What’s in a Blog?
Eleven American soldiers were killed Tuesday on the road to Kufah when they were trapped in an ambush and insurgents burned their Hummers with incendiary devices, the Army reported today. Convoys had been traveling that route with relative safety since May. Insurgents loyal to Amir Harith al-Hassan, a dissident Shia mullah, claimed responsibility.
That was all I could find about any incidents on the road to Kufah. Only three of the dead were mentioned by name, because they were from New York, and the story had been carried in the New York Times. I didn’t find any mention of it in the Chicago papers, which surprised me since a Chicago youth had been the sole survivor of the attack. No wonder Tim was bitter about the American response to him and his comrades.
I was curled up on my living-room couch with the dogs and my laptop. The dogs still smelled faintly of lavender, and they were still tired enough from their morning run that they’d been content to chase tennis balls in the backyard while I made a pot of spaghetti. Mr. Contreras had shared it with me, even though I only put in mushrooms and peas instead of the tomato sauce he preferred. After dinner, he’d gone out to spend an evening with some of his remaining pals from his old local.
I turned to Chad’s blog. As John Vishneski had reported when he hired me, the early entries were filled with a kind of happy zest, as if Chad were writing up a road trip with his buddies. When he reached Iraq and was reporting in the blistering heat, you still got a sense of underlying good humor and a serious commitment to his country.
A few months ago I was playing football and going nowhere. Now, even though I know it’s hard on my folks and my friends, I feel like I’m serving my country and doing the right thing. So, naming no names, you guys back home think all I can do is drink beer. Let me tell you, here in Iraq I STILL drink beer, plus carry a hundred pounds of equipment into the desert. And do a hundred push-ups. Of course, football training didn’t hurt my conditioning, but I’d like to see the Bears forward line go through the workout we get here!
Even after his first year in Iraq, when he’d been under fire a number of times, he managed to keep his spirits up in his posts.
I keep thinking of that Tommy Lee Jones flick Men in Black. When we see men in black here, we know we’re in trouble, and I wish to God some alien would rise up out of the desert and put a big old tentacle around their necks. Or just one of our local little pets.
Vipers are a big deal here, something they never talked about during Basic. We have a snake guy here. His name is Herb, which is so right because a snake man is a herpetologist when he’s at home, so we call him Herbie the Herpes. But you’d better believe it’s in good fun because old Herpes is the go-to guy if you find one of his little friends crawling around your tent. He tries to get us to love them like they are our brothers in nature, but nothing doing for this infantryman!
Anyway, men in black came up on us in the middle of the night. We fought for three hours. I can’t tell you how scared I was, RPGs exploding around us, IEDs, the whole nine yards. How we didn’t lose anyone I don’t know, but we had five guys with big-time wounds, including Jesse Laredo. You’ve read about him if you’ve been with me from the get-go, great joker, littlest guy in the unit, but the strongest. Jesse would give his right arm for a buddy, and that’s just what he did tonight. So all of you reading this blog send a prayer Jesse’s way, and for his mom and dad in Albuquerque.
We love you, Jess, we’re praying for you. And a big thank-you prayer to our medics, too, in here with their choppers in no time, getting Jess and the rest of them off to the hospital ship out in the Gulf.
Chad wrote about collecting food and toys for Iraqi orphans during Ramadan, and setting up a football squad at his forward operating base. He wrote about warm showers on hot days, cold showers on cold rainy days, but it wasn’t until his third deployment that his tone turned bitter.
Maybe if I had a wife back home, I’d love my time Stateside the way the other guys do, but there’s no one who can really relate to what I’m going through here. My mom and dad read my posts, they send me care packages, but it’s not like having a wife or a buddy who stays up nights hoping I’ll make it through another day. I spent four months in Chicago, and every day got me longing more and more for the desert and the vipers. Everyone’s got their own life to live, I understand that, mortgages, dental bills, trips to the mall, but does anyone remember we’re fighting a war over here?