can feel it. Fewer than 100 days remain in Afghanistan; it's time for
an Update.
Everyone is feeling that our time is closing, though there are still
so many more days of monotony that everyone is also getting angry with
the place. Every day that passes brings us closer to home, but the
race is still long. I used to have a CO that said, "You don't stop
running with the finish line in sight, no matter how long the race has
been." He'd say, "No one drops their pack within yards of the hump
being over." He was really into us finishing what we started. I have
never been one for the back end of things. I am good at starting and
rotten at finishing. That's why I have the first two chapters of so
many stories written.
The short tempers are only exacerbated by circumstances. Due to an
administrative SNAFU our 3 vehicles have been lost to a contractual
failing at some higher level. This leaves us with many problems, the
most pressing of which is that no one can get the mail. We have
several hundred pounds of mail sitting at the Post Office in the
adjoining camp, but no effective way of transporting it to the
Hospital. This is particularly troublesome for me, I have started my
next semester of classes and I am sure that my textbooks are over
there. Now technically I can go over and collect my own mail, and I
intend to. The problem is this: To do that I will have to leave work
at 0700, walk over to Leatherneck without a coat, when we were in
training they told us that we did not need cold-weather gear, so we
are all without. We have a warm, zip-up fleece, but they Marines on
the adjoining base have issued an order that says that this fleece is
not acceptable uniform, and therefore we are not to wear it. So,
without a coat, walk to the other base, wait until I can get the
packages from the post office, which will be at their leisure, then
carry the packages back to this base. The early morning, when this
will necessarily take place, routinely reaches temperatures of -7
degrees. It will be an uncomfortable thing to do. But, and I hope that
my professors appreciate the trouble, duty calls.
The other latest development has been an interest among my tent-mates
in minor divination. They have ordered Tarot Cards and hold nightly
readings. They have order Ouija boards and commune with spirits. I am
becoming used to waking to chanted incantations. I have expressed my
discomfort with this practice, but as the only one who is on a
separate schedule, I already feel bad for enforcing my whims on the
majority. I have taken to waking annoyed.
Since this is devolving into a bitch-session, I will try to change the
subject. The surge in troops has definitely been having an effect on
the number of visiting patients. This past week I've seen two
separate, very impressive, double amputees. They were both bilateral
BKA. (This is medical slang for the concept that both gentlemen were
missing both feet. Below the Knee Amputations.)
One of the fellows came in, his one foot just a bit of bone shooting
out of his pant leg and the other hanging on by shreds of skin,
sitting up and talking to the doctors. I was pretty impressed. I can't
think that I would handle it as calmly. He came in with a fellow who
had taken frags of the IED to his face and shoulder. This second
fellow was carrying on, crying and wailing. I was impressed by how
stoically the fellow with no feet handled himself. He wasn't joking
around or anything, but he was strong and composed. It was probably
shock, but I thought that it was also telling.
You never know, of course, how you will go out. You never know how you
will react. Everyone hopes that they will bear up with stoic dignity,
but we all suspect that we'll be the sort to cry and whine, our own
wounds seeming so immediate and terrible that we can't concentrate on
those around us or the comparative hardships they face. (Given how
much I complain in print, I will doubtless be the fellow who complains
at the slightest breeze.)
They tell you, in boot camp and at Field Medical School, that you can
never know how you will respond to combat. They say that people who
are wonderfully strong in all other areas freeze up when the Fog of
War descends upon them. It is one of the things that young men fear
about themselves. But then there is this next test, as I supposed
there always is. If you do not freeze up, how will you handle being
wounded? And then, I suppose, there is always that final test, how
will you handle death? That question hangs around the fringes of
everything, as our Heroes come into the morgue.
Ultimately, how can I blame a bunch of young men for looking for
answers in even the bogus arms of Ouija Board spiritualism? When you
see death on a regular basis, even if you're not in much danger
yourself, you start to think about it more than is healthy.
Samuel Johnson said, "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not
having been a soldier." I think that every Soldier thinks meanly of
himself for not having been a combat veteran, and every Soldier knows
that, whatever combat they may have seen, someone else saw something
worse. It is an inevitable game of one-upsmanship. I had the
Congressional Medal of Honor described to me like this once: You can
only get it if your act one-ups the act of the previous recipient,
that's why it is almost always given posthumously.
In order to receive our highest honor, we have to die in service.
Maybe that's why a man can so calmly talk to his doctors without his
feet. He knows that he has only had a minor brush with military
greatness.
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