rough and ready
on the way up to ohio from georgia, i left the interstate for a while and took a country road through tennessee, where i met some national guard soldiers just back from iraq who invited me to tag along and watch an army drill for the day. while i was following them out to the guard armory their humvee overheated, so we spent the next few hours with their leutenant and the rest of the unit on the side of the road waiting for an army tow truck. we sat in their humvee for a while playing cards and eating army meals and me asking dumb questions about all the equipment, and eventually drew and craig and i started talking about their army experiences.
their unit got back from iraq six months ago after spending over a year in baghdad, where they did supply runs to other camps and general fighting. it was amazing to hear their differing perspectives on the war and the bush administration, ranging from intensely liberal hatred to good old boy jingoism, and i ended up spending the day at the armory listening to incredible stories and sobering acknowledgement of the war's general futility by men who had seen it firsthand.
and then, damn. drew gave me one of his pins and some iraqi and kuwaiti money for the book i'm keeping, and as he and i shared a beer and i jokingly asked him if he cried during his time there. he looked me in the eye and described the hummer he drove in iraq (the exact one we sat in) breaking down on a trip and being passed by another, which hit a burried bomb a few meters up the road. the driver died instantly and as the only medic on the scene, drew saw his first dead body that day and explained that even after being trained in a machismo-drenched environment, 'there is something wrong with a man if you don't cry after some of the things you see over there.'
sorry to be so heavy, but that's a bullet hole in that helmet.
their unit got back from iraq six months ago after spending over a year in baghdad, where they did supply runs to other camps and general fighting. it was amazing to hear their differing perspectives on the war and the bush administration, ranging from intensely liberal hatred to good old boy jingoism, and i ended up spending the day at the armory listening to incredible stories and sobering acknowledgement of the war's general futility by men who had seen it firsthand.
and then, damn. drew gave me one of his pins and some iraqi and kuwaiti money for the book i'm keeping, and as he and i shared a beer and i jokingly asked him if he cried during his time there. he looked me in the eye and described the hummer he drove in iraq (the exact one we sat in) breaking down on a trip and being passed by another, which hit a burried bomb a few meters up the road. the driver died instantly and as the only medic on the scene, drew saw his first dead body that day and explained that even after being trained in a machismo-drenched environment, 'there is something wrong with a man if you don't cry after some of the things you see over there.'
sorry to be so heavy, but that's a bullet hole in that helmet.