Spinning #3

Brent Dunkleburger was my bunkmate during my first deployment. We called him DK because long names in the Army are never used. DK was the father of three beautiful girls and the husband of an ugly wife. He loved his family with every ounce of his 130 pound body. We shared his laptop. I was sitting next to him the day that his youngest daughter was born. We both watched the screen with tears in our eyes. His tears were from seeing his child for the first time. My tears were from watching my friend view his newborn child from 3000 miles away and still having the glow that a dad has when he looks at his daughter for the first time.

            DK was riding in the front seat of a Humvee the day that he died. I remember the explosion that rocked the side of his truck as a rocket propelled grenade impacted above the door frame. The gunner slumped over the .50 caliber gun mounted on top. Shrapnel killed him instantly. We opened fire on the area where the RPG had been fired from. We slung countless taxpayers dollars’ worth of ammunition into the block that housed the insurgent. As I reloaded my rifle I looked up to see DK moving the dead gunner off the silent weapon. I stopped and watched him set the body inside the truck and open fire on a mud-clay building. DK had a small smile on his face that combat brings to some people. He never stopped firing the gun. A second RPG exploded on his Humvee and killed him. He fell into the gun as his corpse fired off the rest of the 100 rounds attached to the .50 cal.

            I do not remember the name of DK’s gunner that was killed that day. He was a new replacement that had recently arrived to our platoon. I have avoided learning his name in the years since then. He was not my friend, he was not DK. His death, while equally permanent, was never as sad to me as DK’s.

Spinning #2

More fun from my Capstone project.

War works magic in the minds of its combatants in different ways. It causes some people to break down. They freeze up in a firefight and get killed or wounded. Sometimes they break after an event and just have to be removed from the environment all together. I spent several years being jealous of these types of people. I wanted to go home and know that war was too much for me. It wasn’t. Instead I was part of the group that became mean and angry. I did not become a mindless killer. I became someone that enjoyed the violence. I loved the smell, the taste, and the excitement that the violence brought to my life. I was not in Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction. I was not in Iraq because they harbored terrorists. I was in Iraq to inflict pain on the enemy while trying to keep as many of my guys alive as possible. I loved it. I still love it.

            We were guarding Checkpoint 133. I was on the ground with our medic, Thompson. Locals would walk up to the checkpoint, get searched, and move down the road. Two men walked up. One was bracing the other. When they were closer we could see that the man being helped had his eyes sewn shut and had a very strong limp. They explained that his eyes had been injured during a firefight between the Americans and insurgents that he had no part in. He was just an innocent bystander who happened to get wounded. He pulled down his pants and exposed the horribly infected wound on his ass. I called Thompson over and asked him to take a look.

            The medic poked the infection with a large Q-tip and gave me a look that was a mixture of amazement and disgust. We asked the men to wait as we went to the Humvee and got some medical supplies.

“You know he was wounded in a fight against us, right?”

“Yeah,” I said with a smirk, “but he said he was not involved.”

Thompson laughed, “Sure, that mother fucker was just watching a battle and had nothing to do with it.”

            Thompson grabbed some pills from his med-kit and we went to talk to the two men. Through broken English and Arabic Thompson explained that he needed to take three pills a day for a month. Once the infection cleared up he should be able to walk without pain, but that the eyes could not be fixed with what we had. The men thanked us several times and returned in the direction they came from.

“Did you give him antibiotics?” I asked.

Thompson laughed as he walked back to the Humvee, “Fuck no! I gave that bastard a bag of vitamin C pills. Hopefully by the time he realizes they’re not working he will be dead from the infection.”

I just laughed at that, “You’re my fucking hero, man.”

            

Spinning

I have been working on my Capstone writing project. It includes taking a paper from another class and improving it. I have decided on working on a piece from my Vietnam Literature class. It is a weird combination of non-fiction and fiction. The idea comes from reading Tim O'Brien. This was also my first attempt and writing about things that happened during my time in Iraq. The other things I have written so far have been post war stuff. I find this much more difficult and more enjoyable. The paper was a collection of several quick burst of stories. A flash fiction collection really. Here is one.

I was sitting on the steps outside my trailer. We had recently relocated from a series of bombed-out houses to a camp that had two-man rooms. Every night concluded with a cigarette on the steps. Shockley walked up to our trailer and asked if he could bum a pack of smokes for his mission tonight. I liked to keep a drawer stocked full of cigarettes, and the word had spread that my room functioned as an after-hours convenience store. I reached past the Newports and grabbed a pack of Royals for Shockley. Royals are the cheap Iraqi menthols. I tossed the pack to him and said I would be expecting my $2 tomorrow.

Someone was beating on my door. I had been asleep for a few hours, but had no idea what time it was. My roommate got up and answered. Shockley's truck had been hit by an IED. Everyone was alive, but Shockley had to be medevac'd out. I sat up in bed and lit a Newport, and thought, "That fucker owes me $2 or a pack of smokes. Now he is getting to go home."

A Diet of Alcohol and Cigarettes

The murder of 16 Afghanistan civilians by one US soldier has had me thinking lately. I am shocked that this has not happened sooner, and that it has not happened more often. Our military has been fighting a war for 10 years now. Most of that time we were fighting two wars.

While most Americans have stayed at home and said all the right things about supporting the troops and blah blah blah, the real issue of the mental toll on the combatants has not been addressed. I am not trying to say that the soldier is not responsible for his actions. I feel that he is fully responsible and should be killed for what he did. I am more concerned by the complete lack of discussion about what war will do to young men when they are exposed to it for a year on/year off rotation for a decade.

The fighting in these modern wars has not been as violent or deadly as a conventional war. The real issue with the mental problems of Iraq and Afghanistan comes from fighting an enemy that uses guerrilla tactics. The mental stress of living in an area and thinking that every citizen you see is out to kill you is what compounds the stress of war on soldiers today. This is why guerrilla warfare is successful. You remove the massive losses that an army normally faces and replace that with the doubt and fear of "Is today the day that the guy by the sheep stand blows me up?"

I do not have an answer for the mental beating that these recent wars have inflicted on the soldiers. The military does not have an answer either. They just bring us home, make us answer a few questions, and then feed us some pills if the bad thoughts do not go away. I would just like to see the issue being discussed more than it is. Starting a program to give returning vets a job is great. That will help a lot of guys out. A more important program would be a successful way to bring these Americans home and help them not want to blow their brains out. Right now the stigma behind seeking help is bad. Correcting that will take a serious overhaul of how the military handles mental illnesses from the top down. Some guys can't handle the thoughts/dreams/memories and kill themselves. Some of us lock away in our homes for a few months on a steady diet of alcohol and cigarettes until we meet a woman who is great enough to pull us out of the funk. Both options are shitty.

I can only hope that the war in Afghanistan can end soon and that we do not have to go through this again in my lifetime. I am certain that another war will pop up eventually, maybe sooner than later. Hopefully we can have a better grasp of how to deal with returning vets by then.

Who doesn't love a war poem??

Baghdad: 12-12-06

I carried him into the building’s entrance

Leaned him against the wall with his legs stretched out

I sat against the opposite wall

Our feet were touching

“Why did you have to do that?”

No response

“That was fucking stupid.”

No response

I reached into his pocket and grabbed his pack of smokes

I took a cigarette and extended my hand to him

No response

I yelled upstairs

“Hey Pat, you blew his brains out the back of his head.”

A response

“Fucking awesome!”

“He had a full pack of smokes too!”

A response

“Hells yeah, even better!”

Talking to the walls

My previous career, which seems like a lifetime ago, put me in a situation that has forced several friendships to end in death. Most days I think about the guys that are no longer here and move on. There has not been a day when they do not make an appearance in my head. Often it just puts a smile on my face as I think about a memory we formed. Some days they really hit me hard though. 

I realize this is something that will never change. I have a lot of dead friends. Some were killed in war. Others died once we got back to America. Either way it just sucks. Beth helps me deal with the loss more than any thing else. She is an amazing woman. She struggles with it sometimes because she does not know how to address the problem when she sees it hit me. Some days I just need a drink and a few minutes to move on. Other times I just listen to this song and mope around the house for a while.

Uncle Heath's Story Time!

I thought I would share a story about the day I thought I was going to die in a port-a-potty.

During my first deployment to Iraq I lived at a base that was mortared a lot. When I say "a lot" I realize that can be hard to completely understand. It was a small base. More like an over glorified outpost. Our base received mortar fire daily. We had people killed and injured by mortars. On Mother's Day in 2004 we were hit by more than 70 rounds. I do not know the exact number because eventually I just stopped counting. I know the full impact may still be lost on you, but the story must go on! 

One day I was sitting in a port-a-potty, what is now known as the coach's office, just taking care of business. At this point everyone there knew what the sound of an incoming mortar round was like. It is a sound that we will never forget. So I heard the incoming rounds. I opened the door to see if anyone was running around me, looking for some clue if the rounds were hitting close to our building and more importantly if they were hitting near my completely plastic bathroom. I propped the door open with my boot just in time to watch a round splash roughly 100 meters in front of me. It was decision time! I pulled up my pants and started running towards our building. Roughly ten steps out of the port-a-potty I stopped and made a mad dash back to shitter. I stood in the plastic bathroom thinking, "this will keep me safe." Then it dawned on me that I was hoping to avoid burning hot shrapnel while inside a plastic box. This entire process was done in a matter of seconds, of course. I then ran to our building and waited out the mortar rounds. 

After the rounds had stopped I caught a whiff of the mess that had made itself at home in my pants during all of this running. I then had to grab the baby wipes and a clean set of underwear and make the walk of shame back out to the port-a-potty that just a few minutes before I had expected to save my life.

The day ended well. No one was injured. I had to throw away a pair of underwear, but at least it all happened so you could read this fun story :)