Northbound Into the Dark

Nearly twenty years ago to the day, I boarded a commercial airplane with a machine gun slung on my back, along with 150 of my closest friends. Tray tables were stowed, seats placed upright, belts fastened, and weapons stored under the seat in front of us—normal protocol for air travel, right? The flight was approximately sixteen to eighteen hours long, with a stop in Budapest to refuel on the tarmac. A few hours later, we landed in Kuwait City. The air hit me like a tidal wave of thick, fetid heat. We loaded onto a bus with our weapons—minus ammo—and trekked to our new home at Camp Arifjan. We would spend the next year there.

War is Hell, but Arifjan is heavenly as far as duty stations go. We had air-conditioned barracks, a few fast-food options, and a big PX with all the accoutrements of home you could ever want. This war thing wasn’t going to be half bad, I thought to myself. And for the most part, it wasn’t. As far as deployments go, we were incredibly fortunate.

The next week, we disembarked from a ragtag convoy of newly acquired military vehicles at the Udairi training range, about fifteen miles from the Iraqi border. We spent a week there in tents riddled with the funk of age and relentless heat. The environment was all beach and no ocean. This place looked exactly as you’d imagine a Middle Eastern locale to look—a sea of sand and scorpions. We acclimated to the scorching climate, trained on vehicles and weapons, and mostly just got used to the environment.

I earned my call sign there—the military nickname you go by on the radios. The story, told countless times by members of my platoon, is that I jumped out of a moving Humvee to chase down some desert lizard—likely a Uromastyx. That sounds very much like something I’d do, though I don’t actually remember it. I’d done things like that my entire life, so one event didn’t stand out. Either way, “Critter Getter” was born, and the moniker stuck.

If you’ve read this far and served during the Global War on Terror, you’re probably thinking this POG loser is recounting his experiences in Kuwait and Arifjan of all places. Many say that Arifjan, Kuwait, isn’t a “real” deployment. To be honest, I tend to agree, at least when it comes to proximity to combat. I’m glad my story didn’t end there—otherwise, it would have been as boring as, well, a Kuwaiti deployment.

My unit was a reorganized field artillery battery that ended up running convoys all over Iraq. Being an Army National Guard unit, we felt we had something to prove. Our commander signed us up for every northbound mission we could get. We outperformed all other companies in our battalion, logged more miles, and completed more missions than our Active-Duty counterparts. We may have been lowly weekend warriors before activation, but once mobilized, we stepped up and put the hammer down.

Most of our days were spent riding military supply routes and praying we didn’t evaporate into pink mist from a roadside bomb. We became nocturnal, traveling mostly from sundown to sunup across ancient landscapes that only knew war. It was the adventure of a lifetime. Nothing has made me feel as alive since. The irony is that being so close to death made life feel electric, each near miss a reminder of just how fragile and vibrant existence is.

I did my job. I was an average soldier, nothing special. I didn’t sign up for that job, but I honored my enlistment and did as I was told. I filmed funny videos to pass the time and ease the stress of living in a combat zone. On the few days a month we weren’t on convoys, I edited those videos in my bunk at Camp Arifjan and shared the DVDs with my platoon. We grew close. Many of us are still in touch two decades later. A small group of us talks daily or weekly. Those men became my brothers. The bonds were forged by stories only we can understand, and despite my best attempts to describe them, I always fall short of capturing the experience fully. My life was never the same after that deployment—for better and for worse. But I wouldn’t trade it.

We have a twenty-year reunion for that deployment in a few days. That was the first deployment for many of us and the only one for me. It was a special time with a great group of men. I look forward to reconnecting with people I haven’t seen since we were clad in desert combat uniforms. People often wonder why soldiers go to war, and barring political nuance, most of us just want to do right by our peers. We don’t want to let down our buddies.

I hope in the twenty years since we lived covered in Iraqi moon dust that I’ve honored my brothers. Mostly, I pray that my attempts as a storyteller to draw upon a well that never seems to go dry will yield some understanding of the sacrifices made by so many of my generation.

________________________________

Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.