Cynthetiq

I was sitting with Azharen chatting and catching up while looking at personal emails.

When I finished with them I checked my AOL spam folder, and found an email from my cousin about another cousin. Smitty I correspond with from time to time but the email she forwarded to me was from a cousin I had not seen since 8th grade. We are the same age. We had similar childhoods. Our paths crossed whenever our families would get together.

I was not aware that he was an officer in the Army. I had not not tried to contact him in several years and the last time I was in Hawaii he was away. I remember meeting him for the first time as kids. We hit it off playing and carousing as young boys do.

And here was an email that he wrote a couple of days ago regarding his tour in Iraq.

I read it aloud so that I could share it with Azharen. Tears welled up in my eyes as I read the story to him. My thoughts followed his pictures that his words painted.

He and I are no longer kids. I recalled to Azharen remembering the first time I met my cousin and the horse race toy we played with. I remember the last time I had seen him when I was in Hawaii at 13/14. I still have some innocence left, but he has not. I wept for joy that I know he is safe and sound after not ever knowing that he toured Iraq. He gave me a perspective that I would have never seen or heard from the media. I want to keep it close to me and the only way I know how to do that is to write about it in my journal.

It gives me faith that humanity is there. That positve forces are still in motion.

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Hi Everybody,

It's been five months since I left Iraq. It has also been 1 year and 5 days since I came very close to being killed by a suicide bomber in Fallujah and with Memorial Day coming up, I've been thinking a lot about my time over there. I've had so many people ask me what it was like over there and I've never really given anyone a straight answer. I always laugh it off by just saying, "It sucked" or "It was hot".

Everyone's experience over there was different. You also have to remember that I'm what's called a "combat support" officer. I'm not an infantry guy whose sole job in life is to close with and destroy the enemy. Every time I left the wire, I was only thinking about survivability, I wasn't looking for a fight. I can't imagine what the real infantry guys went through day after day.

I've been shot at with bullets and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs). I've even been in a C-130 when a surface to air missile nearly hit us. I've been mortared so many times that I could tell the difference in the "thump, thump" sound of the mortar rounds to determine whether I should run for cover as fast as I could or simply keep drinking my coffee. And then there was the suicide bomber. An Iraqi wearing a belt loaded with explosives ran towards the Iraqi police station in Fallujah where we were meeting with the local police. He got within 10 feet of the door before he was shot by an American soldier guarding the door. But then the belt exploded and both were killed instantly. I had shared a cigarette break with that soldier not 15 minutes prior to that incident.

I've seen the professionalism and heroism of American soldiers every day. I've looked into the eyes of soldiers, MY soldiers, as they prepared to move out on convoys wearing old flak jackets and they knew full well that there was a good chance they would get shot at and those jackets weren't going to do a damn thing to help them. They never complained, never said they weren't going to go. They knew had a job to do, and they did it. They knew if they refused to go, somebody else would. I've also looked into the eyes of a soldier wearing the new Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) immediately after he got shot in the chest and the plate stopped the bullet cold. After he picked himself up, you have never seen a look of bewilderment, and then followed by a look of relief in your entire life. I've also performed first aid on a soldier who was hit by shrapnel right below his IBA and that vest was pretty much the only thing keeping his gut from spilling out.

Because he saw my rank on my helmet, he thought I was a doctor. I saw his look of fear and panic turn somewhat into relief because he thought he was in capable hands. He just kept calling me "Doc" and I just kept telling him that he was going to be all right and did what I was trained to do. I never told him that I really had no real idea what the hell I was doing. heard later that he pulled through.

I've also seen and done things that I'm not proud of. I've seen Saddam's mass gravesites and cried, but I've also laughed at dead men. In the aftermath of a firefight, I overheard a soldier complain about having to help clean up the corpse of an Iraqi shot in the head and in a reference to "Pulp Fiction", mutter "Why the hell am I on brain detail?" Instead of scolding him, I laughed with him. I've given instructions to my vehicle driver not to stop if a child is in the road. You see, the insurgents will tell a kid that American convoys will always stop and give out candy and clean water. So if you see a kid standing in the middle of the street, that's a good sign that you'll get hit with an IED. The convoy stops, the insurgents set the bomb off, and Americans get killed. If running over a child saves Americanlives, then that's what has to happen. I've questioned my own sanity when I saw for the first time an Iraqi insurgent get shot. Instead of feeling remorse or sadness, I distinctly remember having a thought pop into my head about how different it was from the movies.

There was no staggering, no theatrics, he just kinda flopped down. That kinda brings me to another point. I've also noticed that people have looked at the pictures of prisoner abuse and wonder how seemingly normal Americans can do something like that…how they can treat other humans in such a manner.

In absolutely no way can I ever justify what those soldiers did. They are disgrace to my Army, they crossed the line, and they should be punished. The only explanation I can give as to the reason why they did what they did is that in war it is very easy to dehumanize the enemy. In order to rationalize the awful things you have to do and somehow get through it without going insane is to make the enemy "not human". Those MPs took it to the extreme, but I realize that I found myself saying, "God, I hate this entire country." Or, "Fuck 'em, they're just Iraqis". You get so tired of being scared, so tired of being frustrated at the situation around you, so tired of living with the constant fear of getting killed, that you sometimes just want to take it out on somebody. Added to that is the fact that you didn't really know who the enemy was. They didn't where uniforms. That normal looking Iraqi walking down the street could be the guy who turns around and pops a cap in your head. You just never knew… it was hard to differentiate between "good guys" and "bad guys". So the easiest (and safest) thing to do is assume they're all bad. I recall being in my vehicle at a stop, my weapon down but ready. I remember looking a man in the eye, and him looking at me in the eye. I couldn't see where his hands were or if he had a weapon or not. I remember hoping, praying even, that he would make a move so I could put a round in his chest. Just to be able to do something, to fight back instead of just running for cover during the latest mortar attack.

I realized that my attitude towards Iraqis had started to change, so what I started doing was going out with the Civil Affairs guys who were rebuilding schools. Seeing the kids and doing something positive was great and put things in perspective. The coalition really is doing a lot of good things out there, though you'll never see that on the news. I made them laugh and gave them candy and tried to teach them baseball. (They only know soccer, so they ended up kicking the ball instead of batting). A million times I've waved back at them when they called out in the only English they know, "Hey Mister!"

I've taken a picture (with her father's permission) of a little 9-year-old Iraqi girl so beautiful that she belongs on the cover of National Geographic. Her shy smile and utter delight at the prospect of going to school for the first time in her life is something that will remain with me forever. (And by the way, her uncle was killed and her father imprisoned and tortured by Saddam for being a part of the 1991 Shia uprising.) I've seen children look at us in utter amazement, thinking we were like some kind of swaggering "robo-cops" in our helmets, body armor and sunglasses…ah yes, the sunglasses.

Iraqis really don't wear sunglasses, except for Saddam's Bathist henchmen. So there was a real live, honest-to-God rumor that the black, wrap-around sunglasses that were issued to American soldiers had "x-ray vision" and could see through women's clothing. It's not that they're stupid, but they believe Americans have the technology to do anything we want. X- ray glasses were certainly within the realm of our technology. So the first thing we did when approaching Iraqis (especially females) was to take off our sunglasses, just in case. But the kids would love to try on those glasses. You should see the look of disappointment when they peered through them and the only thing that happened was that everything got darker. I actually had a child put on glasses, then take them, look at me and (through his father's translation) ask me to "please turn on my glasses".

I guess I've seen it all, if not all then certainly I've seen a lot. I've seen soldiers act like heroes and soldiers act like total morons. I've seen sergeants who've been in the Army 20 years cry like babies and I've seen 19-year-old infantry soldiers so hardened that they laugh at the destruction around them. I've been the new guy who wore his body armor out to the latrine, and then I've been the vet who heard the sound of a stray bullet that I knew wasn't remotely close enough turn around to a bunch of new guys to ask them if they heard it, only to find out that they all dove behind a retaining wall. ("Hey guys, it's going to be a REALLY long day if y'all keep doing that.")

So I'm home now, back at my "normal" Army job. I think I'm doing okay. I still have an occasional nightmare. I hate being in crowds, I find myself scanning each person to determine if they are a threat. I specially freak out when my car is stopped on the street and someone walks near it. It's little things in my everyday life that sometimes take me back there for a moment or two. If I'm driving and see trash or debris in the road, I'll automatically swerve to miss it because that's where the bad guys put IEDs. And then I wonder how long I'll keep doing that, or if it'll ever stop. Seeing news footage of Iraq is hard, because then I can put myself right back there…the sights, the sounds and the feelings of fear.

Anyway, that's what my experience was like over there. Like I said, every soldier's experience was different. For you civilians out there, this is your war too I guess. We all have a stake in it. I don't mind anyone forwarding this email on to anyone who might be interested, as is often the case with emails. The only thing I ask is that you delete any reference to my full name when forwarding it on…you can say "my brother" or "my friend" it's not that there's anything classified, it's just some things are personal. And God only knows where forwarded emails end up. I just hope this brings you some perspective to what's going on over there.

- Anonymous Soldier

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