I
A dog walks up to the guard post with half its face stuck full of porcupine quills. We hear it stumbling in the gravel behind us. Blount gasps when the red light of his moonbeam finds the black-and-white quills in the side of the dog’s face. All I can think in the moment is this: I am not a compassionate person. I didn’t come here to help, not people and not dogs. The needles are twice the length of a pencil, clustered hideously across the side of a furry white face. Some of the quills have barely missed an eye. Then a cloud of flies swarms into the guard post. They buzz and whine in our ears. We’re used to the flies here, but this is more than usual. Blount raises a gloved hand and swats them out of his face. I hold my M16 steady with one hand and use the other to swat flies away. This is our first night on duty in Kajaki.
The dog looks from me to Blount and then back to me as if there’s still something we could do to help. But if we weren’t getting attacked by bugs right now, it’s not like we have a vet hospital here. FOB Z, where we live, doesn’t have a clinic for hurt dogs. Most FOBs don’t, probably not even Camp Leatherneck or Delaram II. And you don’t get medals for saving dogs anyway. People shoot them sometimes, and it’s not always out of necessity. The white dog moseys around the guard post and watches us. We must look like idiots as we try to avoid the porcupine quills and swat at the flies buzzing around our helmets. Then for no reason the dog walks away, through the space between the back gate and the wall, and out along the dirt road ahead of the guard post and into the dark. Blount clicks off his moonbeam after the dog leaves. The road from the back gate leads all the way to the Green Zone, but I doubt the dog will walk that far. The Green Zone is where the Royal Marines go to fight the terrorists.
The flies scatter once the dog is gone and then a pack of jackals begins howling near the old barracks that sits abandoned along the road. I’ve been watching that old concrete building out there from the moment we started our shift. I figure it’s an old barracks because of all the windows, and it’s plain and rectangular, designed for efficiency, a place where enlisted people used to live. Blount and I had only been on post a few minutes before the barracks seemed to materialize from the shadows, as if it had not been there a moment sooner. Or at least that’s how my eyes tricked me as they adjusted in the dark.
“Goddamn,” Blount says after the flies clear out and the jackals’ howling dies back down. “Scorpions in our house, hornets as big as crawdads, screaming jackals, and giant porcupines.” Blount’s a tall, goofy motherfucker, and I don’t know him very well yet. Someone in the platoon told me his grandfather owns a chain of grocery stores in the South, but I haven’t asked him about that. He whistles a weird catcall to himself and I know I’m supposed to tell him not to make noise on duty, but I’m distracted too. I’m just as freaked out as he is. I’ve never seen shit like that dog before. When I was a kid, my family took our dog to the vet to put her down. There was another dog at the clinic with quills in its muzzle, but they were small. Nothing like the ones tonight. How were we supposed to know there were giant porcupines here?
“Giant porcupines,” I say. “Another thing we weren’t ready for.” We’ve been in this war almost nine years and we still don’t know what we’re doing. We weren’t prepared for Kajaki. On our first night here earlier this week, we carried our gear to an empty house within the walls of FOB Z. The Soviets used it in the eighties and now it’s our turn. We found graffiti all over the walls and scorpions skittering around on the floor. We spent the night clearing all the rooms of scorpions as if we were going door-to-door clearing out terrorist strongholds. We brushed the scorpions into a bucket and flung them over the wall in the backyard, sending them down the hill towards the river. No one will miss them. This place is crawling with bugs, overflowing with them. The next morning, Blount and Vargas found these big hornets flying laps around the house like they were practicing for an insect Indy 500. Johnson says they might not actually be hornets. Who cares if they’re not hornets? I just know I don’t want them crawling on me.
“What’s next?” Blount says.
I look up at him and I say, “Dinosaurs,” because this place feels like prehistoric times compared to our homes in the States, back in a city or in a newly built subdivision next to some cornfields like where I grew up. The whole place is after you here, not just the Taliban. If it’s not some kind of poisonous bite that gets you sent down to Camp Leatherneck on a medevac, then it’s the desolation of the land itself, the very ground we’re on. You die if you get lost in the desert. We never had anything like this to worry about back home.
“So that’s it,” Blount says, and then, “Wonder what a five-five-six would do to a dinosaur.”
“Probably nothing,” I say. I don’t really know how to imagine a dinosaur. I’m not that creative. I imagine what a five-five-six would do to a dog, and if it’s worse than what the local porcupines are capable of. I didn’t come to this country to worry about dogs, though. I didn’t come to this country to shoot dogs either, but I definitely didn’t come here to worry about them. Sorting out the reasons why I came here feels like a waste of time, even when all we have is time to waste. There’s nothing to do but stand here and think about the past. I know I didn’t come here to stand firewatch like this, that’s for sure. No one wants firewatch.
It’s so dark out it’s nearly impossible for us to see anything without NVGs, even with our eyes adjusted to the dark. The Brits are watching from observation posts on the mountaintop next to the back gate. They have to be using NVGs at the OP up there, which would make the two of us obsolete down here, which would make what we’re doing busy work. We’re just poges, personnel other than grunts, marines who aren’t infantry. So what the fuck are we doing on post to begin with? Goddamnit. I try not to yawn. I don’t want to set a bad example.
Staff Sergeant Rynker, the advance party senior enlisted in charge, the higher-up who put us on the back-gate duty roster, doesn’t understand that we have other shit to do, shit related to our actual MOS as landing support specialists, the shit that we trained to do in our job school, the shit we prepared to do during our pre-deployment workup exercises. I’ve only met Staff Sergeant Rynker in person once, and briefly, but I know enough not to like him. I try to keep myself and my marines away from him, out of sight, out of mind as they say. He came here with us as part of the advance party in order to make preparations for the arrival of the inbound US Marine artillery battery and its command element. For now, he’s in charge of running base operations, so he’s the type to find busy work for people who don’t look busy. He wouldn’t be putting our names on the duty roster if he understood or cared about what we’re accountable for.
We’ve still got about an hour left before anyone comes to relieve us, so we stand quietly in the Helmand night and wait. You’re doing good as long as you can stay awake. There’s nowhere on FOB Z to get a shot of espresso before going on post at zero dark thirty, but if I wanted I could chew on the coffee grounds packaged in an MRE to stay awake. I know enough people who do that for real. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t at some point, and if I said it didn’t work wonders to keep me awake. It always helps if you’re desperate. How could anyone fall asleep with a mouthful of coffee grounds? Fuck. I would chew on coffee tonight if I had some. Blount’s the only one who has an extra MRE though. I guess if he’s carrying it in his daypack right now then I could just tell him to give me the coffee grounds and maybe he would listen, but whatever.
My eyes are dry as hell. The old barracks flickers in and out of focus with each blink. I notice a window on the side of the building we’re facing, but when I blink again there’s only a blank wall in its place. I need more sleep, which is typical. It’s practically by design that we don’t get enough sleep, like some kind of unwritten rule.
“Why’d you join the Marines,” I ask Blount, because you pass the time by talking about dumb shit like that, plus I haven’t gotten to know him that well and you’re supposed to know your marines. It’s one of the leadership principles on our official list, but it’s not like I had to study for a test when I got promoted. If it really is a leadership principle, it’s one that most leaders don’t follow very well. I guess it’s on me to change it if I’m going to call out other leaders. Blount and I have been in the same platoon since I transferred during workup training, but we haven’t worked at the same FOB until now.
He reflects on my question for a moment and finally says, “Army office was closed,” but, he doesn’t laugh. I don’t know if I should take it as a joke. He could be making it up. He could be telling the truth. He might be serious. Nothing much surprises me anymore. I try my best not to laugh, but I can’t help it. It’s too dark to see if Blount is smiling.
“What about you, Corporal?” asks Blount. For a moment, I can’t decide whether or not to tell him the truth about my brother Bryce or to make up some bullshit. I don’t like thinking about my brother, let alone talking about any of that.
“College sucks,” I say. “I mean, not always. But a lot of the time. Yeah.” My answer doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. I was only in school a couple years, and even then it’s too easy to remember the good things while forgetting all the shit I hated or the experiences that made me feel terrible. But even worse than college is the Marines. I thought enlisting was an escape from all the bullshit you have to put up with in college. Waking up early, studying, dressing up for job fairs, you name it. Turns out the Marine Corps isn’t a great place to go if you want to escape bullshit.
“Don’t be cool,” says Blount. “Stay out of school.”
“Exactly,” I say. Then for a while I say nothing. We wait silently except when answering the radio checks.
“Radio check, over,” says a fuzzy voice through the radio speaker, calling to us from the COC, the most important building on base, where the higher-ups conduct tactical and operational planning. It’s best not to be there if you don’t have to be.
“You do it,” I say to Blount.
“Kill,” he says. He picks up the hand receiver and holds it near his face, stretching out the spiral cord connecting it to the olive drab radio. “Lima charlie, over,” says Blount into the hand receiver.
“Roger, out,” says the fuzzy voice, and that’s it.
Eventually, a couple lance corporals from the artillery advance party walk up to relieve us and take over the guard post. We don’t know either of them and I am not interested in getting to know either of them at the moment, so we don’t introduce ourselves. Blount tells them to be on the lookout for big old porcupines. They look at us but neither of them answers. I know I wouldn’t know what to say if someone told me some shit about porcupines. I would tell him to fuck off if I said anything at all.
We walk back to our scorpion-free house, which sits down the road from the back gate in a row of abandoned houses. There’s no door on any doorframe, no glass to seal the windows. We simply walk across the open threshold at the front doorstep and then we’re inside. Vargas and Johnson are sound asleep on their cots, Vargas in the front room where Blount and I sleep, Johnson in a room by himself on the other side of our house. The butt stock of Vargas’s M16 lies next to his face, the rest of the rifle hidden inside his green sleeping bag. I walk out back to brush my teeth outside, then I get undressed and climb into my own sleeping bag on the floor, but I do not bring the M16 inside the sleeping bag with me.
Vargas talks in his sleep. He whispers at night. I noticed it before we came here, when we were still at Delaram II. I heard him from the other side of our tent back then, and he’s doing it again now, whispering from his spot in the corner. But I can’t understand him. I try to keep my eyes open, despite how tired I am. There’s a drawing of a boat and a stick figure on the wall next to my cot. When I close my eyes, I see the white dog looking up at us in the red light, waiting for us to do anything to help, the side of its head stuck with a cluster of the biggest porcupine quills I’ve ever seen. And we’re just standing there watching it suffer, acting like we’re not responsible for anything because we’re farther from home than we’ve ever been.
II
Three dogs sit outside the chow hall and beg for food before breakfast. The white dog from last night is not with them. I notice Blount is inspecting the area as we walk across FOB Z, like he’s also on the lookout for the dog. He breaks off from our group to peek around the corner of a building as we pass by. He shields his eyes from the sun and looks up at the OPs on the mountain. He doesn’t say anything about the dog before morning chow.
We sit down at the red wooden picnic tables in the chow hall and we finish the eggs and sausage prepared for us by the Brit cook. They’re not all technically British, but we call them all Brits anyway. We don’t rush to finish our food even though you’re always supposed to. We savor each bite. It’s the best food we’ve had in months, better than Delaram, which wasn’t bad, and even better than the sandwich shop back at Leatherneck. There’s more going on in this chow hall than what we’re used to. A large television sits at the front of the room with a rerun of a World Cup game playing on mute. A red bookshelf in the corner holds versions of novels like The Da Vinci Code, printed with different spellings of words like tire spelled with a y. The Royal Marines eat at tables around us and extend distant greetings in the form of a nod or a tip of their cups in our direction. A small group of US Marines, the advance party artillery, eat at a table alone and ignore us. We flew in on the same helicopter as them, but none of us have spoken directly to each other, not for reasons other than official business. We all wear the same uniform, but that’s about it. They’re combat arms, so they look down on poges like us. Their job is to get here to prepare for things like the change of command and the overall transition that takes place when the rest of their unit arrives.
When we finish eating, we meet our platoon commander at the main gate. We call her the lieutenant or the ma’am when she’s not around, but we address her as ma’am if we address her at all. She’s suited up in her flak vest with an M4 carbine slung across her back, but she’s not wearing a helmet. Her Kevlar helmet hangs from a carabiner at her side. The light reflects off her tightly bound black hair as bright as if it were reflecting off the face of a wristwatch.
“Good morning, ma’am,” I say as the four of us gather around.
“Good morning, Corporal,” she says. She only addresses me by rank, but if she wanted to, she could use my name. She’s in charge, so she sets the tone of our interactions. I think I trust her, but she doesn’t trust me, that’s for sure. If she did, then she wouldn’t have come to Kajaki with us at all, let alone for the first couple weeks like she has planned. Whether the junior marines trust me or not, I’m still not sure. They don’t know as much about my past fuckups as the lieutenant.
Back at Delaram, my platoon sergeant noticed how much time I was spending at the internet center. He did some digging online and found a blog that I had been publishing. I wasn’t stupid enough to violate operational security like I was accused of, but I left my name right on the front page of the site like a moron. Anyone could have searched my name and found it. My writing disparaged some people in our command, so that was a no go. They had to punish me for that, but no one could punish me too much without making themselves look bad. I took the blog offline and the lieutenant did a page eleven on me, which goes right in your service record, but is mostly just a slap on the wrist. As far as I know, most people in the platoon still don’t know about any of that.
I know the lieutenant chose me for this mission as a punishment of sorts, because of the remoteness of the location and the unlikelihood that there would be internet access here. She never had to tell me that directly, it’s just obvious. There’s nothing here to see or do, which means there’s no danger of me writing about anything that happens. I still have my notebook and some pens, but all of the original blog entries from the notebook have been thrown out at this point. I got rid of all that to try to forget how stupid it made me feel to have my own words used against me.
Our platoon is spread so thin across the Helmand Province that the lieutenant didn’t have any corporals or sergeants available for Kajaki other than me. All the other NCOs were running shifts at their own flight lines. On her end, getting stuck with me probably seems like a punishment too. I would never know if that was the case and it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask her. I can’t confide in anyone else either. The other NCOs in the platoon are assholes, and it’s not like I can tell any of this to the junior marines in confidence. When the lieutenant told me we were coming here, she said I should be honored to lead the first team of landing support marines in Kajaki. No other red-patchers have beaten us here. We’re the first ever. Now it’s time to prove we belong. Our platoon is only supposed to be in-country about two more months, and hopefully the four of us will only spend one of those months in Kajaki after the lieutenant leaves. I hope this matters someday.
The lieutenant briefs me on the plan of the day while the others stand off to the side, the others being the junior marines: Lance Corporal Johnson, an African American; Lance Corporal Vargas, a Mexican American; and Lance Corporal Blount, a Texan American. What does that make me, a white guy from the Midwest, a Flyover American? It doesn’t matter. None of us have worked together, and Johnson comes from HE, the heavy equipment platoon specialized in driving forklifts and loaders. HE and LS spend a lot of time working together, but none of us have worked with him yet.
The lieutenant says we’re going up to the landing zone, so that’s what we get ready to do. While she speaks, I nod. My sunglasses hide the fact that my eyes are distracted, not by the lieutenant, but by some mountain peaks in the distance behind her. The lieutenant may not be looking at me either. Maybe she is also looking past me at something in the distance. That could very well be since she’s a big-picture person, but it’s impossible to tell where she’s looking with the black Oakley Gascans hiding her eyes. I don’t feel bad for zoning out because there’s nothing new about seeing an LZ if you’ve been in LS a year or more. An LZ is just a designated spot for helicopters to land. There’s not much to it.
A couple Brits wearing brown T-shirts and desert-camouflage pants drive up in a small, tan open-top truck. They climb out to greet us and the driver overpronounces the word lieutenant, maybe to stop himself from saying leftenant, which is how they say it across the pond. The lieutenant introduces herself and shakes the Brit’s hand. He’s wearing a flak vest over his brown T-shirt and I notice a helmet sitting on the driver’s seat. I recognize the rank patch on his flak vest as a sergeant, three stripes, but he doesn’t introduce himself as one.
“Just call me Arnold,” he says. I’ve never heard a sergeant in the US Marines introduce themselves by any name without the word sergeant preceding it. Very relaxed. He puts a helmet on his bald head and gets ready to take us outside the wire. “All right, lads?” he says to us. If I had to guess I’d say Arnold is about thirty-five, which would make him older than the sergeants I’ve served with in the US Marines by ten years or more. Maybe he just looks older than he is. Arnold’s passenger introduces himself as Red. He’s the forklift driver. He’s got one chevron on the front of his vest, which makes him a lance corporal I think, the same rank as our junior marines. Our new friends are in the British Army, serving as attachments to the Royal Marines to run the LZ for them, which means they’ve been doing what we’re about to do: spend all our time receiving and sending out cargo and passengers. It sounds simple, but things like this are always more complicated than they need to be.
“Is your real name Red?” Vargas asks as the junior enlisted introduce themselves and shake hands.
“If it’s what the color sergeant calls me,” says Red, taking off his helmet to reveal a head of brown hair.
“I thought your hair would be red,” says Blount.
Copyright © 2023 by John Milas
