Roy Scranton - War Porn

“Sergeant, we’re not prepared to cordon off a whole…”

“Sir, we need to clear them fucking buildings,” Staff Sergeant Smith shouted up at him.

Krauss backed down. “Alright, Sergeant. Take some men and clear the buildings.”

We spent the next two hours waiting while the clearing teams went through the cluster of buildings along the highway, kicking in doors and screaming at hadjis. They didn’t find any weapons. After a while, Lieutenant Krauss called off the search, and we reformed the convoy, drove to CAHA Wardog, and ate lunch.

That night and the next day it was all anybody talked about, who shot what who where. I didn’t feel any better and my soul didn’t bleed like the wounds of Christ. What happened was the days got colder. I drew new rounds to replace the ones I’d fired. We ran patrols. We set up TCPs. We watched more Sex and the City, cleaning our rifles and arguing about who’d give better head, Charlotte or Carrie, and who we’d like to fuck up the butt.

remember, you are not alone

We got a speech from Captain Yarrow telling us what a great job we’d done. He told us we were transitioning to patrols now, covering neighborhoods southwest of BIAP, and training in Close Quarters Combat.

I was scheduled for environmental leave toward the end of December and started counting days till I left.

We practiced kicking in doors. We learned to follow each other through a house, checking in closets and behind furniture, leading with our guns, shouting “Clear,” “Door Left,” and “Stairs.” We learned to cover each other across open spaces, take out suicide bombers, turn and shoot without aiming.

On Thanksgiving President Bush came. We were out on a patrol that night, driving village streets in the rain and planning on MREs for dinner.

We watched Top Gun, Pumping Iron, and The Shawshank Redemption. We wrestled, played pool and ping-pong, played touch football in the parking lot, argued and laughed and got in fights. Reading kept playing “Gimme the Light” and that “Birthday” song.

One day I walked up to the CP and First Sergeant Beaman came out grinning. “They captured Saddam,” he said. “Caught like a rat in a trap.”

“Great,” I said. “We can go home now, right?”

“It’ll be a real turning point,” he said.

I nodded. “Now all we gotta do is find those WMDs.”

“Hey, Wilson,” he said. “Get down and push.”

“Hooah, First Sarnt.” I dropped and pushed until he told me to stop.

I decided to quit smoking. Attack Battery got hit with an RPG out on patrol, mostly minor injuries but one of the guys had to be evacked to Germany. Somebody in another unit was run over by a tank. I cleaned my rifle and waited for Christmas.

4 to 71 at 122nd. 9:59. Take the 10 to the 15, change downtown to the 77 and get off at 21st. 10:12.

I talk to my ex-girlfriend and we decide to try again. The trouble starts almost immediately, with my car’s clutch grinding out as I drive in over the coast range from Newport. I make it to my mom’s in Corvallis, but going to Portland the next day the clutch drops with a thunk, and I have to get the car towed back to town, where it sits in my mom’s driveway growing a skin of brown needles.

It’s a sign, of course—the sky full of signs that fall.

Things don’t improve in Portland. I take the bus across town to a 7-Eleven, fill out an application, take the bus back across town to a nursing home, fill out another application. Rain falls, and I go to the library to search the internet for jobs and wind up shuffling the stacks, reading The Coming Anarchy and The Clash of Civilizations.

4 to the 72 at 82nd. 11:37. 12:19.

We go to a dinner party with some friends of hers. We eat tempeh stir-fry and drink IPA and talk about jobs, the local theater scene, and good, cheap places to eat. After dinner we pass a joint and the conversation gets grim, somebody says they can’t stop thinking about on TV those bodies falling. Did we think everything had changed? Would they attack the Mall of America? We talk about blowback and globalization and how, yeah, on the one hand it seemed maybe we’d sort of caused it. Maybe we wanted it to happen. We talk about troop movements in the Hindu Kush.

3:58. 14 to 9 to 60th. 4:09. 5:23. Home.

I make pasta. We drink wine. The money dribbles away. I apply at Goodwill, Burgerville, Powell’s, Denny’s.

Thanksgiving comes and goes and Christmas too. Against the rain and winter skies, the garish decorations and relentless commerce bring not cheer but constant reminder of my downward spiral. No joy, no carols, not even Santa can save me.

One day, after spending two hours filling out a personality test at Walmart, I go down the strip mall to an Army recruiting office. The recruiter starts my packet. He asks me about drug use and criminal record. He tells me about bonuses and college money. He asks me what I want to do and where I want to go.

wounds to the stomach, prosecuted—many have moved to the cities, particularly Mosul, Kirkuk, and Sulaymaniyah Operation Resolute Sword divided into the Shi’a majority in the south and the Sunni who live mostly in the central part of the country around Baghdad have not been assimilated into the population are “Marsh Arabs” who inhabited the lower Tigris and Euphrates urban centers with Baghdad being Iraq my spear

population of two

already pleaded to be those targets on the edge of the gallbladder and transverse colon; only those acts which can be said to be half measures, the national Kalashnikovs

with a gunshot wound through the rectum; and two with possible war seen war that will be fourteen more casualties arrived Operation Sidewinder CIA secret prisons at the military’s Iraqi Advanced Trauma Life Support protocols for the administration of Bush’s decision was over the last six

sometimes they arrested all adult males present the

US citizen

military must adhere wholly by the low-value treatment often including pushing Saddam

punching and kicking and striking with rifles heart of the cover of darkness Operation Iron Saber after 2130, the White House by remote control, we’ve ravaged disarmament in the early morning hours Thursday they’re apparently exploiting the Arab fear of dogs and you, the city and two key avenues, DETAINEE-14 and a totally widowed mother—he, Astyanax, which meant the questions of the local Coalition less than a meter across and devoid of any more but the daintiest and choicest of morsels

surgical

burned down tired and went to sleep, he would lie

knowing neither want nor care, whereas the version here is not simply the General might salvage judged (myself) and I do not make

filled with water, linking unstable

My spear! Surely I fear the prisoner’s head and do good and the people, the attacks brought coming, there is no doubt therein, Coalition forces in the early OPERATION IRON JUSTICE turning but no gunfire in the government and the challenge upon me, I will answer you and defend the world TV from open rebellion: in the north, Mosul was a close call and over time the Bradley fades. The US-trained Iraqi police enter hell abased. Allah is striking selected targets of wounded and many dead. He urges them to surrender OPERATION IVY NEEDLE the west seems nervous, boys, most surely the opening stages

police stations other small attacks intense heat

center and the Pentagon, he and his team Allah, your Lord, Babylon where the rebellion is OPERATION RED DAWN another road

Saddam smiled, white teeth shining. A common picture in a common frame, by law others like it hung all over. Thought or feeling made no change—hating the picture was like hating the sun. Even here, Qasim thought, in our musty office: Saddam Saddam Saddam. This one’s old, brown and fading, creased along one edge, the frame’s glass cracked at the corner. Surely we should have it replaced. The picture, the desks, the floors, the walls.