July 22, 2012
Logar, Afghanistan 01:00

As I walk past him I contemplate whispering “fuck you,” because he got to lie on the hill while we trudged on. I think about that near whisper a lot, and question whether I in fact did utter those words, the implication being that my last words to him were sarcastic and somewhat antagonizing. Being chosen to do the main part of the mission was hip, and even though I wouldn’t mind lying on that hill to only pull security, my heart raced with the prospect of my first raid. Those seconds I walked passed him have been replayed in my mind  thousands of times, of which I scream at myself to tell him to move. The next day, after all  the horror embedded itself into us, the bomb squad showed us all the IED’s we walked past, footsteps inches from the pressure plates. I’ve tried to come up with some sort of fate as to who was chosen would die that night, but all I can come up with is bad luck and chance.

The sweat from walking would collect salt piles on our shirts after multiple klicks, even in the dead of the night where that unforgiving Afghan sun wasn’t present. In the blackness, all you see is a circle of muddled green. It’s like an old television from the 90’s, whose screen flickers white and black, thousands of Dalmatians scrambling across the surface, yet here the white is green. Objects are blobs of smeared green and black. Twisting the lens changes your depth perception, and you must become proficient in knowing the right twists to avoid falling into deep dried riverbeds called wadis. We had only been in this country for a few days, and were doing missions of which we’d been advised should have been toned down, so as  to become more familiar with combat and war.

It couldn’t have been more than 50 paces past that almost whisper when the sky lit up. Outside my circular green vision I see a flash, and second later a peal of false thunder, and immediately we all fall to the ground thinking it to be a mortar. The flash in the sky was like the  sun unveiling its face for a moment, only to hide back into the curtains of the night. There was only one flash, the sound, and silence. In that silence the dawn of comprehension falls so heavily and swiftly, that you begin to feel sick and dread the idea of someone being hurt. I remember begging to myself, “please no,” hoping everything was alright, but the suspicion of the truth creeping its way up. After those intense moments of silence, the radio breaks the stillness and we hear the cry, “we’re hit.” We break composure for a moment in our race back up that hill. My friend lost 40 pounds in that run, not immediately of course, but in the months to come of which he thought if he’d only run faster, they would still be alive.

At the top of the hill our medic is beside the person who moments ago I almost whisper jokingly to. I see him as a blob of green, hard to decipher through that crackling green television, and notice that this blob is missing shapes which normal blobs have. I hear a forceful plead, “stay with me Horsley,” and then my leader says, “keep going, he has no chance and there’s more.” In these moments truth is nonexistent. In my mind he was completely fine and we were going to save everyone. Minutes later there were more flashes, and more screams, and once the calm settled, a voice whispers in my ear the names. My salt soaked shirt comes into my consciousness and I am shivering, reflecting the names, their faces, and those last days with them. My eyes well and he says we’ll cry about it later, but for now we have to get home. There are coyotes circling around a new blob which enters into my television.

We’re on that hill for over 10 hours, and they tell us not to look, but it’s impossible not to, and there’s evidence splayed across the sand everywhere. They shoot at us and I want to give up, to sink into that sand in sorrow, but the fear that comes into existence, and which takes a few months to control, pushes us to take cover behind what little rocks we can.

A few weeks before, we’re in Vicenza, Italy, and it’s the 4th of July. One of the deceased asks me what true love is, and says he’s going to learn Italian over the deployment. In the tiny wooden cots we’re stuffed in while stationed in Afghanistan, we pack up his How To Learn Italian for Dummies book and ship it to his mother.  The empty beds silently yell at us, as we recall the day before in which we sprayed shaving cream everywhere. It’s under the fireworks that we’re both drunk and he comes to be, being one of the oldest of the group, sincerely wondering what true love felt like. He is normally shy, quiet, but when socializes explodes into this mousy, smiling, sporadic tiny kid who laughs and runs around everywhere. I don’t know if I answered his question satisfactorily, but it sorrows me to know he never got the chance.

A few months after this day, when some of us got over the fear, and some of us remained on the base, I’d began reading a poetry book by Cummings which was mailed to me. In those dingy rooms where sand pervaded everything, I’d found a truth lurking in poetry which I believe was only possible through being in such an alienated environment, stifled with the constant threat of death and terror. You think before you deploy that there is a force watching over you, and when you arrive there, you realize all you have are the people you’ve gotten drunk with, cried with, and traveled with for the past years.  There’s no closure in watching your friends die, and in poetry I found an expression of feeling which normal literature couldn’t purvey.  I wrote a poem called bodies, and whenever I read it those days come flashing back, and I know I’d never have been able to write such a thing without that particular experience. It’s in this reflection that I’m aware the worlds of experience lurking behind people’s words, and that with a little scrutiny, you can uncover a moment in time encapsulated by what a writer chooses to say.

bodies

i watched two children
cut up worms
on a hilltop
their knees are covered with dirt
performing a surgery
on wriggly creatures
who never knew better
just lying there
until the scalpel peels them apart

after the kids walk away
i cover the intestines up
with a blanket (the image never leaves)
and i feel the bitterness
as streaks of mud
spreads across my face
and i whisper, i loved you

a day later
i saw the same children
with a pistol and a smile
blowing a slug
into the brains of a puppy
just one quick pop
i watched them laugh
at the wriggling creature
yelping and yelping and yelping
(i can still hear the yelping to this day)
for a whole minute
until they ended its misery
with another blast
and left the body
in a ditch
for me to cover up
with my last blanket
whispering, i loved you