Deployment, 1

01DEC2008

Text messages sent to my friends during the time of 01-23DEC2008. (I was unable to write much notes during the first month of deployment):
1) So I drive the 5-ton to the field every morning. This time my TC was P____ and Jac____. Last night it was two privates. More and more I have to zone out of the conversations around me. They’re so dumb. It makes me feel disconnected from my unit. But it is what it is.
2) One of our best Platoon Sergeants took one of our worst privates way way out into the woods and smoked him, then punched him in the head. Afterwards, the Private had to go to the Troop Medical Center.
3) This time my TC was my plt sgt. Who told me I’d be the gunner for the armored supply truck. I kind of saw it coming. When I imagine the other guy who could’ve been gunner -- P_____ -- in a field in God‘s Country, he doesn’t fit. He’s not a real killer.
4) I’ve never had to pull rank so much in my life. I’m close to walking Jac____ out to the wood line myself. Was I this bad as a private? I wonder if I would hit my kids if they acted this way.
5) More and more my plt sgt is perturbed that we aren’t blood thirsty. Most are more worried about the battery in their ipod. I wonder if he’s being unreasonable. The killers I have known weren’t blood thirsty. They simply treated the killing of a man as just as ordinary as getting a girl pregnant. They made it look more natural, were more respectful about it.
6) So there’s this SPC named Bo_____ who likes to be my TC. Everyday he walks up to the supply truck grinning, waiting. I say what I always say, casually: _So tell me your adventures today,_ And he begins.
It’s like a daily comedy sketch honed for me. He jumps up on the water buffalo hitched to the five ton and starts telling the day’s stories. Sometimes Mos____, one of my new battle buddies, will stand behind him with exaggerated gesturing and mouthing the words: _he is so gay._ But I don’t mind him I guess and try to be nicer to him sense I’m sure a lot of people in the unit do.
Everybody says he’s the best tanker and the smartest. But he’s a slacker so others surpass him and it makes everybody angry. Plus he’s always smiling, and joking, which other’s can’t understand. Nothing can get him down -- in another words he doesn’t give a f_ck.
For some reason I’ve always been impressed by people like that. Sometimes when I asked him his adventures I sit on the edge of the 5-ton and don’t listen, and only fake laugh. I watch his eyes as he tells me of yet another girl friend and I wonder what is going on in there.
7) So now everyone in the unit calls me Chuck. K___’s always called me Chuck.
8) This morning I went ahead and washed up and shaved out at the water buffalo, which I had parked at a corner of the training field. My two best pals here, Mos___ and Se___ decided to do the same. Laughing and joking and horse playing we finished as the dawn broke pink. It's been awhile since I've had a lot on my mind, but i couldn't help but feel how fleeting and valuable moments like this one are in this world.