Another World
That time in Iraq was almost like being on a foreign planet. We had a burning pile of garbage lying about 500 meters from our tent that smoked all day and glowed all night. Late at night we would have transport helicopters bringing supplies and personnel. The pilots would like to use the glowing garbage heap as a reference to the helipad. An azimuth would be used, say maybe 170 degrees and 500 meters from the glowing heap. More times than not if the winds were blowing south the pilot and crew would begin drift off course five degrees or so and begin to hover 10-20 feet above our shaking tattering tent.
Normally the tent would shake to the point of actually blowing away on occasion waking up myself and everyone to include giant rats in the tent. It was common for me to walk outside waving my fist in the air at the pilot and from time to time thinking of firing warning shots at the misled crew members. Did I mention the rats? Our tent would become infested with rats due to a couple of factors, food in our tent our proximity to the garbage heap and the fact that much of Iraq is used to grow dates. Rats love dates and make their homes high above the ground in the palm trees. I remember one rat in particular that was the size of a medium rabbit. This rat was huge and I did not hesitate to open fire as he lazily strolled across our tent floor. I brandished my M9 pistol missing and then a hit and another hit followed by four more shots until the mammal finally breathed his last breath.
I tossed the rat outside and climbed up the guard tower ladder to check on my men. Well man I only left one man up in the tower at a time due to the lack of manpower. I imagine one of the most difficult things about being deployed would have to be the constant threat of indirect fire. At a moment's notice you could be walking along minding your own business and have explosives raining down near you. The base was fairly small so most of the mortars that came down were not too far away from wherever you were.
Occasionally I would get to leave the wire and see some of Iraq. Our unit manned a checkpoint along Route Tampa that consisted of a couple of vehicles, a couple of 240 machine guns a radio, four men and myself. During the day we would have traffic pull over, ask the driver some questions, like where are you going and where are you coming from. We would sometimes check the cabs of vehicles and the cargo on trucks. This would occupy the day but during the night there was a curfew and we saw little traffic and much of our time was battling sleep. I would sometimes think that it would be fairly easy to overrun five men at semi isolated checkpoint without too much trouble. It seemed often times that our fate was up to a higher power.
There was another Staff Sergeant who had an administrative job in the basement of the TOC (tactical operations center), we will call him gorilla because he was built a lot like a gorilla and you never knew when he would snap on you. . He was from Lompoc California which is only about an hour south of where I grew up. I would generally spend about an hour a day in the basement of the TOC discussing work with the S4 officer I worked for and visiting a friend of mine (Matthew) that was the retention NCO (non commissioned officer) for our unit. I also enjoyed the safety of the basement, considering we were bombarded by indirect fire more often than I cared for. Matthew and my wife were friends and Matthew seemed to have much contact with his wife than I did mine, so I would talk to him and find out indirectly what my wife was up to. I would spend a half an hour to an hour every day waiting outside a tent in the brutal Iraqi desert waiting to speak with my wife. Who I would hope would help me deal with my deployment. I found most of the time she would answer the phone briefly and act indifferent to me and had little to say. If I spoke to her it would be disappointing if I did not speak to her it was disappointing. Although I had no say in the matter of deploying to Iraq, I believe that my wife felt abandoned and irritated with me.
I would spend a good hour a day at dinner visiting Matthew and eating dinner in our chow hall. On Friday after dinner we would get to watch fights. The gorilla apparently had done some amateur boxing in his day and had a boxing ring shipped out to our FOB. He must have known someone in order to have a real boxing ring sent out to Iraq. The gorilla would fight and always pummel his opponent. I remember a Friday afternoon when he beat down this rather large marine. I did not really get along with the gorilla and one afternoon he was shooting off his mouth and I said something, it offended him and he challenged me to a Friday fight. I could not back down or let him think that I was scared of him.
I was not particularly looking forward to what came after dinner that Friday. I had been in a couple of smokers. A smoker is a three round boxing match. I got into the ring and I did somewhat enjoy the large crowd that showed up to watch. On our base almost everyone showed up to watch the Friday fights. I believe somehow I managed to go the first round with him and get in a couple of shots. The bell rang and it was the second round, I began to swing. The gorilla got low and buttoned up. My punches were being blocked, he burst upward with a right hand landing squarely under my chin. I remember feeling my heels come off the ground and bouncing my head off the ring floor. I woke up to a smelling salt in the back of a nearby FLA (field litter ambulance). I had a headache for a week and he broke a rib during the first round. The gorilla's best friend was the referee and I had never been hit so hard, it felt like a lead weight hitting me. Now that I think about it, the gorilla would train with lead weighted gloves. The ref was his best friend and the only person that inspected the wraps under our gloves. I am almost positive the gorilla wore the training weighted lead gloves during our fight.
It was a cold brisk day, November 21st 1994 in Barstow California. The boy, his younger sister and the boy's mother were on their way to Meadview Arizona for Thanksgiving with family. They stopped off in Barstow for gas. The boy was lying down in the pickup bed, inside of an old sleeping bag, of a 1990 Dodge black and grey compact pickup truck, while his mother drove and his younger sister (by two years) sat shotgun. As they pulled into the 76 gas station on the corner, the boy saw a homeless family to include the Father, mother, daughter and son. I believe this to be a desolate place and thought the boy: life could be worse, I could live in Barstow.
As the family left Barstow the boy laid down in the back of the truck trying to fight the chilly Fall day in the Mojave Desert traveling east through Interstate 15. We finally arrived in the small town of Meadview and pulled up to a shop and rob convenience store. Just outside the store was a payphone. The mother and boy got out of the truck and approached the payphone and on a small 3x5 card sitting on top of the payphone and written on it was a phone number to my cousin's home. The mother called the four digit number and received directions to my cousins a few blocks from the convenience store.
The homes all sat on approximately acre lots in this small desert community, most of the homes were double or triple wide trailers with residents living below the poverty level. We all entered the double wide trailer to a very pleasant greeting from our relatives. People were cooking and talking, some were sitting on the couch watching television. The family was busy catching up on things going on in each other's lives.
Around 9 PM that evening the boy sat down and begin to read the Bible, as he often did in the evenings before sleep. The boy experienced something that evening almost too extraordinary to explain.
An audible voice said clearly to the boy "you are going to die soon". That night the boy had a dream and in the dream the boy stood alone in a dark desolate desert. In the sky appeared large round metallic silver in color orb. The boy felt unworthy to be in the presence of this majestic orb. The entire surroundings reflected clearly on the surface of the orb, everything but the boy. The boy realized that the orb was Jesus and He had returned for his people all his people but not the boy. Because the boy had not acknowledged Jesus in his life the orb would not acknowledge the boy now.
The boy had only started reading the bible in the evenings again after going through adolescence full of complete disregard for school, academics, indulging in large amounts of various drugs and normally a drunken stupor. The boy had hit rock bottom and was searching for a God he once knew of as a young child.
After hearing this audible voice out of the thin air, the boy decided to continue reading the bible and read it from start to finish. The boy still had a hard time changing his old ways of drugs and alcohol. So the boy saved some money and decided to hitchhike to Alaska in order to get away from outside influences.
Again the boy found himself in Barstow on his mid tour leave from Iraq. During an army tours you generally spend 12 months deployed and are allowed to go home for two weeks. The boy was home and happy to be home but it seemed as though the boy's wife was unhappy, distant and the boy was unhappy. The boy had seen war and how ideology, hate, jealousy, fear and loathing played a part in the Middle East at home and in the boy.
The boy's wife had told the boy had seen the boy's company commander at the bank where she worked and the commander was asking for a loan. The boy's commander had decided to go home on leave and surprise his wife. While the army unit was deployed to Iraq from the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert a National Guard unit had come in and taken over our role as trainers for units deploying to Iraq. Some of them not only took over our training role but also took over our beds our paychecks and our wives. The boy's commander had come home to an empty home; his wife had left with a specialist from the National Guard unit and was spending the weekend in Vegas spending the Commanders money. That money that was blood money. Blood money, money earned by the blood of men and friends.