Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Journal

Due to a rash posting on my part, and decisions made above my pay-grade, I have been ordered to stop posting on Kaboom, effective immediately. Though I committed no OPSEC violations, due to a series of extenuating circumstances – the least of which was me being on leave – my “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage” post on May 28 did not go through the normal vetting channels. It’s totally on me, as it was too much unfiltered truth. I’m a soldier first, and orders are orders. So it is.

If you think, please think of us. If you pray, please pray for us. The second half of our deployment will be just as challenging and dangerous as the first half.

Thank you for caring. Agree or disagree with the war, if you’re reading this, you are engaged and aware. As long as that is still occurring in a free society, there is something worth the fighting for.

Fleeing the rain and coked-out models of Milan, LT Demolition and I venture north, intent on conquering the Alps en route to Zurich to join the soccer madness of Euro 2008. What Hannibal crossed with war-elephants, and Napoleon trekked through on a white steed, we stake our historical claim in a …

Grey Opel?

Oh irony, with your bitter face-spit. Did the rent-a-car place really have to give us the most popular vehicle of Iraqis, the nigh-daily VB-IED threat as reported by the intel geeks of Fortuna?

Fine. Pop in Queen’s Greatest Hits and let’s roll.

A postcard’s rugged beauty. Everywhere. Mountains crashing up out of the valleys like god-towers, rivers falling off the hills like feral waterslides. Where am I? A Green Party political ad? Switzerland is like Lake Tahoe on steroids, without the testicle shrinkage. And sans baseball career.

Hit the summit, and try not to be killed by all the speeding Formula 1 Darios on the winding spiral down.

Civilization. Stick with the SOP. Lodging. Food. Booze. Not necessarily in that order.

What time is it? Who cares? We’ve shed our watches, embracing the time-free existence. The only thing scheduled is nothing. We’ll meet that timehack.

Join the Italian rioters in the streets. Jubilation. A continent too tired for war and too haughty for idealism, instead bonging soccer jingoism in levels that would make Rupert Murdoch blush.

Party on. Sing sing sing, sway sway sway. And sure, why the hell not? Let’s do another round.

Why yes, even the Polizia are joining in the madness. They may not have guns, but they’re sporting some awesome reflective vests. Very authorityish. And no, I did not notice that Swiss girl with doe-eyes. Why do you ask, are you in need of a utility knife? I’m engaged, and in love! But I’m still the world’s greatest wingman – lead the way Maverick, Goose follows. Viva Italia!

Bright lights, white noise and puzzle-piece memories.

Wake up, overhung, unsure what country we’re in now. Gah. Damn it. I forgot to take my shoes off again.

Sniff the shirt. Ehh. It’ll do for another day. Laundry can wait.

Coffee. NOW.

How many days now until … ?

Uhh. Don’t think about it. Spare yourself the depression, and bask in the break. Everyone says you need it.

It lingers though. Like the feel of spider-legs creeping against skin, long after the insect has been smashed.

Back to the Opel.

When we stop for snackage, let’s try and not speak Arabic this time. The overly-friendly Euros start to freak out. Arabic to the Italians, Italian to the French, German to the Swiss… wait … what do the Swiss speak again?

Everything. If everything sounded like Hoefulingburginghamdensteg. Onto Germania!

Lazy days in a University town, reading books, sipping on beers on a river that is too smart to flow. Reminds you of more innocent times, times you know now you’ll never be able to reclaim. Can’t keep up with the kids anymore, be it intellectually, obsequiously, or spontaneously.

I need naps.

My back throbs under the pressure of invisible weights.

And somehow I lost all the answers to a world I swore would never break me.

God I miss her.

Here though, in a coincidence that rivals the return of the faux-hawk hairstyle in terms of happenstance, is an American Studies course that reads blogs, one of which being mine, to help foreign students learn English.

Blanket apology to anyone who reads this thing in an attempt to study a language. I’m beyond certain that I’ve had a negative impact on your language development. I. Hate. Grammar. Rules (so(I WILL Br8ke dem for no goode reezen!!!!!!!!!!!!(*)&^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too much e.e. cummings as a child, not enough Miss Manners.

LOLerSKATES!!!!!!!!!

Ahem. So being a minor internet celebrity is kind of cool.

One Euro beers in a college dormitory basement is cooler. I still got that foosball touch, you dig? Fratstars don’t die, we just go into hibernation.

More scattered puzzle-pieces swallowed by the metaphorical howling dog of randomness. More late nights. Even later mornings. Turn in the Opel, train rides across Germany, finding old friends and new adventures, wandering castles and biergartens alike. Not necessarily in that order. And then one sun, it was over. Just like The Hollow Men predicted, not with a bang but a whimper.

Maybe it was a throat-clearing cough. Anyways.

Ready or not, back to the Suck.

In this post-modern world of war and famine, 24-hour news coverage, and emo music, it’s easy to forget that something as ancient as romance can be true and pure and overwhelming and original and … right.

Big ups to Italia for the assist on that one.

Cue whirlwind week of possibility.

Greet LT Demolition in the airport with a fist-pound.

This place is weird he says.

I think we’re the weird ones now.

Yeah. I guess you’re right.

Scouts out. To the hostel we go where we find City Girl and The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-She-Devil (inside joke, we’re friends, I swear) watching soccer. Awkward hug.

Umm. Hi.

Hi. How was war?

Umm. Different. How was life?

Difficult.

Right.

Yeah.

Let’s eat!

Then the tourist carnival; animal crackers of pandemonium all around. With pasta. I am Maximus Decimus Meridius at the Colosseum. I won’t shave for my girlfriend, but I’ll shave for the Pope, because you know, he’s the freaking Pope. The real Pantheon, the one that doesn’t include Captain Jack Sparrow.

And some creeks of flowing red wine. And an accordion dude. And singing hippies on the Spanish Steps.

And you know what? All things considered, this is pretty awesomely normal. Or is it normally awesome?

They both work.

Ahh, Italy. Onto Sienna. Romantic strolls through Tuscan plazas, under a flashlight moon that beams new hopes and old dreams alike.

For fuck’s sake, I’m a sapstar.

And then, after a rainy day spent bantering underneath umbrellas, I say to hell with it. I love her and I love her now and I know that will not change so what am I waiting for? No sane woman would ever put up with you or a deployment or a mixture of both.

Good thing I’m not attracted to the sane.

Today is so much better than yesterday. And tomorrow is no guarantee. We both know that now. So yeah. Umm. I’m taking a walk. I need … nail clippers. Yes. Nail clippers. Gah woman, I know it’s hailing water-bullets! I’ll be right back. Tell Demolition to mind the house, I’m hunting and gathering here.

Alright. Swiped an example from her jewelry bag to get the right size. Now I need to find a ring shop that takes me seriously, despite my terrorist mutton-chops, baggy plaid shorts, and plain white tee. And no, I don’t speak a lick of Italian. This should be interesting.

It was.

Wake up the next morning and check to make sure it’s still in the hiding place. Safe as a hibernating bear. Okay. You sure about this? I’m pretty sure matters like this are pondered over. Let’s ponder.

I always said I’d wait until I was 35. Well, after half-a-year in Iraq, I feel like I’m 35. Commitment issues with love don’t really seem like such a big deal after you deal with commitment issues with life.

Okay. Fair enough. It’s a little spontaneous, don’t you think?

Yes. But the best decisions in your existence have been spontaneous. Writing for the school paper. Going to Wake. Becoming a fratdawg.

This is a slightly bigger deal. And by slightly, I mean massively.

Okay. How about being born? Ten weeks early, that was pretty spontaneous, and all things considered, it worked out for you. Same with getting baptized. You could over-think anything if you allowed yourself, too. Spontaneous action is the only reason you’ve ever accomplished anything. Ever.

Touché.

For two weeks, you danced on the blackest edge, and because you don’t listen, made her do it, too. That will not happen again. It’s okay, though. You survived the test, and grew up. It happens to the best of us, even those of us with hero complexes.

Now you know. For sure. For surest’s sure.

Now we wait. For the right moment. The right place. The rightest right.

And try not to look like too nervous in the mean time. Stuttering like an idiot savant every time she asks you a simple question like please pass the salt isn’t helping matters.

Frago. Venice is drenched in a hurricane, and we’re not talking the metaphorical kind here. Good. Let’s avoid that cliché. Let’s stay on this coast. Onto the Cinque Terre! Lead the way Demolition and The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-She-Devil. Me and City Girl, we’re too busy being disgustingly stellar back here.

Don’t let the haters hate. Appreciate.

Strolls along the beachfront. A long, winding lunch, and the barest of emotions shared overlooking the sprawling sea in colors too vivid for this world. And a sun just as fleeting as this holiday escape, teasing we mortals with forever rays.

The sapstar striketh anew.

And then it was. The next morning brings the verbal leaves, the crunchy summer-red ones that mean we must go our separate ways. Time. It waits. For no. One. Now or never. Never or now.

Night. A crescent moon, loaned to Italia by way of my Arab friends down yonder in the Cradle of Civilization. One last walk on the beach, letting the crashing waves speak for us in languages we don’t need to understand. Deep breath. You can’t mess this up, you Irish bastard. Back in the day, during all those basketball games with the boys, you prided yourself on being the clutchest of the clutch, the little point guard with a champion’s swagger and a first step to the left that could shake anyone.

Yeah, but this ain’t basketball.

I’m still fucking clutch, though. Smoother than ice.

Pause at a bench. One last deep breath. Soak in the ivory skin and refined grace and fiery auburn hair and jade ovals and brimming idealism and natural intellect and unrelenting sass that initiated this domino rally of classical romance way back when.

What follows is a word-valentine that I won’t share, out of deference to all things personal. Even in the internet age, privacy can and should exist. All you need to know is her response:

I absolutely will.

Revoke my man-card. I could care less. Hearts explode in millennial fireworks that know no limitations of time. Viva. This.

All’s fair. In love and … what’s that last part, again?

“Dude, for the love of God, if you remember anything while you’re in Poland, remember this – don’t drink the Windex.”

Those were MadBeard’s first words to me as I stepped off the plane; express shipment sent straight from Iraq. What two kids from the American West were doing in Warsaw was as much a mystery to us as anyone else, yet there we were. Him, the wandering freelancing computer programmer, too brilliant for traditional pathways, me, a very confused soldier in need of a break.

What better place for a break than passing out on top of the Iron Curtain. I think Churchill said that once.

Maybe not.

Warsaw is a kind of Eastern European steel city, forever stamped with a “Stalin Was Here!” harshness. Western Europe parties to celebrate, here, they party to forget. I wanted to keep a low profile, but between my clothes, basic mannerisms, and perpetual state of perplexity, I might as well be sporting a Captain America cape. It’s okay, though. The Poles’ perma-crush on all things Reagan have made the transition to the non-combat culture a little easier. And even the seriousness of this land can’t help but smile at my clowning antics.

So yeah. The Windex. Apparently, some of his local friends have been known to come up from Krakow with jugs of vodka mixed with blue sugar, arriving like a roving band of gypsies, striking at the most inopportune moments with their lethal brand of Polish moonshine. My old friend, aware that my immune system hasn’t sniffed beer for six months, let alone been steeled for homemade Slavic concoctions, wanted to save me from going blind. A kind gesture, to be sure.

That’s the difference between old friends and new friends.

If and when people find out I’m away from Iraq on holiday, I sort of become an instant celebrity. At first it was cool, until I realized it was the bearded woman type of celebrity, not the Hollywood brand. It’s no one’s fault, of course; normal people just don’t know how to react to things like that. Like that – being – as in – as in being – “Uhh. Yeah. I’m in Iraq. No. I don’t want to talk about it. Does the techno music ever stop here?”

And then. North. Where the sun sleeps less than soldiers.

Punch-drunk peace. The Baltic Sea propositions with prepositions. In. On. Along. By. The way.

By. The way. What in the name of Frederic Chopin’s piano am I doing here? Drinking on the beach watching the sunrise with a group of truly insane neo-Vikings?

Or did I By. The way. when I stumbled into a random public park, surrounded by thousands of rowdy Polska soccer jerseys, lost in a sea of red and white and diehard religious-like zeal?

Things that make you go.

WTF.

The sausage really is excellent, though. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Even if I’ve temporarily left the Desert, I still feel it with me. Backfiring motorcycles always hurt my soul, and according to one understanding Slavic female, “made your eyes look like a rabbit.” I tend to instinctually search the back of those ridiculous mini Euro cars for loose wires and hidden compartments. And yesterday, I walked halfway across a Polish town before realizing I was holding a loaf of bread like an M4 Carbine, poised at the low ready.

Big ups to the old village woman who started clucking at me as a result. It’s the only reason I stopped.

I’ve gone from a stranger in a strange land to a strange in a stranger land. Which, you know, is nice. You generally don’t think about things that way.

I haven’t heard from the Gravediggers, other than an occasional MySpace message, so I know they are doing fine. At least ten times a day, though, I stare off, and worry. They’re fine, of course. The NCO’s have it under control. They always do.

Knowing that doesn’t stop the staring off, though.

There’s more to write, there’s always more to write. But the madmen with the Windex have arrived. MadBeard escaped here to find, and it’s been comforting to share that with him, no matter how temporal the experience.

Time to get gone.

And I’m not talking about the Windex.

I’m running the FOB-gauntlet, complete with stops in Molasses Swamp and Gum Drop Mountain from the Candy Land board game. It certainly would appear that these super-fobbits graze in Candy Cane Forest more than three times a day, too. I didn’t know they made uniforms that big, you dig? My battle buddy, LT Demolition’s driver who’s going home to North Carolina for leave with his well-deserved Purple Heart in hand, and I are trying our best to play nice and hide our contempt for this land of excess. Like SSG Bulldog always says, “it ain’t their fault, LT. They just don’t know no bettah.’” I’m sporting the cleanest of my uniforms, which is still trulymadlydeeply filthy for these parts – dirt, grime, and lacquered gallons of man-sweat permanently stain the ACUs, apparently. This revelation and accidentally shocking a too earnest Brigade staff lieutenant with tales from the front over breakfast have been the highlights of the trip, thus far.

Anyhow, getting from Anu al-Verona to Europe may not be easy, but at least I’ll be able to do so, legally. (Yes Mom, I remembered my passport.) As I hide in the lodging tent to avoid the judgmental eyes, waiting for the next Bird out of here, I can’t help but remember one of Biggie Smalls’ classic life anecdotes; one he retells to the Gravediggers at least once a week before mission for entertainment’s sake. In short, our interpreter is banned permanently from the nations of Italy and France – something that still doesn’t sit well with him some twenty-five years later.

It’s so much more than that, though.

And it always starts out exactly the same.

“You know LT,” he begins, with his characteristic British-taught English peppering his words. “I have not always been a man of family. In my youth, I was very wild.” (My soldiers usually cheer and applaud at this point, which causes Biggie to giggle. With a professional comic’s touch, he waits them out before continuing.) “I thief, I fight, I drink the whiskey-”

“You don’t drink alcohol anymore, Biggie?”

He shakes his head morbidly at this point. “My wives, they make me stop three years ago. They say that we have kids to spend money on instead. I have to sneak it now.” (Note: This has not stopped him from repeatedly stating he could acquire Guinness for me, if I ever change my mind about following General Order No. 1.) “So, in my youth, I journey to Europe in search of women and whiskey. I tell my father I look for better work.”

(More cheers and nods of knowing understanding from the Gravediggers.)

“I first go to Greece, then to the Hun-gary, and then to Italy. Ahh, Italy!” His eyes tend to look skyward at this point, and the wonder that seizes his speech when he talks of the free world returns. “Whiskey, tequila, beer … it was the excellent time for me. You know how everyone love Biggie.” It’s true. If you can’t picture my terp as a local bar champion, wheeling and dealing and laughing and celebrating life with new friends and old buddies alike, you haven’t read this blog closely enough. He’s like a big, black Jerry Lewis, and could probably put more than few brews down back in his prime. “And best part is, even if you fail to find woman for the night, you go spend money on prostitute. Many beautiful prostitutes, in Italy.”

“Biggie!”

“What?”

Nevermind. Disregard my American, puritanical sensibilities. Continue.

“In eight months in Italy, I spend all my money that I save for five years work in Africa! Too many whiskey and women. Worst part, my papers (work visa) terminated during those six months. I could not find the work even now that I actually look for it.” He shakes his head again, and bites his lip, recalling lost opportunities. “A friend of mine write from the Portugal. Come to the Portugal he say! Good work and you don’t need papers! So I hop on next train to the Portugal.”

A dark cloud comes over the horizon of Biggie’s face, as the dreaded F word comes into play – France. “But they stop me in France!” His voice changes tones here, as he mocks the French accent. “They say, no African man, you cannot go to the Portugal, you have bad papers! It’s … it’s…”

“Profilin’!” offers SSG Bulldog. “Dose mutha fuckas even gettin’ us in France. That’s some bullshit.”

Biggie is clearly unfamiliar with the problem of racial profiling on the American continent, but that doesn’t stop him from agreeing with SSG Bulldog’s point. “Yes! Yes! So they say, you cannot go to the Portugal. You go to jail instead. I stay there for three months and then they put me on boat and tell me I can never come back to France or Italy. Not ever.”

I told Biggie I’d see if some of his old haunts are still open while I’m in Italy, although it isn’t my first stop. Until then, I’m killing time like it’s an IED-emplacing terrorist, daydreaming about a smiley face with a bloodstain shot through its’ yellow skull, and wondering why Dos Passos isn’t more of a household name. Keeping my mind off those damn midair Black Hawk drops, flyboys fucking with their ground-pounding cargo.

I guess I deserve such for all the disdain I had for those chAir Force guys a while back.

Shrug.

Onto the Interludes.