Dispatches from the front

Date: 3/16/2003
Subject: Musings

Hello all,

We’ve moved forward, inching ever closer to the Iraqi border. Like a runner at the starting block, poised in a stance of potential energy, we wait.

Daily, I monitor the BBC World News wondering at the activity of the noble pieces on this dusty chess board. Now the players converge on Portugal for another meeting.

It is a constant strain knowing of our impotence as pawns, and wondering as to our fate. Now closing on our second month in country, the strain is beginning to show. Letters are a treasure, voraciously read and jealously guarded. We subdivide our days into meals and mail. We speak of what we will do first upon our return, of food, of bathing, of drink, of sex–all primal needs that we are deprived of here. One thing we all agree on is that it will be a long time before we visit a beach.

We create our little microcosms based on units, miniature tribes, tiny families. Such is the soldier’s life. We are our support, and we must have confidence in each other.

My troops miss their families and we wonder at our reception once we return. Will this be a repeat of the Viet Nam era with soldiers being villainized? Treated as criminals instead of as men and women who had sacrificed their safety and comfort to the pitiful pay and severe, austere living in order to serve the United States?

Regardless of one’s opinions of the specifics guiding this behemoth, its foundations lie in the bloodshed of the revolution. Giving the rights of speech and the safety of home. Even with my very liberal standing, I will be severely saddened if these men and women are not welcomed with open arms. My troops are heroes, one and all, regardless of the politics on high. We are so isolated even in our numbers, heartsick and homesick.

One of my colleagues got engaged just before being plucked from his job in a veterinary clinic, and whirled off into the desert. I know he is hurting. Others are scared and bored and dirty and exhausted, emotionally and physically, as we maneuver and prepare. I preach on the cradle of civilization which we are on the fringe of, explaining the deep and rich histories of the Byzantines and the Persians, of the politics of the Iranian and Iraqi regimes, of their wars and their reasons. I reach deeply into my undergraduate years to bring up recollections of the meanings of the Koran and its poetry, to mellow the unknown and foreignness which my soldiers feel, and to allow them to appreciate the people who surround us.

If things proceed on hawk’s wings, will these young men and women (I am among the oldest of the detachment) see horrors as we move North? Will the Shiite majority unleash hatred against the Sunni minority? Will the Kurds demand an independent homeland, and raise arms against Turkey? We are so ignorant of our fate. You all have the luxury of intellectual debate over the lives of these soldiers. But we have the taste of it in our mouths. British, Australians, Americans, Spaniards, Turks, Kuwaitis, Iraqis.

I saw Kuwaiti policemen wrestling out of friendly joke when they were helping a lost convoy find its way out of an oil field–they were barely 18. M16s laying against the wheel of the truck as they played. These boys and girls have no say in what occurs. On both sides, most are innocent of the game of kings. But they are the ones who will suffer. On both sides.

I listen to the radio and hear veiled threats from the French, cries of Nuclear proliferation from Korea, female suicide bombers marching under Burkhas through the streets of Baghdad, of Americans screaming that soldiers are overpaid, I hear of approved plans for the rebuilding of the twin towers, and of Bryn Mawr College striking against the war. I know of the masses of building blocks sent to Iraq from the West to allow them to develop their biological weapons during the Cold War and the Iran/Iraqi war and of their use against the Kurds and I am saddened by our lack of foresight. Equally I think of Nazi tanks rolling over Poland while Europe placated and I am saddened by France’s lack of hindsight.

I am mere miles from the border. Sitting in the eye of a historical storm.

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Date: 3/20/2003
Subject: So it begins…

Hello All,

Early this morning it began with the initial strikes. I imagine that the news media is keeping you all well up to date, with analyses and counter analyses, insight and dissection. I fill a secondary role of intelligence officer for our group and as such listen to the French, Dutch and British newscasts to get a varied view. We hope that this will be surgical, and to use someone else’s words “antiseptic” with minimal collateral damage. At which point I can begin to be a veterinarian again, and take care of camels. I received some good news yesterday regarding Italy, and it seems to be a go…I’m afraid I can’t go into more detail. Communications will likely be down for this kind of message for a couple of weeks. Be well, all of you. I’ll see you soon.

Love,
Eric

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Date: 3/23/2003
Subject: More thoughts from the front…

Hello, hello…please don’t think that these dark thoughts are signs of a depressed mind, more so a serious one, in sync with the overall atmosphere and the somberness of the world today. I am grateful for the messages and when the smiles come, it is thanks to you all…so read on, and don’t question my need for a shrink…just a stiff drink.

So surreal. Patriot missiles, docked in their heavy launchers watch the horizon for counterstrikes. We have trained and retrained and retrained for the inevitable SCUD launch. It is indelibly engrained into my mind. The different sirens, wailing out warning in their own language. A long continuous scream echoes throughout the camp, a wordless cry of incoming.

From inaction comes frenzy. We scatter to grab our gear, chaotic in the reality, no longer a drill, our smooth ballet of preparedness loses its elegance, and we trip and grab blindly, racing towards the bunkers.

Ninety seconds. That is the time it takes from warning to strike. A minute and a half to get everything together and make it to some kind of cover. Short continual bursts are even more of an adrenalin rush. When the big voice yells in those minor screeches, it is caution of chemical or biological weaponry. Now the first move is to close your eyes, stop breathing and get your mask on in nine seconds. Nine seconds in the Kuwaiti heat. Within minutes, the sweat is coursing down your face, pooling by your chin. Nine seconds, and then, as before, grab everything and find cover.

Once safely crammed into the reinforced tunnels which the army has provided us as bunkers, we begin to dress in the protective clothing. The contrived protection is mere concrete shells covered in sandbags, open at either end to the desert and sky. The nuclear, biological, chemical suits immediately raise the body temperature by ten degrees. This is compounded by running in the sand, breathing through the mask like through a straw. We have eight minutes to get fully dressed, and then we wait.

The sirens bawl, and we sit, knees touching with our backs to the cool concrete walls. We stare at the gray roof, inches from our heads. No one speaks, waiting to hear the all clear. Or waiting to die. It is a morbid moment. The counsel of the inanimate voice finds us in our warren, there are four or five soldiers between myself and the outside, and with a thought removed from myself, I casually wonder at what would happen if one of the Gods’ lightning bolts impacted nearby. Would the shockwave tear us apart? Would we be incinerated by the resulting destructive force, buried in the chamber like Egyptian pharaohs, mummified in our protective suits? And so we stare and wait and catch our breath, listening to the rhythm of our own frightened hearts, and the cadence of our respiration.

The day following the preemptive strike proceeded with rigid unease. Like cats, we jumped at every sound, spinning in our tracks. Directly across from our tent was the Air Defense Alarm, which would ignite any time a missile was launched anywhere in the region. As a result, we barely would return from one alarm before scurrying out for the next. Tempers flared and work was done with half-thought, all minds trained on the skies.

Siren after siren erupted into the quiet, sending us racing like mice caught in the kitchen at daybreak. With each alert, we linger in our masks and listen for news. The first couple of launches streamed through the clouds towards Kuwait City, accounts were limited, but we assumed that the patriots had intercepted them. Then came the humbling news of an impact, albeit, not of a SCUD, but a weapon had impacted just outside of camp Commando. We had inspected the Camp a few weeks earlier, and while it remained the height of preparedness, the encroaching desert silence gave us an overwhelming sense of peace.

Now I could only wonder at the news. Where there casualties? Had I seen a life walking through the camp without concern, now disintegrated by the impact of concentrated violence? Fortunately, hours later, news was put out that the missile had not struck anything vital, and that no soldier or civilian was harmed. Launch after launch, and we began to steel ourselves to the inevitability of the ritual: alarm, react, run, wait. Count your friends, count your rounds and measure your breaths until the quiet of acceptance takes over your being and you seek normalcy within the anarchy.

As the first twenty-four hours dissolved away, and we collapsed into a fitful sleep, our dreams were studded by the sound of rotors coursing overhead and interrupted in horrified gasps as we mistook the sound of jets for incoming artillery. And the jets did come. Scores of them, bombers hidden by night flew North on missions of destruction, and the Iraqis likely huddled in their beds, just as we did, with the fated knowledge that there was nothing we could do to stop the fiery breath of those machines of bedlam and turmoil.

Now, the news pours in. I fill a quasi-role as an intelligence officer, listening multiple times a day to the French, British, American and Dutch radio stations. BBC, Amsterdam and Parisian news, as well as the Voice of America. It allows me to filter the dogma and propaganda from both camps and to boil it down into a comprehensive morsel of sound-bites for my commander and for my soldiers.

Horrors of the executions, the friendly fire deaths, the discordance. One hundred thousand march on New York, armies of protesters in London, Bilbao, Munich. Arrests in San Francisco. Ricin found in the Gare de Lyon. We know how we sit on the razor’s edge of public opinion, and yet it is something we cannot concentrate on, not while Saddam ignores the Geneva Convention and we are fixed in perpetual motion. Work is continuous, and the strain is heavy. Sleep is occasional and erratic, but we remain vigilant and prepared. Hopefully this will resolve quickly with less and less loss of life as each day unfolds.

I can’t go into details over open lines, and things will remain terse and pressured until the day that I set foot on home soil, down a deep glass of single malt scotch, and take a long, long, hot shower, scraping off months of grime with a hammer and chisel. Please be well, and keep sending good vibes this way.

Yours,
Eric