"The Finest Young Men You'll Ever Know"

Tired as hell...we slumped in our hard plastic seats...some trying to close their eyes for a few minutes under the harsh fluorescent light glare. Two hundred eighteen and nineteen year old kids. It was in the early hours of the morning and we'd been marching around in shabby formation in the several hours since arriving at Fort Benning. It was our first day in the Army. We were nervous and tired. Most had been awake for over twenty-four hours. The last thing we wanted was yet another "Welcome to the Army" talk in a lecture hall on more rules and regulations. But that's exactly what we got.

Some Major who was in charge of training schedules came bounding out on stage and went on about this and that. One of the few things I remember was one of his closing remarks about how all the guys around us would be remembered as "Some of the finest young men you'll ever know."

There were some derisive snorts...a few groans at what sounded so cornball at the time.

It took some years and some real experience to make me feel sorry I scoffed that night. (A lot of years, actually since I realize right to this day and will continue to do so. Damn...next month it will have been twenty years since that night. Twenty years! I'm getting old)

Going into the service was quite the culture shock...but I can also say honestly that coming out and going into the university world and later the civilian workforce was equally the shocker.

It's not easy transitioning from being a tool of politicians to a victim of office politics. One is important and the other is almost unbelievably petty by contrast.

There's a certain comfort in knowing that you can trust everyone around you...that your people will do anything for you...that everyone has a sense of duty to pull their own weight and do their jobs to the best of their ability. They are proud to be a member of the team and can't stand the idea of letting their comrades down.

And it's more than pride. At the risk of sounding cornball myself...it's love. How else can one explain things like kids only a year or two out of high school volunteering for dangerous missions so that the older, married guys with kids (guys with more to lose should they die) can stay back and stay safe?

Juxtapose that with the pettiness that can pervade the allegedly adult workplace (or even the blogosphere?) and I can say...at the risk of sounding like an ass...that most people I've encountered in the last twelve years just do not measure up. It's not easy to adjust to an atmosphere in which your coworkers will quite literally lay down their life for you to one in which people steal credit for your ideas and deflect any and all blame for their own shortcomings and mistakes (which is the annoyance that inspired this post...ahem).

This is probably why I haven't made any close friendships in the workplace (and only a few when in college). I think I hold people to this arbitrary standard of mine. Yet...it's a two way street. I feel like no matter how low I set the bar...too many people would fail to be able to reach it.

Maybe it sounds anachronistic to talk about things like having a sense of duty and of personal honor (although...on that other site...the word honor is tossed around a lot...and I suspect few people really grasp it and fewer really abide by a code)...but I like to think that they haven't totally disappeared.

I know some people still carry on this way. I know. I remember them.

Hearts and Minds

How often do you hear people say "Support the Troops!" with almost pious tones?

Have you ever wondered exactly what it is they do to show support?

I came across this post on Alt:

"Tomorrow (Dec. 1), I'll be at the MOA (Mall of America) to participate in the Largest Yellow Ribbon event at 2pm.
An 80ft. crane will take a picture of everyone in a ribbon formation and will send it to the troops overseas for support.
Hopefully it will be fun and the snow and ice won't keep people away. "

Sigh. Heart in the right place, mind in the wrong one.

At first...the silly, naive soft-headedness of this post made me angry. Much in the same way that seeing yellow ribbon bumper magnets on SUV's infuriates me (yeah, magnets, they don't even have the commitment for a sticker).

A photo of you by a ribbon? Really? And this will make the kid with the ulcers from worry...the exhausted kid...the scared kid....feel better...how? He went overseas to a war zone and he's going to feel better about his mission because you went to a mall?

Fucking stupid.

I got control of myself though...and didn't tear into this blogger. After all, their heart is in the right place. They just need direction and knowledge. And some common sense.

This is one reason I try to educate people. Folks obviously want to do something...they just don't know what to do. And all too goddamned often they wind up with platitudes and meaningless actions (fucking flag pins and magnets and nonsense like the above blog post)...and feel they've done something. People with the will, the desire and the means to show genuine support wind up wasting their time on some real silly shit. Then they feel like they've somehow accomplished something and the need and desire to help is alleviated. And a chance to really do something useful is lost.

I'd rather people send care packages of useful items. I want people to remain informed about veteran's issues so that when these kids come home they'll be well taken care of. I want people to take direct action if they honestly want to show support. Write to politicians, monitor military related legislation. Force the fucking suits to keep their promises to kids who take on a hard life to do things other people can not or will not.

Direct action.

Maybe I'll finish writing on this in another post. I can't decide whether I'm sad, angry, disgusted or frustrated right now.

After Images

Some surviving photos...I have so few after the flood. In fact, a few of these were sent to me from someone else.

1) The division I was a member of...the Third Armored (Spearhead)
2) Where we lived when we first arrived.
3) Where we lived later. Don't know if it was worse or not...more space but primitive conditions.
4) A friend
5) Another friend
6) My boss and his driver
7) Two more friends
8) An anti air track near the perimiter of our camp...I passed it at night on my way to my private spot.
9) Packing up to move out in the wee small hours of the morning. Hurry up and wait.
10) A sandstorm just starting...it wound up collapsing our bathrooms.
11) Long shot of our recon platoon racing back and forth.

I didn't write a real Veteran's Day post on Alt this year. Usually I do put down something on Vet's Day and Memorial Day.

From some of the e-mails I receive (and, to a lesser extent, some of the comments) I fear people may be taking away the wrong messages.

Whereas I try to get people to see the ugly consequences and the reality of sending your nation's children off to fight and die...a lot of the reactions I receive in mail reflect a romanticized vision of whatever I'm writing about. I get a lot of "Thank you for your service" type mails. Those always make me uncomfortable as all hell.

I'd rather they took away inspiration to act. Act on VA issues and all the other problems and issues I cover. I'd rather they think about what I write and use it for something.

Musical Interlude #1: Fortunate Sons

Our soundtrack was a generation out of date. The songs were older than many of us.

Most of our fathers had been to Vietnam. We grew up hearing about the war. Now, as we made ready to fight in our very own war...the music we listened to and the movies we watched were part of our country's last great conflict.

Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon. We sat in the middle of the desert watching movies about a jungle war.

There's a saying that the generals are always fighting the last war as they make their plans for the next. We were trying to steel ourselves for the coming war through vicariously experiencing the last.

Our track commander, the young sergeant who led our steel box ambulance, was a huge fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their greatest hits were the musical chords that played us into battle once we crossed the berm.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,Ooh, theyre red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief,they point the cannon at you, lord

I remember madly drumming on my thighs...pumped on No-Doze and fear...hammering away on my legs keeping time with the music. We had been awake for days, staving off the need for sleep by popping amphetamines and everyone was in various stages of mental calamity.

Sitting on the jump bench in the back of the ambulance, I wailed away on my legs like a speed fueled maniac. The others started to get swept up in the humor of it. Deejay joined in by playing air guitar and swinging his head back and forth. Weird little Scrappy pumped his fist in the air. Even Brownie...the hardcore rap fan bobbed his head along. It became A Moment.

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no senators son, It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one

We needed the laugh, we needed the break in tension

But, also, the music spoke to us just then. We knew we were the bottom of the barrel...the bottom rung of society's ladder. The poor, the trapped, the desperate. Kids from broken homes and broken systems, from shitty little towns and shitty blighted neighborhoods.

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no millionaires son, no.It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, no

Just a bunch of dumb fucking grunts who volunteered for this shit. few choices in life...so we chose this. Like the First Sergeant said, if we wanted a comfortable life we should have joined the Air Force.

We were dirt. Just dirt. Unimportant people going nowhere that no one cared about.

And we thought that was just hilarious. What else could you do but laugh?

And laugh we did. We laughed at the war protesters and we laughed at the war supporters. We laughed at the generals and politicians and newsmen on CNN. What the fuck did any of them know?

We laughed at each other and we laughed with each other.

And we laughed our asses off during our little impromptu band performance that day. We all joined in. We were all the same. Four kids...four friends thrown together by life's circumstances. All we needed was each other and fuck the rest

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,Ooh, they send you down to war, lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh, they only answer more! more! more!

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate one,It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate son.

And thinking back on that Moment as I write this...where amid the barely controlled chaos we found time to share some of the laughter and camaraderie that got us through the shit days, bopping along to the music of another generation...I realize something.

When I would ask my dad about his time in his war...he would rarely talk about. Sometimes he'd smirk a little and say "Oh, it wasn't always so bad."

I know what he meant now.

Jesus, I really loved those guys.

Night, Part 3 (Just Another Dream)

I used to dream all the time. Bad dreams. They had little variation and usually revolved around the same two subjects; the Sand Dune and The Kid with No Legs.



The dreams were particularly bad and frequent my first year living in New Orleans. I don't know what the trigger was... if it was because I was yet again in a new environment or if it was just a delayed reaction.



I would wake up violently next to my girlfriend in the little bed in the little apartment we shared near Tulane University. I often woke her in the process. I'd convince her everything was OK and wait, listening to her breathing, until she drifted back to sleep.



Then I'd rise. I loved being up in the middle of the night when everything is quiet. I enjoyed the sensation that I was the only person awake...the only person experiencing this night. The moment was mine and mine alone.



I would step outside into our building's courtyard. I loved the humid, tropical feel of the nights there. The warm air dampened sound and enveloped you. It felt close against the skin...sensual.



The courtyard was full of palm trees and shrubs. In the middle was an oval swimming pool. After standing stock still in the night air for a while...just breathing it in...I would slip into the pool.



At the shallow end were a series of steps. I would slowly walk down them...moving just a little bit at a time....barely raising a ripple. The water was usually still warm from the day's brutal sunlight. I'd glide into the deeper water...not swimming so much as sliding unobtrusively through the water. I'd make my way to the middle of the pool and turn to float on my back.



It felt so peaceful right then. The warm water surrounding me...the sultry air pressing in from above. The pool lights would be out so I'd be floating in darkness. My ears would be below the water line so no outside noise disturbed me. I would float and relax...the tension from the dreams oozing from my body and my mind. I would look up at the stars through the palm leaves and be at peace.



And sometimes I would wonder what it would feel like to slide beneath the water. To just let myself slip. To let that beautiful warm water cover me...cover my sins and carry them away.



It would have been so easy to just drift down...to let the water wash away the sin, the guilt, the fear, the uncertainty, the sadness.



It would have ended the dreams. It would have so peaceful.



Everything up to that point would have been

just

another

dream.

=================================================

Looking over these posts...I fear I give the impression I was deeply disturbed. It wasn't quite like that. It is one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to articulate. I wasn't deep in the throes of constant PTSD flashbacks (although...those did occur but they were relatively rare). And I wasn't in constant states of rage or depression.

These was just a sense of sadness that seemed to follow me. It was always there.

I think some of it stemmed from feelings of guilt. And much of it was because I felt so alone. I wanted to talk to someone...but at the same time I didn't because I knew they wouldn't understand. It was a separation....an isolation...that was maddening.

My friends asked me all the time to talk about what it was like over there. But they didn't want to hear about how I felt...they wanted a good war story. I eventually began avoiding them.

That isolation was a factor in my decision to move away.

=========================================

As stated in another post...I eventually did find someone to talk to. And now I write.

The sadness is still there some days....but nowhere near the level it once was. When I was a much younger man...I was worried that it would be overshadowing me the rest of my life...and I wasn't sure I could handle it.

But I can.

Talking helped.

New Orleans helped. Moving there was one of the best decisions (even if it was sort of a spur of the moment one) I've ever made. The people there were so friendly and accepting...they allowed me to reinvent myself. Like that warm night swim...I was fully embraced. It was a place where I felt peace. The city helped save me.

The dreams still come some nights....but those nights are fewer and fewer. Letting some things out was cathartic. And writing about them (and, by extension, re-examining them) has allowed me the peace of acceptance. The feelings from those years...the years that were the defining moments of my life... will always be just in the background. But now more like shadows than clouds.

And so many years later...I have many new memories on which to dwell.

Now when I dream...I often dream of New Orleans.

Night, Part 2 (Father and Son)

To begin again with the past within the past...another repost from the alt blog. From 21 Sep o6:

How My Daddy Taught me to Swear

He would scream in the middle of the night. Shouting names and obscenities.

I was just a wee lad, maybe 4 or 5 when I first became aware of it. I would crawl out of bed and creep down the hall to listen.

I didn't realize he was asleep. I thought he just chose the early morning hours to get mad and sad. He seemed so happy the rest of the time, jocular and such. I thought he yelled in the night so my brother and I wouldn't see him.

He would scream names sometimes. Victor and Charlie. I thought they were two guys who were bullying him at work the way the bigger kids sometimes bullied the smaller kids at school.

Sometimes he'd sob.

But a lot of the time he swore. Fantastic strings of expletives. I'd crouch outside his bedroom saying the words to myself in a whisper.

I felt like I was getting away with something.

Eventually he'd wake up...or the yelling would become so violent that my mother would wake him. I would retreat to the bedroom I shared with my brother and peek from behind the door. My father always woke the same way on these nights: arms clutched across the shiny skin on his chest as he went into the bathroom for enough time to let mom go back to sleep.

When I was older...I figured out the shiny skin was scar tissue. It covered his entire chest and wrapped around his left side.

Even then...I didn't know how it came to cover him. When I was eight I asked him. He laughingly replied "A German girl nearly captured me once." I knew he'd been in the Army...but my whole frame of reference was World War II movies. I pictured some blond Bavarian Fraulein with a Luger pistol herding him into a POW camp in Berlin...before he made a brave escape like Steve McQueen.

It wasn't quite like that.

My cursing lessons continued for years.

=================================
The present, Oct 2007

My dad and I grew up with an edge of competition between us. It was more like friendly competition than the stereotype of the son trying to surpass the father. But...I may have been doing a little chasing. Chasing that elusive acceptance and approval of my always stoic dad.

He played three sports in high school...I played three. He enlisted right after high school...so did I...choosing the same branch. Dad was a paratrooper...so I did my best and worked my ass off (almost literally) to pass the physical test and get accepted to the airborne school. Everything he'd done...I tried to do as well. With every new emulation of his past dad would just shake his head and chuckle. I knew him well enough to read the approval, the flattery he felt.

At age 24 he went to war. The son went at age 22.

My dad taught me more than how to swear. He taught me that even strong men can be afraid. That sometimes the fear comes back to visit in the dark of night. He taught me that it's OK to ask for help.

My dad said nothing about it but he finally saw a psychiatrist to talk about his nightmares. Just having that chance to talk helped immeasurably and the night terror stopped. A generation later I'd do the same.

It was those unspoken lessons...the example my dad set...that lead me to reach out and get help when I most needed some.

My father and I never talked with one another about our experiences in war. It's hard to explain to people who just don't know. It's not stoicism or humbleness or avoidance. It's just that type of shared experience...needs no talk. We never spoke of our troubles afterward either. But it was those experiences...those in fire and those in night...that showed me that I truly am my father's son.

Night, Part 1 (The Sand Dune)

A repost from my blog at Alt from just over two years past...
from 19 Sep 05:

Another sleepless night...hence my sudden rash of blog posts....I am in my third evening of less than adequate sleep.

I have been staying up for most of the night. Tonight it was a nightmare that woke me.

They come from time to time, usually in cycles.

I had a dream that I was in a road race. It was an actual race in which I ran. After Desert Storm ended my unit performed humanitarian relief missions for some long months. We then pulled back out of Iraq across the border into Saudi Arabia to begin preparations to travel to the coast to pack up and go back to Germany.

We had a decent amount of downtime so we had to be creative with ways to fill the hours. For some unknown reason it was deemed a road race through the desert would be a good idea. Thus the Iraq and Back 10K Run was born.

The combat engineers measured and mapped out a course. Entrants would run 5k to just across the border into Iraq and 5k back again. For the hell of it some people decided to fashion costumes and make a spectacle in the spirit of fun. I decided to run wearing only boxer shorts and combat boots...and in a bit of inspiration used some colored topical ointments and camouflage paint to cover my face and torso in fierce war paint.

There were about 75 runners at the starting line. One of the battalion officers blew a whistle and off we roared in a stampede. I don't know if I can convey the chaos that ensued. The temperature was approximately130 degree Fahrenheit. 75 idiots with more testosterone than brainpower madly dashing through the sand in the general direction of Iraq. Limbs flailing...curse words liberally screeched..strange hooting noises.

After the first few kilometers the temperature began to take its toll. People began to drop out...some literally dropped and were picked up by the field ambulances following the herd at a discreet distance. A sense of urgency to finish struck. The mass of wailing, panting, crying, screaming troopers reached a frenzied fever pitch as it passed the demarcation line into Iraq.

As the herd turned and began the return run the noise lessened. Now it was just an endurance contest to finish...to make it back.

At one point I'm sure I blacked out on my feet.

About 50 or so people crossed the finish line under their own power. I finished in the number twelve spot. The race was a big success for morale.

Later we found out that some people whom we had been helping through relief missions, not too many miles from where we were sitting in the desert, had been attacked by the survivors of the Iraqi Republican Guard. I don't know why. As far as I know they weren't involved in any aborted uprisings. Some of them were killed. Our field hospital had already been packed up and we weren't set up to handle casualties. We saw the medevac choppers go by overhead though.

In my nightmare I'm running the race. I veer off from the pack and head deeper into the desert. I start to run up a sand dune (which even in the dream I know is out of place for the terrain around the wadi al-Batin). And I begin sinking. It's not quicksand...more like deep snow. I sink up to my thighs and it's so hard to move forward. On the other side of the dune someone is crying and begging for help. My movements become more desperate and I just can't reach the top of the dune even when trying to claw my way forward with my hands.

I never reach the top. I always wake up before that.

=====================================

present day, Oct 2007

I used to have nightmares all the time. They didn't start up right away...but started visiting me after I left active duty and my life calmed down. I think I was just too busy for rumination until then. Or maybe mental trauma needs time to germinate...or fester.

I dreamed of the sand dune quite often. And of The Kid with No Legs. And of the day I received my splinters. Frustration, guilt and fear. Nightmare grist.

The odd thing is...other than making me tired some days from lack of sleep...they didn't really bother me all that much. They were just more garbage I brought home with me to go with the splinters, the scars, the premature lines in my face, etc.

No...they were more than that. They were memories and feelings...that I felt bound to keep. Especially those over which I felt some lingering guilt. Maybe that was my some lingering martyr syndrome from my catholic upbringing.

Or maybe it from from a sense of duty that had been instilled in me from a young age by my father...and reinforced by my father figures in the Army.

It's also not completely true that the dreams didn't bother me.
Sometimes they were heavy.

Duty is heavy as a mountain
but Death is lighter than a feather.
-------Japanese proverb

to be continued....

Fire

I'll have to come back to this one. The four viginettes based on the elements was just something bouncing around in my head. I think they'll be interspersed throughout the novel.

I'm not quite ready to put down the story I'll use for "Fire" though.

Water

When it rains in the deep desert it comes suddenly. There are warnings to be sure...you can smell the storm a long way off. The hint of the approaching downpour hangs in the air for a long time then strikes with sudden zeal. It's a myth that the desert never sees storms.

I stood on the outer perimeter of our Tactical Assembly Area and watched the ocean-like rippling of the sand.When the night sky is clear, the moon casts a bright, pale, almost ethereal light over the desert.

The light has a dreamy quality. I enjoyed standing far away from our camp...alone and staring into the desert. The night light drew me to the perimeter every evening. You see, I was but twenty-two and I still knew how to dream.

I was awake and dreaming. I dreamed I was on a different sort of adventure. I had visions of Beau Geste...of dashing legionnaires...Gunga Din...caravans. I was an explorer. I hunted for the elusive and peaceful oasis.

Out on the perimeter, under more stars than I had ever seen, I could be someone else...could be somewhere else. It was my place of refuge and escapism.

But the rains were coming.

Our activities increased...I was less and less able to visit my night place on the perimeter. On one of our final nights at the Tactical Assembly Area, before we were to head north, I managed to sneak away for just a little while.

The smell of rain was heavy in the air. A storm was fast approaching. I tried to get into my explorer world...to find my oasis. To no avail. I couldn't tune out the revving of the engines, the clanking of the treads, the yelling behind me. The rustle of the sand across my boots, blown by a cold wind, was too distracting.

All I could do was look north. Bob Dylan's voice ran continually through my head singing about a hard rain that's gonna fall.

One of the perimeter sentries, on high alert this close to our departure, stumbled across me on his patrol. He questioned me a little and decided I was just loafing. As I walked past him heading back to camp...he played his red filtered flashlight briefly over my face. He must have noticed it was slightly wet.

"Hey, man, are you OK?"

"Everything's fine. It's just raining."

Wind

The wind in the desert is pervading. With nothing to stand in its way...it comes in hot and fast...hugging the terrain. Sometimes it carries with it portents, sometimes it carries things away.

There really was no rest for the weary. After having spent the whole long night responding to one emergency call after another we had a new job at dawn. We had to walk the site of the previous night's fight to look for survivors.

In a long, staggered line we walked...feeling like interlopers on sacred ground. We prowled amidst the wreckage. It looked like the pictures of Pompeii...the unlucky ones frozen in the last moments of life. Their arms reaching out, fists gnarled, skin ash gray. And everywhere plumes of smoke rose like ghosts.

I took a break...sat on my helmet. I watched the wind whipping around the smoke that hung overhead....taking it away. It carried away the darkness and the stench. It let in the sun. It shifted the sands to begin covering what we'd left in our wake. At that moment, in a rare flight of imagination for me, I wished it would take me away too. I was just so tired. I'd had enough. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to be gone out of there...

Earth

It is an inescapable, omnipresent element.
The fine granulated sand is taken up by the constant winds. It clings to everything it touches. Desert earth is constantly shifting...moving...building up and wearing down. Sometimes it reveals. Sometimes it buries. The sand holds sway over life.

It is the blood of the desert.


You get used to it, or rather, you tell yourself you can and will. The constant grime, the chafing, the sore eyes, the itching. The sand gets in every crack, crevice and pore. It gets in the folds of your neck, your nostrils, eyes, ears. Every wrinkle and ridge in your skin stands out in stark relief as the sand settles and clings and you slowly turn grayish-brown. It gets in your helmet, your pockets, your rucksack, your underwear. Every morning you need to upend and pour sand from your boots. Every evening you need to disassemble and clean your weapon so the invading sand won't foul the mechanism.


You try and clean yourself and your gear...but the sand keeps on coming. The wind blows it across the camp, underneath your tent flaps, into your eyes and mouth. You spit it out, brush it off, dump it out. You wipe at it constantly. Pre-moistened towelettes and baby wipes have become precious commodities to be hoarded and traded. The chafing is maddening.


The sand becomes the immediate enemy. More real than whatever sits on the other side of the berm several miles north. It is more painful to your skin than the Arabian sun...more annoying than the big, black flies...more bothersome than the scorpions.

You tell yourself you can deal with it...that you will deal with it. All while it slowly drives you insane.

Late in the afternoon of the first day of the ground war. Our battalion is in "diamond" formation and moving northeast to take up position on the far right flank of the 2nd Brigade's area as the entire division is working on getting into formation to push further into Iraq.

I am riding with Bravo Company...we are at the "tip" of the diamond. We have been through the berm and in the enemy's land for twelve hours...but the only enemies we have seen have been those surrendering. Eagerly surrendering. We exited our ambulance to treat them.

The sand stirred up by this vast armada of our vehicles choked us. Each vehicle had a long plume behind it looking like a powerboat creating a long wake. We have our faces covered by scarves but it does no good. The sands get through any boundary. Relief comes only when we climb back into the rear of our armored ambulance (which looks like a giant shoebox on treads with red crosses painted all around). We spit thin mud onto the floor in vain attempt to clear the sand from our mouths.

As we reached the next phase line on the map, the battalion halted. We would wait until the entire division was in formation before continuing onward. And we would refuel, perform maintenance, eat, try to nap. My team got out to stretch our legs. Brownie, Scrappy, Deejay and myself. Three medics and a radioman. The sand had mostly settled as the vehicles wound down. A light rain helped keep down the dust. We could breathe for once.

From the other side of the ambulance where he was relieving himself, Scrappy called our attention to a certain terrain feature. What looked like a ridge in the sand was actually a ruined trench and bunker line, partially buried. Being curious, we ventured out the 50 or so meters to the trenchline.

It was many months later, after much reading, that I pieced together what had most likely destroyed the bunkers we saw. During the six weeks of the bombing campaign, the Air Force used displays of firepower to break the morale of the Iraqis to induce them to surrender. Massive B-52 bombers would drop tons and tons of 2,000 lb bombs on empty desert...then drop leaflets on the nearest Iraqi units telling them to surrender...or the big bombs would fall on them next. Someone miscalculated...and dozens of 2,000 lb bombs fell close to this Iraqi unit (we rolled past the bomb craters a short while later)...and the concussive force was enough to collapse the hastily constructed bunkers and trenches. And they were occupied at the time.

We didn't smell the dead before we saw them. They had been dead for perhaps weeks and the rot was well progressed. And the desert had already begun to dry them. In the bunkers that were not totally flattened, we could see them in clear poses of Muslim prayer supplication. They knew death was coming for them. One corpse still had prayer beads locked into a small, curled fist.Their skin was drawn tight, putrification had already bloated and split them. Now they were desiccating. Some had suffocated. Some had been killed instantly from concussive force. Some were buried almost totally, some half buried. Many were covered in black, dry blood. And all of them had sand in their mouths.

Scrappy spit on the ground. I had the urge to do the same. I think we all did. We went back to our ambulance.

That was 24 Feb 1991. Today is 09 Feb 2006. Almost fifteen years to the day. Sometimes I can still taste the sand in my mouth.