Author’s Note: We did a lot of Time Sensitive Target missions in Ramadi, Iraq prior to the 2007 Al Anbar ‘Awakening’. There was one old graveyard out in the city where we would stage our Strykers and loiter, waiting for the launch command. This is what it was like…
The assaulters’ lounge
sprawled languidly in the oppressive heat
like so many hunting dogs
on the Stryker’s ramp
relaxed, our heads back against the door frame
muscles charged with latent energy
leaning back in our kits
we sit, helmets off, radio traffic
idily crackles in the background
waiting on THE WORD
rifle muzzles down
hands contouring down lower receivers
fingers curved over triggers
the metal ramp is littered
bottles filled with dip spit collect
like the sunflower seeds at our boots
we’re territorial like that
the conversations flow
the profanity spoken like poetry
pungent punctuation marks
pop pop pop
dip can coming out of shoulder pocket
communion plate passed around
the raunchiest stories ever
war obscenities, sexual outrages
the funniest stories you ever heard
outbursts of laughter
like the dip spit spilling out from our lips
“you cannot make up this shit!”
walk away from the group
to piss by the tombstones, return again
to resume staining the dust with spit
and the laughter is
an affirmation, group absolution
more sacred than could come from a priest
“I get it, dude. That’s fucked up, and you’re fucked up,
but I get it because I’m fucked up too.”
and you’ll never be alone
so long as we’re here with you
on this Stryker ramp
here in this graveyard
somewhere in Babylon
and like that, the moment is passed
as the WORD descends like the Hand of God
Launch or RTB
we put our MICHs on
and cram back into our metal cocoons
never to return to that moment
it briefly hangs behind us
over the sunflower seeds and dust stains
before slowly fading away
some of us move on
we make some attempts to remain in touch
but it will never be the same
not like it was back then
some of us try to settle
into the REAL WORLD, where we try to speak
a new language unstained by tobacco
or dead baby jokes
where civilians measure your cock by your
salary, car, or social status
and not by your competence
or by how well you shoot or by the
weights you can throw around in the gym
or that certain assurance
in your voice as you cross that last threshold
into that yawning and hungry darkness
lit only by your tac-lights
“Need one!”
“Got one!”
Touch.
Entry.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
assimilating into
a world where friendships are measured in
the affectations of affability
not in the burden of shared misery
Ft. Benning in the dark before the dawn
another platoon formation run
around the airfield
carrying forty-pound water jugs then
buddy-carries up Cardiac Hill
the Legs look at us
furtively, like domestic animals
eyeing a wolfpack stealing by
halfway point
you carried me, now I will carry you
to the top of this damn hill
we assimilate
keeping lonely midnight vigils as we
make myths out of our memories
as we relive the past
looking at the photos, raising a glass
consecrated to those passed
and failing to adjust
going back to the closest thing we can find
wearing civvies this time
and slinging up our rifles
we go seeking the warrior culture
trying to find the past in the future
we return again
to the land we left where we try to find
that which we left behind back there
trying to find that moment again
but the only ones
who never truly left that moment were
the ones who joined with it forever
in an instant’s flash
in the crushing overpressure or in
a single shot in a darkened room
or the ones who dived
into a substance-abuse death spiral
or health crisis or car crash
they left the moment
only to become one with it later
in another time and place
these are the only ones forever in the moment now
we drink to it
dream of joining it, give it labels like
Valhalla, Hall of the Slain
but it’s back there
in that old, dusty Ramadi graveyard
the rooftops and the airfields
back there in the places
where we bided our time in the moments
that we shared and that defined us
This first appeared in The Havok Journal on May 24, 2014.
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