Open Writing

I said: d’ya speaka my language . . .?
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich . . .!

Doha, Kuwait D-Day + 2

Arrival.

The sunlight was near blinding as I stepped out onto the gantry and made my way down the stairs. The heat was a solid, dry mass that impeded all movement. “C’mon godammit, hurry the fuck up! Grab yo’ shit an’ go!” I refrained from rolling my eyes unlike other Soldiers at the warm, encouraging words of our Non-Commissioned Officers. Sergeant, derived from the term Sergent in French To Serve, if I remembered the the spelling of the word correctly, which was doubtful at this point. The so-called Backbone of the Army, they ran the troops officers led.

But I my experience, too many were bullies as opposed to leaders.

I hated them.

“Oh, my God!” Sergeant Blac, who was my immediate supervisor, gasped in his trademarked false dismay. In the rear, he repeatedly got flustered, belligerent and abusive in order to prove he outranked us. “Oh, my God! You better hurry up or I’m gonna’ start smokin’ balls, I don’t care how hot it is!”

He was not my real supervisor, I in fact, worked directly for the First Sergeant and the Company Commander as one of the Company Armorers, not that Blac would accept this. I had taken the job recently and was good at it, having experience in my last unit as well.

Under the continuing badgering, we moved forward with our kit and gear, not really knowing who he was displeased with. I was older than him by quite a few years. I had served in the Army longer and I knew I had more combat experience. Moreover, his Military Occupational Specialty was Eleven Chuck, 11C: Mortar. I was a Dogface, 11B: Infantry, yet I was just a Specialist. A rank that amounted to senior Private, it meant nothing in the Army these days, it meant nothing to the Army. It meant nothing to men like him.

I truly hated the enemy, but I hated them more.

The enemy only wanted to kill me. These bullies wanted to destroy me. Strangely, enough, the fact I had finished college and still volunteered to serve had caused me endless grief. I was also a man that refused to compromise. I was too rigid, refusing to cater to the politics of the Army. This had made me a target over the years. No one should be anyone’s court jester, or fool, yet I had been forced into the role countless times in Italy, indentured to play the role of clerk. Bitterly, I could no longer remember what I was, I could remember what I did, but not what I was. I could only remember that I was a different person before enlisting. This was an experience that left me still dedicated, but cold. In truth, the desire to maintain my personal honor was my only reason for doing so.

“Grab it and go! Grab it and go, godammit!” A senior man yelled. “It don’ matter what ruck you grab,” he insisted. “Fuckin’ grab an’ go!”

“Hurry the fuck up!” Sergeant Blac yelled.

Ignoring that choice piece of logic, I spotted my Green Tick, looped it over a shoulder and moved to the Rally Point. There was a group of European touring buses waiting, with contracted Kuwaiti drivers. This was something else I was familiar with: the Euro bus. I had traveled all over Europe in them, training in Germany, Italy, returning from missions in the former Soviet states. I frowned. “Hey! Where’s the Schnitzel truck? Where’s the Panini stand?” I demanded, tongue firmly in cheek. I missed the sandwiches that were always at the Rally Point on the Drop Zones in Germany and Italy when I was a Paratrooper.

I looked up at the main control tower for the airfield, a giant, sphere ringed with windows, an assortment of communications antennae along the top. This was my second occasion seeing it, the first being when I was returning to Vicenza.

A combat Veteran.

Stowing the Green Tick in the cargo hold of the bus with the rest in my small group, picking up a frigid bottle of water from a large cooler, I boarded. The blinds were closed and I squirmed into a seat with my kit. The seats filled up from rear to front. “Hey! Fill it up in the back! Nobody gets a seat to themselves! You Privates takin’ too much godamn room! Make your buddy smile, godammit!” The man barking frowned, deciding no one had listened to him. “Ya’ll bout to get off the bus and do some godamn flutter kicks if ya’ll don’t get a move on!” The flutter kick was a punishment exercise where while lying on one’s back, the feet were elevated at six inches and lifted with alternating kicks. In full kit and holding a weapon above, it was near impossible from the imbalance, if one did not want to ruin one’s back.

Seats had been filling up as instructed the whole time.
Towards the front, two seats were being co-opted by the men complaining about too much room being taken by the enlisted. As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm: . . . but some are more equal than others.

The interior was already sweltering. What made it near sickening was the ever present stench of chewing tobacco and stale cigarette smoke. It was a combined odor that stirred the stomach to revolt and bile to rise in the throat. So I breathed with shallow breaths through my mouth.

Finally, the bus started to move.

“Turn on the air conditioner!” Someone demanded. The order was echoed repeatedly through the bus. “Yeah! C’mon, turn on the air conditioner!”

“Hey!” The same disgruntled Sergeant barked. “Shut the fuck up!”

“Or you’ll make us all get off and do flutter kicks?” I muttered. “Don’t tell me you’ll stop the bus first. Really, I’d hate that.”

“Fuckin’ asshole,” the Soldier next to me agreed. “I got bullets, try and make me do fuckin’ flutter kicks!”
I at least had the job I wanted over here.

I was the CO’s bodyguard . . .

You better run, you better take cover . . .!

I Come from a Land Down Under by Men at Work