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.

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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....