I called home a few nights before, after waiting in the rain over an
hour for a phone to open up. January marked the first full rotation
after the invasion and hundreds of soldiers were passing through camp.
Weary faces in faded uniforms announced news of homecoming while newly
arrived soldiers touched base before heading in to the unknown. Out
here you find that the signal connecting voices across continents is
fragile.
Every word spoken across the line was heard. If you talk about
sleeping on a cot in a dusty tent, a silent operator will sympathize.
If you say the food is surprisingly good, he will quietly disagree.
Yet if you begin to hint to at where you are he'll just as easily
disconnect the call. Suddenly a wooden bench in a communications
shelter is infinitely further from the safety and comforts of modern
life.
Our convoy left camp after twenty-one days in country for the road
north. We staged one last time at the edge of Kuwait before the early
morning border crossing. It smelled like oil. The temperature fell so
low I thought I saw frost on the sand. I found a way to stay off the
ground by laying a medical stretcher across the rails in the cargo
space of my truck where I could bundle in my sleeping bag and try to
get a few hours of sleep. Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was the
anticipation of what lay on the road before us that kept me awake all
night. After resigning to a night without sleep, I preempted my alarm
and slung my rifle over my back at three-thirty in the morning.
Less than an hour later we were on the two-lane road heading north,
the location where Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait in what led to
Desert Storm. I was driving carefully, keeping my distance with the
Humvee in front of me, pointing my rifle out the window into the dark.
We had been informed that once we cross the “third berm” that means
we're in Iraq, and to lock and load. The narrow road winded sharply
through a sleepy cluster of buildings and a roadside booth with a
light on and no one inside. I reached behind me and grabbed an energy
drink from my stash and mixed the caffeine with adrenaline rushing
through my body.
“Where the hell is the third berm?” I asked the TC as the diesel
engine roared loudly while cold air rushed at my face. My eyes darted
at objects revealed by headlights, scanning for any sense of
orientation. “Lock and load.” I pulled back the charging handle,
releasing a round into the chamber and then flipped the selector
switch back to safe.
An orange glow that rose to incredible heights in the sky became more
intense by the time I reached for another Red Bull. We considered the
glow to be the rising sun then scrapped the idea of the sun rising at
four-thirty in the morning anywhere. Soon the landscape opened up to
reveal a sweeping rocky terrain that seemed endless, blanketed by a
warm ambiance from the fires stretching to the sky. My travel
companion stared in awe from the passenger seat, humbled at the sight
of massive forces of energy beyond one's control. Over the radio the
lieutenant revealed that we were passing through a field of oil
refineries burning impurities. Torches of war.
The fires faded behind us and the sun still hadn't risen, but the
truck's heater produced a meager amount of comforting warmth. In my
side view mirror I could see headlights from our convoy on the
otherwise empty road behind me, and ahead were red tail lights that
got smaller and smaller. Floating red dots that rose up and down in
waves on a pitch black space. The passenger quietly looked out the
window at nothing in particular. The canvas covering flapped
ceaselessly as I pressed the gas and followed the red dots into the
void.
Written by Andy Cary. Andy Cary served in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004 at the age of twenty. He holds a B.S. Information Science degree from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Andy is currently the front-end designer for a bootstrapped startup. Contact him at andy at geoyn dot us.
