Roy Scranton - War Porn

“Shut your cakehole, Thorton. You’re a fucking college professor?”

“Well, I was teaching but…”

“Alright, Professor, shut your goddamned mouth and push.”

Thorton was confused.

“You better dad-gummed start pushing right now, Private.”

Thorton dropped to his hands and pushed himself up and down.

“You.” Drill Sergeant Krugman turned, pinning me with his cold blue eyes.

I saw myself as he saw me, skinny-necked, bird-beaked, blinking anemically from behind clunky-framed Army-issue Basic Combat Glasses, and wanted nothing more than to erase myself from his vision, erase my poems, my hippie past, erase everything but the camouflage BDUs I wore and my determination to make it through.

“Nine-eleven,” I shouted, “Drill Sergeant!”

most iraqis see themselves as a persecuted people

and hold the coalition forces, as the occupying power,

responsible for resolving all personal and national problems

I sat in one of the ratty chairs scrounged to furnish Sergeant First Class Perry’s “reading room” and opened my MRE: Charms, Cappuccino packet, Country Captain Chicken, Pasteurized Jalapeño Cheese Food Spread, Wheat Snack Cracker, and Noodles with Butter Sauce. The Noodles and Charms went in the trash. The entrée I deboxed and slid in the MRE heater bag, into which I poured some water. Then I fit the bag and entrée back into the box and placed it all, as per instructions, “against a rock or something.” I leaned back, listening to the heater’s chemical hiss, my transistor radio’s crackle, and the BBC announcer’s accent, so civilized, doing cricket scores.

A boom sounded somewhere in the city and I jerked. Voices, talking, nothing—I wanted to be on mission or I wanted quiet. Sergeant First Class Perry was the same, which is why he’d commandeered this room, closed off as it was from the gymnasium that housed our new barracks.

The gym was a vast bedlam, divided into rough thirds by battery, about two hundred joes all told. The main areas were subdivided into loose platoon AOs, squads, and individual cubicles carved out with plywood and poncho liners.

A guy in Bravo Battery named Pizza had started walking around naked. When he got up one afternoon and pissed all over the floor, he was put on suicide watch. He screamed in the night, eerie piercing howls of terror. Villaguerrero punched some dude from Alpha, got his rank taken away, and was tasked to DIVARTY. Bullwinkle crashed a hemmet into the compound’s main gate, tearing open a fuel tank and spilling gas everywhere. Lieutenant Krauss had started talking to himself.

The Iraqi Governing Council was appointed. General Abizaid said our enemy was waging “a classical guerrilla-type campaign.” Rumsfeld said we’d turned a corner. The Jordanian embassy got hit by a suicide bomber—foreign insurgents, they said, probably al-Qaeda.

We were told to be on the lookout for an orange and white sedan.

I took out the entrée bag and cut it lengthwise. The smell of cheap curry and preservatives made me gag. I set the entrée aside to cool and squeezed Pasteurized Jalapeño Cheese Food Spread on a Wheat Snack Cracker.

Anxious music cut the cricket scores: “Breaking news at the BBC. Just minutes ago the UN headquarters in Baghdad came under attack. We go now live to Baghdad… Adrianna?”

“Hello, David. We’re live from Baghdad. US forces have sealed off a sizable area around the UN headquarters here in response to what initial reports seem to be saying was a suicide car bomb attack just moments ago. There’s no word yet on any casualties sustained inside the compound.

“The bomb was heard throughout the city, yet another in what has become a typical series of daily explosions. United Nations representatives and American military personnel have so far refused to confirm speculation as to the number of casualties or how the attack may have penetrated security, though it is worth mentioning that in recent days the UN had reduced its security profile and decreased the number of American soldiers stationed there.”

“Have any groups claimed responsibility for the attack, Adrianna?”

“No, David. Representatives have so far refused to speculate on which group if any might have carried out the attack, and there have not as yet been any statements made claiming responsibility. I can tell you that unidentified sources say the attack was committed with a truck bomb loaded with high explosives, and that the driver used an unguarded access road to enter the compound.”

I thought of the woman in heels trailing her complex scent. I ate my Wheat Snack Cracker.

“Adrianna, can you describe the situation there?”

“Well, David, it’s difficult to get close to the scene. US forces have sealed off the compound and are blocking the main roads with battle tanks. Soldiers are patrolling the area and there’s clearly an emergency plan in operation. It seems from here as if one corner of the UN building has collapsed entirely. Military personnel are currently searching the rubble for survivors.”

Sergeant First Class Perry came in the door and glanced at the radio. “What’s up, Wilson?”

“UN got bombed, Sergeant.”

“That so?”

“Suicide truck bomb.”

He grunted and sat on his cot. I ate my Country Captain Chicken.

aline the front and rear sight with the target

and squeeze the trigger

Our days at CAHA Wardog began when the hadji semis arrived. We worked them in pairs. One soldier would sling the other’s rifle and guard the driver. The other would climb into the cab and tear covers off seats, sweep through knickknacks on the dash, pull up floor mats, shout down, “What’s this, huh? What’s this for? What’s in here? You fucking hiding shit, huh? You think you’ll get over, do ya? Hey, look at this guy. He thinks he’s a fucking exception.”

After the cab, we’d search the truck’s exterior, checking the wiring, the engine, and the underside of the trailer bed. We’d check their fuel tanks. Finally we’d search the driver himself, patting him down along his man-dress, turning him around, making him take off his kaffiyeh.

“Do a complete search,” shouted Staff Sergeant Smith. “Check their junk. They could be fucking hiding bombs in their taint.”

The hadjis stank of old sweat. We made fun of them, scowling, shouting, laughing. We pointed at a fat one, mimed his belly, and asked, “Baby? You have baby?” His friends laughed and he blushed, frowning.

At the end of the day, we searched the hadji workers as they left. “What the fuck is this, you little fuckwad?”

I looked over. Burnett, towering over one of the hadjis, held an MRE bag in his fist, shaking it. He shoved the hadji, who stumbled back and put his hands up. “No Mista, no,” he bleated.

“This fucker’s got nine-mil rounds in his MRE bag. Trying to fucking steal from us.”

“Lock ’em down,” shouted Staff Sergeant Smith.

I threw my helmet on and grabbed my rifle.

“Mista,” one of them said. He put his hands out in supplication.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch! Uskut your ass!”

“Mista, Mista,” he said.

“Uskut, bitch!” I shouted, sticking my rifle in his face.

To my left, one of the hadjis got up and Burnett forced him back. There was a clack on my right as Stoat chambered a round, then a series of clacks as we all followed suit. The hadjis got panicky.

“No, Mista,” one said, climbing to his knees.

“Sit the fuck down, bitch!” I shouted, bringing my rifle to the ready. He sat back down.

One of the hadjis on my right whispered something to another and Stoat jumped at him: “No talking!”

Lieutenant Krauss called higher, waited for higher to call back. The shift foreman spoke some English, so they tried to use him to talk to the hadjis. We waited.