The Expectation and the Job

“When I enlisted, I tried to sign up for the infantry,” said every POG (person other than a grunt) ever. It’s true, but with little means for college funding and an enlistment bonus dangling over my head, I opted for field artillery. I mean, the recruiter said I’d get to “blow shit up.” Done and done. Where do I sign? I drove a Multiple Launch Rocket System, and my crew did, in fact, blow things up, but only at Fort Bragg. Our launcher was the best in our battalion, officially winning the “top gun” contest. This meant we got to shoot a full volley of twelve rockets in front of God, generals, and our mothers. Hooah, or whatever.

When we deployed to Iraq, none of that mattered. My National Guard unit was sent to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, for what was, in effect, a more relaxed basic training refresher course for adults ripped from their full-time jobs in a hurry. We hadn’t been given our mission yet. We just knew we wouldn’t be shooting rockets. Initially, we trained to clear buildings, conduct patrols, and do other cool stuff. We didn’t get to do any of those things during the deployment either. About a month before our ship date and around two months into training, they said we’d be doing long-haul convoys with tractor-trailers. The heck with that. That wasn’t the job I signed up for.

There was a platoon training to be gun truck crews in janky, poorly outfitted old Humvees, and that was the cool job. I wanted that job. I didn’t dare volunteer for it. Those are the guys who died. At least that’s what all our training seemed to indicate. They were exposed and easy targets for the enemy. But dang, was it cool. I received no specific gun truck training in Indiana other than the crossover stuff we all did. I accepted my lot in life. I was going to be just a trucker, I suppose. A mission is a mission, and it had to be done.

We were outfitted with weapons, some nearly as old as we were. Have you ever seen those super sweet, kitted-out M4s that many soldiers get to carry? Yeah, we didn’t have any of those, not even close. Short barrels? Nah, our old weapons were full musket length. Perfect for convoy operations when you had to get in and out of vehicles, right? Many of the guys got M16A2s that were likely leftovers from the first Gulf War. They still had sand from Saudi Arabia lodged in the barrels.

I was given the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, aka the SAW. At least I had a cool gun! I mean, it was nearly twenty pounds, but I was a big dude and up for the challenge. As impractical as this weapon was in the cab of a truck, it didn’t matter; I had a belt-fed distributor of hate and discontent. At least I’d look cool in pictures, I figured. Looking cool is half the battle, or whatever G.I. Joe used to say on Saturday mornings.

The day my boots hit the ground and my duffel hit the concrete pad in our barracks in Kuwait, my platoon sergeant told me not to get comfortable and to grab my gear. I was going to the gun truck platoon. It would have been really nice to have had more training, but I guess the in-country crash course would be good enough. Turns out, it wasn’t. I went on an entire convoy mission with my .50-caliber machine gun firing weird, only to find I’d done the headspace and timing incorrectly. For those who don’t know, that’s Army lingo for the barrel being too far from the body of the weapon and the rate of fire not cycling properly to achieve five- to 10-round bursts. I effectively made this relic of World War II a one-shot paperweight. After brief hip-pocket training from my squad leader, too late to matter, we fixed the issue, and I vowed never to make that mistake again.

I did the cool-guy job, at least in my own mind, for maybe four or five months of that deployment, and then, just as quickly as they gifted it to me, they took it back. Apparently, our Humvees weren’t safe, and the armor some redneck in the motor pool two tours ago bolted on the sides wasn’t adequate to preserve my life. I did find it suspicious that our floorboards were covered in sandbags. No wonder that truck was so damn slow. I felt like community property at that point. I was shuffled off to yet another platoon. I ended up in three of our four platoons and likely only avoided the other because my brother was in that one. There were rules against that.

So, for the remainder of my tour, I cradled an M249 mostly in the passenger seat of a bobtailed M915 tractor. At least I didn’t have to pull the trailer. That was likely good for the Army AND me, since I was a terrible driver. Our role was a sort of bastardized rear security element. Along with that job, I was tasked with caring for around twenty foreign nationals, and I loved learning about their cultures. They were usually good for a laugh, as they’d periodically fall asleep and drive off into the desert to parts unknown, and we’d have to retrieve them.

A job is a job. I never really got the one I wanted, but I adapted along the way and made the best of each curveball the Army threw at me. Sometimes war is just showing up, doing what you’re told, and living to tell a tale. Most people will make a snap judgment when I say I didn’t kick in doors at zero dark thirty with some elite unit. They dismiss my stories about convoys as not being flashy enough to warrant their concern. What can I say? It was a blast. I guess we don’t get to choose our own adventure; we just get to survive it. Most of us just got by until it was time to go home, and then went about living our lives as if they weren’t on the precipice of being extinguished every day for a year.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker based in Bethania, North Carolina. His work has appeared in Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and other outlets, and he directed Hammer Down, a documentary about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom with Alpha Battery 5-113th of the North Carolina Army National Guard. For The Havok Journal, he often writes essays and reflections about war memory, veteran life, the outdoors, and everyday experience. You can find his books, collected works, and social media 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.