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The High Life

The Gateway Arch rises from the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, implausible and angled and silver and alien, instantly evoking in me memories of The White Mountains, a favorite childhood book about extraterrestrials come to subjugate Earth’s youth.  Designed in 1947 by Eero Saarinen (he of the TWA terminal at JFK; Washington Dulles Airport; and the “Tulip Chair.” Like on Star Trek.  You know the one) and built from 1963 to 1965, it is as wide at the base as it is tall, and it’s the tallest monument in America – at 630 feet about 80 feet taller than the Washington Monument and almost twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.  Here I met a days-old college grad, on his way from Pennsylvania to California to be a back country guide at Yosemite; spied a cigarette smoking and Diet Coke drinking Amish couple; and chatted (listened, mostly) to a uniformly khaki and polo-dressed couple from St. George, Utah, returning to the Arch twenty years after their honeymoon (“the trees have grown so big!”).

You can stand on the ground, immediately under the Arch and staring upwards with your head rocked back so far it’s impossible to keep your mouth closed, or you can ride to the top in surreal, miniature and plastic sterile pods, folded up in a windowless egg with a man about my age wearing a flannel shirt, too-tight jeans and a Donald Duck wristwatch.  It truly is a marvel, and standing in the 17’ wide top of the Arch, looking down on the flooded river and surprisingly sleepy downtown, provides the proper motivation to think bigger than you really are, or should be.

So on my way east, in the beginnings of an off-and-on three day rainstorm and mulling over my doctor friend’s posit that “veterans and heroin addicts are impossible to kill,” I called the Cincinnati Reds office and asked them for a press pass for that night’s game.  I am a writer, no?  No, no, not a “blogger.”  A writer.  A reporter on life, just taking a little baseball and hotdogs and apple pie (and Guantanamo, and bailouts, and the False Reports of the Secularization of America! and right-to-life and Iowa Negotiated Hog Report and the Fairness Doctrine – the Midwest has a lot of a.m. radio) middle-of-America trip and thought I’d stop by your nice little stadium and then write a story about it. I have, like, 60 readers. Or so.

An optimist would assume the worst one could say is “no,” but Josh from the Reds, he no optimist, offered a much, much more thorough response.  “We don’t credential bloggers.  And you’re coming tonight?  You wouldn’t just show up at someone’s house and expect to be let in, would you.”  Not a “would you?” less Josh indicate an interrogative and an opportunity to respond, but would you as in who do you think you are and who do you think you’re talking to? And we don’t credential BLOGGERS.

Not credentialing bloggers is good policy, no doubt, but advance warning is necessary?  Seriously?  Are there no Mormons in Cincinnati?  No Jehovah’s?  No Girl Scouts, no Little League, no Amway?  I would – do – expect to be let in if I just showed up at someone’s house, and most people I know would probably let you in.  But lesson learned: prior to watching Bronson Arroyo give up 9 runs in three outs (that’s called karma, Josh from the Reds), I emailed the White Sox and changed my approach.  Not a blogger, but a writer for a website, and here’s my link, and I’m seeing five games in five nights, the last night in Des Moines (Des Moines!), and I don’t want access to players but maybe hang out with real writers and see what they do and how they do it and it would make a good story and there’s a war on, don’t you know?

I did not, in fact, invoke the “war clause,” but it was unnecessary, as Ray Garcia and Scott Reifert are not only optimists but are also Major League Baseball’s finest Vice President of Communications/Coordinator of Media Services and Champions of the Little Man and . . . they gave me a ticket.  And a media package, and access to batting practice where I could size up Carlos Quentin (he’s big) and A.J. Pierzynski (bigger) and even stand next to Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of both the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls and the 52nd richest man in America.  And I paid them back by ruining Mark Buehrle’s Perfect Game.

Not “perfect game,” as in the sun is shining but it’s not too hot and it’s not crowded so we can hang our feet over the seat in front of us and the beerman knows us by name and we can see perfectly Ichiro’s laser throw to third holding the runner at second and there’s a beautiful human being at your side and we just can’t stop smiling but perfect game as in Perfect Game.  As in

 

scorecard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and no walks and no errors and not even a sniff of Detroit’s batters figuring out Buehrle’s speed and timing and location.

Athletes in general are a superstitious lot, baseball players particularly so, and a Perfect Game is an untouchable, an unspeakable.  It has happened just 17 times in the 132 years of the sport; they are magical and to see one, to be in the presence of greatness, of such infinitesimal rarity would feel like that first time you were twelve was it? maybe eleven and jumped off a cliff, it seemed so high and you were so scared but you jumped anyway and plunged into the water, kicking like a madman to get to the top but doing your best to appear nonchalant, so nonchalant when you yelled at your buddy still on the cliff it’s easy don’t be a baby – just like that but better and I know I shouldn’t but I had to send a text to a friend anyway to let him know i’m in chic watching a perf game thru 6 and he rightly, rightly responded you just effed it up go get a beer.

But it’s a text! A text is not spoken, a text should not violate the rule, but the very next hitter hit the ball on a rope to the first baseman – he caught it for an out – and the next batter hit a double into the gap and then Buehrle walked two batters and the bases were loaded.  And I ruined Mark Buehrle’s perfect game.

Major League baseball stadiums are cathedrals and Perfect Games are unspeakables and Jerry Reinsdorf is the 52nd richest man in the United States but if it’s Middle America that you seek, you need go no further than the High Life Lounge in Des Moines, Iowa.  There are decent chain restaurants in just about every city in America, chain restaurants with good service, and good food, and a good atmosphere, places like The Rock Bottom Brewery or Old Chicago’s, but chains are, after all, by nature impersonal.

But there are also pseudo-chain, shadow-chain back-alley, dark corner, cracked sidewalk establishments in every town, disconnected commercially but a veritable network emotionally, spiritually, celestially, where it’s not that you don’t want to be seen, but rather don’t want it to seem like you want to be seen yet relish that moment when you can just let it slip out that you’re in the know: let’s meet at _____ and it’s that much richer if the invitee needs directions.  Bob Dobb’s in Tucson and the Cap Lounge in DC and the Beach Tavern in Tacoma and – you know the one in your own town.

The High Life sits on the corner of 2nd and Market in Des Moines and the $2 PBRs taste like holy water after shelling out $8 for keep the change beers at Kauffman, Busch, Great American, and US Cellular stadiums.  There is shag carpet on the floor and dirty brown formica covering the bar and black naugahyde stools pushed up to it.  It has eight taps visible, one each Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon, two Lite, three Miller High Life and one Guinness, off by itself at the end of the bar like an accountant at a teamster’s party.  The décor is late 70’s and the clientele not much later, and I wish I could tell you it’s been a Des Moines staple for that long, but it’s been around since . . . 2005.

Yet, it was a good beginning to the Iowa Cubs, because if the Cubby Bear on Addison puts you in the proper mindset for Wrigley, the High Life Lounge puts you in the proper mindset for AAA baseball.  Though just one step down from the bigs, and for many organizations just an hour or two down an interstate, the atmosphere at AAA baseball is closer kin to your kid’s little league game.

This is truly a family affair.  I heard a little girl in line next to me tell her mommy that man is wearing a purse (it’s a man-purse, honey, and don’t point at the man); bought a $12 ticket that let me sit anywhere in the park (even the cheapest $4 tickets are within foul ball souvenir territory); envied old couples bundled up in shared blankets; and watched eleven – eleven – First Pitches: two small children, a local congressman, three people appearing on behalf of the local ALS, a local boy-makes good with the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, and four others who threw out their First Pitches so quickly and anemically I failed to either hear their names or write them down.

And all of them, every last one, even the little girl who took a full two minutes and the announcer’s public encouragement to just throw it to the man in blue standing behind the plate, everyone of them was applauded roundly.  Is this baseball?  Or is this Iowa or anywhere else in the Midwest or America for that matter?  Every half inning had a contest, a throw-it-through the tires or musical chairs in the oversized blow-up baseball gloves or a scholarship raffle or little kids racing wearing huge, baggy clothes and both t-shirts and hotdogs shot out of a compressed air gun – hot dogs, and more hot dogs and more hot dogs and this is America.

All American sporting events start with the Anthem, but it is endemic to baseball.  It is usually performed well, sometimes especially so.  But occasionally, I think, it is superlative, and if done correctly it can do to you what that Perfect Game does to you, what that first post-cliff dive gulp of air or that random where did that come from? memory of that first really, really good kiss can do to you.  On this day, a cloudy, windy, slightly cold night in Des Moines, Iowa, a young fellow – challenged, I think; touched, exceptional, mentally retarded – played the American anthem on his Casio keyboard.  And it was beautiful.  And no one, not a soul, not a breeze, not a flap of flag or drop of cup or cough or awkward laugh escaped during this mistake-ridden rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and I, after five days of baseball, and America, and occasional loneliness,            just             felt             good.

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Airborne Ranger, Airborne Ranger

Fourteen years ago this summer I suffered through the most miserable two and a half months of my life – 17 days each in the soupy July air of Fort Benning, Georgia; the frying pan-hot Chihuahuan Desert of eastern New Mexico; the demoralizingly steep ascents of the Appalachians; and the dysenteric swamps of the Florida panhandle; all largely on a meal a day and little to no sleep.  The reward was a Ranger tab, yet conventional Army wisdom still derisively labels me a “leg” – a non-Airborne qualified soldier.  But now here I am back at Ft. Benning hoping to remedy my deficiencies, this time at the U.S. Army Airborne School.  I am the senior officer in my class, and one of just two Majors out of over five hundred students.  The vast majority of my classmates are younger than my youngest sister; many, I find, were born the year I graduated from high school.  The training is geared specifically towards these Privates who are, regrettably, prone to not be where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be there, and not wearing the uniform they are supposed to be in.  For their trespasses I am yelled at (always respectfully, never directly), forced to do push-ups, flutter-kicks, ski-jumpers, and the grossly underestimated “overhead clap.”[1]

I am, as some have reminded me, no longer twenty-four.  I know this.  I am thirty-seven.  But no one here knows this, so on the outside I am a rock.  I always do my “optional” ten pull-ups and twenty push-ups each time we are released for the day.  I sound off vigorously with an “Airborne!” each time I hit the ground.  I never complain, I never doze off in class, I do everything Sergeant Airborne tells me to do, enthusiastically and without delay.  But inside I am dying.  The bottoms of my feet hurt.  The side of my neck is friction-burned from the straps of the mock-parachutes.  I have fire ant bites on my legs and hands.  I cannot feel, inexplicably, the this little piggy had none toe on my right foot.  I quietly await what, by all indications, seems to be the early stages of a hernia, and I think I pulled a muscle in my triceps opening my hotel room door.  But still I am here, and after two weeks of training and five jumps from a C-130 Hercules airplane, I will no longer be a dirty, nasty, non-Airborne qualified leg Ranger.

Zero Day and Ground Week

Airborne Ranger, Airborne Ranger, where have you been?

Around the world and back again.

Despite some anxiety – this will be the first time I’ve been around Joe[2] on a regular basis in over three years – I show up as close as possible to the Zero Day “no later than” report time of 1200 hours.  I am a cagey veteran, a veritable old-timer given the apparent average age of my classmates, and my Army experience has taught me that reporting any earlier than absolutely necessary only means you’ll either get tasked to go do something or just end up waiting that much longer.  I file into a classroom with about 200 other soldiers, holding in my hand my orders directing me to Ft. Benning; an Airborne physical stating I tested negative for HIV, have no blood in my stool, and am generally an able-bodied male; and an age waiver signed by my boss stating that despite the age limit of thirty-six, I should be allowed to attend Airborne training.  The soldiers around me are clearly brand-new to the Army – many having just arrived from Sand Hill, the basic training area for infantrymen – and do not need an age waiver.  The soldier sitting to my right appears to have a zit for each of my years.  I hear an audible gasp from the group as I stand after the administrative sergeant calls out “any majors here today?”  The NCO, a red-headed Sergeant First Class whom I immediately dislike, calls out for the other officer ranks, then directs us all in the completion of four forms he had previously passed out.

 

“Airborne, take everything off your desk and put it under your seat.  Everything Airborne!  Get everything off your desk or else you jackasses will fuck everything up, and I don’t have the time to be fucking with you.  Now, reach in that folder and take out THE TOP SHEET AND THE TOP SHEET ONLY.  On that first sheet, fill out block one where it says ‘last name.’  In this block you should put your last name and your last name only.  Airborne!  Did I tell you to fill out block two?  Don’t get ahead of me airborne, because you’ll just fuck everything up.  You don’t do shit until I tell you to!  Now, in BLOCK TWO” – he sends a condescending look in the direction of the overly ambitious jackass – “put down your first name and your first name only.  Fill it out in standard Army black letters and in ENGLISH ONLY.  I don’t want to see no Japanese hieroglyphics.”

It takes us over an hour to do what should have taken ten minutes, a trend that continues for the remainder of my time here.  I have to show, for the six hours of Zero Day I have spent at Airborne School, a helmet, a moldy canteen, a sunburn and an order to show up early Monday morning.  It’s going to be a long three weeks.

The Army frequently uses the “crawl, walk, run” method of instruction, which essentially means we train to the lowest common denominator, and so we spend most days crawling like a figurative nine-month old.  Though I am staying in Officer’s Quarters away from the Bravo Company area, where the soldiers sleep, I have to report each morning at 0450 hours for “forced hydration.”  This is where we stand around the second floor of the barracks (we’re in second platoon – note the symmetry) holding a full canteen of water until Sergeant Airborne shows up, reels off a few disparaging remarks, and then tells us to “DRINK UP AIRBORNE.”  We then guzzle the entire canteen.  After a few minutes, we solemnly move downstairs and outside to wait in formation with the rest of the company.  The cadre waits inside until the last possible minute (I went into their office one morning and found them sleeping, sprawled out like a bunch of cats), yelling through an open window if they need to talk to any particular soldier.

Sergeant Airborne yelling out the window for a specific student is one of my favorite parts of Airborne School.  It is five am, five hundred students have just guzzled a canteen full of water, and we all know we will stand around for approximately thirty minutes waiting for the cadre to come outside and run us to the training area.  This routine accommodates that basic human need for interaction, even at five am, and the company area quickly comes alive with human chatter, sounding like cicadas emerging from their seventeen year sleep.  Conversation is stopped only (but always) whenever we hear one of the windows slide open, Sergeant Airborne’s head emerging to yell out a roster number: “Charlie Three One Seven!”  Immediately five hundred voices respond.  “CHARLIE THREE ONE SEVEN!”  The cicada love song then resumes, and I giggle internally.

The main purpose of Ground Week seems to be to teach us how to fall down correctly, employing the “PLF” – the parachute landing fall.  In short, this consists of landing with your feet and knees tightly together, and hitting, preferably consecutively, your five “points of contact”: the balls of your feet, the outside of your calf, your thigh, your butt, and then your pull-up muscle, hopefully exposed by you keeping your elbows together in front of you and high up above your face.  This sequence of events, developed in the 1940’s, is the basis for the Army-specific directive, to “get your head out of your fourth point of contact.”  Feel free to adopt it into your own library of colloquialisms.  Ideally, the PLF will save you from serious injury, because the T-10 Delta parachute – a version of which has also been around since the 1940’s – is designed to get you to the ground safely, but more importantly, as quickly as possible.

This is not the landing you’ve seen on television, where a rainbow-clad skydiver pulls on toggles just before impact, hitting the ground running, yet softly, like a Pelican landing on terra firma.  This parachute was designed with the soldier in mind, specifically the enemy soldier, who is probably shooting at you as you fall from the sky, so getting down quickly is of utmost importance.  The trade-off is that you hit the ground harder than you’d like to, and to be able to properly minimize the impact is a good skill.  So we practice falling down.  Again.  And again, and again.  We practice falling down from our standing position.  We practice falling down from a 2’ wall.  We practice falling down while sliding on a cable.  We practice falling down facing forwards, facing sideways, facing backwards.  We practice falling down moving in all directions while sliding on the cable.  To emphasize the importance of keeping feet and knees together, we bunny-hop around the practice pit with our legs welded together, like we’re training for a gunny sack race but can’t find a gunny sack.  Not wearing underwear was a decision considerably lacking in foresight, as the sweat building up in my man-regions has nowhere to go.

We spend the last day of Ground Week jumping out of the 34’ Tower, the first occasion where I feel like I’m doing something kind of cool.  We do it both “Hollywood” – wearing only the parachute harness and a reserve parachute strapped in front of you – and “combat load,” which includes all of the above plus a thirty-five pound rucksack hanging from your waist.  Once we’re geared up, we walk up five flights of stairs, where a Sergeant Airborne hooks our harnesses to a pulley resting on a cable suspended 34’ off the ground.  Once hooked up, Sergeant Airborne gives a smack on the ass, indicating it is now time for you to jump out the door.  I give a vigorous kick and throw myself into a tight body position – chin tucked into chest, elbows in tight, feet and knees together.  I fall for just a fraction of a second until the harness catches, and then slide down the cable to other students waiting to unhook me.  With the exception of jumping off a tower, this is not a pleasurable experience.

If you’d like to get a taste of this, here’s a suitable recreation:  Take two seat belts, run them between your legs and then over your shoulder.  Fasten both, ensuring a buckle is digging into each clavicle.  Now squat down, and have your buddy cinch the belts up real tight.  Now stand up.  If you are unable to stand completely upright, then you’ve done it correctly (if, however, you feel your scrotum being pinched in between a belt and your thigh, you probably have some adjusting to do).  Now go get a computer monitor – not a flat screen, but one of the old school big ones.  Fill it with sand, and hang it from your waist.  Take two more seat belts, and run them through the two existing belts, right about at the front of your shoulders.  Make sure that when these belts extend straight up, your head doesn’t fit easily between them.  You want to reproduce the feeling of having your neck filleted as the straps rapidly shift from front to rear.  Now go walk up five flights of stairs.  Tie your two shoulder belts to the railing.  Jump off.  Repeat ad nauseum.

Tower Week

Airborne Ranger, Airborne Ranger, how did you go?

In a C-130, flying low.

 

The highlight of Tower Week is supposed to be the 250’ tower, where some students are slowly reeled up by a cable hooked to a parachute, and then dropped.  Think the Free Fall ride at Six Flags, and you’ll have the visual.  But we’re on a shortened training schedule, both because of a post-wide “Safety Day” and because of the four-day Memorial Day weekend, so the Tower is scrapped.

Instead we do a lot more hanging around, sitting in the bleachers and bullshitting in between either Sergeant Airborne or some uptight student yelling at us to “shut the fuck up.”  And for the majority of our down time, I’m pretty happy, because being around Joe again is invigorating.  Though my description at the end of this essay might leave you somewhat hesitant about the kismet awaiting Joe, have no doubt – he’s someone you want on your team.  And Joe is funny.  There are two female ROTC cadets in our platoon, both under 21 and attractive.  They are the object of much affection, and watching and listening to the mating call of Joe is hilarity of the highest order.  One afternoon I overhear two Marines one-upping each other in their efforts to impress Female Cadet, the winner clearly the Marine who proudly states he once teabagged[3] an anthill for $100.

We’ve now spent almost eight days together, for extended hours, and the student appointed as my squad leader annoys me.  He’s a 39 year old National Guard E7 from Oklahoma, and though his hayseed routine was initially endearing, it’s quickly become tiring.  He is a brownnoser, a Spotlight Ranger, a suckass, a sycophant, and has chosen Airborne School as his forum to display his leadership skills.  He also lacks what we call “situational awareness.”  One morning, after several rear PLFs, a Sergeant Airborne asked us if we wanted to do more.  My E7 responded affirmatively, the only one of 500 students.  Not like in “hooah Sergeant Airborne, you can’t smoke me!” but like in “shucks Sergeant Airborne, I sure would like to practice one more time.”  Later in the day, while assisting soldiers, he began calling off everyone’s number before they slid down the apparatus, as if the Sergeant Airborne was illiterate (our roster numbers are painted in big black letters on both the front and back of our helmet) and the student was mute.  Here’s our conversation, verbatim:

“Sergeant, if you feel the need to call out each person’s roster number, then just have them do it.”

“Oh no sir, I’m good, it’s not bothering me.”

“But it’s bothering me.”

On the last training day before Jump Week, I lock my keys in my truck at approximately 0440 am.  We spend all morning in our Physical Training uniforms, first conducting a company run and then, for no apparent reason, walking through an outdoor shower.  This is fine for all the Army soldiers, not so fine for the Marines.  The Army PT uniform consists of a thick gray t-shirt and black water repellant shorts.  The Marine Corps PT uniform, on the other hand, is a thread-bare thin olive drab t-shirt and a pair of short silkies,[4] and the cold water additive has rendered the rest of us observers at an impromptu spring-breakish scene.  My Marine Corps platoon sergeant looks like he’s been shrink-wrapped.  I can tell his religion.  After about 20 minutes, he tells the formation that some people are a little uncomfortable around the wet Marines (I have to admit, it’s difficult not to stare), and tells all his mates to use their canteens to discretely cover themselves.  So now I have about 10 strapping Marines (they’re all Force Recon guys) walking around holding their canteens below their waist like fig leaves.  They look ridiculous.

We end the morning (and the day) with a platoon photograph.  We arrange ourselves from tallest to shortest.  I put myself in front of three or four guys who I’m fairly certain are taller than I.  My weekend safety brief to all the soldiers consists of “don’t be a jackass.”  I hope I can follow my own advice.

At 8:30 pm, about two hours after calling “Pop-a-Lock,” I am visited by a tricked-out Jeep Wrangler with no visible company logo.  Out steps a 350 pound kid in jeans and a sleeveless tee (not the homemade type, but purchased, indicated by the hemmed arm-holes), white deodorant residue both hanging from the hairs protruding from his armpits and spread liberally across the sides of his shirt, markings of the hard day’s work put in by his mammoth and pendulous arms.  He sticks an air bag into the door jamb of my truck, inflates it enough so he can reach a beefed-up clothes hangar through the crack, and then unlocks my door.  Sixty-five dollars for about thirty seconds of work – I hope jump week goes a little better.

Jump Week

Airborne Ranger, Airborne Ranger, how’d you get down?

In a T-10 Charlie, big and round.

I am not afraid.  Though I’m uncomfortable in the harness, I am not sweating.  My heart rate is normal.  I am essentially indifferent as the loudspeaker calls out “CHALK FIVE, STAND UP AND FACE THE AIRFIELD.  KEEP YOUR FEET AND KNEES TOGETHER AIRBORNE.  IT’S GO TIME.”

It’s about noon inside the chute warehouse, and an overhead door slides up, revealing a C-130 Hercules rolling up the tarmac towards us, her four turboprop engines whining noisily.  She turns the corner, the lowering tailgate visible through the combined heat waves from the ground and the aircraft itself.  We shuffle towards the back of the plane, entering in reverse order and passing two or three of our instructors, who will act as Jump Masters on our flight.

As soon as we are seated, the plane begins to roll, and Jump Master beings his routine.

“TEN MINUTES!”

Sixty of us call back, “TEN MINUTES TEN MINUTES TEN MINUTES!”

Jump Master shouts, “GET READY!”

It has not been ten minutes; closer to thirty seconds.  As he shouts his second command, the jump door of the aircraft rolls up, revealing the passing tree line below us, and the tenor inside the belly of the airplane changes significantly.  A soldier sitting across from me turns his head from the open door to me, his mouth and eyes wide open.  I give him the “OK” sign, and we sixty call back “GET READY!”  I smile at the soldier.  This will be a breeze, a walk in the park.  We are trained, we are ready, equipment always works, and we have a reserve anyway.

Jump Master calls back to us, “INBOARD PERSONNEL, STAND UP!”  We repeat it back to him, and the first five jumpers in the two inner rows of cargo net seats struggle to their feet.

“OUTBOARD PERSONNEL, STAND UP!”  I repeat his command as I stand myself.

“HOOK UP!”  Jump Master simultaneously makes a sign-language “X” with both of his hands, and we twenty standing jumpers move to unhook our static lines from our reserves,[5] placing them on the cable running over our heads.

“CHECK STATIC LINES!”  It is imperative that your static line go from the cable overhead, through your hand, and over your shoulder to the parachute on your back.  Underneath your shoulder is bad juju, so you first check your own static line and then the line of the jumper in front of you.  If all appears to be well, you tap the helmet of the jumper in front of you and tell him “safe.”  This is passed forward until it gets to the Jump Master, who then shouts –

“CHECK EQUIPMENT!”  We repeat the command while running our hands along the brim of our helmet, our chinstrap, the buckle on our chest and then on each leg.  The last man in line, after checking his equipment, slaps the backside of the man in front of him and yells in his ear “OK!”  The command is passed forward until it reaches the last man, who confidently thrusts his open hand into the face of the Jump Master and yells “ALL OK JUMP MASTER!”

The Jump Master slaps the jumper’s hand, then turns to the door.  He stomps down one foot, checking the stability of the ramp, then methodically but deliberately checks the door jambs for any protrusions or sharp edges – it’s a truly dramatic scene.  He then looks at the first jumper, affirmatively shoving his finger-extended hand in his face, and shouts “STAND IN THE DOOR!”  The first jumper then hands the Safety (a non-jumper there to ensure a smooth exit from the aircraft) his static line, puts a hand on each side of the reserve at his waist, and then turns so he is facing out the door.

I cannot see him (I am the eighth of ten jumpers on my side of the airplane), but I have no doubt his eyes are as big as Oreos, his pulse racing, breathing heavy, his brow littered with sweat.  But not me.  I am solid, coolly indifferent to jumping out the door.  The light at the front of the aircraft turns from red to green, the Jump Master shouts “GO!,” and we are moving.  I shuffle forward, hand the Safety my static line, and turn towards the door.

When one jumps out of an airplane moving at 130 knots 1200’ above the ground, one is supposed to exit the door by jumping up six inches and out thirty-six.  One is supposed to tuck one’s chin into one’s chest, keeping elbows in tight to the ribs and hands firmly gripping the sides of the reserve parachute hanging at one’s belly.  The jumper is then supposed to count to four – one thousand two thousand three thousand four thousand – then move hands from the reserve parachute to the risers of the opening parachute above his head.  Once the jumper confirms he has an open and untwisted parachute, he then looks for other jumpers, ensuring not only he is keeping a safe distance from the other jumpers, but also that he is falling at a rate of descent consistent with the other jumpers.  At approximately 100’, the jumper is supposed to reach up and pull down on the two risers in the direction opposite of any drift, keeping eyes squarely on the horizon.  One does not look down once below 100’, as he is supposed to “feel” the ground with the balls of his feet.  Once the jumper feels contact, he should execute his perfected PLF, landing expertly.

This is not how it works for me.  It turns out that I am totally and unequivocally mentally unprepared for the violence about to befall me.  As I move to exit the door, I am sucked out before I can get my first “thousand” out of my mouth.  My chin is in my chest, but only because the risers being yanked out of my pack have slammed my head forward, knocking my helmet down over my eyes in the process.  I have a tight body position – elbows in, feet and knees together – but only because I am scared shitless.  I can see a sliver of scenery from the underside of my helmet, and I watch it turn from tree to ground to tree to sky and back again.  I feel like a cigarette being flicked from a fast moving car.

I do not count to four thousand, mostly because my jaw is clenched shut but also because I am chanting, in my head, to the God of Agnostics: chute open chute open chute open chute open.  I stop tumbling, fix my helmet, and then look up to see my risers twisted.  As I was instructed, I quickly grab a riser in each hand, pulling apart as hard as my panic-induced arms will allow, and bicycle my legs like I stole something and my Schwinn is the getaway car.  I untwist, the risers parting to reveal a gloriously open, unobstructed, fully inflated chute.

She is beautiful.  I want to name her.  I think I want to name my children after her.  I sheepishly look around and collect myself, feeling like I just took a spill on my skateboard at a quiet intersection – did anyone see that? – and settle in to enjoy the ride.  I then notice that I am falling faster than everyone else in front of me.  This is not, I think, supposed to happen like this.  Shouldn’t the first one out the door also be the first one to the ground?  I crane my neck to see the jumpers behind me, but nothing – I am falling faster than them as well.  I look for the smoke pot on the ground, lit to help us see which way the wind is blowing so we can execute the appropriate PLF.  The smoke seems to be moving only upwards, directly at me, and I am falling only down, directly at it.  They did not teach me how I was supposed to land if I was falling straight down.

I hear a voice.  “AIRBORNE STOP LOOKING AT THE GROUND.”  I have no idea where the voice is coming from, and cannot see its source, but it reminds me to keep my eyes on the horizon.  I need to feel the ground as I land, first touching with the balls of my feet, then calves, then thigh, then butt, then pull-up muscle.  This PLF, I think, needs to be a good one, because I am falling really, really fast.

I do, in fact, feel the ground with the balls of my feet.  A microsecond later I feel the ground with my ass, and then, like it’s the tail end of a childhood game of “crack the whip,” I feel the ground with the back of my head.  I have skipped my second, third, and fifth points of contact but added a sixth.  I lay there for a few seconds, spread eagle, partially disoriented but mostly grateful to be on the ground and alive.  When I sit up, I see a Sergeant Airborne (the source of the voice I heard) sitting on a cooler, only about fifteen feet from me.  His right hand, holding the bull horn, is draped lazily over his right knee.  His head is hanging down, and I can tell he is laughing.  I give him a “what the f**k” look, and he swings the bullhorn up to his lips.

“ARE YOU OK AIRBORNE?”

“FUCK NO I’M NOT OK!  That hurt.”  He laughs.  He goes back to the bullhorn.  “YOU HAVE TO TWIST YOUR BODY AIRBORNE.”

“When?,” I ask.  Because there is absolutely no time between my feet and ass and head hitting the ground.  But there are already more jumpers floating down, so I gather up my equipment and start running across the drop zone to the staging area.  I am the first one back, by a good five minutes.

Jumps two, three, and four go much the same, though on my second jump I land on a packed road rather than the tilled ground, seeing stars after my head hits; on my fourth jump I am dragged across the drop zone for ten feet or so before I can unhook the chute.  I have no idea why I fall faster than everyone else – I’m really not that much bigger – but for all subsequent jumps I make sure I am the last one out the door so that I will not interfere with anyone else as I come down.  I still make it back to the staging area first. For each jump I am progressively more nervous, but loathe them all equally.  We jump twice on the first day and twice on the second day, needing only one jump on day three to get our fifth, and Airborne-qualifying, jump.

The last day comes early.  We have to be at formation by 3:30 am, and we silently run the mile to the airfield.  Once we get there we practice exiting from both doors of the mock aircraft and go through our practice PLFs for Sergeant Airborne – I am, admittedly, phoning it in at this point, as I have yet to have a PLF work for me.  We eat a cold MRE for breakfast.  We are in the harness – combat load for jump five – by 6:15 am.  This morning my squad will be on the second aircraft, and I am very much looking forward to being on the ground and out of this torture device of a parachute harness as soon as possible.  There are a limited number of Jump Masters, and they do double-duty both for the Jump Master Personnel Inspection in the harness shed and as the Jump Masters on the aircraft, so once we’re inspected, we can’t get back out of the harness.  I don’t drink water so I won’t have to pee, and pass time trying new ways to sit on the wooden benches to alleviate some of the pain.

The first jumpers are scheduled to get on the plane at 1000 hours, but the hour comes and goes.  Then eleven.  Today is overcast, and we need the clouds to be no lower than 1700’ – 1200’ is jump altitude, but we’re required to have 500’ of clearance.  I ask a passing Air Force pilot about the ceiling: Only 700’.  The clock reads noon.  The sergeant in charge (NCOIC) gets a waiver from the commander so we can jump at 1000’ instead of 1200’.  But the clouds are still only at 900’.  I volunteer to jump from 900’.  I volunteer to jump from 700’, 500’, whatever it takes to get out of this harness.  It’s now one o’clock.  A soldier two down from me passes out from dehydration.  We yell for Sergeant Airborne, two of us clumsily unhooking the passed out soldier from his gear.  The NCOIC unsuccessfully tries to get the commander to allow us to drop combat gear.  Another soldier wets his pants, the rest of us informed by the NCOIC conducting his end of the conversation with another Sergeant Airborne over the loudspeaker (“WHY IS ONE NINE EIGHT GETTING OUT OF HIS GEAR?”  Seconds pass. “DID HE GET THE PARACHUTE WET?”  More seconds.  “DID HE TELL ANYONE HE HAD TO GO?”).

At 1345 hours – one forty-five pm, and seven and one half hours after getting into the harness – Sergeant Airborne comes over the loudspeaker.  “CHALKS FIVE AND SIX, STAND UP AND FACE THE AIRFIELD.”  At this point, there is neither elation nor relief.  I want to get out of the harness but am, to be honest, fairly apprehensive about this last jump.  I will exit the door, no doubt, but I am not particularly looking forward to it.  We trudge out the door, wait for the aircraft, walk up the back of the ramp, and sit.

And then?  And then.  And then.  And then, over the airplane radio, music.  No, not music, but an anthem.  The anthem of my senior year of college, Everlast’s opus, that homage to kicking ass, self-aggrandizement, and yes, jumping around.  And why not?  Why not jump around?  I’m about to exit an airplane with fifty pounds of crap slung off my body like an overloaded bandito, and I deserve to serve your ass like I’m John McEnroe.  I deserve a little jumping around.  A smile replaces my grimace as I drift back to 1993, sitting on our dryer in the filthy basement of the Green House, my friends around me smoking a joint as we stare together at the wood floor above us, pulsating with the synched bacchanalian jumps of a hundred of our closest friends living the dream.  Over the plane radio it begins, pack it up, pack it in, let me begin, I came to win, and the Jump Master is literally packing us in.  He seats one of us, then makes us lift our rucksacks up as high as possible as he squeezes someone else into the seat directly across.  There is barely room for one person with a ruck, but he needs to squeeze thirty per side.  He makes everyone raise their hands in the air (get up, stand up, come on throw your hands up) as he shoves us to the back of the plane.  But I do not care.  I am 37 and have been sitting on a wood bench for almost eight hours and I have to pee and there’s a metal bar grinding into my shin and I don’t care, because across from me I see an ROTC cadet, a young kid looking all of his twenty years, mouthing – yelling – the words to Jump Around and I cannot help but be overcome because this is one of those days, one of those moments that doesn’t come around all that often but when it does, it reminds me that I really, really like what I do.

I exit the aircraft fifteenth of fifteen and am flung from the door like litter.  My chute opens – no twists – and I watch as I pass fourteen other parachutists on my way down.  I pull the release lever for my rucksack at about 200’, and it dangles on its cord thirty feet below me.  I find the smoke pot to gauge the wind; it’s pushing me to my left.  At 100’ I reach up and grab the two right risers and pull down as hard as I can, my eyes on the horizon.  I feel the ground with the balls of my feet, then my left calf, then my left thigh, my left butt cheek, and finally my left pull-up muscle.  I keep my elbows in front of my face, my momentum swinging my feet and knees – held firmly together – up and over.  I unhook the parachute and start to get out of my equipment, and hear a Sergeant Airborne through his bullhorn: “NICE LANDING SIR.”

I want to hug somebody.  Instead, as I reel in my parachute, I utter, under my breath, that one word I have heard over and over so many times the last three weeks, to the point I never want to hear it again:

Airborne.

[1] For this exercise, stand with your feet shoulder width apart, arms extended out and parallel to the ground.  Keeping your arms straight, move your hands upward until they touch, then return them to shoulder level.  This is a four count exercise – one, two, three (one!), one, two three (two!).  Do 200 of these.  Seriously.  Now do push-ups.  Now do more overhead claps.

[2] “Joe” is a slangy name given to soldiers of any rank below that of sergeant, and it should convey to you a vivid image of his idiosyncrasies.  Joe owns both an XBox and a PlayStation.  Joe took his enlistment bonus and bought an ’08 Ford Mustang GT, financing the balance with a double-digit APR.  Joe smokes – he’s likely to chew as well – and has a tribal tattoo on his arm and shoulder.  He owns denim shorts, and frequently sports them with a “Linkin’ Park” concert t-shirt and a DC skateboards hat.  Sometimes you have to remind Joe that he needs to wash between his toes.  Though he likes girls, Joe’s not real sure how to relate to them, and so is prone to do things like flicking or punching them in the arm, much like a fourth-grader lustily reacting to the early pangs of puberty.  Joe has a big heart, with which he isn’t entirely sure how to deal.  Joe works hard, and most importantly, Joe will do anything for his fellow soldiers (and by proxy, you), including but not limited to: lie, display common sense-defying acts of loyalty, steal, provide back-up in a fist fight, assist in the cross-border transportation of marijuana, and dive on a grenade.

 

[3] Recounting here the definition of “teabagging” is simply too much for me, so I’ll instead refer you to http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teabagging.  Reader beware.

[4] Army Rangers and Special Forces wear shorts consisting of essentially the same material, sometimes referred to as “Ranger Panties.”  The shorts are typical of what you’d see on any world-class marathon runner, expect Marines and Rangers aren’t usually built like world-class marathon runners.  They’re built like, well, Marines and Rangers, and so the shorts are really, really short and really, really thin.

[5] The system works like this: inside the aircraft and a little over 6’ from the floor are two cables running the length of the airplane.  On each soldier’s back is a parachute, with a nylon “static line” starting at the bag holding the parachute intact, protruding out of the pack and then over your shoulder.  At the end of the static line is a metal hook.  This metal hook goes onto the static line, and when you jump out of the aircraft, the hooked line pulls the bag and parachute out of your pack.  You are hooked to your hopefully opening parachute by four “risers,” pieces of think nylon webbing that run from the chute to your harness.

 

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Going Hemingway

Quito to Baños and Back Again/8-12 April, 2008

Is there a more harrowing opening scene in modern cinema – outside Saving Private Ryan – than the first ten minutes of Alive?  Is there one among us who didn’t experience an empathetic tightening of the glutes, an involuntary clenching of teeth, a collective release of breath once that doomed plane skidded and tumbled to a snowy stop?  The 1972 crash – loaded with an Uruguayan high school alumni rugby team – resulted in 29 dead and 16 survivors spending 72 days high in the brutally cold Andean cordillera before they were finally rescued.  In addition to the 1993 movie, the post-crash events spawned the delightfully macabre bumper sticker Rugby Players Eat Their Dead, which is, in fact, how those 16 survivors lived to tell their grizzly story.

As I readied for my two-week trip to Ecuador and Peru, my own desperate thoughts of how I might live should my TACA Air airplane crash-land in the Andes had taken refuge in my traveling companion for the total of my nine flights over a two-week period: Mac would provide me plenty of much needed sustenance, if need be, because he’s a good friend, and because I could – I would – eat him.  I would.  Mac is a big man.  Or at least he was.  It seems Mac is in love – to a vegetarian, to boot – and he’s a good twenty pounds lighter than the last time I saw him.  Fortunately about every third Latino getting on our flight carried a box of fried chicken,[1] so I wouldn’t have to eat Mac after all.

Mac and I had but two goals for our trip to Ecuador and Peru – to see a soccer game and to see Macchu Piccu.  The rest would be unplanned, allowing us the freedom and flexibility to go where we wanted when we wanted, to stay or go, to take the backpacker-highway or the road less traveled, to drink heavily or not at all.  We opted for each.

Ecuador: Land of Little People

Our first stop is Quito, the capital of Ecuador and at 9,200 ft, way too close to the sun.  It takes me less than a day to get a solid base burn that lasts throughout our trip (none of my Latino DNA, apparently, is in my epidermis, and by the end of the trip a cloud of dead skin sloughs off me each time I remove my fleece).  But our first afternoon starts overcast, so we kill time with a bowl of ceviche and the first of our many, many Pisco Sours.  Bitterly and legally disputed over, Pisco is a native drink of both Peru and Chile but served everywhere in the region.  During Spanish colonial rule, imported grapes were the beginnings of what became a hugely successful wine industry.  But in 1641, King Philip banned the import of wine, causing the Peruvians (or was it the Chileans?) to find an alternate, yet still alcoholic, use for their grapes.  Voilà, Pisco.  Add some egg whites, Simple syrup, lime juice and a dash of bitters, and you have the Pisco Sour.  Though it tastes like a more acidic Margarita, it sneaks up on you like jungle juice at a frat party.  I blame it on the altitude, but the three drinks we had as we waited out the rain, sounding all the world like machine-gun fire as it fell on the fiberglass covered courtyard, left us both feeling adequately prepared for our two-weeks in South America.

It did not, however, adequately prepare us for our first South American riot.  There are a lot of cabs in Ecuador – far more cabs and buses, it seems, than private cars – some government owned and operated, some not.  The drivers of the some not, on this Tuesday afternoon, are restless, and express their displeasure by clogging the streets and hurling rocks, bottles, fists and feet at every passing yellow cab.  There are thousands of men chanting and kicking yellow-cab ass as the cars accelerate through the gauntlet of protesters, and Mac and I get close enough to film but far enough away to stay out of the way of the frequent errant projectiles.  We stand safely, we think, next to the sole police officer we see, who is acting on the situation largely by looking the other way and texting messages on his cell phone.  An ice-cream truck drives by, “Jingle Bells” drifting lazily from its loudspeaker.

The average height of a Brazilian male, says www.shortsupport.org,[2] is just about 5′7″.  The vast rain forest and towering Andes Mountains separating Ecuador (and Peru) from Brazil must include a genetic decline, because Ecuadoreans seem to me to be much, much shorter.  Mac and I look like genetic freaks, never more so than when we fold ourselves and our backpacks into public transportation, be it the hilariously miniature Daihatsu cabs – we frequently bottomed out over speed bumps and potholes – or the back seat of the Quito-Ambato-Baños bus we took after our third day in Ecuador.  The four-hour journey began with a Tourettic DVD salesman pacing the aisle of the bus for the entire first half of the trip, talking to no one in particular but repeating the same sales pitch with the dedication and regularity of a time-condensed call to prayer coming from a minaret.  He would start at the back of the bus, dropping cellophane covered DVDs on each passenger’s lap, making his way to the front.  A passenger indicated his interest by picking up the DVD – no matter if you were picking it up simply to give it back.  On the salesman’s return trip, untouched DVDs went back into his canvas bag, touched DVDs invited the hard sell.  He warmed to us after he found we were American, and we learned from him that a) Columbian women were hot; b) he had family in Florida; c) Columbian women were hot; d) Columbia was the third largest country in South America; e) Columbians liked war; and f) Columbian women were hot.

We rolled into Baños around ten at night, and our desire to both get us into a beer and out of the rain prompted us to break routine and follow the first teenage hucksters accosting us.  They took us to the Hostel Freddy, where we were given two rooms – mine smelling like farts and cigar smoke –  for $5 each, a pretty good deal until I was woken by the sounds of the bus station, just a block from my single-pane windowed room.  Mac, no doubt, slept through the night, lulled by the sounds of his own snores.  Five dollars a night might compensate for farts and cigar smoke, it does not make up for unwanted wake-up calls.

Baños, named for the natural mineral baths spread throughout the town, is hemmed in by towering mountains and the Tungurahua volcano, active enough that this city is still clearing eruption residue covering a part of the only paved road leading to town.  Mac and I climbed to the top of one of the ranges, braving muddy trails, no trails, thirty degree inclines with no trails, jungle-thick flora, fifty-cent piece sized spiders, diving vultures, and an overzealous guard dog (after starting down the wrong trail, we asked a local woman how to get to the “antennas.”  Her prophetic answer: “take a cab”).  We walked the road back down, unsuccessful in our attempts to hitch a ride from either of the two cars passing us, pausing only to accept the offer of a local farmer to take one of his granadilla, a fruit looking like an orange on the outside and a pomegranate on the inside, but with the consistency of mucus.[3]

We spend the afternoon as the only customers in a vitriolic Dutch woman’s café, listening to her espouse her theories on American politics and calling George Bush a “fucker.”  Her Ecuadorean husband walks past us hangdog, and I am grateful I am not him.  On our second and last night in Baños, we visit the mineral baths, where we account for all four hundred something pounds of gringo, our board shorts looking like Capris in comparison to the locals’ Speedos and boy shorts.

The morning brings us symmetry: As we get into our cab taking us to the two and a half hours to the Quito airport, the radio plays Europe’s The Final Countdown, that traveler’s anthem we’ve heard in Mexico and all over Scandinavia.

la vaquera

[1] KFC is the Starbucks of Ecuador, but every box of chicken on our flight was an unknown brand.  If anyone knows this phenomenon, please let me know.

 

[2] Short Persons Support’s mission is to a) Support and provide reference material to persons of short stature; b) Raise awareness of the social and economic issues facing short people; and c) Provide inspiration to short people to help better their lives and attitudes.  All I want them to do is tell me the average height of an Ecuadorean male.

[3] Later, in Lima, we explained this story to some other travelers in an attempt to recall the fruit’s name.  “It’s not fruit,” stated a sassy Canadian.  “Don’t tell me it’s not fruit,” I answered, “it was sweet, it had a peel, it had seeds on the inside.”  Or something like that.  “No,” she answered back, “it’s snot fruit.”

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Call to Macchiato


Addis Ababa, Ethiopia/March 16, 2007

It’s 5:15 am and I’m woken by the call to prayer being blasted outside my window. Though spoken in Amharic – a language uniquely Ethiopian – it sounds remarkably similar to a Native American chant as I fade in and out of sleep. My Malarone-inspired dreams take me out of Addis Ababa and back to the Nevada desert where I sit and watch a tribal counsel quickly go from group chant to an argument over one guy’s Marine Corps jacket. This dream is only slightly less bizarre than the one I had the night before where Lisa Bonet and I were firmly entrenched in a life of domestic wedded bliss. But that’s for another time – the call to prayer has gotten louder – and so I’m awake for my first full day in Addis Ababa.

This is the poorest country I’ve ever been to. At 6:45 a.m. our part of the city was already awake and moving, and the early sun filtered through the mix of dust and pollution gave a look of a war-torn country. Beggars are everywhere, matched in numbers by the homeless lined in neat rows along the sidewalk, still sleeping. There are piles of garbage scavenged over by mangy dogs, and sewage drains double, apparently, as toilets. But the city is alive and well, and it has all the characteristics of fast-paced city life. There are 7 million people in Addis and its suburbs, and it seems like most of them are out walking. The taxis are mini-busses, and they pull over toward the sidewalk at designated stops, slowing enough to allow the guy hanging out the window to scream the destination to no one in particular. You can hear them coming and going, bus after bus driving down the road with a man standing outside the passenger window like your dog letting his ears flap in the breeze. The streets are lined with stores, shop after shop selling car batteries, then shop after shop selling rebar, then shop after shop selling tires – it continues on and on. My instinct says they need a mini-mall, but then there would be no reason to ever leave your own neighborhood, thusly losing your connection with the rest of the city.

Ethiopia is the home of coffee, and they serve the best macchiatos I’ve ever had. Mark and I had four of them (for less than a dollar) while we stood outside on the street, watching daily life go by. I left my video camera running and almost every child that walked by made a face or smiled. This country has over four million orphans, and many of them seem to be on the street (part of this trip is to help some orphanages, so more on that later). We had dinner at the “expensive” western restaurant, which had average food but was remarkably nice and definitely western, replete with the ubiquitous older white male escorting the younger, really really hot brown girl (I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve been).

One story before I end: At dinner I met a friend of Mark’s, an Ethiopian woman who runs one of the orphanages. She’s actually from the northern part of Ethiopia, an area named Tigray, and left this country when she was eleven years old due to a civil war. She and her cousins (one parent died, and the other stayed behind) walked to Sudan (she doesn’t remember the distance, only that it took a few months) and then lived in Khartoum with an uncle and several other relatives in a single dirt-floored room. In Sudan, she was treated as a second-class citizen until she left, at 17, to go to Boston. She had never been to America, spoke no English, and had experienced neither electricity nor running water – let alone boarded an airplane and flown across the world. She taught herself English, did well enough in school to get a scholarship to a university where she ran track, and came back here to Ethiopia to help the children of this country. It’s an incredible story, but it’s commonplace here (at least up to the fly to America part).

More later – I wanted to send some quick thoughts – but it’s 5:45 here and time for a macchiato.

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Sudanese Refugees Got No Game

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia/ March 20, 2007

Can you get AIDS if you rub your eyes after you’ve handled a snot-nosed HIV-positive two year old? And is there irony in orphaned Ethiopian girls wearing t-shirts with the words FEELGIRL emblazoned across the front? Today was powerful, so I have to lead with sarcasm while I absorb it all.

My days overseas usually start with a hangover, but today started with a trip to Mother Theresa’s AIDS orphanage in Addis Ababa, where Sister Maria (she didn’t even know the words to “How do you Solve a Problem Like Maria”, the silly nun) has taken care of thousands of kids over the last ten years. She, her support staff and 400 kids – all HIV positive, with a few having full blown AIDS – live in an incredibly clean compound where the kids receive schooling, lots of attention, and medical care (they now get ARVs, and only four children died last year). Sister Maria runs the place like, well, a Catholic nun, and I witnessed her order three loan officers, there to check her books, to “not leave without making a donation.” We visited two other orphanages of varying quality, and were served macchiatos at each – I think I had seven today, and am clearly subsidizing my beer intake by sucking down as much caffeine as possible. The children are polite and well behaved, and seem much like kids anywhere, with the exception of the very young ones – they practically attacked me and the other males in the group. Orphanage staff is almost exclusively female, and toddlers, it seems, sometimes want to be held by men. I spend most of the day conflicted. Conflicted because I’m white; conflicted because I am, relatively, loaded; conflicted because I’m a foreigner (“forengee“); conflicted because trips like the one I’m on are almost always faith-based (“Jesus lovers,” I call them (me?), though the Ethiopians spell Jesus with a “G.” My name, of course, is Gay); conflicted because I’m not a Jesus-lover. The people with whom I’m traveling are incredibly kind, motivated, and genuinely concerned about these kids, and are clearly moved by a higher power. But I remember what Townes Van Zandt said about being a guitar player: if you truly want to be one, then that’s all you can be. You have to be willing to give up money, security, livelihood, a job – all the cholesterol in your life preventing you from mastering a blues scale.

So if you truly want to live your life for Jesus, then shouldn’t you do nothing else but live it? We roll into the orphanage, hold some kids, drop off some soccer balls, then roll back out for a post hand-sanitized macchiato. Does it really matter? Does it make a difference? Mull it over along with me.

I skipped the last stop of the day, a tour of the “Institute for the Destitute and Dying,” opting instead for a walk with a friend through the alleys of the Kaliti neighborhood. Kids literally run the streets, most in flip-flops, some barefoot, the older ones in better shoes and school uniforms. I saw a Britney Spears poster; an ad for Tupac’s latest (I think, I’ve lost track); tailors sitting outside, running old-school Singers; VW mini-vans and motorcycles flying through the streets (I’ve cursed exactly once on this trip – I swear – and it was when a motorcycle swerved to pretend to hit me. I yelled out “fucker,” which I immediately regretted after realizing the number of little kids constantly following us). We stopped at a gate reading Jesuit Refugee Service Center, and as it opened to let a car enter, I witnessed the most delightful image I’ve seen thus far – Sudanese refugees playing basketball. They were tall, lanky, incredibly dark, and awful at hoops. I mimed my 20% accurate set shot, and a young kid named Ricard waved us in. Matt and I spent the next hour at 7700 feet running up and down a concrete court with bent, net-less hoops; me on a belly full of pizza and macchiato trying to set picks on 6’8″ 130-pound Sudanese teenagers running from who knows what.

Africa is growing on me.

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Thank You for Being a Goofy White Guy

Somewhere between Gulu and Jinja, Uganda/March 29, 2007

 I haven’t shaved in two weeks, I’m wearing my underwear inside-out for the third day in a row, and today is, at last, Africa hot. I’m in Uganda on the road from Gulu to Jinja and feeling totally irrelevant. I wish I could sufficiently describe to you the contrasts I’ve experienced since I wrote you last. This place is a cold-water blast of visual, emotional, and tactile sensations unlike anything I imagined. Bats as big as place mats, some charred and crispy, hanging from electrical wires like tangled kites; dirt-poor people always dressed immaculately; stern faces on Rwandan farmers that light up when you wave to them; kids in strikingly bright colored school uniforms, almost exclusively barefoot (especially in the country); and some of the coolest greetings you’ll ever see. Ethiopians shake hands and then touch their right shoulders together. Rwandans wave with two hands, raised up about shoulder level, smiles as big as their faces. Ugandans shake hands like I will when I meet Charles Barkley: first the standard white guy handshake, hold it briefly, then switch to the overhand so only thumbs are interlocked – again, hold it briefly – then back to the standard white guy shake. Eye contact throughout is mandatory.

I came here expecting to have my life changed, but it didn’t take long to realize that expectation was based on naivety and 30-minute clips from the National Geographic Channel. Africa is everything you imagine it might be and nothing like you think. In Rwanda I visited a church where in 1994 over 5,000 civilians – mostly women and children – were massacred by grenades, rifles, machetes, arrows and stones, all victims of a genocide that killed over 800,000 people in about 90 days. They came to the church seeking shelter, and when threatened refused to leave. Now their skulls are stacked neatly in rows in the rear of the church, while most of the remaining bones are thrown together into a giant pile under a dirty tarp. Just a few miles up the road from the church, in a huge grassy open meadow at the foot of an active volcano, we played soccer with about 100 orphans. They slipped in cow shit and laughed like any child should, calling us “barbaro” (it means “buffalo;” they apparently found our aggressive style of play a bit excessive) and even more hilarious, “freak.” A teenager named Fierce who was anything but scored after executing a sweet juke, to the delight of everyone, causing the other 99 to break into song.

I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere more beautiful than Rwanda, made all the more shocking when you remember this is the environment that produced “short sleeves” – cutting off arms above the elbows – and “long sleeves” – cutting off arms at the wrist. The government is still prosecuting participants in the genocide, using “gacaca” (ga-cha-cha) courts to allow the victims to determine the sentences of those who plead or are found guilty. Remarkably, most are given lengthy community service sentences rather than jail time. Could you look at someone every day, knowing they stole your car? What if instead they hacked off your brother’s limbs? Or killed your parents? Somehow this country seems to be moving on.

In Uganda I visited an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp where I witnessed first-hand evidence supporting the stat that about 85% of all of Northern Uganda lives in these camps, and that Uganda is the youngest country in the world – they have an average age of 16. Because of a 20-year war between a rebel group (the Lord’s Resistance Army) and the government, hundreds of thousands of farmers have been displaced from their land, living instead in small, circular huts.

Parentless children are the most visible effect of the war. Most of the adults have been either killed or displaced by AIDS and/or the war, and as a result the kids are stacked into schools and orphanages (and the IDP camps) like cordwood. They seem far happier than anything I’ve seen in America. There are many westerners here doing many great things, but if you have time, check out www.invisiblechildren.com – it will sadden, humble, and inspire you. Because the LRA was essentially abducting children from their homes during the night and forcing them to fight and kill in the rebel army, thousands of kids started walking from their homes at dusk to come together to sleep in the city. They arrived at night, thousands of them, some having walked several miles just to avoid being abducted. They slept together, arms and legs intertwined like piles and piles of puppies, and then walked back home the next morning to either work or go to school. Three twenty-somethings from California captured their story on film and started a movement to get the kids back into the regular folds of society. Today they are helping to run a boarding school that houses over 1400 hundred students, about 80% of which are orphans. Until a new dorm is completed, girls live 50 to a room – there are over 400 of them living in two buildings, each about 150’ by 50’. Though they see white people – or “muzungu,” which essentially translates to “running around in circles” – on a daily basis, they rarely see white children, and a six-year old blonde girl on our trip was given minor celebrity status. Goofy white guys, apparently, cause less of a stir. People in Uganda say “thank you” an awful lot – thank you for walking today, thank you for wearing shoes, thank you for cleaning up your part of the sidewalk. I tried a “thank you for doing your homework,” but was met only with giggles and points.

My initial worries about being the sole agnostic amongst a sea of believers were totally unfounded, and I had some amazing conversations about the places we occupy in this world. On top of that, it turns out trying to introduce Jesus to Africa is a lot like trying to introduce soccer to South America – it’s already here, in full form. If anything, it was almost an afterthought. Far more interesting is some of the great t-shirts I’ve seen: “Jesus First, Then Comes Soccer”; “The Man” (arrow pointing upwards), “The Legend” (arrow pointing downwards); “Ann Arbor is a Whore” (couldn’t tell if it was a Michigan State or Ohio State shirt); and my favorite, “Grandma To Be” (on about a 25 year old dude).

So that’s it. No dramatic ending, other than I rafted Class V rapids on the Nile today – no crocs, but lots of spills. Hope to see you sometime soon.

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Coming Home

Savannah, Georgia/June 7, 2005

So I’m coming home. Today is the 2nd of June, and tomorrow I will leave Bahgdad after just 135 days in country. It seems like a long time, but still significantly shorter than the tour of those I leave behind (tour. Such a funny application of the word, though with plenty of company in the Army lexicon: collateral damage, high-value target (if it’s such high value, why are we trying to destroy it?), smart-bomb, low-intensity conflict, knock and search. Sometimes – don’t tell anyone – I feel funny using these words, like I’m the guy who might believe there’s an alien in Area 51, or there was someone on the grassy knoll. The language of conspirators). Some introspection: I have mixed emotions about leaving. Can anyone commiserate? I want to get the hell out of here – fast – yet I have these feelings of not wanting to leave these guys I have trained, lived with, interacted with on a daily basis since the middle of October; of not wanting to leave this significant thing in my life; of wanting to help improve what seems, at times, a dire situation. Don’t be misled; I do not believe this to be my fight. But these are my friends, and it is my uniform, and it is my job, and I do believe, in spite of it all, that the burden borne to the biggest guy on the block is to make life better for everyone else. But it’s also my family I am going home to, and my country, and all of you. I suppose I can take solace, if you’re into self-flagellation, in the fact that I’ll surely be back here in the near future.

Baghdad is soon to be home to the biggest US embassy in the world. Surely the next time around we’ll have spread our good American cheer far and wide enough that I can get a beer outside the front gate. Already, I’ve had Iraqi school boys sing Snoop Dog lyrics to me and proudly flash me their middle finger (“hey mistah! Fucka you!”). Ah, progress. You cannot stop it, you can only hope to contain it.

Each morning here I awake acutely aware of the paradox of participating in something with which I don’t entirely agree. Usually I contend myself with the belief I’m an integral part of the greater good, or by helping soldiers who made some pretty stupid decisions, or by helping other officers to be better people and attorneys and by trying to be a better one myself. But some mornings I don’t know entirely how to deal with it. Some mornings I wake wanting to be Russell Means, wanting to be Jim Harrison, wanting to be Marla Ruzicka. I want to shake things up a bit, I want to be anti-establishment. Some mornings I simply want some insight along with my coffee, want the information I think I’ve earned and deserve, not only as to what makes one country invade another, but also as to what makes a man strap a bomb to his back and run into a dining facility, or a group of people waiting to worship, or into a school. Surely it’s not as simply as oil; surely it’s not as simple as 72 virgins and eternal bliss. Surely it’s complicated, its pursuit and discovery merited by the loss of lives, national identity, religious upheaval, and billions of dollars. Right? Surely it’s an enviable thing, this quality of not only being willing to die for your cause, but to willingly die for your cause.

For 130 days straight neither the war nor its effects has reached out and touched me. When I’d wanted to see it, I had to go out and touch it myself. But we’ve angered the insurgency, apparently, by encircling Baghdad, and in the evening of day 131, prompted by the sound of gunfire, I stepped outside my trailer to watch tracers ricochet off of who-knows-what and fly into the night sky, framed against the backdrop of a dusty, yellowed Baghdad moon. Then on day 132, while waiting for a helicopter, I watched a VBIED-inspired mushroom cloud rise above the tree-line, the accompanying boom reaching me only seconds later. Day 133 brought a mortar round to my living area, about 200 meters from my own trailer, and today, day 134, I heard and felt – despite a building, a mountain, countless concrete barriers and a distance of about 400 meters between it and I, I felt – the effects of two 122mm rockets, the first landing harmlessly in between the chapel and the finance office, the second landing in the middle of our shopping complex, killing two and injuring seventeen soldiers, civilian contractors, and Iraqi businessmen. Two or three of the injured soldiers, and one of the dead, all members of the Georgia National Guard, had been here less than a week. Your length of time in this country does not dictate your chances of death. Day one equals day 100 equals day 135 equals day 365. It’s like flipping a coin: No matter how many times you come up heads, you’re even money for tails the next time around.

Break. I’m home. I’m home, and I have read my above letter. Such pessimism, Jose! Such despair! Such chagrin! It sounds as if I wrote those words with bombs exploding behind me, on the run, running, leaping to latch onto a departing helicopter, my three duffel bags hanging from one arm as I desperately clung to the helicopter skid with the other (“Keep flying, Copperhead 35, I’m good! Get out of the impact area! Save yourself!). Such (melo)drama in my words, and I wasn’t even loaded when I wrote them! But I’m sending them out anyway, because I’m home now, and have so many good things to tell you – mostly how it’s not as bad as the media (or I) portray it, and that Iraqis and Americans, along with a few Italians, Estonians, Brits, Aussies, and Poles (sorry Michael Moore, I saw no Moroccan monkeys) are doing great things on a daily basis, and that Iraq, the Middle East, and hopefully America, will be the better for it. We hope.

Two stories to end with, one of ambition, one of optimism (sort of): About three weeks ago, I ran into a young soldier sleeping in the sun, sprawled in a folding camping chair while waiting to talk to an attorney. Sergeant Hester, a 23 year-old shoe salesman and member of the Kentucky National Guard, is a Military Police soldier, with a mission to “shadow,” or guard, civilian semi-tractor/trailer convoys while they travel from city to city. At the end of March, SGT Hester and about nine other soldiers were shadowing a convoy of about twenty supply trucks, almost exclusively driven by third-country nationals (Aussies, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshi), when they were ambushed by approximately 75 (mostly Iraqi) insurgents. SGT Hester and the other American soldiers were in their armored vehicles at the back of the convoy when the insurgents initiated the attack with small-arms fire and Rocket Propelled Grenades. The soldiers immediately sped to the front of the convoy, where SGT Hester’s vehicle took a direct hit from one of the RPG’s. After first administering first-aid to the gunner, SGT Hester then left the vehicle and headed for an empty canal where she – yes, she – and one other soldier proceeded to kill or injure 10-20 of the enemy. SGT Hester threw grenades, fired her weapon at close range, went back to her vehicle at least once to get more ammunition, and had to take a break about half-way through the 45-minute gun battle to regain her energy. As she put it, at one point the fighting was “toe to toe.” Though none of the American soldiers were killed, several were injured. An ominous sign of the insurgents’ intent was found at the end of the battle when the U.S. Soldiers confiscated, among other things, several sets of hand-cuffs (for taking prisoners) and a videotape of the early stages of the operation, immediately preceded by a film of the insurgents beheading a third-country national, most likely some truck driver, here to make more money in one year that he might see at home in ten. So is it a good thing that any young American is placed in a position where they must kill or be killed? No way. Do I hope that SGT Leigh Ann Hester, Silver Star pinned upon her busty chest, gets the opportunity to testify before Congress? Or maybe arm-wrestle some charcoal-suited, bespectacled, pomaded gentlemen from (insert red state)? Absolutely.

Second story: About the same time I met SGT Hester, I hadn’t left the base in about a month and was feeling a bit stir crazy. The JAG officer for the Louisiana National Guard (yes, they’re exactly as you would expect them to be) invited me to go with them to deliver some clothes and school supplies to preschool-aged children in a western suburb of Baghdad.

A convoy, in and of itself, is an adventure: The narrow Baghdad streets are absolutely slammed, every traffic circle doubles as an open market, and life zooms by through the small, bullet-proof window of your armored vehicle. Little kids smile and wave, young men glare, women avoid eye contact all together. I have two loaded weapons, but the quarters inside our vehicles are so cramped that I could never hope to use either without getting out of the vehicle, so I’m literally along for the ride. We drive by the school twice before our translator figures out where it is, but we finally stop, announcing our presence with authority (how could we not?). Our five-vehicle convoy parks on the sidewalk; the front, middle, and rear vehicles each manned with .50 cal machine guns pointing in opposite directions. Our presence has reduced traffic to one-lane, but life continues. People are lined up outside an ice-cream parlor, three men in sandals load sodas onto a truck, a man and his daughter sit on the hood of his car, laughing. But for our presence, it seems to be a scene you would see in any major city in the world. We exit the vehicles, about twenty men and one woman, all of us with loaded weapons, armored vests, and dark sunglasses, and meet a few of the teachers at the gate. The school itself, behind a gated entryway, is two nondescript slump block buildings without windows. Outside, trash and rubble are strewn everywhere, faded paintings of Disney characters on the walls. We are escorted to a one-room building, where the remaining teachers await us. All are women; two are dressed fully in black and but for their eyes, completely covered (how ironic, I think – I’m completed covered as well).

In stark contrast to the outside, the inside of the building is exceptionally clean, tidy, and orderly. A row of miniature plastic chairs lines the far wall, each occupied by a wide-eyed, dark-haired Iraqi child. They are beautiful, apprehensive, and silent. I wonder what they must think, as we roar inside the class room, carrying boxes and talking loudly. Do they think we have come to kill them? To stuff them inside these big containers, and take them away to teach them rap lyrics and curse words?

Some of the soldiers open the packages, unloading stuffed animals, clothes, school supplies, and finally unrolling a long piece of butcher paper, bearing the Crayola-ed words “Sacred Heart Elementary School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” It’s signed by the denizens of that school, surely multiple Thibedeauxs, Simons, Delahousses, Landrys, and Beaudreauxes. My friend wants me to stand with the children so he can take a picture; I politely decline. I feel like an intruder, self-conscious of the M16 slung from my shoulder, and wonder what I would have thought had armed men come to my school when I was in kindergarten (I remember my cousins surprising me once, that was alarming enough).

Many of the children have begun to smile and chatter, and the teachers appear genuinely grateful and thankful for our arrival, and so I also wonder what it was like here three years ago, or five, or ten. The teachers serve us juice boxes and moon pies (universal diplomacy!), and then as quickly as we stormed in, we storm out.

On the way home, we (not me, specifically, I wasn’t really part of the decision making process) decide to make a quick side trip. We are looking for a bad guy. The unit has been looking for a local imam, leader of a mosque that is perhaps behind some unsavory activities in this part of the city, and this is, apparently, as good a time as any to see if he’s at home. We turn down a side street, the lead vehicle speeding to the far intersection, blocking access and pointing the .50 cal down the road. The trail vehicle does the same at the opposite end, and the three remaining vehicles, me in one, stop about three-fourths of the way down the street. Several soldiers move towards the target house, the others pointing their weapons at rooftops, pulling security. I quickly fall in line with the men going towards the house, adrenaline rising, my mother’s face but Johnny Cash’s voice in my head (“don’t take your guns to town, son, leave your guns at home. . .”), my M16 at the ready (before, during, and after, I am disturbed at my eagerness, how quickly my thirst for adventure trumped common sense, politics, safety, care for others. Something to digest; perhaps safer to just ignore). Alas, no one is home, and we return to the street where we have attracted a crowd. A few older gentlemen are talking with our translator and the company commander. They look wise and well-educated, and are wearing clean, white dishdashas, or “man dresses,” and how quickly my sense of adventure gives way to another weakness, my sense of fashion. I eye the thing enviously. “I think I could pull that look off,” I contemplate. “Maybe a nice white linen number. Matching sandals. I could wear it to my cousin’s wedding in July.”

But back to the point of the story, that of optimism. The older men continue to talk with the translator, sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, and it is clear that not only is the imam gone, but he won’t be back for a while. Our commander asks to pass a message to the imam, to come in to talk to us when he returns. Suddenly, quickly, the crowd around the translator grows: kids, and lots of them. School has let out, and the word has apparently gone around that some Americans are in for a visit. Some soldiers open the backs of two of the humm-v’s, and start passing out paper, pencils, pens, markers, calendars, paper clocks, and the kids are going crazy. They are clean, kempt, happy. They all wear matching white and blue uniforms. Many come up to me, ask my name, where I am from, show me their English school books. The girls hang out in the back ground, all but one, who points out that one of the boys is named “Saddam,” again and again, and the other kids, including Saddam, laugh uproariously each time. I wish I weren’t wearing a helmet, or carrying a gun, wanting instead a soccer ball, a rugby ball, a skate board, two tin cans, anything. The kids go from vehicle to vehicle, getting supplies, talking to the soldiers, everyone now laughing and smiling, soldier and child alike, white-haired gentlemen in man-dresses. We are interrupted only by two men with beards and long, skinny switches, who start their flock of sheep down our road. I expect a collision, chaos, confused children and frightened sheep. The two men ably divert the sheep back down the road, however, the herd first swallowing up the armored humm-v blocking the road, then spitting it out the other side.

For now, at least, collision avoided.

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The Daily Grind

Camp Liberty, Iraq/March 28, 2005

I think me ma believes I’m in constant danger (other than, of course, the trouble I get myself into), and I realize the news media doesn’t really delve into the daily life of a soldier on a Forward Operating Base (FOB), mostly, I imagine, because it’s pretty boring. So here’s a glimpse:

Life here can be surreal. Not a dreamy, LSD-induced Sgt Pepper’s type of surreal, but a result of the bizarre juxtaposition of modern conveniences, relative civility, Play Station-at-your-fingertips life on the FOB compared with the reality of life “outside the wire.”

I live in one half of a 12’ x 40’ trailer I share with another major, our individual rooms separated by a common bathroom. I’m living about as good as one can live here in Iraq. My trailer is one of about 40 located on Lot 10; many lots are lumped together to compose an “LSA” (Logistical Support Area). There are thousands of these trailers on nothing but gravel and dirt, meticulously laid out in grids. Given the weather and dusty terrain, and but for the absence of cowboys, Mexicans (excepting me, of course), and pink plastic flamingos, it could be a west Texas trailer park. Within walking distance is my office, MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation), a gym, the dining facility, and a laundry facility, ostensibly owned by KBR/Halliburton but run solely, it appears, by Filipino labor. We have a Burger King, a Subway, a Pizza Plus, a post office, a bazaar, and a huge Post Exchange that sells everything from socks and envelopes to bicycles and 64” televisions.

I show up at my office about 7:45 each morning, start coffee, and check my email. The rest of the office trickles in between 0800 and 0900, and we see clients throughout the day, the routine broken up by frequent bullshit sessions. Topics range from current events to Larry’s shrewd decision to shave his head, thus avoiding the impending comb-over, to our client’s misconduct relative to the things they confront off the FOB. I have plenty of time to exercise, and do so almost daily. The gym is about 100 meters away, I run a 5 kilometer loop around a nearby lake, and the only hill on the FOB is behind my office, up which I can do sprints.

The dining facility is better than expected. There is good food at every meal, exceptional desserts, and all the Red Bull my enlisted soldier can fit into his pockets. Televisions line the walls, one side perpetually on ESPN, the other on FOX news (must we always be drinking the Kool Aid?). There is an outdoor patio, floored with Astroturf and roofed with a brown and yellow awning. Lights wrap around tree-trunks in the Dead Palm Tree Garden (a valiant effort by the Army, albeit an unsuccessful one), and music, invariably jazz, blares from speakers mounted on an elevated deck. Though we get the occasional mortar, it is by far the exception rather than the rule. Any “boom” is enough of an event that when we hear one, we leave our offices to see if we can see where it landed. Rarely are we successful. My biggest complaint is the lack of motivation from the contractors tasked to fix the door handle on one of the two port-a-poddies (such a funny word) outside our office. I feel safe every day, and life, but for my location and missing all of you, is pretty good. Life is almost – almost – normal.

But now the surreal:

My trailer is ringed with 6’ high concrete barriers, which given the fact my trailer is elevated about 3’, is good coverage if I’m lying down, not so good when I’m standing up. My 5 km loop goes around a lake where Uday supposedly dumped bodies. The gym is filled with soldiers working out, still in their uniforms, their weapons either leaned up against the wall or strapped to their legs. The top of the hill up which I sprint is peppered with radio antennas, camouflage tents, and special radars that detect incoming mortars and rockets and then track them back to their point of origin. Within sight of my office are three aerostat balloons, all tethered to the ground and equipped with cameras that maintain constant observation of the surrounding town. One of my attorneys, while attending a morning Battle Update Brief, watched – live via video feed – a VBIED drive into a US Army HWWMV, killing two soldiers and injuring another. Wherever I go, there is an M9 pistol on my right hip and a round-filled magazine on my left.

To enter our dining facility, you have to show your identification to two armed guards, then walk around 10′ barriers protecting the building. Inside the DFAC, M16 rifles and helmets clog the aisles. The patronage consists of American Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines, but also soldiers from Australia, Britain, Japan, South Korea, El Salvador, Poland, and Estonia, among others. There’s a bizarre mix of civilians: muscular ex-Special Forces types working as security contractors; OGA (“Other Governmental Agencies” – read CIA, DIA, etc) personnel with compact automatic weapons; overweight hairy guys sporting Ted Nugent t-shirts and mullets and too-tight jeans and working for Kellog, Brown & Root as mechanics, truck-drivers, and whatever else (Lord knows what those guys are running from); and masses of third-world nationals, who basically run the infrastructure. They work as barbers, cleaners, carpenters, food-servers, sanitation workers, check-out clerks. They come predominantly from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, all countries so poor that $20 a day is apparently enough of a windfall for them and their families at home that they’re willing to travel to Iraq and work in a dangerous and borderline oppressive environment.

These workers, like many of the military personnel, never leave the FOB. Soldiers for whom leaving the base is a daily undertaking derisively refer to us stay-behind types as “fobbits.” Hilarious. There’s an incredible amount of disparity in the soldier’s experience in Iraq. The Air Force is here for just four months, the Marines for six, and the Army for twelve. Some members of the National Guard will go 18 months before they see their homes again. Some soldiers live a solitary existence helping to train the Iraqi Army, some live on isolated FOBs and experience combat on a daily basis, some live on huge FOBs with all the conveniences of home (like me), some rub elbows with the state department & CIA spooks in the Green Zone, surreptitiously drinking beer and lounging pool side, and some live in Kuwait where they can wear civilian clothes, don’t have to carry their weapons, and neither hear nor see the bad guys, ever. One would think the disproportionate amount of danger faced between a soldier who lives on a FOB and a soldier who lives on the road would contribute to a tense situation, but the reality is that it just doesn’t matter. I read about a Marine who’s been hit by IED’s nine times, and is going home not only alive, but with all his digits and limbs as well. Last month, two soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division died when a VBIED crashed into their HMMWV – they’d been here two weeks, and were doing their “left seat/right seat” ride, where the outgoing soldier shows the incoming soldier the ropes. To the insurgency, a Joe is a Joe, whether he (or she) has been on the road two times or two hundred. The insurgency, it seems, is a fickle mistress.

But enough of that. One cool thing to end on – the CCCI. The Central Criminal Court of Iraq is a partially bombed building in Baghdad where most of the insurgents are eventually tried. The process works like this: US Army unit goes out on patrol, gathers up Bad Guys plus evidence against Bad Guys (US dollars, prohibited weapons, cell phone parts for setting of IEDs, water color portrait of Saddam and Osama in angelic embrace). US soldiers put Bad Guys in a BIF (Brigade Interrogation Facility), where they are, of course, interrogated. Some Bad Guys aren’t so bad, and they’re let go. Some Bad Guys say they aren’t really Bad Guys, but we don’t believe them, so they hang out a little bit. Some Bad Guys are the real deal (Q: “What were you doing with the wires and the cell phone?” A: “I want to kill Americans.”), and they get sent to Abu Ghraib or Bucca until they have their day in court at the CCCI.

One of my friends, an Operations Law attorney responsible for gathering the evidence against insurgents, sent me an email asking to meet him in the Green Zone so I could witness the court in action. He brought two soldiers with him (one, it turned out, was a Samoan kid with whom I used to play rugby) who were involved in a firefight with an insurgent sometime in November. The Iraqi had fired on these two soldiers, and they returned fire, one shooting him in the leg, the other then administering first aid. The unit then transported him to a field hospital for medical attention (if it weren’t so serious, it would be comical, no?), and he was eventually transferred first to Abu and then to the CCCI for his trial.

The court itself is located a few hundred yards outside the Green Zone, technically in an unsecured area. To get there, you drive from the Green Zone to an enormous metal gate cut into a huge concrete barrier. Prior to the drive, we were given a movement brief from the Air Force Security Team that was to guide us the few hundred meters from the gate to the actual court house. In the middle of the brief, upon taking in the battle-savvy appearance of the two soldiers with my friend, and giving a nod to my Ranger tab, our escort stopped – I kid you not – and said, “well, you guys look like shooters. We’ll just follow your lead.” Are you kidding me?

We opened the metal gate, with a suspense-building slow creak, and walked in. I fully expected to see Augustus Galoop gobbling down sweets and drinking from the Chocolate River. Immediately we spread out into a V formation, looking in all directions, maintaining vigilance – very Oliver Stone/Platoon type of stuff. This is bad guy land, right? As we approach the courthouse, I see nothing but Iraqi men and women in business attire, walking around like it’s a Tuesday morning at any courthouse in America.

Don’t we look silly.