I’m sorry this is really long, but it’s the shortest I could manage to get it. This is going to be a rough draft edit to my shabby turning point.<\/p>\n
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Arriving at the Vicenza airport 4 years after my first landing there, I recalled my initial dreams of what the future would hold. I\u2019d had all these fantasies of making great friendships, doing crazy stuff in Italian cities, but mostly of having that great coming-of-age adventure. What I thought about when getting off that bus to fly home to Seattle was the friends I\u2019d lost, that feeling of depression when great times come to an end, and that I\u2019d bury my involvement with the military as much as possible, taking it as but one experience and moving on. In watching most of The Sorrow and The Pity, a lot of recollections of my year in Afghanistan surfaced, coupled with other memories, and in thinking of writing these journal entries, decided to bring up some of those memories for this class, extremely reluctantly.<\/p>\n
When we landed in Afghanistan, the surrounding mountains and environment gave me what I retroactively can now call the most sublime (Kantian) moment in my life. We were all waiting for these supposed mortar attacks anxiously, for that moment we were no longer cherries. A few days\u00a0days later, two of my best friends died, and about 7 people were wounded, some severely. We stayed with the bodies over 12 hours to ensure they got back to the base, being shot at multiple times. When the explosives unit came, they showed us the footprints we\u2019d made, crossing over a dozen bombs. It was like stepping in the one empty box in a 10×10 minesweeper game. I think about those footprints of mine often, whispering to me that I’d missed them, while Salazar laid fully on top of one for at least half an hour. A couple of people were shot those final moments when we finally managed to clean the place up, I\u2019d even laid on someone\u2019s leg gunshot wound on accident, in which he laughed and said \u201cyou mind?\u201d Moments before that my buddy Espinoza and I had machine gun rounds snap inches in-between our heads, scrambling in the dust trying to find cover behind the tires. It was pretty funny and pretty terrifying, because I\u2019d said we were going to get shot sitting like that moments before. The reason I bring some of these moments up is that the group of 30 we\u2019d come with had dwindled to less than 20, we\u2019d come closer than ever in the 2 years we\u2019d been together, and the one person in charge of us turned out to be a coward, which reminds me of characters in France during World War II, particularly the Resistance. I understand that fear he probably was wrenched with, because he\u2019d been blown up hours before and thrown meters away, and had to endure losing one of his soldier\u2019s days within arriving. We had expected him to be courageous, to be that figure to hold our hands, but he abandoned us in despair, and I cannot help but not be mad. You can never gauge what a person will be like during moments of extreme stress, no matter what pre-established notions you have of how personality and character will translate.<\/p>\n
The one thing I didn\u2019t realize before joining the military, was the love these old veterans had for us young cherries. During those initial months in Afghanistan I realized how much I hated war, and how pointless being there was. I already had a semi-disgust for the military, but this cemented a deeper hate for those higher unknown powers at work in decisions for America. I am anti-war to this day, but in some sick way I\u2019m glad I got to experience war firsthand. The reason I joined really fell on a love that fell apart which lasted a few years and my desire to go out in a bang. Rarely I came across people who actually wanted to be in the military, and if they did, they were almost always patriotic. What also struck me was the intelligence most of these people I lived with had. They weren’t academically smart, but fuck were most of them extremely “street smart”. One of my best friends was from the worst parts \u00a0L.A., and another a hockey playing Minnesota’ian. Those cliche people in the military were usually the ones not in combat positions, or I just avoided them completely. One day my buddy from California and I broke into the Arena and climbed on the roof, playing my guitar and singing Home by Edward Sharpe.<\/p>\n
Once you deploy and come across cherries back at home, you see that innocence and long for it, and you don\u2019t care about politics or the army or anything-what you care about is making sure these cherries\u00a0are going to get the chance to also come\u00a0home when it’s their turn to deploy. Our poor leader rarely if ever went out on missions with us, and we never got replacements, having to do the full deployment with triple the amount of normal missions tasked out to each individual. He was one of the strongest (physically) person I\u2019ve ever met. He won multiple wrestling tournaments and was an instructor at a prestigious combat school previously. We thought he\u2019d be this badass dude that was going to protect us, but he spent most of the deployment in the gym. My squad leader was an Iraq vet, tiny and skinny, and smoked a pack a day. The first firefight I was in, our platoon send the 6 of us out to deal with it, being the golden squad of the platoon. I\u2019ll never forget those events. It started with them shooting at us in their dried up river bed systems. Our platoon set up an L, and we went out the side, and crossed this small empty field. They started laying into us with machine guns, less than 150 meters away. I remember using blades of grass as cover, and firing my machine gun, feeling so proud that I was protecting my 5 squad mates as they had to retreat, running their asses off in the extreme heat. This skinny guy didn’t give a fuck, and had no break in clarity, while I was scrambling and disoriented. It took a few weeks\u00a0to get the fighting down and not lose vision. Fighting in Afghanistan is hell. Not only do we carry hundreds of pounds of equipment, but we\u2019re facing people wearing rags and familiar with the territory, able to blend in quickly with the locals. I don\u2019t know if I killed anyone, but it gave me a shell shock feeling knowing friends with multiple kill counts. I asked myself why we were there daily, always wondering if I should just put up with the penalty of not fighting anymore. The punishments of abandoning your duty during a deployment is extremely severe. I decided to make it through, if only to do what I could to keep what little people we had left alive. When we came home from deployment, our squad leader kept only me and my buddy, who got shot up on that hill at the beginning of the deployment, in the squad. He even kicked out the golden boys, and one day while drunk in Ukraine, he told us both that it was because he saw that we\u2019d enjoyed firefights, and that we didn\u2019t have the crippling fear. He wanted people like that to watch over him. I felt proud and disgusted. I felt proud that I was braver than this person who was ripped and worked out every day, among others who spent their deployment shacked inside doing nothing. I\u2019d join the war in part to see if I was coward, however unusual that sounds. We\u2019d always heard stories of people who\u2019d been cowards during previous deployments, and I saw firsthand people gossiping and treating them like shit. I didn’t want that to happen to me, and it was true that our platoon held a certain prestige post-deployment. But most of all I\u2019m embarrassed at being proud of this, proud that I was able to fight back against people I didn’t know, in a war that confused and agitated me.<\/p>\n
When we had the ceremony for the two that died, days into our deployment, while saluting the portraits of the fallen, a staff sergeant from another platoon yelled \u201cWombats\u201d at the top of his voice (Wombats being our platoon name). I normally cringe at anything military related-wearing dog tags, salutes, marching, cadences etc.-but this yell was the most beautiful, tragic, and heart wrenching sound I\u2019d ever heard in my life. Being a Wombat was something that had deep roots in our brigade, memories you hear while being smoked for hours down \u201cthe hallway\u201d. If there\u2019s any one strong moment in which post memory resonates for me, it\u2019s the feeling of walking down those barracks hallways, recollecting the memories handed down to me-\u201cthis person died, this person went to Legion Co., that used to be my old room.\u201d We had a creed that went, Pork chop pork chop, greasy greasy, beat that team, fucking easy easy, Gooooooo Wombats. It\u2019s from 3000 Miles To Graceland, and it was the weirdest shit ever. Whenever someone died on the base in Afghanistan, you would hear Taps being played, and salute the helicopter flying away with the body. I remember someone died a day before he was to fly home. The day our 2 friends died, we heard Taps over and over and over. I remember thinking there was no point in thinking I was going to come home, and the fear of death left me until I left Afghanistan. I remember rolling that phrase off my tongue all during the deployment, and while reading War and Peace and A collection of Cummings\u2019 poetry religiously. \u201cI lost the fear.\u201d Once you lose the fear, things become easy and seeing dead bodies doesn\u2019t strike you as hard.<\/p>\n
A few days after the Wombats yell, I\u2019d survived a near atomic explosion. They said it was the biggest vehicle suicide in the history of the war. It turns out that the semi carrying these explosives was turned around at my checkpoint, and decided to go around the wall and blow up at the side. I remember looking at the vehicle x-ray machine and just being hit by this massive wave. Everything went black and I reached my hand up to make sure my buddy Espinoza\u2019s top half was still there. He crawled down the hatch and we asked each other if we were okay. We got on top of the vehicle and looked at the mushroom cloud next to us amazed. There were tents everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The debris was as far as the eye can see. It killed a ton of people but I never saw them and we left that base a few days later to go to another base. Flying away I was struck with this hopeless entrenching feeling of despair that we\u2019d lost two amazing people for absolutely nothing, and I started to question if I was even alive. The rest of the deployment was a miserable grind, always waiting for that explosive to take your legs off. \u00a0I remember having an RPG hitting 100 meters away, and then 50, and then even closer. My squad leader didn\u2019t flinch, and even though he was a redneck, chain smoking asshole, I couldn\u2019t help admire him and wonder just how horrible Iraq was. Their memories are what kept me going, because they’d gone through worse, so I could too.<\/p>\n
Our post deployment replaced of the coward leader we had had asked all the cherries one day if they wanted to deploy. When they cheerfully screamed yes, he said all these kids with combat patches would throw it away in a heartbeat. I absolutely despised garrison life and anything military related, which was apparent to my leadership, but they put up with it because I somehow won every prestigious badge and passed all the schools. When he said this, it was one of the few times I realized the giant show these people have to put up when in charge of cherries, because they are burdened with guilt and responsibility if they die. We\u2019d get stories from him throughout various times, mostly when drunk, about Iraq. He told us how he\u2019d lost an 18 year old to friendly fire and you could see that buried pain while recollecting the many friends you\u2019d lost in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Salazar\u2019s mother flew to Italy for the lost soldier\u2019s family get together. The company gathered money together and paid for them to come, showing them around the city for a week. Horsley\u2019s family didn\u2019t come and wished to never speak to us. I talk to his brother every now and then, but other than that, I respect that wish entirely. Salazar\u2019s mother is a wonderful woman. They have a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and I remember Salazar sending all his money to help with her surgeries. We had a toast to her, and my squad leader gave a speech. He broke down in tears during it, saying he was sorry he couldn\u2019t bring her little boy home. That is a guilt I can honestly say is with me every second of my life. I\u2019m not sure how easy that is to get across, but the few of us Wombats left from the deployment all share that burden. When at \u201cour\u201d bar in downtown Vicenza, where the bartenders each had drinks named after us, I had a moment with a buddy where we looked at each other, nodded, and he said \u201cme too.\u201d There\u2019s something about losing someone in war that wrenches your soul harder than any other death I\u2019ve ever witnessed. I think about the World Wars often and the immeasurable amount of pain the world took on from those years. My silence about the war is something I can relate to from those veterans-it\u2019s hard to speak of war to those who don\u2019t experience it. And most of all, it\u2019s hard to speak of it when you are shamed of being a part of it, while being proud of those brave enough to endure it with you.<\/p>\n
The days of coming back to Italy, drunk and ecstatic, walking around the parks and taking the bus downtown, were blissfully peacefully and tragically fake. As time goes, it\u2019s easier to feign normalcy, but the wounds and seeing such monstrosity keep in my memory what mankind is capable of, and the importance in doing whatever it takes to strive for peace, no matter how ignorant and childish a wish of such is. As for my memories, there\u2019s so much more, and I doubt I\u2019ll ever talk about them again, and when I die, I know they will no longer exist without having shared them. The question I\u2019m left with facing is: does it even matter if I share these stories?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m sorry this is really long, but it’s the shortest I could manage to get it. This is going to be a rough draft edit to my shabby turning point. Arriving at the Vicenza airport 4 years after my first landing there, I recalled my initial dreams of what the future would hold. I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}