarious. What about the time on the Samarra mission?”
“With Smithson?” asks LT.
Zerega nods.
“Oh my God. I haven’t thought about that in months.”
“What happened on the Samarra mission?” asks Jesse Smith.