Posted on 09/19/2006 8:35:48 AM PDT by concretebob
What would you do differently if you knew that you were going to die today? Really knew it? In the 'normal' world, we may wonder about death every so often, usually after watching a disturbing movie, or maybe after we see an obituary of someone we once knew in the paper. But, unless you are grappling with a serious illness, or wondering what that semi is doing crossing into your rain-soaked lane at 4 a.m., or have decided that skydiving this weekend might be a great way to "bond" with your new girlfriend, it probably doesn't seem like a real possibility to you.
But here in Baghdad it’s much different.
This is your midterm exam for Combat Existentialism 101. Please ensure that you use a Number 2 pencil to answer all questions. Completely color in all answer bubbles; do not check or tick the answers. Please answer all 'Other' questions using ten words or less. Reaction time is a factor in this test, so please pay attention and answer as quickly as you can. You may begin.........now.
1. It is the morning of the day on which you will die. For breakfast, you:
(a.) have a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee that your wife cooked for you in the kitchen of your Victorian townhouse
(b.) enjoy eggs benedict on a rice cake with a side helping of tofu granola and wheatgrass, and a steaming mug of soy latte double decaf.
(c.) smoke five Camel Light cigarettes and chug a lukewarm can of 'Colombian taste' coffee that was really made in a factory in Saudi Arabia.
(d.) noon is too late for breakfast
2. It is the morning of the day on which you will die. After breakfast, you:
(a.) decide that you are going to have a good day.
(b.) decide that, once again, you are going to have a shitty day and vow to make the little bastards at the office / in the classroom / upstairs pay accordingly.
(c.) take your usual choice of antidepressant and hope for the best.
(d.) Other (explain)_____________________________________
3. It is the morning of the day on which you will die. You are deciding on what to wear for the occasion. You:
(a.) Put on your best suit and tie, and pick a really nice boutonnière from your rose garden in the backyard.
(b.) today is casual day at the cubicle farm.
(c.) Put on the same tan and gray digitized uniform you've worn for a week, accented with 240 rounds of 5.56mm ball ammo and three 40mm grenades
(d.) the ashram has only one kind of robe.
4. It is the morning of the day on which you will die. You spend the day:
(a.) at the park with your children, making sure they know how much you care about them.
(b.) making passionate love with your significant other.
(c.) blowing the $2345.75 in your checking account on beer and hookers.
(d.) briefly looking at an old Polaroid of the wife you haven't seen in four months, before you go cruising through an Arab neighborhood filled with raw sewage and foreign people that would like nothing else than to gleefully chop your head off.
I could go on with this for some time, but I think that will do. Just something strange that popped into my head on patrol yesterday, inspired, I think, by a Harlan Ellison short story and a John D. MacDonald book which I read years ago when I was a kid. Not sure why they are reappearing in the cramped interior of a HMMWV in Baghdad, but they did.
It struck me a couple times recently, waking up in the afternoon of Day 4 of the midnight patrol schedule, and looking at the bleary world with the uber-clarity of the terminally sleep deprived--what if this really is the last day I'm here? Would I talk to the guy behind the counter of the store where I buy my morning coffee the same way, if I knew I will die in 4.5 hours? Would I choose to spend the last few hours on Earth 'reading the articles' in a dog-eared Playboy in the stifling and odoriferous comfort of a porta-john, or yelling at a co-worker because his TPS report is late (again) or haranguing my daughter over the phone on the crucial and therefore expensive details of raising her children?
Yeah, I know, we've all heard this crap before, and probably better enunciated than this, but it has been a bit of a revelation for me when thinking and feeling it in real terms.
On to more interesting topics. Yesterday was the one of the most action packed and enjoyable days on patrol yet. We got shot at with automatic weapons by a whole bunch of people on not one, but two separate occasions, and got to watch a giant gasoline-hauling semi truck explode into flames in the middle of a gunbattle on a four lane highway. It was cool, and only a couple of people got killed, none of them anyone we know, or even American, so it's okay and you can fully enjoy the spectacle without feeling guilty.
Yesterday started with a particularly silly morning; silly in the British sense of being witty and quite droll, and thankfully not in the U.S. military sense of being subjected to the latest 'bright idea cook-off' of some West Point graduate.
We're now so used to prepping our trucks for mission that the whole chore takes about 30 minutes, compared to the 2 hours that it used to. I was in an unreasonably good mood, primarily brought about by the aforementioned downing of cigarettes and Saudi cappuccino-in-a-can; that and the three hours of sleep the night before.
I was doing my best British Brigadier impersonation, lecturing my soldiers (note: start Sandhurst accent now) about "how we must venture out into the Uncharted Sands of Mesopotamia in Service to the our beloved Queen, and how we must be particularly Vigilant in case we should stumble upon any Wogs. Said Wogs are Particularly Nasty Blighters, and should be Avoided at all costs, due to their affinity for High Explosives and Buggering Sheep. These Wogs can by identified by the brightly colored Tea Cozies that they have taken to wearing upon their Heads, for reasons as yet unknown, but no doubt having to do with their worship of someone known as Allah. I am not personally acquainted with this Chap myself, but am Quite Suspicious of him, since I never met anyone with such a name while at Eaton."
This went on for for quite some time, and even took a detour through the 'How to Defend Yourself from an Attack by Fresh Fruit" routine, until my soldiers, having been neglected as small children and not properly indoctrinated in Monty Python, begged me to stop. At which point I painted a "Flying Tigers" shark mouth on the 'rhino' mounted to the bumper of our HMMWV, and announced to the squad leader that we were ready for combat.
Since the Wog has blown up most of the Main Supply Routes (MSRs) in our little slice of East Baghdad, most of the major roads have been designated as Black, which means that we can't drive on them. This is actually pretty cool, since it means that we have to drive through the mahallahs. My squad leader was one of the few NCOs to pay attention during our training in Kuwait, and, like me, is a strong believer in Not Being Predictable. This means that a drive from one checkpoint to another, which used to take 5-10 minutes using the main roads, now takes 2 hours, as we wind through the back alley ways, side streets and sewer tunnels (a la the original Italian Job--these are some seriously big sewers, you should see them) in order to avoid the locals setting out unpleasant surprises in our path.
I like it because the ever-present threat of a shooting ambush at very close quarters helps to keep me from dozing off in the heat of the day, and because we get to see how the locals live and thus make fun of them. My driver loves it because he gets to run over small animals and the occasional unwashed toddler, while attempting to splash their parents with the raw sewage running down the middle of the street. My gunner hates it because the children throw glass bottles at him, since we are the tail end vehicle. The driver and I dissolve into cackles of laughter every time a new shower of glass tinkles down from the turret hatch, and then are subjected to him cursing and carrying on about it for the next four blocks, until he finally calms down. At which point it happens again. I keep a running score going on our platoon radio net for the enjoyment of everyone in the convoy.
At one point, we emerged from a wreckage-strewn alleyway, festooned with telephone wires that had been ripped out of various walls by our radio antennae, covered with splatters of fecal matter and broken bottle glass, only to find that we were right where we should be, which was Checkpoint xx. This is 'Crazy's Checkpoint', if you remember from before. I haven't seen Crazy since then, nor any of his squadmates, so I guess they have been assigned to yet another strategically vital concrete overpass elsewhere in the Greater Baghdad area. Hopefully he is okay, and is somewhere out there, wildly masturbating to the silicon beauties of Maxim. Another group of Public Order Battalions have been assigned to this checkpoint. We pulled up to say hello.
You never hear the one that gets you, and I had heard all three, so there was no cause for undue haste.
We thought.
[This is part 1 of a 3-part ON Point Exclusive. Written by an MP stationed in Baghdad who wishes to remain anonymous.]
Interesting how all these antonymous sources are both so obviously very old men and so very literary oriented. Curious why anyone with this amazing level of literary skill stayed in the military instead of going to Hollywood?
Yeah, knowing several people which had their actual boots on the ground THIS sounds WAY wrong:
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My driver loves it because he gets to run over small animals and the occasional unwashed toddler, while attempting to splash their parents with the raw sewage running down the middle of the street. My gunner hates it because the children throw glass bottles at him, since we are the tail end vehicle.
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What idiot would LOVE to run over animals or TODDLERS??? Something doesn't pass the smell test here...
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