Easter '06

Previously: Ancient History

"All we do is drive up and down the highways, waiting to be attacked."
- A soldier recovering from one such attack, Easter, 2006

He was one of forty or so who had helped consume the largest Easter dinner Mrs G has ever made. The daughters had helped in preparation but wouldn't be involved in delivery. That's where I came in - helping transport every serving container we owned from our kitchen into the car, down the autobahn and to the facility where the spillover troops - those whose wounds were minor enough not to require in-patient care at Landstuhl but significant enough to merit evac from Iraq or Afghanistan waited in limbo. Their next destination might be the States, or back to their units "on the front".

The majority wanted option two. In the meantime they waited, housed in a dorm in the middle of Germany, visiting the docs but mostly doing very little and probably dwelling much on where they'd been a few days earlier and where they might be tomorrow. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the DFAC - a fine facility to be sure. But that particular Sunday Mrs G burst into the dayroom, her husband in tow (in civilian clothes) and a home-made dinner for forty in hand.

Most were surprised. Few were there long enough to experience multiple visits from MaryAnn or her partner in crime. And this was just a waypoint, after all - a place where they expected to be forgotten. Instead they were being thanked, but their universal question was inevitably why? Few Soldiers (or sailors or Airmen or Marines) - surrounded most of the time by thousands who are doing exactly what they are doing - are aware they are doing something that sets them apart. Something worthy of thanks in word or deed.

Having done my bit for them that day I took repayment - intel on how things were going over there. In getting honest answers it helped that I was between tours myself, had been there before and already knew I was heading back. And these guys could be counted on for the worst possible view - they were, after all, the walking wounded from America's war. Many were relatively undamaged but had been in vehicles with others less fortunate, their seat on the right rather than the left making the difference between home cooked Easter meal and dinner from a tube - or even a last supper. So there they were in limbo with little to do but ponder their existence after dealing with the frustration of administrative details and the limits of medical science and families on the homefront convinced they must be far worse off then their brief communications would claim.

And it was 2006. Success in Tal Afar was in the past, unknown to most, and declared unrepeatable by most others. The Samarra mosque bombing was headline material for stories that couldn't fail to mention "civil war" and the American victims caught in the middle. The Anbar Awakening was a few months away, the surge a year out. The war in Iraq was lost. A mistake from the start. The war in Afghanistan was forgotten.

Who could possibly paint a grimmer picture than the individuals in the middle of all that? (American "journalists" and their readers or viewers who'd never been in country, of course - but this is a rhetorical question.) And it wasn't a pretty picture - but the worst I heard was the quote that prefaces this account. "All we do is drive up and down the highways, waiting to be attacked." A situation can be bad, but that assessment was grim because it indicated that as bad as it was we weren't really going to be doing anything about it.

That was one guy, and I didn't drill for details. I don't doubt for a minute that driving up and down the highway was all he did in Iraq - waiting to be attacked was his choice of additional detail. That was his perception, and it mattered. Whether that was his platoon's mission or his company's or his brigade's I didn't bother asking. And I didn't need to ask why that's what he did - they were keeping the roads open for convoys. Why? So the FOB could be supplied. Why? Because there were soldiers there. What were they doing there? They were keeping the road open...

And the circle goes on and on, and I knew it and didn't have to ask. The answer was in his eyes and tone of voice when he replied. And he was tired (though not hungry) and didn't know where he would be in a week - home in the States or running route clearance in Iraq, waiting for another flash boom that would mean he wouldn't make it to the DFAC that night, would miss out on enjoying the food that couldn't have been delivered without him...

And after a while the crowd dwindled and the wife and I cleaned up the dishes and packed them away and went home to an Easter dinner of our own.

And that was Easter, 2006.

Things are better over there now, of course. Which means that the guys who went back and made that happen are less on the minds of their countrymen than ever before. Funny how that happens.

"Dinner's ready", the wife just called from our kitchen in America on Easter in 2009.

So Happy Easter from our house to yours.

More to follow...

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