Roy Scranton - War Porn

“You read about this fucking Moqtada militia shit?”

“The protests?”

“Fucking Moqtada al-Sadr and his goddamned Mahdi Army. Shit’s going crazy. Najaf, Karbala, Basra. Everywhere. Even here in Sadr City.”

“Fallujah, too.”

“Yeah, but that’s fucking Sunnis.”

“Man, I can’t wait to get back to Germany,” Sergeant Chandler said. “I got this girl there, we’re emailing—she just emailed me some fucking naked pictures of herself. I don’t even hardly know her.”

After dinner we went to the hadji coffee shop for cappuccinos, then went back to the tents.

Staff Sergeant Gooley stood waiting. “Where the fuck were you guys?”

“Same place we go every day, Sergeant.”

“We got a platoon briefing in two mikes.”

So we went over and Staff Sergeant Smith and Lieutenant Krauss sat on MRE boxes and told us we needed to sign out with our chief whenever we left the tents, and also we had to get all our ammo together to be collected. They told us the nearest shower trailer was off-limits because it was broken. They said Second BCT had been extended and deployed to Najaf to assist putting down the Mahdi uprising, but as of yet nothing had changed about our redeployment. We were also told a convoy was going to BIAP tomorrow and they asked for volunteers. Sergeant Chandler and I looked at each other, then away. Sergeant Nash raised his hand. Four days.

Got up and did PT. Read the news. Moqtada al-Sadr had called for a general uprising against the CPA.

That night, as I was coming back from the showers, I could see the guys returning from the convoy. I ran into Sergeant Nash, strung out and sweaty, carrying a load of ammo into our tent.

“’Sup, Sergeant. What happened?”

“We got fucking ambushed is what the fuck happened.”

“Shit. Everyone okay?”

“Yeah, it’s a fucking wonder.”

“Get anybody?”

“They ambushed us and fucking ran. Two RPGs and then small arms. We had the fucking colonel with us and the stupid fucker stops the convoy in the middle of the kill zone and gets out and starts directing traffic. Like we’re a fucking I don’t know what. I almost shot the fucker myself.”

Lieutenant Juarez gave the briefing that night. He told us about adjustments to the ROE. The Mahdi Army could be identified by a green armband or a green flag. They were considered combatants, and we were to engage them with deadly force.

That night we woke to another mortar attack. One explosion, then one more. I looked at Sergeant Chandler in the bunk opposite. He looked sideways at all the other guys slowly getting up and putting on their gear, then rolled over and went back to sleep. There was another explosion, then I went back to sleep, too.

Got up and went to the gym then to breakfast then the internet.

Each platoon designated a counter responsible for collecting all our rounds and grenades. We each kept one thirty-round mag each, but everything else went in cans to hand over to 1st Cav.

At around three we went to the gym and lifted, then to dinner, then to the coffee shop for cappuccinos. After that we came back and played volleyball and watched videos till it got dark.

About twenty minutes later, we were rousted for stand-to.

“Command’s expecting an attack on the FOB tonight,” Lieutenant Krauss said, “so gear up and stand by.”

We got all gussied up then stood around bitching about having only thirty rounds apiece. When the LT came back, he picked five guys, including me, to ride in the back of C27. We were assigned to secure the northeast corner of the tents. Another five were put in C26 and sent to the southwest corner, and everyone else was QRF.

“They’re expecting some kind of concentrated attack, so eyes and ears open. Maintain radio contact. If you see something, fucking radio it up first. The last thing we need is a friendly-fire incident.”

There was some shooting far away, a lot of shooting closer, a couple more pops very close, then quiet. After about ten minutes or so, we heard a barrage of machine-gun fire from the south wall.

Then the shooting died out and we waited another forty or fifty minutes before the call came to stand down. We got back to the tent and asked what happened but nobody knew, so we went to bed.

Thursday. Our Big Day. Chalk 1 got up and got our shit together and staged at 0545 for an SP time of 0630. Our convoy of five-tons was ready, but our escorts hadn’t shown, so they told us stand by. At about 0730, they told us to go get chow and report back by 0900.

Bullwinkle, Sergeant Chandler, Sergeant Nash, and I went to breakfast. We ate a big meal and grabbed extra fruit and rolls and boiled eggs for later.

“I can’t fucking wait till I touch down on German soil. I swear to God I’m gonna fall on my knees and kiss the ground.”

“I’m gonna kiss the first fucking German girl I see right on the lips. Just grab her.”

“Shit, I’m gonna kiss the first fucking German I see no matter what. Klaus, Dieter, Heinrich, Adolf. I give a fuck.”

“You know, we’ve been here so long, that ain’t even gay.”

Bulldog Battery had already sent out their first chalk all the way to the airfield at Balad. We watched the last company of 82nd Airborne roll out.

We waited until 0850, then found Staff Sergeant Gooley and asked what was up. “Stand by,” he said. “Stand by until further notice.”

We waited. Some guys smoked, some guys slept. At 1015 they told us mount up. We cheered and loaded our gear in the back of the five-ton, clambered aboard, then waited, grinning like retards at lunchtime.

“Let’s go!” Sergeant Nash shouted.

“What the fuck’s the holdup?”

“Can you drive a five-ton?”

“I can, but I don’t have a flight manifest.”

At ten minutes to eleven, Staff Sergeant Gooley came out and told us to download our gear and take it back to the tents.

“What the fuck, Sergeant?” Bullwinkle shouted.

“Your LT’ll brief you. Download your gear.”

“Negative, Sergeant. Negative on that.”

“What the fuck’s going on, Sergeant?”

“You’ll be briefed by your platoon. Don’t make me tell you again.”

We dispersed, dragging our bags behind us. Inside Second Platoon’s tent, Lieutenant Krauss stood down at one end talking. He was saying words but not words. I couldn’t hear anymore. The air was like water, like I couldn’t breathe, like if somebody bumped me wrong I’d slide floating across the sky.

It sounded like something ninety days or until complete. Something about Karbala. Something mission essential. Something about not wanting to hear any fucking bitching, because we were soldiers and we were called on by our commander-in-chief, the President of the United States of America, and we would do our duty with pride.

The fog rolled in off the sea, clouding the trees, closing in on the mountain so that when I woke it was as if from sleep to waking dream, a mirage of insubstantial gray pierced by great black spires. I’d make myself coffee and inhale the chill air and roll a cigarette and think.

I’d sit at the formica table in the trailer and, staring through the mesh behind the slatted windows into the fog, drink my coffee and scratch poems onto notebook paper, poems about the way memory shifts in and out of focus, the way we imagine things that never happened and remember other things wrong, the daily reconstruction work of being, who I am, what I’m doing, how can I be the same I was before and who am I tomorrow.

Sometimes I’d go out into the mist and listen to all the green held thick in the moist air, my palm on the trunk of a tree just to feel the heft of it. Sometimes a deer would come through, wild and wary, and I would fill with longing for the wholeness of animal life.