Aug 30
by Rod Merkley
As a Soldier and a veteran I find myself drawn to the historic sights of the wars of the past. To me, it is important that we honor, remember, and respect the warriors that came before us and through these visits I have been motivated to do a little bit more with my life. One such visit was to the WWII cemeteries in Luxembourg.
By Michael Harvey
It is not easy to say goodbye to loved ones prior to going to war because of the specter of never again saying hello.
by Angela Grant
Being a contractor downrange is a little like being a freshman or driving a Yugo or not owning a single pair of name-brand sneakers; you have no status. Doesn’t matter whether you are in engineering or IT or education, there are military members and DOD civilians that you know are thinking you’re not one of us, you’re just here for the money.
The nine months I was on leave to teach at the Army Education Center at Kandahar, UMUC was paying me about what DoDDS had. Plus, I always felt like saying, “I am paying taxes, sir/ma’am.” Three hundred and thirty days was longer than I wanted to be away from my daughter who was in college back in the States.
Jun 10
By Ruth Crocker
I remember waiting, staring at the dizzying pattern of the geometric pink and black wallpaper in my old room. My parents had chosen the paper for me when I was eleven. They said I needed my own room away from my brothers. I was, “…growing up.”
I returned to live in the same room as an adult to wait for my husband, Captain David R. Crocker, Jr., to return from Vietnam. We had been stationed in Germany for two years and returned to the U.S. in September, 1968, to stay with my parents just before Dave’s deployment. Read more
By William N. Wells
In the central highlands of South Vietnam a few clicks north of Pleiku is a hill, the top of which during my time in-country in 1968 was occupied by an American engineering battalion and a communications station. This hill I called home for a year was surrounded by forest…and rings of barbed wire studded with Claymore mines, guard towers, and machine gun nests.
These defenses were pretty effective in keeping Charley out and us in, but were of little use in keeping out anything smaller than a house cat. During certain times of the year, the visitors that came unimpeded through the barbed wire included enormous rhinoceros beetles.
In North America, we are not used to encountering insects as big as mice, but some of these tropical critters were three or four inches long. Rhinoceros beetle were formidable creatures, looking much like their namesake with multiple horns on their heads and an exoskeleton which was no doubt effective in fending off adversaries of their own fighting weight.
But not us. Despite twelve-hour shifts seven days a week plus guard duty, the days dragged on, we were young, and in the world in which we found ourselves, entertainment and compassion were in short supply.
One evening during rhinoceros beetle season, it occurred to one of our number to cut a large rectangular hole in the lid of a shoebox and tape clear plastic across the hole to form a window. He and his friends then walked around the compound, enlisting unsuspecting rhinoceros beetles for the evening’s entertainment. To their startled insect eyes, in our helmets and flak jackets we must have seemed the biggest bugs they had ever seen.
Dozens of unfortunate beetles whose numbers came up that evening were marshaled together and deposited into the box, enough beetles almost to fill it. Their captors then placed the lid onto the box of wriggling beetles, taped it shut, and gathered around to peer into the window and watch what happened next.
What we didn’t expect was the roar that issued from the sealed box, audible all the way across the compound, as the beetles fought and clambered over each over in a Black Hole of Calcutta recreated just for them,
Entranced, mesmerized, we watched the churning mass of insects through the window as the roaring continued for what seemed like hours. As for what we saw through that window, imagine a glimpse into Hell through the glass door of a front-loading washing machine.
Eventually, the roar emitting from the box began to subside as the captive beetles slew each other and exhausted themselves. And eventually, their captors untaped the lid and unceremoniously dumped the contents of the box onto the ground. Truth be told, there wasn’t much left to liberate.
The pile on the ground consisted of numerous dead beetles, hundreds of body parts, and a few luckless survivors, lurching unsteadily away on whatever limbs remained attached to them. No bug medics appeared to carry them away to safety. No bug VA representatives showed up to hand them forms to attempt to fill out with whatever appendages they had left.
No widows or offspring came forward to claim the remains, honor the dead and give them a proper burial.
You would think that there would be some kinship and solidarity among fighting bugs, even across species. But no…for we were young, and in the world in which we found ourselves, entertainment and compassion were in short supply.
We big bugs (those of us who stayed out of kill boxes, anyway) eventually laid aside our own armor and returned to the North American nests from whence we came. As the years rolled by, we hooked up with lady bugs and did our buggy things. One of us even wrote a story about the little bugs. He hates to break it to you, little fellas, but this brief story is likely to be as much immortality as you guys will ever get.
Sorry about that.
Bill Wells spent four years in the Army and a year in Vietnam between 1966 and 1970. His father flew in B-17s over Germany during World War II and a nephew recently returned from a tour in Iraq in the Army, so encounters with military service seem to run in the family. Currently a software engineer in Bethesda, Maryland, Bill writes when he can, which isn’t nearly as often as he would like.
By Vicki Hudson
I remember that first time, the picture fresh in my mind. A silent screen video flickers across my memory. I knew it was coming. Still, hearing the voice on the phone with the memorized phrase, “raging bull” took me by surprise. I had known that phrase for ten years. Year after year, I’d heard the training phrase, “grazing bull”; someone calling me on the phone as a practice alert. Later, as I progressed in rank and responsibility, I made the calls, or directed they be made. Each call was really just a verification of information done once a year, a random ten percent each month of those on the unit roster. We called that document the alert roster, though no one ever thought it would be used to alert anyone, except maybe when the date our weekend warrior duty would change from the annually briefed yearly training calendar. Read more
By Jeffrey Hess
In 1989, we were sea-going sailors. Not brave, just doing our jobs – jobs that happened to be aboard great steel ships, risking our lives in the invisible oceans between home and the Soviet threat.
We were single and married and divorced with two kids who hated us because we were gone six months at a time. We wore khaki shorts, or Levis, or Z-Cavaricci’s and got haircuts every two weeks. We shined our shoes and ironed our uniforms and took the test for the next pay grade every time we were eligible. Some of us turned screwdrivers, others of us drove the boats, some were locked away in the bilges tending to boilers, diesel engines, or nuclear reactors. We called the Navy the “canoe club.” We called each other squid, snipe, air dale, deck ape, wingnut, and worse, but would take offense if a non-Sailor did the same.
We called our ships boats, but would correct anyone else who did the same. Read more
Jan 2
By Molly Martin
The American Regional Embassy Office, called the REO (pronounced Río), in Kirkuk huddles near Chemical Ali’s former palace. We navigate the maze of barriers and gates under the high dome of the hot, pale blue and cloudless sky. I relax, turn the SAW heavenward and sit back in the turret sling as we roll through the last gate. Once in it’s my job to clamber out of the turret and guide the vehicle to its parking spot in the little gravel lot. I hitch up my gear. It weighs a mere 29 lbs. As I hope heavily down from the hood, I hold my wobbly helmet. It’s still missing the bolts in the back, so it’s held together by twists of 550 cord.
Considering that we can’t get re-supplied on toilet paper, the specialized bolts I need to make me combat ready are not forthcoming any time soon. Never mind that one of my two pairs of issued desert boots is the wrong size. Read more
By Tom Garcia
I feel like I should be dead—not my friend. After all, he was sitting in the seat that had been mine all week. No one should feel this intense pain and sadness, which continues to ebb and flow, 4 years later. Unfortunately, I know that I am not alone. I suspect that while these feelings may diminish or fade periodically, they will always be present.
Am I afraid to let the feelings go? If I let them go, will my memories of my friend also fade? My counselor told me no. I want to believe her, and to a point, I do. She did help me, but she can only do so much. I can only do so much.
It may sound strange, but sometimes my brain has a mind of its own. It takes me to places that I do not want to go—or revisit. The harder I try to steer away, the faster I arrive. The more I try to ignore it, the brighter the neon sign flashes. All this when I am awake. Read more
By Jason Davis
One morning last June, I received a phone call from Vondran. I couldn’t answer, but in the voicemail, he was frantic and shaken.
“Dude,” he asked, “what… what the hell happened to Vance?”
It had been my second week on the job in the new career, and in an environment where my past was virtually unknown. It seemed like a fresh start, that I could finally be someone other than what I had been. And so I continued working, determined to show that I was a dedicated worker. But I couldn’t think straight. The tone in his voice worried me, and it tugged at my wavering concentration.
A few minutes later, I stepped out of the office and called him back, remembering the old team and the old days.
For as long as I’d known him, Vondran had been the witty one, the snarky sham-shielder that could brighten the somberest of moods. But in that moment, on the phone, he was restless and scared. His voice quivered and I could feel in it the too-familiar pang of denial and despair.
“Hey—hey man,” he stuttered. “Have you seen Vance’s Facebook page? Did something happen?” Read more
O-Dark-Thirty