“Eight days. We’ve lost eight of our guys in eight days. That’s a guy a day. A guy with a family and loved ones back home. What the fuck are we doing here, man? Why the fuck are we fighting this war? It’s none of our damned business, anyway. We should be back at home, taking care of our own. We ain’t accomplishin’ nothin’. Dirt in our eyes. Dirt in our boots, under our damned fingernails. Nothing but dirt and mayhem all damned day long. Tell me…when is it gonna be done? When will it be enough? When the fuck can we go home, that’s what I want to know.” Rogers stabbed the sharp end of his throwing knife into the sole of his boot, squinting at the point where steel met rubber. No one said anything.
It was dark. The night out here in the desert was a lot like it was back on the island—very little light pollution meant stars for days. Stars, thick and clustered, brilliant and white for as far as the eye could see. The black mantle of the sky was different, too. Richer. Deeper somehow, like you could reach your hand into it, feel the texture of it against your fingertips, encompassing you.
Three clicks to the west, or there about, an orange flash popped against the shadow of the horizon, briefly throwing a ragged, broken skyline into view.
Kandahar.
Over there, in the torn out heart of the city, three of the units from our base were locked in a skirmish with local Taliban fighters. The insurgents had pinned them inside a building and were doggedly trying to get inside, to kill whoever they could find through the sights of the M4s they’d stolen from one of our envoys a little over a month ago.
Sound carried so well out here. A rattle of gunfire echoed over the scrubby plain between the hollow at the base of the hill where we were sitting, awaiting orders, and the outskirts of the city, reminding me of the Chinese firecrackers Ronan and I used to play with when we were kids. He was out there somewhere, on the other side of the city, waiting with his men just like I was, looking up at the same stars, probably bored out of his head. No doubt one of his guys was pissing and moaning, too. There was one in every unit these days, it seemed. Someone who finally wasn’t afraid to say what everyone else was thinking: why the fuck were we out here, playing cat and mouse games, theoretically protecting a country of people who didn’t even fucking want us here?
“Oil. It’s all about the oil,” Rogers hissed under his breath.
“Dumbass, it ain’t about the oil,” Daniels snapped back. “They ain’t got no oil in Afghanistan.”
“Then why? Why the fuck would the government of the United States of America waste billions of dollars coming out here? Huh? You tell me that, ’cause seems to me like this don’t make a lick of sense.”
“They sent us out here ’cause these motherfuckers attacked us, you fucking reject. What were they supposed to do? Isn’t that why you joined up in the first place?”
Rogers chose not to answer that. We should all have been waiting in silence for our orders to come in over the radio, but there was no point trying to kill this kind of talk once it got started. “S’why I joined up,” Daniels continued. “Collins and the captain, too. Ain’t that right, Captain?”
Last thing I wanted was to get drawn into the same existential “why are we even here?” argument that had already been the root cause of so many wars and genocides throughout the span of human history. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, leaning as much as I could against my rifle, stock planted in the ground, trying not to wince as the blood flowed more freely through my stiff joints. When it looked like the men weren’t going to continue on their banter without me, I cleared my throat and gave them what they needed to hear.
“Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die.” No one said a word. “You guys never heard of Tennyson?” I asked.
“No, sir,”
“Nope.”
“Wa’n’t he some kind of Victorian faggot?”
“No, he wasn’t some kind of Victorian faggot.” These guys had my back at every turn. They were my brothers, fierce and loyal to the end, but sometimes I just wanted to strangle them. “He was a poet.”
“That’s what I meant.”
I ignored the comment. “Tennyson wrote a poem called ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ It was about men going into war and dying. And that line, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die, basically sums up this whole thing. It’s not our job to ask questions. It’s not our job to revolt, or doubt the upper chain of command. It’s our job to do as we’re told and do it well. And if that means we go out and we die, a guy every day, five guys every day, ten…then that’s what we do. And we keep our mouths shut.”
Did I believe this? Absolutely fucking not. But admitting that to the guys would be fatal. They’d lose what little faith they had left in the idea of hierarchy and chaos would ensue.
Three more months. Three more months of this, and I’d be on a plane back to the States. Back to Magda. I’d given enough. Lost enough. Watched enough men die. No more tours for me. Three was plenty; it was time to go home.
More gunfire. More explosions in the distance. The long, whining sound of an RPG missile seeking its target. The men all flinched instinctively when the missile landed. The ground rumbled beneath us. A ball of fire leapt up at the sky, orange and white and angry, and someone sucked in a breath through their teeth.
Our orders finally came in: Stick to the outskirts of the city. Clear the buildings on the southern side near the markets. Interview everyone. Arrest anyone who looks suspicious. Search for weapons.