So I had a pretty good week this week. Well, at work anyhow. Olivia has been sick and just miserable the past week or more. It seems just as we get her better she's sick again. You'd think that by the fourth child I'd just resign that we're never going to have an uninterupted conversation or full night's rest and just get over it, but it no-kidding surprises me almost every time we have a fitful night. Well, last night, she threw up all over us twice. First time was in her bed, and the second in our bed. The third through the seventh time Stacey was on duty and I just plain dont remember. Anyhow, I was an hour later than usual to work. Poor kid had an ear infection and it burst. Worst part about it, was 24 hours earlier I was finally at my wits end and yelled and in a frustrated moment yelled at her and thrust a bottle and a blanket at her and just put her on the couch. I had no idea what else to do. So when Stacey texted me from the Dr. yesterday and informed me about the burst ear drum, well, you can't feel much lower than that. I hope with the next baby I can finally have the patience I'm short now.
So, tonight, as baby lays on the couch and recharges her batteries, I finished dinner for Stacey. It's her familial favorite spagetti. The girl really can cook I tell you. I've got four or five belts that somehow have shrunk to prove it. I'm not sure how nylon belts shrink, but somehow she's been able to. Must be the high heat settings on the dryer.
Anyhow, so whilst she slept, I finished making the noodles, which even I can't screw up. Then I sat the kids down, and we actually ate at the table. Oh, it was glorious. I mean, we even started with a prayer and nobody yelled, (although they still talk louder than necessary). But we had a pretty good dinner. Well Josh started quizing me on Iraq. I'm not sure why he did. Maybe it's because Isabelle mentioned she wants to be a Soldier when she grows up. She wore a set of kid fatigues to school today and has been wearing them for the past three days. It's cute. She has little rank insignia, and a hat with captain's bars on it. It didnt help that I had to drop off donuts with Stacey for Josh's birthday, and we happened to have extra to drop off in Izzy's class. I tell you what, Army Guys are apparently a pretty big hit in a class of Kindergarteners. Not to mention fifth-graders. I pretty much almost had to sign autographs to get back out the door.
Anyhow, so tonight Josh asked me what my scariest time in Iraq was. You know, I didnt really have an answer. But I did remember one of the first few nights after we arrived. I had a room mate in my little trailer. To paint the scene for you, we lived on Camp Victory in Baghdad. Camp Victory was the Corps Headquarters. It's adjacent to the now famous, "Green Zone". Anyhow, our plush accomodations were these white trailers which where basically divided down the middle. Each room, which was normally shared by two of the same sex, was approximately fifteen to seventeen feet long and maybe twelve feet wide. One window, one door. So my room mate, "1LT Workman" or, "Kendall" was an awesome dude. He's really seriously one of the smartest, most down-to-earth and reliable people I know. Anyhow, Kendall and I set our racks up on opposite walls. Then we took our little cradenzas we each had and framed the window on the back wall with them. We purchased a minifridge, a tv and a VCR and put them all beneath the window betwixt the aforementioned cradenzas. At the foot of the bed, like any good G.I. would, we had an "end-table" of sorts which was a rolling job-box (black) where we would put our extra gear and stuff that you just didnt need daily. Pretty sweet setup really.
So, one of the first few nights we were there, shots started to ring out. They sounded really close. No alarm was sounded, but we were really beginning to feel like we might be over-run. So, I did what any newbie would do. I got my body armor on, my kevlar helmet, and locked a round and magazine into my M4 and layed down on the bed (after locking the door of course). Well come to find out the next morning, we were actually living within a few hundred yards of the U.S. firing range. What we were experiencing was a bunch of U.S. Soldiers conducting night fire. That little piece of information wasn't in the brochure by the way.
So then Josh asked me about what the thing I was most afraid of. I said it depends. If you're walking, it's a sniper. If you're driving it's an I.E.D. If you're stopped in a vehicle, it's an Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG). If you're sleeping in your hooch (trailer) it's a mortar shell that they get lucky with. Or a rocket. They actually successfully hit a trailer down the line from us about three months into our stay. Additionally our chow hall was rocketed about a week after we left. So, it's always in the back of your mind.
I remember running around Lost Lake. Which never really was lost. Nor was it a lake, but more of a pond fed by the Euphrates. Anyhow, running around Lost Lake, on the North side of the lake outside the compound is a giant mosque which has two giant towers. Not really minarets, but the kind of place you might stash Rapunzel. Anyhow, I was convinced that I was going to be sniped from there someday. We had a training area around the corner from there and they experienced a similar set of circumstances a couple weeks after we arrived.
So, then the conversation went on about this and that. I guess, until I was asked the questions I just sort of took these experiences and others for granted. I told them about the time I had to walk in a platoon wedge at three a.m. in down-town Baghdad looking for I.E.D.'s on foot. That was a fun time. I was really pretty nervous and then I realized, well, if it's a wired 155 Round or 120 mm mortar, I'm just pink mist in the wind. I'll wake up playing a harp on Cloud Nine. I'm wearing body armor, a kevlar helmet, groin protector, shoulder protectors so if I get shot, I only die if it hits me in the face or in the femoral artery. I was on the far outside right of the formation and hugging that wall likeyou wouldnt believe. I loved that wall, because nobody was shooting me from there. Anyhow, I may have already written about this before so I'll stop here. Suffice it to say, I told the kids that you just always have those things in the back of your mind. Today might be your day.
Two things can happen to you in that environment. As has been said, "There's no atheists in foxholes." or, you can rationalize yourself into some pretty risky behavior. In fact, ironically, the closer and closer you get to redeploying home, the crazier things get. I'm not going to go into it here, but you're just convinced that some twist of fate is going to bring your number up on the big scoreboard in the sky and they'll be telling your dad how terrible it is that you were smoked two weeks before rotating back to the world.
Where am I going with all this? Nowhere really. I guess it was just a matter-of-fact discussion with my kids about matter-of-fact stuff for Soldiers. See, to me, I think for the past few years I've really minimized what went down. I have a bunch more stories, but none of them involve, "this one time, we swept into a safe-house, all dressed in black, on a special ops team, kicked in the door and shot fifty-two terrorists in the face." I think those are the stories everyone wants to hear when you get home.
In fact, that's probably the dumbest thing you can say to a Soldier. "What's it like over there? Is it really that bad?" Which really means, "Did you kill anybody?" It's a hell of a thing to ask a man really. Cause if I had killed someone, I certainly wouldn't be bragging about it. I'd want to bury that down my subconcious so I wouldn't have to relive it and second-guess myself every day of the rest of my life wondering if the Lord was really on my side.
You know I love being a Soldier. I love the comraderie, I love the cut and dry duty. I love being part of something bigger than myself. It's unfortunate, but the flip side of all that is that you really face a lot of cold hard realities that most people never give a second thought about.
I think now six years later, it's really starting to feel like a different life. A world apart you know? Like looking back at your first apartment, or that thing you did in college with the pickup truck and the togas and the giant vat of KY and the sorority girls. (OK, I imagined that, it never happened). Anyhow, as a Soldier your always torn. You can't tell your family you really feel like you want to go back, because you dont. But every day you're in uniform back here in garrison spinning your wheels you feel ridiculous. People at restaurants stopping you and thanking you for your service, little kids idolizing you, people romantizing your efforts. It's ludicrous really. You cant help but see the irony that you're back here in the Land of the Big P.X. (shopping store) and you're brothers and sisters who really deserve that lunch someone just bought you are living in a trailer if they are lucky, or on some combat outpost on a cot if they're not. The real suck are the dudes that are living in Afghanistan embedded with some faction that's anti-Taliban and eating goat parts and not shaving for weeks.
OK, so, where we going with this? I guess, I feel lucky. Not just for the way I lived in Iraq, but for the freedoms we enjoy. No kidding. I know it's cliche' but I really mean it. While I was in Iraq, 75 Iraqi citizens were washing up on the short of the Tigris every day. In a country the size of California, seventy-five people a day. That's unfathomable in the U.S. So, I guess from day to day I forget that, just like everyone else. But not for long. I try to teach my kids without scaring them about daddy's job is really all about at times. It actually frightened me a little that my little girl wants to be a Soldier. I'm proud but nervous. I want her to be a doctor. I dont want her to do what I do. I guess I would rather she not know the things I know as a result of my experiences. I want her to have a healthy respect for our nation, but I just worry about what it entails to continue to pursue these endeavors we're now entrenched in.
Anyhow, not to be a downer. I just thought I better capture what I was thinking tonight. What a conversation around our dinner table can consist of at times. I want to capture this before I forget it.
Well I gotta run. Stacey's back from her walk and it's time to engage with the family again.
Cover me while I move. ;)
See ya later.
J
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