The Deserter's Tale (15 page)

“What are you going to do with her?” I asked. “Turn her over to the Iraqi police,” he said. “Why don't you just let her go back to her family?” “She's a whore,” he said again and rose from

his desk. “I'll turn her over to the police and we'll have fun tonight.” He rose from his desk to go look at the girl.

When we returned to the girl, nausea swirled in my belly. An Iraqi police officer stood smiling beside her.

The border official told the girl that she was being turned over to the Iraqi police. Her eyes widened in terror. She didn't say a word, but I know exactly what her eyes pleaded as she looked my way:
I pray to God, please save me from these men.

“Can't she just go back to Syria?” I said.

“Yes, Syria,” the girl said.

The Iraqi police officer thrust his pelvis in a way that left no doubt about his intentions, gave the border official a big smile, and left with the girl.

Before he departed the border area where my platoon was working, I hurried to speak to the sergeant in charge that day and described the situation. I explained that the cop had rocked his hips in anticipation of what he would do with the girl, and that he and the border official were working together.

“They're going to rape her,” I said. “Isn't there anything we can do?”

“It's their problem and none of our business,” the sergeant told me.

I wanted to say more, but I also feared that my superiors would be happy for any excuse to punish me and deny me the opportunity to go home to my family. So I stayed silent, though I felt degraded by my own passivity and by that of my army.

By our sins of willful neglect, we were about to have a child's blood on our hands. I knew it was wrong then, and now I know exactly what the Geneva Conventions say about the protection of women and children in war:

“Women shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected in particular against rape, forced prostitution, and any other form of indecent assault.”

“Children shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault.”

I knew how things were going to begin for that thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl, that day, but there was no telling how they would end. We had every means at our disposal to protect that girl. I say this because, in Iraq, sergeants and officers in my company generally behaved however they wanted in the presence of Iraqi civilians, employees, police officers, and border officials. In my opinion, it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest to my superiors what the Iraqis thought of our actions. If one of our officers or sergeants had chosen to intervene and protect the girl, no Iraqi working at the border would have been in a position to stop him. We were the ones with the ultimate authority at the border. Indeed, one of our roles at al-Qa'im was to teach the Iraqi border officials and police officers how to inspect a car, and to tell them what we would allow Iraqis to take out of their country and what we prohibited as export items. We were the occupiers and we controlled the border, but when it came to the fate of the thirteen-year-old girl who was about to be raped, we did nothing.

This is the last of my war stories. I dream of it still, and find myself waking and shouting out in the night. My own daughter, Anna, is not yet three years old. I can already imagine her questions, one day, and I do not look forward to them.

A few days later, as we were nearing the middle of November, Sergeant Skillings told me to pack my bags.

“You're going home in two days. Two weeks off. Enjoy it.”

The guys in my squad were happy for me; they also knew that their turns for home leave were slowly inching forward.

Lewis asked me to bring him thermal underwear. Jones asked for a CD. Somebody gave me a letter to mail back home.

Sykora gave me a big hug. He said nothing, but by the look in his eyes he told me he knew I wasn't coming back.

The only person I dared to speak to was Connor, the Texan with whom I had bullshitted about football and southern life during our whole time in Iraq. That night, we sat on a flatbed railway car just outside our compound, while the other men in our squad were in their cots.

“This will be my last” was all I said. I didn't say “last day in Iraq.” I didn't have to.

“Well, I'll be seeing you one day,” Connor said. Sergeant Jones came up to me just hours before I left.

“You're coming back, aren't you?” he said. “Yes,” I told him.

The truth was that although I didn't want to come back, I had no idea of just exactly what I was going to do, or where my life would take me next. All I knew, for sure, was that I would soon be back in Brandi's arms.

8

AWOL

SIX AND A HALF MONTHS EARLIER, GETTING INTO
Iraq had been a slow process. After a long wait in Kuwait, I had taken a slow-moving trip across the desert in a military convoy. But on the way out, I was flown by helicopter from al-Qa'im to the same green zone (al-Asad) in the desert I had stayed in during the second half of September. After a few hours, I flew by helicopter to the Baghdad airport. There was nothing to do but wait, and that was a good thing because my mind was fried. Apart from two weeks of rest I hadn't slept more than an hour or two at a time for more than half a year at war. I had heard so many machine guns and mortars that I often found myself hard of hearingafter firefights. I could barely string three clear thoughts together. I knew only two things for sure: my own army had made me ashamed to be an American and I was finally going home to see my wife and children. I didn't know what I would tell my wife, but deep down seeds of worry began to take root in my gut. If I told Brandi that I was thinking about not returning to Iraq after the vacation, what would she say? Would she be furious? Would my lack of patriotism disgust her? Would she lose all respect for me? I wasn't sure if it was safe to tell her any of my worries, so on the long trip home I tried not to think about anything.

In the Baghdad airport, I ate an MRE, found a spot outside by an airplane hangar, rolled out my bag, and went to sleep. My next flight was on a C-130 to Kuwait, with about one hundred other soldiers. I knew none of them. I wore earplugs to drown out the noise of the engines and kept to myself.

Getting off the plane in Kuwait, we had to wait in line outside a security tent. Soldiers were not allowed to take weapons back home, and we were invited to leave guns and knives in an amnesty box before getting checked. I had dropped off my M-249 in al-Qa'im and I had already turned in my M-16 at the green zone.

Twenty officers checked the bags of soldiers who were traveling back home, but there were so many of us to process that it took two hours to move through the line. I saw one inspector fish a grenade out of a soldier's suitcase. No big deal was made of it. When I was finally next in line to have my bags inspected, I watched a soldier up ahead and to the left. An officer picked through his bag and even patted down the clothing. The officer shook open an extra pair of army pants, rifled through a pocket, and pulled out something thick.

“What the hell is this?” the officer said.

“An ear,” the soldier said.

“Soldier, you want to take a human ear back to the United States?”

The soldier, who made no reply, was removed from the line and taken away.

When my turn came, a woman began to inspect my bag. She had heard the exchange about the ear and smiled at me and shook her head.

“I guess some people want to take some pretty dumb-assed things home,” I said.

“You can't take all these cartons of cigarettes, soldier. Just two is the max.”

“Okay,” I said, “take ‘em.”

When she saw that I didn't mind, she said in a low voice, “You think that guy with the ear is bad. Last week, I caught someone trying to bring home a human arm.” She was laughing as she talked about how she had to pull him from the line and leave him with a more senior officer. I didn't blame her for laughing. She must have seen her share of crazy stuff, and laughing probably helped her get through it.

“If he was trying to do that,” I said, “he must have really lost it a long time ago.”

She confiscated my cigarettes and let me go.

* * *

In the airport in Kuwait and on the long flight to Dublin, I noticed that most of the soldiers wore cleaned and pressed uniforms. I, however, was not exactly dressed for Sunday church. I wore the same dirty, bloodstained BDU (battle dress uniform;) that had kept me clothed for six months in Iraq. I had an extra, cleaner uniform in my traveling bag, but I didn't want to put it on. I didn't want to dress up. I didn't want to look good. These were the clothes I had worn while at war, and I was disgusted by all the things I had been required to do. I didn't want to put a pretty face on things now, and I didn't care if my trousers and shirt hadn't been properly washed in six months.

On the flight to Ireland, an officer gave me a righteous look.

“Soldier, didn't you have a better uniform to wear home?”

“No I didn't, sir” was all I said.

I was tempted to tell the officer that I had been saving my second uniform for a special day. I had thought, during all my time in Iraq, that I would put it on when something truly good happened. But nothing good happened in my time at war, so I never put on the second uniform. Eventually wearing the same uniform day in and day out—and washing nothing but my underwear and socks—became my own private fashion statement. Given the things I had been made to do, why should I give a fuck about the way I looked?

The officer stared at the bloodstains on my trousers, but I didn't want to meet any roadblocks on my long journey home, so I kept my mouth shut and said nothing more.

When we landed in Dublin, it struck me that I had not had an ounce of alcohol for months. A sergeant stepped out of the airplane, took a look at me, and said, “Soldier, let's go get drunk.”

We had only half an hour or so, but I slammed back eight beers as fast as I could. Nobody gave me a second look because just about every American soldier in the airport bar was keeping pace with me.

It takes about seven hours to fly from Dublin to Atlanta. I took every free drink they served on that flight and tried not to think about which was worse: beating up and killing the civilians of Iraq or refusing to do it any more and becoming a criminal.

Getting off the plane in Atlanta, I found Vietnam War veterans lined up on the tarmac to clap and shake our hands and to greet us as war heroes. I didn't want to shake any man's hand. What had I done that merited a handshake? I got away from the veterans as quickly as possible, drank while waiting for the next flight, drank en route to Dallas, and sat in the first bar I could find in the Dallas airport.

There, I didn't have to pay for a single drink. First, a man wearing cowboy gear from head to foot called to the barman, pointed to me, and said, “I'm paying for everything this soldier drinks.”

He came to sit and talk with me and said he owned a ranch.

“How's it going over there in Iraq?” he asked. “Have you been watching the news on TV?” I said. “You bet,” he said.

“Well, whatever they're showing, I can guaran

damn-tee you that it's not like that.”

“How so?” he said.

I told him that innocent civilians were dying and that I didn't even think that I wanted to go back to it.

He gave me his name and telephone number and told me that if I ever went AWOL, I could come see him for a job on his ranch. I took his paper but knew I would never call him. People say all sorts of things they don't really mean.

When the cowboy left, a woman took his place as the buyer of my drinks. When I headed to the bar to clear my bill, she called out, “It's mine, I'm paying for it.”

When I walked to the gate to fly the final leg home, I was so drunk that I forgot my bag in the bar. They had to page me to go back and get it. I doubt they would have let me on the flight had it not been for my soldier's uniform.

Brandi didn't recognize me until I walked right up to her.

“Oh my goodness, you look like a skeleton,” she said. We threw our arms around each other. When we finally pulled back from the hug, she kept feeling my arms and my shoulders.

“Josh, there's nothing left on you,” she said.

“Army food,” I said, “isn't quite as good as yours.” “So does that mean you're going to start eating vegetables?”

“Give a soldier time to adjust,” I said.

Brandi did not take a step without keeping her hand in mine or on my arm. “I guess you had a few drinks on the way home,” she said with a smile.

“One or two,” I said.

She took my arm firmly as we walked into the parking lot. She is a good woman, my wife. She didn't say one bad word to me about arriving home as drunk as a skunk. She just took my hand and led me home.

Zackary and Adam, who were five and three, dove into my arms. Philip, who was just over one, didn't know who I was. No matter. I spent the rest of the day loving on them all, and even Philip knew I was his father by the time he went to bed that night.

Back home in Fort Carson, my nightmares continued. I dreamed of decapitated heads, staring at me and calling out accusations. I dreamed of children dying. I dreamed of being in a firefight with no bullets left in my M-249.

I drank again a day or two after I returned and I blacked out. I don't remember what I did at the time, but Brandi told me later that I had screamed something about an attack and ripped the light fixtures out of the ceiling. Every day of that two-week holiday, even stone sober, I kept reaching for a gun that wasn't on my shoulder and felt naked without it. I couldn't stand in supermarket lines because I was afraid that someone would throw a grenade or bring out a knife. Brandi says that I was not the same man who had left just seven months earlier. I had no patience for crying children, couldn't walk outside without looking over my shoulder, couldn't get into bed without screaming in my sleep, could not stop mumbling about Iraq, and couldn't pay attention to a single household detail.

America felt like a dreamland. It seemed to me that not a soul in the country had the faintest clue about what I had been living through every day in Iraq. My buddies were in danger, and I thought about them constantly. But outside the military base, people in Colorado Springs carried on as usual, going to work, sporting events, malls, and movies. Walking about the city, a person visiting from another country would have had no idea that the United States was at war in Iraq. The long, slow buildup to Christmas seemed to be the only thing that excited the people of Colorado. But when I woke and when I went to bed, and when I ate and when I drank, I could not clear my mind of the places I had been: Ramadi, Fallujah, al-Habbaniyah, and al-Qa'im. I imagined that the house raids and traffic checks continued, and that American soldiers were still bombing, shooting, and beating Iraqi men, women, and children in their homes, cars, and streets.

I got drunk at a bar in Colorado Springs. Brandi says that I started shouting at her about how she and the children lived like royalty in comparison to the people of Iraq. Families over there had nothing to eat and nowhere to live, I hollered, and Brandi stared at me, wondering why I appeared to be blaming her.

“Just be thankful that our family doesn't have to live like that,” Brandi said, pulling me from the bar. Deep down, I worried about just exactly how we would be living if I paid attention to the thoughts of escape swirling in my mind.

During the second week of my vacation, I settled down enough to help Brandi and the children move off the military base at Fort Carson and into a private apartment in Colorado Springs. It wasn't part of any plan to go AWOL or to run from the military. It was simply that Brandi hated living on the base and being surrounded by army life.

We spoke only once or twice about the possibility of going AWOL. I didn't say much. I only said that innocent people were dying at the hands of American soldiers and that I didn't want to go back to the war.

“If I run from duty, we would have to go far away,” I said.

“Where would we go?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

Brandi didn't get angry, and she didn't try to tell me what to do. But neither of us had clear ideas about what would happen if I didn't return to Iraq. If I ran from duty, where would we live? How would we eat? How would we take care of our three boys? All the time I had been in Iraq, Brandi had been receiving my $1,200 monthly check. But with rent, clothing, diapers, and food bills, my salary had been barely enough to keep the family going. We had no savings in the bank and less than $200 in our pockets.

My conscience told me that it was wrong to return to Iraq and to keep on doing things I knew to be wrong. But the very thought of going AWOL overwhelmed us. It was clear that we could never go home to our families. They had no means to support us or to protect us from the army officers who would most surely be lying in wait. We had nowhere to run and nobody to advise us, so we dropped the subject of my running from army duty before we had even discussed it seriously.

I spent the second half of the vacation unpacking boxes in our new apartment and sticking close to Brandi and the boys. They were the only people in the world I wanted to see. I barely went out and barely saw a soul. I made no contact with anyone at Fort Carson, and I did not even see or call the wives of the men in my company. I spoke with my mom and a few other relatives by phone but didn't tell them anything about my problems. In fact, I was so overwhelmed by daytime anxieties and bad dreams at night that I did not even know that President Bush came to speak at Fort Carson one day while I was huddled at home with my family.

Much later, when I learned of his visit, I went online to see what the president had said on November 24, 2003, to the troops at the Butts Army Airfield in Fort Carson.

“We're at war with terrorists who hate what we stand for: liberty, democracy, tolerance, and the rights and dignity of every person. We're a peaceful nation, yet we are prepared to confront any danger. We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other parts of the world so that we do not have to fight them on the streets of our cities. And we will win. In this war, America depends on our people in uniform to protect our freedom and to keep our country safe.”

I can imagine this speech being televised live to the troops in Iraq. I can imagine returning at four in the morning to Saddam Hussein's bombed-out palace in Ramadi after raiding and ransacking a house and detaining its male occupants—even a fourteen-year-old boy who stood as tall as his father. If my buddies and I had sat in our bloodstained desert camouflage uniforms and watched a live broadcast of our president's speech, we would have thrown our rations at the TV screen. If our president stood for the rights and the dignity of every person, why had he allowed American soldiers to repeatedly abuse Iraqi civilians?