Ryan Smithson (3 page)

But cleaning is the facade. Sundays are about escape. We can talk to one another all day on Sunday. We are finally allowed to find out about one another. I would not usually be interested in what fifty people, whom I met only weeks ago, would have to share with me. But here it seems important. For some reason basic training makes me appreciate strangers.

And Sundays are about getting away. Sundays give us an excuse to leave the pine-scented barracks, if only for an hour. There are Protestant and Catholic services. There are Buddhist and Hindu services. There are Jewish and Muslim and Southern Gospel services.

As a bus rolls up for the first service of the day, the whole company forms up outside the barracks.

“This one’s for you Methodists,” yells the drill sergeant.

Only a few people step out of formation and board the bus.

“There better be more for the Protestant service,” says the drill sergeants. “I don’t want to look at you nasty privates all day.”

And then there’s the atheist. Born and raised in New York City.

“What if you don’t believe in God, Drill Sergeant?” she asks from the back of the formation.

Now, there are a couple things that need to be understood here. First of all, just because Red Phase is almost over and White Phase starts tomorrow doesn’t mean we’re out of basic training. You can’t just yell out in the middle of a formation. I’m not terribly religious myself. Spiritual, I’d say. But regardless. We’re standing in the heart of the Bible Belt, sister. The majority of the military comes from the South, and if you think they don’t love teaching valuable lessons to every blasphemous, Northern hippie they
come across, you’ve got another think coming.

“What did you say?” he says, walking over to her spot in formation.

“I said, ‘What if you don’t believe in God, Drill Sergeant?’” she says.

We all wait to hear the drill sergeant yell “drop,” meaning push-ups, or “front leaning rest position,” meaning push-ups, or of course, “cannon cockers.” But he says nothing. He pauses. A long time.

“There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole,” he tells her.

I picture World War II and Vietnam flicks: soldiers sitting in foxholes praying with rosaries. This is how I make sense of what the drill sergeant told the atheist.

When you’re in the shit and all you have are a rifle and your own ass,
I think,
you’ll turn to God.

Sometimes God isn’t listening. Pray all you want, and the only outcome you’ll get is a lead slug through the forehead. But sometimes, just sometimes, God
is
listening. And God hates the bad guys, right? The reinforcements show up, and the Krauts or the Gooks are wiped out. The platoon survives against miraculous odds, and the American flag waves in the foreground. Roll credits.

I think,
Soldiers turn to God during war.

A
fter BCT I stay in Fort Leonard Wood for AIT and then finally return home in March 2004. The Iraq war has been going on for a year, and the military has captured Saddam Hussein.

Heather is in her last semester of college, about to get her Associate’s degree, and still lives with her roommate in their apartment. As for
my
education, I’m now a full year behind the classmates of my graduating class. But I plan on starting community college in the fall. I guess I’ll go for auto mechanics.

For now I continue working at the Denny’s where I worked in high school. I am no longer a greasy dishwasher, though. I’ve moved up and become a greasy short order
cook. It’s decent work for being eighteen and living at home. And of course I spend the first weekend of every month at my reserve unit in Kingston, New York.

The unit is fairly new to me, even though I visited a few times before I shipped out. I don’t know most of the soldiers, but I still have a feeling of camaraderie with them. I made it through basic training. I am their fellow soldier now. That’s where the camaraderie comes from. People understanding and accepting you without your having to prove yourself.

As summer approaches, Heather and I move into an apartment in Troy together. I finally assume the responsibility of living on my own. The Real World isn’t such a scary place after all.

Even though it’s tiny and our neighbors are a little rude, this apartment serves as the foundation for the rest of our lives together. We talk over dinner. Mushy, romantic comedy stuff. Boyfriends talking to girlfriends about things they would never even consider talking about with their buddies. Things like “I missed you at work today, sweetie” and “Poor kitty has to get booster shots tomorrow” and “Which is a better aroma for our laundry, white lilac or summer breeze?” We talk of marriage and kids and owning a home. We talk of the future. We talk of the army.

“What happens if you get deployed?” Heather asks me.

I shrug.

“You think you will?”

“Yep,” I say.

She nods slowly, bites her bottom lip.

“So…”

“So I’ll pack my bags and give you a kiss.”

“Maybe a ring?” she asks.

I smile and kiss her on the forehead.

“Maybe,” I say.

Historically in peacetime our country’s military is all volunteer. But the Iraq war is different. Now during wartime our country’s military is still all volunteer. There hasn’t been a draft. Problem is, there aren’t enough active duty soldiers to function in Iraq and Afghanistan the way DoD needs them to. So the reserves and national guard are deployed.

I never really think it’s coming. I deny the inevitability of deployment. I doubt the drill sergeants when they tell me I’ll end up in the Sandbox sooner or later. I doubt myself when I tell Heather, “Yep, I’ll be deployed.” But my denial doesn’t matter. Because duty comes first.

I am standing in the unit administrator’s office when it happens. The UA picks up the phone. The guy on the other line asks a question and the UA repeats it.

“Is Private Smithson deployable?” he says.

To me he says, “Can you get your two oh one file out of that cabinet behind you?” and tosses me a key.

I turn around, unlock the filing cabinet drawer, and snatch my 201, my entire life history with everything from what hospital I was born in to my PT scores in basic training to what the MEPS doctor saw when he checked my asshole for hemorrhoids.

The UA flips through the thick folder, pulls out a typed sheet containing some secret, returns it, and hands me the file.

“Yes, he is,” the UA tells the guy on the phone.

As I put the folder back, I say, “No. Tell them no.” And I try to make it sound like I’m joking.

At least I finally have an answer to the question I’ve tried to answer since I enlisted. The million-dollar question, the first question people ask when they find out I’m in the military: “Will you have to go to Iraq?”

In my head the answer is usually,
Probably, jackass, and thanks for bringing it up.

From my mouth, the answer that usually comes out is “Maybe.”

People don’t know what to say to this. They say, “Well, I hope not” or “Man, we shouldn’t even be there,” followed by a totally blank stare.

In the civilian world, it makes perfect sense: a deployment roster months ahead of schedule. But this is not the civilian world. This is the place where we are property of the U.S. government, and there is no such roster. There’s
no convenient, all-knowing inventory of names and social security numbers, all the soldiers who’ll be deployed in the new year. And there is definitely not a neat little dotted line where one can write
I respectfully decline.

People don’t understand, and I don’t bother explaining that I’ll be lucky to get a full week’s notice before I’m deployed. So when I respond to the million-dollar question, I press my lips together, nod my head, and say, “Maybe.”

The phone call to my UA is from another engineering unit out of West Virginia. This reserve unit is just like mine here in New York. For one weekend a month and two weeks a year, the unit fills up with engineering soldiers and they train; they do their MOS. The way the army works…Well, I have no idea how the army works. But for this one soldier at this one moment during this one war, the way the army works is like this.

A general somewhere needs an engineering unit in Iraq. In one way or another he finds the unit in West Virginia. This reserve unit, like most others, is not at what the army calls “full strength,” they have to pull soldiers from other units, oftentimes in other states. This is called “cross leveling.” Hence the call to my unit administrator in New York.

The unit cross levels soldiers until it is at full strength and can therefore accomplish whatever mission it needs to do in Iraq. The unit ships off all its personnel and equipment to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This first stage of a combat tour is “mobilization training,” and I’m sure there’s an acronym for it.

So when I receive the call in September that I’m being deployed to Iraq, I don’t enroll in college. I don’t call my buddies for one last night on the town. I don’t find some sleaze in a bar and take her home. I get on one knee and ask Heather to be my wife.

People ask me why I got married at nineteen. They think I must have knocked up some girlfriend. “Any kids?” is always their second question. People assume I’m just naïve. Or that my decision has something to do with money or car insurance, maybe tax breaks.

Really, the answer is none of the above.

See, a girlfriend means nothing to the army. Neither does a fiancée. Anyone other than your spouse or legal guardian may as well be your pet goldfish.

If anything happens to me while I’m deployed, unless that box for “next of kin” reads “Heather Smithson/Spouse,” Heather won’t get the phone call. She won’t get the folded American flag. If I die in the next year, Heather would live her life saying she once had a boyfriend who died in the war.

Within two weeks we throw together a civil ceremony with a judge, a gown, two rings, flowers, a limo, cake, thirty friends and family members, and a reception at Buca di Beppo.

The future is unknown. And during the ceremony at Frear Park in Troy the fear of the unknown pervades. The wedding march playing on the portable radio is a rapid heartbeat. The roots of the flowers in the park are trembling. The warm September wind is icy mist on my neck. The pagoda overhead looms threateningly. Our families, frozen in this moment, are realizing that the promise being made today, this hello to our union, is in so many ways an elaborate good-bye. The whole situation, the way it’s so sure of itself yet so unsure of everything else, is just a lavish ceremony to say, “I promise to be here if you come home.”

F
or two months I sit at home waiting for orders. I try calling. But when I’m told I’m calling too much, I stop calling. I’m given orders, but I’m not notified. And then I’m reported AWOL for not following them. It’s all about bureaucracy.

I call the UA in West Virginia, and finally everything gets sorted out. My unit in Kingston promotes me from private to specialist before I leave to join my new unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where they have started mobilization training.

Saying good-bye for basic training at Fort Leonard Wood was nerve-wracking. “Good luck, Ryan!” and “Do your best, pal!” Relatives smiling like I was about to be
in a performance. Think of “Jingle Bells” at a fifth grade concert.

Saying good-bye for mobilization training at Fort Bragg is sickening. “I love you so much, Ryan” and “I’m so proud of you, pal.” Relatives crying like I’m about to be in a war. Think of watching your own funeral.

My mom, dad, Regan, and Heather all cry like it’s the last time they’ll see me. “We’ll see you when you get home,” they say. The “when” for hope. No one says “if.” But we’re all thinking it.

I give Heather a final kiss and turn toward the gate. The tunnel is a throat, and it’s swallowing me. I wave once more to my family. They hold each other, and I feel detached. They say they’re proud, but I feel like I’m abandoning them. I walk down the tunnel, not looking back, and wipe my tears on my sleeve.

We land in Raleigh, North Carolina. I hate it already. My commander and the command sergeant major pick me up. The commander plans everything, and the sergeant major carries the plans out.

They make conversation with me in the car. I answer their questions but try to ignore them. The commander asks me if I’m hungry.

“No, sir,” I lie.

Once we get to Fort Bragg, the sergeant major drives
us to Old Division Area: hundreds of identical, two-story buildings “dress, right, dressed” like soldiers standing in formation. These buildings were built during World War II for the soldiers being deployed then. I’m lonely but I feel a sense of loyalty to them, those old soldiers who’d gone through what I am going through now.

“You’ll be part of equipment platoon,” says the commander.

I get out of the backseat, grab my green duffel bag out of the trunk, and start toward the brown metal door. Nobody’s around.

The rest of equipment platoon is out on an FTX (Field Training Exercise). A field training exercise is a war game. A unit stays in tents, observes noise and light discipline, and pulls security shifts all night long.

I dump off my stuff on an open bunk and take a self-guided tour. This barracks is two open bays stacked on top of each other. Each bay holds about two dozen metal bunk beds with a standing wall locker for each mattress. Everything’s lined up (dress, right, dress) next to one another down either wall.

As I walk around, I think of the thousands of soldiers who have stayed here. Average GIs just like me, just waiting to go to war. None of them knew at the time whether or not their war meant anything. Vietnam, Korea, World War II. I wonder how many felt detached,
scared. I haven’t even been away from home for a whole day, and I already feel like the end of this combat tour will never come. I wonder about the soldiers who came before me.

Young soldiers like me. Boys getting yelled at for stubble on their chins, for not tucking in the laces of their boots. They smoke cigarettes the same way, for the same reasons. They talk about “back home” the same way, spit the same way when they recall a fistfight in high school. They puff their chests the same way when they talk about ex-girlfriends, laugh the same way when they brag about taking advantage of them.

And I feel connected with these anonymous soldiers, people I may have passed on the street a hundred times back home. Old men with scruffy beards who may have once slept in Old Division Area. People who may have felt the very same uneasiness as they dumped their belongings on an empty mattress.

I enter the bathroom and lean over the sink. In the mirror my eyes are desperate. There’s a longing to be understood and accepted. To be strong and brave like I should be.

Soldiers seem so durable, so resilient, and so heroic in war novels. On the television screen they’re afraid of nothing. I wonder if I have that same courage. Basic training is supposed to teach us bravery and fortitude. It’s why,
I suppose, I was able to maintain my composure while boarding the plane for Bragg.

But courage also means being afraid, accepting a fear of the unknown. Anyone who claims to be unafraid as they sit in a barracks in-processing for war is either lying or crazy. And being crazy is not the same as being brave.

Bravery is being afraid of something but facing it anyway.

Life as I know it is over. For the next year or longer (my orders say eighteen months, but this is an intentional overestimate) my life is on hold. It’s time to do my duty, to live up to my promise of service. It’s time to abandon my family in the name of my country. Because that’s what young men and women do when their country is attacked.

Suck it up,
I tell my mirror self like a drill sergeant.
I’m not doing this for you.

At dinner I have fried chicken and corn. I have powdered mashed potatoes and a hard roll. Then I walk home. The barracks. I’m already calling it home.

The platoon is back for the night, out of the field and eager for hot showers. Fifty kids from all over the U.S. Not all of them are kids, but most are under twenty-five. None of them have been to Iraq. They wash up, joke with one another, and introduce themselves to me.

The platoon sergeant—a short, stocky guy with a good sense of humor—finds me and shakes my hand.

“I’m Sergeant Munoz,” he says.

Actually he’s a sergeant first class. In the army we pretty much call every NCO (Noncommissioned Officer) “sergeant.” To distinguish a newer NCO from an experienced one, we might say he’s a “buck sergeant.” This means he has three chevrons (pointy spikes on top of one another) and no rockers (the curved lines underneath).

A sergeant first class like Neil Munoz has three chevrons and two rockers.

Munoz recognizes the unit patch on my left shoulder. Turns out, Munoz and Struber, my squad leader back in Kingston, “went through the ranks together.” In army lingo this means they were privates together, privates first class, specialists, and eventually sergeants. They grew up together.

A tall, clean-shaven man walks by. He looks young, maybe twenty-five, and seems to be in a hurry. I can see by the golden bar on his collar that he’s an officer. This “butter bar,” as the slang goes, means that he’s a second lieutenant, the lowest rank of commissioned officers.

“I’m Lieutenant Zeltwanger, your platoon leader,” he says, pronouncing the name written over his right breast pocket like “Zelt-wong-er.” “Feel free to call me LT or LTZ. And of course, there’s always the default….”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

He has a hearty laugh, this lieutenant.

“EQ platoon is a tight group. We take care of each other, even when this command doesn’t.”

He looks to the platoon sergeant, who’s still standing next to me. Munoz smiles and nods.

“All right, sir,” I say. “Thank you.”

The lieutenant continues on.

The command sent EQ platoon out for an FTX with no tents or supplies. They promised to send out supplies, but after the platoon sat for hours in a rainstorm with nothing more than sleeping bags, the FTX was canceled.

I get down to Bragg, and the first thing my platoon leader tells me is that this command doesn’t take care of us. This is only mobilization training. How will our unit get in and out of Iraq safely? Already, though, I am thankful to a part of EQ platoon. Already I am thanking God for Andy Zeltwanger and Neil Munoz.

There are four squads in the platoon. First and second are equipment operators. Third is the concrete squad. And fourth is the truck drivers. I’m one of the operators, and Sergeant First Class Renninger is my squad leader.

Munoz directs me out the side door of the barracks where Renninger’s standing. At night any army post looks like this: identical buildings—each with one orange light in the exact same spot—old pine trees and about a million boot prints.

When I meet him, Renninger is standing outside the side door, taking in the scenery, smoking a Marlboro red. For the next year, when I need to find Renninger, he’ll be standing outside a side door taking in the scenery, smoking a Marlboro red. Picture the rough guy in an old western movie only wearing desert camouflage and rubbing the stubble on his chin.

“I gotta shave,” he says. “You meet the lieutenant yet, kid?”

“Yes, sergeant,” I say.

“Great guy. Welcome to the family, kid. And don’t you worry,” he says, taking a final drag. “We’ll take care of you.”

He excuses himself and steps inside.

For the next couple of weeks I in-process for Iraq. Paperwork. Anxiety. It reminds me of enlisting: fill out this form, initial here, cover your right eye and read line three, sign here, dot this
I
cross this
T….
Next.

The unit gives me an option of either rushing through in-processing or taking my time and meeting up with the unit overseas. Without question I tell them to rush me through. I already feel a connection with the platoon, and I don’t need any more uncertainty.

After only a few weeks I see that EQ platoon is something you’d find only in the army. During wartime. With the exception of the four squad leaders, platoon sergeant,
and lieutenant, we’re fifty kids. We’re sitting in this barracks swapping stories and getting to know one another. We’re ignoring the fact that any one of us might not return home with the rest. We’re acting as though nothing serious is on our minds, as if fear doesn’t grip us every time the barracks’ lights go out. As if we’re not terrified every time we’re left alone with our thoughts.