the sandbox
below is a recent blog post from a friend of mine, sgt. matt charles, who recently returned from a 7 month stint in iraq. it has neither a liberal or a conservative bent to it, so for those of you uninterested in reading things that don't support your political views, feel free to read on anyway.
i like it because it's honest...and straight from the horse's mouth. no bullshit spins. no agendas. just one man's impression of things. enjoy.
"Here's a quick essay I've been working on (on and off) since getting back from the sandbox.
What is was like:
In mid-February, 2006, I returned to Dallas from the Al Anbar province of Iraq, cornerstone of the infamous "Sunni Triangle." For seven months I had been running convoy security operations out of Camp Fallujah. At Dallas/Fort Worth International the wives, mothers, children and girlfriends met us at the gate. They embraced their returning heroes and cried, overcome and relieved to see their boys again. Without any family in this corner of the country, I was able to slip quietly to baggage claim, grab my sea bags, meet my roommate, and head home. As we passed through the tollgate he could contain himself no longer. "What was it like?" I've since completely lost count of the number of times I've been asked that question. As if, in a sentence, I could explain to them the experience of an alien land, let alone one locked in a state of war. In telling the stories again and again, with only slight exaggeration in parts, I've come to realize that there is no logical narrative to explain the experience. It is more a series of shorts: absurd, hilarious, terrifying, and sobering.
Rewind to June of 2005. My platoon and I step off a pair of CH-53 Super Stallions onto a baking hot tarmac in Al Taqaddum, Iraq. The heat is positively surreal. We've been in the desert for several days already - Kuwait, Al Asad, and so on - but despite the time we've had to acclimatize, this heat is unreal. The blast of the helicopters' engine exhaust is easily 200 degrees and you can feel the concrete cooking your feet through the soles of your combat boots. My letters home that week describe the scenery as a series of Hollywood movie vignettes. Buildings are blown apart, steel girders reaching into the sky like the rib cage of something out of a science-fiction/western. Twisted bits of infrastructure rise to meet you through the haze of heat. Heavily armed figures slide out of the dust like something out of Road Warrior. With every explosion there is the debate: outgoing or incoming? The place is utterly alien.
Fast forward to January of 2006. My convoy is providing security for the combat engineers as they rebuild one of the forward operations bases (FOB) to allow the re-opening of the main north-south road through Al Karmah. At nine in the morning it is a fairly pleasant eighty degrees. I'm on the radio with the battalion logistics officer trying to get more sandbags brought out to us the speed the work. Gunfire rings out with that oh-so-distinctive sound of bullets headed in your direction. "Break, break. Small arms." I pause the conversation and crane my neck around the truck to see if I can make any kind of positive ID on a target. There are several other gun trucks between my position and the source of the gunfire. My fellow Marines have things well in hand. I turn back to my sector of fire and continue the sandbag request. I'm being shot at, and I'm bored. It's amazing what man can adapt to.
For my first meal back home, I met several friends at a downtown bar and grill. Over a few beers and the best damn burger in town, one of my friends asked that clichéd question in the best way I've yet heard it. He understood that no rational answer could come from the prompt, "so, what was it like?" He phrased the question like this: "What was the best thing? What was the worst thing?" He didn't want the whole tedious memoir, just the two best chapters. I'll answer those two questions in reverse order.
It is early morning on 30 August, 2005. We're on a chow run, bringing hot chow to the Marines in the FOBs. On the northbound leg through the Al Karmah marketplace everything is normal. The locals conduct their business like any other day. On the way back south to Camp Fallujah the place is ghost-town deserted. My gunner, Corporal Martin, is halfway through saying, "Man, it's too fucking quiet," when an explosion rocks the convoy. It's a phrase you hear a lot in the news, "explosions rocked the city of Falllujah." But it's really quite accurate. The shockwave picks up the back of my truck. I'm a little too deaf to pick up nuances of sounds, but I can tell the close ones by how they roll through my chest cavity. In the few seconds it takes to turn around we see one of our 7-tons (heavy work-horse trucks) engulfed in flames. It is one of those never-gunna-forget images. In my mind's eye, superimposed over that burning truck, are Mac and Lopez, trapped inside. It is impossible for anyone to survive that. There's just too much fire, too fast. This image of two of my fellow Marines burning to death in front of me, combined with the total inability to do anything about it, is the worst. In this moment I am un-focusable rage. I want to kill, and in this moment, I don't particularly care what, so long as it dies. But the town knew the attack was coming and cleared the area. By the grace of God, both Corporal McIntosh and Lance Corporal Lopez make it out of the truck with their Purple Hearts earned by recoverable injuries. But I'll never quite forget the vivid awfulness of the thought, "Mac is dead."
Cut to November, 2005. We're securing that same road, one mile north, while the combat engineers build up a new FOB. I'm standing in the middle of the road in my sixty-five pounds of body armor. Except for the kink that just won't leave my lower back, I no longer notice the bulk. I've got my M16 pointed down the road where an orange road cone proclaims in the international language, "Do not cross." Behind me, Martin sits on his turret, M240G pointed in the same direction. Anyone who crosses that line will be killed. By now the Iraqi people know this. They don't cross the line. They don't really come near the line. We're bored. Next to our cordon is a small roadside shop with a modest selection of snacks and drinks. Running the stand is an Iraqi boy of thirteen or so. I'm thirsty and all my water is, by now, quite warm. This kid's got a refrigerator full of soft drinks and American money is like gold here. A dollar gets me two Coke's and half a dozen small chocolate bars. I'm told I over-paid. Before too long all the kids from the neighboring houses are out in front of the stand, asking for chocolate, money, high-fives, my pens, sunglasses, knives, anything. One little girl insists on a game involving punches to the middle of the ballistic plate of my body armor. It hurts her hand, thought I'm barely aware of the attacks. These kids have no fear of us. Every day on the road the pervasive mentality is kill or be killed. And now we're playing with kids. A Marine convoy stopped in their front yard is the coolest thing to happen to them in at least a year. Suddenly, in the faces of these kids, I see why we're still here. One day these kids will live in a world where hate and warfare are just a shadowy memory from early childhood. This image will get me through some rough days to come. This is the best.
After I related those two anecdotes over beer and burgers, someone at the table asked for funny stories. I went for one of my favorites: the Antenna Story, which involves a suicide bomber, small intestine, a broken of antenna, and a battalion communications shop that doesn't like me anymore. I got uneasy chuckles. I realized than how far my already off-kilter sense of humor had slid towards the gallows variety.
I try and tell the funny stories from my deployment, but the humor just doesn't seem to translate. When I get to the punch line, I get blank stares and, "Oh, that's terrible." Jokes about mortars and suicide bombers don't carry well back home, but here' goes…
Anytime there's an explosion somebody jumps, ducks for cover, etc. It's the survival instinct. Every time you flinch at outgoing there's somebody next to you who didn't. It is his job to make fun of you. The day before Mac got blown up, he, Corporal Attaway and I are on base, walking back from chow. Attaway flinches at the sound of a distant explosion. I make the appropriate emasculating comment. "That was outgoing." Then the ground explodes a little ways away. Contrary to Hollywood style, mortars don't whistle; the ground just explodes. Attaway: "Yeah, outgoing towards us. There's a word for that: incoming." "Right, let's run now." After mortar fire has opened the door to your barracks a couple times, this kind of story is funny. Just trust me on this.
There's the time that battalion used us as bait, so the snipers could make contact. This one usually evokes a less than amused reaction. But to me it's got a definite Catch-22 kind of hilarity.
There's the Antenna Story. But that requires an advanced gallows humor to appreciate. I won't even attempt a version of that story for this article.
But over all, war is boring. War is very boring. War is waiting, and walking, and driving, and waiting some more. It is endless hours guarding the engineers as they work, waiting for the attack that doesn't come. It is driving another chow and sanitation run, waiting for each irregularity in the road to erupt with a dirty, concussive blast. Boredom is the enemy, and as every stenciled sign on base reminds you, "Complacency kills."
I've been home for over a year now. I've stopped flinching when I pass roadside debris. I can sleep through the night without having to drink my self to sleep. And even the most vivid memories of my seven months in Iraq have begun to fade into the stories that have stuck as the classics. I have become happily complacent in my cycle of work, friends, and sleep.
I listen to the news on Dallas' NPR affiliate as I drive to work in the morning. Lots of well-meaning politicians, most of whom have never had the pleasure of sitting around waiting to be shot at and mortared, tell my why the war is good or why it is bad. It all fades to white noise. A year ago I wanted to be the righteous hero, the new Greatest Generation. I might have settled for the role of the sold-out warrior, betrayed by his leaders. More and more I just don't care. I'm reenlisting because this war isn't over, and if someone has to lead my Marines back there, I'd like it to be me.
I doubt war has ever made any real sense. In fact I'm reasonably certain that it hasn't. As this war stands, there don't seem to be any good options. Sadly, I have no light to shed on the issue. Yet I am somehow drawn to the insanity."
i like it because it's honest...and straight from the horse's mouth. no bullshit spins. no agendas. just one man's impression of things. enjoy.
"Here's a quick essay I've been working on (on and off) since getting back from the sandbox.
What is was like:
In mid-February, 2006, I returned to Dallas from the Al Anbar province of Iraq, cornerstone of the infamous "Sunni Triangle." For seven months I had been running convoy security operations out of Camp Fallujah. At Dallas/Fort Worth International the wives, mothers, children and girlfriends met us at the gate. They embraced their returning heroes and cried, overcome and relieved to see their boys again. Without any family in this corner of the country, I was able to slip quietly to baggage claim, grab my sea bags, meet my roommate, and head home. As we passed through the tollgate he could contain himself no longer. "What was it like?" I've since completely lost count of the number of times I've been asked that question. As if, in a sentence, I could explain to them the experience of an alien land, let alone one locked in a state of war. In telling the stories again and again, with only slight exaggeration in parts, I've come to realize that there is no logical narrative to explain the experience. It is more a series of shorts: absurd, hilarious, terrifying, and sobering.
Rewind to June of 2005. My platoon and I step off a pair of CH-53 Super Stallions onto a baking hot tarmac in Al Taqaddum, Iraq. The heat is positively surreal. We've been in the desert for several days already - Kuwait, Al Asad, and so on - but despite the time we've had to acclimatize, this heat is unreal. The blast of the helicopters' engine exhaust is easily 200 degrees and you can feel the concrete cooking your feet through the soles of your combat boots. My letters home that week describe the scenery as a series of Hollywood movie vignettes. Buildings are blown apart, steel girders reaching into the sky like the rib cage of something out of a science-fiction/western. Twisted bits of infrastructure rise to meet you through the haze of heat. Heavily armed figures slide out of the dust like something out of Road Warrior. With every explosion there is the debate: outgoing or incoming? The place is utterly alien.
Fast forward to January of 2006. My convoy is providing security for the combat engineers as they rebuild one of the forward operations bases (FOB) to allow the re-opening of the main north-south road through Al Karmah. At nine in the morning it is a fairly pleasant eighty degrees. I'm on the radio with the battalion logistics officer trying to get more sandbags brought out to us the speed the work. Gunfire rings out with that oh-so-distinctive sound of bullets headed in your direction. "Break, break. Small arms." I pause the conversation and crane my neck around the truck to see if I can make any kind of positive ID on a target. There are several other gun trucks between my position and the source of the gunfire. My fellow Marines have things well in hand. I turn back to my sector of fire and continue the sandbag request. I'm being shot at, and I'm bored. It's amazing what man can adapt to.
For my first meal back home, I met several friends at a downtown bar and grill. Over a few beers and the best damn burger in town, one of my friends asked that clichéd question in the best way I've yet heard it. He understood that no rational answer could come from the prompt, "so, what was it like?" He phrased the question like this: "What was the best thing? What was the worst thing?" He didn't want the whole tedious memoir, just the two best chapters. I'll answer those two questions in reverse order.
It is early morning on 30 August, 2005. We're on a chow run, bringing hot chow to the Marines in the FOBs. On the northbound leg through the Al Karmah marketplace everything is normal. The locals conduct their business like any other day. On the way back south to Camp Fallujah the place is ghost-town deserted. My gunner, Corporal Martin, is halfway through saying, "Man, it's too fucking quiet," when an explosion rocks the convoy. It's a phrase you hear a lot in the news, "explosions rocked the city of Falllujah." But it's really quite accurate. The shockwave picks up the back of my truck. I'm a little too deaf to pick up nuances of sounds, but I can tell the close ones by how they roll through my chest cavity. In the few seconds it takes to turn around we see one of our 7-tons (heavy work-horse trucks) engulfed in flames. It is one of those never-gunna-forget images. In my mind's eye, superimposed over that burning truck, are Mac and Lopez, trapped inside. It is impossible for anyone to survive that. There's just too much fire, too fast. This image of two of my fellow Marines burning to death in front of me, combined with the total inability to do anything about it, is the worst. In this moment I am un-focusable rage. I want to kill, and in this moment, I don't particularly care what, so long as it dies. But the town knew the attack was coming and cleared the area. By the grace of God, both Corporal McIntosh and Lance Corporal Lopez make it out of the truck with their Purple Hearts earned by recoverable injuries. But I'll never quite forget the vivid awfulness of the thought, "Mac is dead."
Cut to November, 2005. We're securing that same road, one mile north, while the combat engineers build up a new FOB. I'm standing in the middle of the road in my sixty-five pounds of body armor. Except for the kink that just won't leave my lower back, I no longer notice the bulk. I've got my M16 pointed down the road where an orange road cone proclaims in the international language, "Do not cross." Behind me, Martin sits on his turret, M240G pointed in the same direction. Anyone who crosses that line will be killed. By now the Iraqi people know this. They don't cross the line. They don't really come near the line. We're bored. Next to our cordon is a small roadside shop with a modest selection of snacks and drinks. Running the stand is an Iraqi boy of thirteen or so. I'm thirsty and all my water is, by now, quite warm. This kid's got a refrigerator full of soft drinks and American money is like gold here. A dollar gets me two Coke's and half a dozen small chocolate bars. I'm told I over-paid. Before too long all the kids from the neighboring houses are out in front of the stand, asking for chocolate, money, high-fives, my pens, sunglasses, knives, anything. One little girl insists on a game involving punches to the middle of the ballistic plate of my body armor. It hurts her hand, thought I'm barely aware of the attacks. These kids have no fear of us. Every day on the road the pervasive mentality is kill or be killed. And now we're playing with kids. A Marine convoy stopped in their front yard is the coolest thing to happen to them in at least a year. Suddenly, in the faces of these kids, I see why we're still here. One day these kids will live in a world where hate and warfare are just a shadowy memory from early childhood. This image will get me through some rough days to come. This is the best.
After I related those two anecdotes over beer and burgers, someone at the table asked for funny stories. I went for one of my favorites: the Antenna Story, which involves a suicide bomber, small intestine, a broken of antenna, and a battalion communications shop that doesn't like me anymore. I got uneasy chuckles. I realized than how far my already off-kilter sense of humor had slid towards the gallows variety.
I try and tell the funny stories from my deployment, but the humor just doesn't seem to translate. When I get to the punch line, I get blank stares and, "Oh, that's terrible." Jokes about mortars and suicide bombers don't carry well back home, but here' goes…
Anytime there's an explosion somebody jumps, ducks for cover, etc. It's the survival instinct. Every time you flinch at outgoing there's somebody next to you who didn't. It is his job to make fun of you. The day before Mac got blown up, he, Corporal Attaway and I are on base, walking back from chow. Attaway flinches at the sound of a distant explosion. I make the appropriate emasculating comment. "That was outgoing." Then the ground explodes a little ways away. Contrary to Hollywood style, mortars don't whistle; the ground just explodes. Attaway: "Yeah, outgoing towards us. There's a word for that: incoming." "Right, let's run now." After mortar fire has opened the door to your barracks a couple times, this kind of story is funny. Just trust me on this.
There's the time that battalion used us as bait, so the snipers could make contact. This one usually evokes a less than amused reaction. But to me it's got a definite Catch-22 kind of hilarity.
There's the Antenna Story. But that requires an advanced gallows humor to appreciate. I won't even attempt a version of that story for this article.
But over all, war is boring. War is very boring. War is waiting, and walking, and driving, and waiting some more. It is endless hours guarding the engineers as they work, waiting for the attack that doesn't come. It is driving another chow and sanitation run, waiting for each irregularity in the road to erupt with a dirty, concussive blast. Boredom is the enemy, and as every stenciled sign on base reminds you, "Complacency kills."
I've been home for over a year now. I've stopped flinching when I pass roadside debris. I can sleep through the night without having to drink my self to sleep. And even the most vivid memories of my seven months in Iraq have begun to fade into the stories that have stuck as the classics. I have become happily complacent in my cycle of work, friends, and sleep.
I listen to the news on Dallas' NPR affiliate as I drive to work in the morning. Lots of well-meaning politicians, most of whom have never had the pleasure of sitting around waiting to be shot at and mortared, tell my why the war is good or why it is bad. It all fades to white noise. A year ago I wanted to be the righteous hero, the new Greatest Generation. I might have settled for the role of the sold-out warrior, betrayed by his leaders. More and more I just don't care. I'm reenlisting because this war isn't over, and if someone has to lead my Marines back there, I'd like it to be me.
I doubt war has ever made any real sense. In fact I'm reasonably certain that it hasn't. As this war stands, there don't seem to be any good options. Sadly, I have no light to shed on the issue. Yet I am somehow drawn to the insanity."