"Haaaaay!" he drawls, "How are ya balloon knot?"
Oh my fucking god....
It's B., my Marine buddy, calling from Afghanistan.
We haven't spoken since he left in late April. His phone call, from somewhere in Afghanistan no less, almost knocks me over.
It's o'dark-thirty Sunday morning where he is, still hot, dusty and annoying. His voice is different than I'm used to, strained yet trying to sound happy. Why would someone calling from a war zone try to sound happy? I wander my living room in circles listening to him talk for over 45 minutes.
There is a toll exacted on every human being for participating in a war, regardless of how strong they may seem. I remember before he left the edge of excitement in his voice and his posture, how he was amped up for combat and ready to get to work. Now he sounds weary and ready to collapse although he's only part way through his deployment. He's already watched three of his friends die, one taken out almost right in front of him by a sniper bullet to the neck. "That could've been me." he relates as his initial reaction, then immediately feels ashamed as he watches his friend drop to the ground. The complexity of emotion is too much for him to speak of, much less untangle.
He tells me how a guy in his unit went out on routine patrol and accidentally stepped on an IED. Just to refresh the memory, insurgents usually plant IEDs to destroy vehicles, so a lone human stepping on one, minus thousands of pounds of steel, is instantly fatal and quite nasty. He tells me of the recovery team that comes in hours later to deal with the aftermath, how they only recovered his buddy's mangled torso. He tells me the recovery team spent days combing the area for human remains and how they collected every scrap they could find, compiled it all according to regulation, and sent every piece together back to the U.S. for proper burial. All I could think of was, "Who the hell would want that job?"
They have a phrase for someone who dies in such a way - the "pink mist." Sounds so much like a dream, like something from Fairy Land.
Sometimes I wonder what it is that I've done to collect so many military friends, and how it is that they seem so comfortable relating to me the most gruesome details of their war experience. For B., the Marine, telling me nasty details is almost a hobby but I'm usually more accustomed to listening to him relate his most recent female conquests in gruesome detail, not death and dismemberment. I'm comfortable listening, but sometimes at the end of the day, I feel as if someone has handed me a bucket of shit and I have no place to put it down. What am I supposed to do with this information? How do I cope with knowing what I know? I'm NOT a Marine or a Soldier or an Airman or a Sailor. I didn't sign up for this and I don't always have the skills to deal with what I've been told. However, I feel like it pales in comparison to actually having to BE there and witness these things first hand. The least I can do is be a friend and listen, because allowing someone to talk freely about their pain is helping them to release even just the smallest part of it.
The least YOU can do is read about it and grieve along with me.
I retain the memory of so many horror stories: the friend in the 2nd Battle of Fallujah who watched as 11 men in his unit were killed, then held two of them in his arms as they took their dying breath; the friend who was part of the invasion force in Iraq back in 2003, driving in a column of Humvees into Baghdad and seeing the desert and the city streets littered with bodies along the way; another friend, so haunted and still so traumatized....every night he dreams the same dream, of an accident, reliving night after night the sight of his friend pinned underneath a Humvee that rolled on top of him; the friend who had to climb out of a tank in the middle of a firefight to retrieve ammo from the outside of the vehicle; or the friend who stood next to a buddy as he was gunned down by machine gun fire, watching the bullets tear through his brain, who then, in a fit of rage he barely remembers, loaded a grenade launcher and blew the perpetrators and their vehicle to kingdom come less than 50 feet away.
These are the stories I can recall just off the top of my head. There are others, some too personal to relate because they are ones that involve MY friends and loved ones, people I have cared for who were tortured, injured, killed, etc. Those are stories I keep to myself, that are stored deep in my soul that may never reach the light of day again.
So as B. spoke, I listened attentively and took in every detail, not just of his story but of his retelling; of his tone of voice, the words he chose, the way he retold the incidents. All of those facets, to me, tell the entire story from his point of view, a war from the perspective of the one who is fighting it. If you are quiet, you can hear the stories just like his all around you. Open your ears to them and alleviate someone's suffering.
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