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Introduction
Let me
introduce you to my neighbors and friends from my neck of the woods.
They’re loggers and software engineers, teachers, lawyers, paramedics
and cops. Some are students, others are husbands and fathers, brothers
and sons. Throw a dart at a map of the United States and chances are
your neighborhood has the same mix. They’re everyday Americans,
average folks like you and me who just try to get by day to day in
this harsh and crazy world.
But
there is a difference. Twice a month and for two weeks in the summer,
these neighbors of mine put
They are today’s citizen-soldiers. With the regular Army stretched to the breaking point across the globe, these citizen-soldiers are playing a critical role in the War on Terror. Almost half of the troops in Iraq right now belong to the National Guard, and they have put their lives and careers in stasis while they fight on the front lines against radical Islamic Fascism.
This is nothing new in American history. These citizen-soldiers are the keepers of a great and noble tradition whose roots can be found in the very genesis of our nation. Who was it that bloodied the British so thoroughly at Bunker Hill? The Minutemen— our citizen soldiers. Who carried the brunt of the Civil War on their shoulders? Certainly it wasn’t the regular Army, which was so small as to be quickly dwarfed by the farmers and factory workers who flocked to join their state’s militias in the first years of the war.
And in World War II, the National Guard fought in every major engagement from Bataan to Omaha Beach and beyond. In Oregon, our National Guard outfit, the 41st Infantry Division, joined General MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific. Serving side-by-side with the 1st Cavalry Division, the 41st blazed a trail of history as it island-hopped across New Guinea and into the Philippines.
Our military tradition has long been vested with our citizen-soldiers, and that is as true today as it was when the British threw in the towel at Yorktown two centuries ago.
Once
again, in time of war, America has
How tough are they? These Islamic fascists have the inflamed passions of the Viet Cong, the caginess and creativity of the Germans we faced in WWII, and the utter depravity of the Japanese during the War in China. Like the Kamikazes of 1944-45, the Islamic Fascists are willing to commit suicide in order to inflict mass death and chaos on those they hate. They are devoid of mercy. They kill indiscriminately and brag about it afterwards. They deliberately target women and children, hoping that the trauma induced by their deaths will terrorize their enemies into submission. They blow up schools and mosques, then blame their actions on the United States.
Though they cannot win on the battlefield, they can win the battle for national and international morale. At the heart of that fight are the innocents they slaughter.
London has felt their wrath. New York, Washington, Baghdad and Kabul are all linked by one depressing fact: they have all been victimized by these malign and brutal killers.
Yet, when caught by American troops, these Jihadists turn to pitiful cowards. “They’re fucking little bitch pussies when you catch them” said one Bravo Company soldier, who watched more than one grovel for his life after being caught firing rockets at Camp Taji. They’re tough and ruthless, but only when they face the meek and defenseless.
What sets them apart from past enemies of America? What makes them the most malignant and dangerous foe we have ever faced? One simple fact: they want to destroy us, wipe us off the world stage and revel in our demise. Cold War logic like “Mutually Assured Destruction” doesn’t work with this enemy. They would gladly take a one-way trip to Allah to bring America to her knees.
They seek no political resolution. They want no land, no territorial gain. At their core, these Islamic Fascists are nihilists. Victory will be theirs when America’s global power has been broken and Israel has been wiped off the map. They will not rest until our cities are blackened, our population ravaged. There will be no surrender, no withdrawal in the War on Terror. We cannot escape from Baghdad like we did from Saigon. Our enemies will only move to other regions to work at our destruction.
The era of Total War is over. Today, the War on Terror has become the first conflict in the era of Annihilation. Either we kill them, or ultimately we all will be in their crosshairs.
Go one block further and you find the chaos seen on the nightly news. Firefights, car bombings, cordon and searches--these are the staples of block three in this disorienting new wartime environment. And time after time as the men of the 2/162 fought pitched battles in the streets of Baghdad, they’d catch sight of camera crews and still photographers capturing the action on film—from the other side. It was confusing and violent; it tested them to the limits of their endurance. Some were found wanting, but the vast majority were more than up to the challenge.
If that wasn’t enough for them to deal with, there was always the home front.
While they remained locked in that life and death struggle overseas, their very absence from the houses down the street changed forever the social fabric of my community. It was one of many unseen consequences of this new global war. And as that home front dynamic evolved, rumors flew and trouble brewed. The physical gulf between soldier and loved one magnified every dispute, every basic life challenge. It opened the door to temptation, and adultery ruined not a few marriages.
For others, as they stood behind their
No family was left unscathed by this deployment.
This is the story of my neighbors, but it may as well be the story of yours. Every National Guard unit in America today is either deployed, getting ready to deploy, or has just returned from a deployment. What’s more, the same dynamics experienced here in Oregon by the 2/162 and its community is reshaping every town and city in America today. We here in our little part of the country, tucked up in the woods of the Pacific Northwest are the rule, not the exception. We are undergoing fundamental changes as a people, changes whose true effects will linger for generations to come.
***
From the barren landscape of rural Iraq to the squalid, sewage-drenched slums of Baghdad, my friends and neighbors took the fight to the enemy while doing their utmost to protect the innocents caught in the middle of this bloody insurgency. These Oregonians, some as young as 18, others as old as 60, spent a year under fire during a crucial time in the campaign in Iraq. They fought in Najaf, they fought in Fallujah. They dodged mortar and rocket fire from Sadr City. The Sunni Triangle was on their patrol beat.
In the end, they saw their misery, the loss, the pain and the enormous commitment and professional pride they had invested in Iraq finally bear fruit. At the end of January, 2005, the Iraqis voted in such huge numbers that it put shame to the turn-out in our own presidential election only a few months before. The election validated everything they had endured. It punctuated the end of their deployment with tangible proof of the progress they had made with their sweat and blood.
This
is the story of my friends and neighbors,
Late at night, both on and off the record, I’ve listened as they’ve opened their hearts and spoke of things so tragic and terrible that I’ve spent many drives home with my composure totally shot. I’ve stood in awe at their loyalty to strangers and their willingness to help anyone in need. Their manners are old school. They hold doors open for men and women alike. They will call civilians “sir” or “ma’am” until their guests ask them to use their first names. They treat each other with respect. At their best, they are polite, direct and honest men.
From these men, I’ve learned much of what I now know about honor and commitment. I have never met a bunch of guys as dedicated to this country as the 2-162. That point was driven home to me in September, 2005, when the battalion was mobilized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The men had just begun to settle back into their civilian lives when they were yanked from their families again. Marriages failed, and more than one wife stood in the doorway and announced, “If you go to Louisiana, I won’t be here when you return.”
They went anyway, this time to help their fellow Americans.
The days in New Orleans were searing hot and humid, and by noon every movement became an effort. The Oregonians patrolled in this environment on foot and in commandeered city busses, looking for survivors in the Orleans Parish and the 9th Ward. It was intensely hard and heartbreaking work at times, but these men never slacked off. They met the standard yet again, and made the battalion commander’s last weeks with the unit another tremendous success.
In New Orleans, I witnessed firsthand their compassion. Here and there, we found holdouts living in flooded, ruined houses who refused evacuation. The Guard had been ordered by the mayor of New Orleans not to give food or water to these people in hopes that eventually they would consent to evacuation. One short chat with the likes of Mimi Bartholomew, a fortysomething diabetic woman who lived alone, and anyone could tell she would rather die than leave her birth home. Others were the same way. The men ignored the mayor’s order and brought food, water and medical supplies to these desperate, impoverished people.
Despite the fact that these men had been away from their families since October 2003, despite the fact that this second deployment played hell on their families, jobs and schooling, most volunteered to go. They are America’s protectors, and when they get the call, they don’t think of what they’ll be losing here at home. They think about who they’ll be helping once they get to wherever the country needs them.
They are good men whose backgrounds are so diverse it is a wonder they got along with each other. They did so because of one great underlying common trait: each one of them shares an abiding love of this country. It forms the core of who they are, defines their decisions and motivates them in even the worst conditions. Most are embarrassed at first to discuss this commitment to our flag since it seems a little hackneyed in today’s disillusioned world. But one day, Shane Ward opened up to me and showed me what this was really all about. They may be goofballs and fun-loving hooligans on the surface at times, but there isn’t a single summertime patriot in the bunch. Their commitment is real, their sense of duty so profound that they risked everything they’d built in their lives to go where their country needed them most.
And they paid the price. Some lost everything they knew and loved when they returned home and have now got to start over from scratch, something that is never easy no matter how young or old you are.
Then
there are the ones who didn’t come back. This war in Iraq is bloody
and gruesome. Human beings are frail creatures, and in the torrent of
flying steel their bodies are
Now
bring into this mix of unique friendships the reality of the worst
moments in Iraq: sudden, violent and horrific death. Seeing a lifelong
friend, a neighbor, a high school classmate, burnt and blown to pieces
in front of your eyes is not something that anyone truly recovers
from. It will stay with these men for the rest of their lives in
nightmares and late night reflections. While researching and writing The Devil’s Sandbox my emotions ran the gamut—as did theirs through their deployment. Fear, humor, horror, outrage and loneliness all played roles in their lives in Iraq. Most war stories and movies focus on the horror and trauma, but that was just one aspect of the 2-162’s deployment. The intensity of emotions over there—the laughter, the bonding that went on, the anger and indignation—they all played equal roles in the lives of these men. When they came home, their emotions felt muted. No longer were they hyper-aware of their own mortality and the fragility of life. That rush, that vividness of experience and feelings were taken away from them and suddenly they found themselves in their old routines. It turned out to be extremely disorienting and caused much of the readjustment issues the men and families experienced. As a result, I’d be remiss if I focused just on the traumatic emotions the men felt over there. There were moments of exhilaration, euphoria, hilarity in the midst of combat. In short, they were simply human, experiencing human emotions in an intense and very dangerous environment.
One final point: the men of the 2/162 are infantrymen. Over the generations the average rifle-carrying soldier has been called many things from grenadier to skirmisher, doughboy to GI. Today, they are “Crunchies” to the armored guys, “Grunts,” “Knuckle-draggers” and “Joes” amongst each-other. Mech infantrymen were routinely referred to as “Trunk Monkeys” for the way they bail out of their Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Whatever your want to call these ground-pounders, the fact is infantrymen from Bunker Hill to Baghdad have always been a profane and wild group of guys. It alters the way they talk amongst themselves, destroys much of their humor, and simply doesn’t reflect the nature and life of today’s M4 lugging Joe. These men are a far different breed of cat than their comrades in the Air Force and Navy.
Basically, when you’re trained to crawl around in the muck, live like dogs in filthy holes and kill people at close range with rifles and machine guns, the very nature of the job tends to create a uniquely gritty atmosphere. To try and describe that without including profanity would be like trying to play baseball without an infield. So, I apologize in advance if the foul language offends. It is not intended to do so, it is simply intended to convey the mindset and personalities of the men in this story.
***
From
punk rockers to buttoned-down chemical engineers, this unit spanned
every socio-economic and ethnic group in our state. It was a microcosm
of Oregon, transplanted 7,000 miles
I’ve spent my entire adult career interviewing combat veterans. From admirals to Doolittle Raiders, to fighter aces and bombardiers, I’ve devoted my life to being the medium through which their experiences can reach others. In all that time, I have never met a finer group of human beings. I am proud to bring you their story and humbled that they were willing to share it with me. It made me realize the depth of the loss we as a community and a nation have suffered with each soldier killed over in Iraq. That loss is felt not just amongst the families and friends, but in the lost potential for our communities as a whole. My community has lost EMT’s, police officers, musicians and specialists who devoted their lives to at-risk children. We’ve lost potential teachers, entrepreneurs and hard working family men. We’ve lost the sage guidance of fathers, the support of loving sons and husbands. We’ve lost the type of men who will stop and help a stranger fix a flat on the side of the road. They are altruistic and service oriented, and our community has seen this vast reservoir of potential destroyed by those same Islamic fascists who seek our collective destruction.
They’re average Americans, with average American values.They are
hard-drinking wild men at their most raucous times, fractious and
petty during their worst moments. They fight amongst themselves like
any family. There are the popular ones and the outcasts. There’s an
unofficial hierarchy within the battalion forged in the field and
based on performance in combat. They squabble, they’re loyal. They
compete amongst themselves. And there are the schemers, the
dreamers, the idealists and the cold hearted bastards. There are holy
rollers and blasphemers; soft touches and strict disciplinarians.
They’re well-educated. They’re ignorant. They rock to Blink 182. They
hum Toby Keith tunes. They are Mormons and Catholics, Lutherans and
Baptists. They are Muslims and Atheists. They’re well-read.
All spent hours watching war movies, learning from Hollywood that they are just the latest in a long tradition of American soldiery. They love, and love to be loved. They’re flawed. In short, they’re human. And it is just impossible not to love them a little.
Or a lot.
Now, let me introduce you….
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on the uniform of the 2nd
Battalion, 162nd Infantry, Oregon National Guard and go off
to learn how to kill people.
What’s
more, they served willingly in combat, and did it their way. They went
into a dirty war and fought it clean. They returned with their honor
intact, immeasurably proud of how they executed their missions. Their
sense of right and wrong never wavered, and that moral compass not
only materially aided our cause over there, but surely will help them
all deal with the aftermath of the deployment for years to come.
