Saga part IV

29 Mar 2150 hrs

Sitting on my cot, writing this at ten minutes before lights
out. Technology makes this so easy, which makes it so hard. I am
enjoying the now, while I have it, because soon I won't be able to send
one of this for a while.

We have been sending people forward in small packets. Soon we will move
the entirety of the Bn forward, across the Berm. Out to where, as old
maps used to put it, "Here there be monsters."

There has been a shift in the importance of things. What used to seem
important in the abstract is now material. Every morning after chow I
clean my rifle. I take it apart and check for sand. I brush it. I
remove parts I normally ignore. Throughout the tent is the soft rasp of
toothbrushes and the familiar clicks and clacks of rifles being taken
apart. The desert means I don't apply a light coat of oil, lest I make a
paste of dust, first to polish, then to grind, if it does not merely clog.

Every few days I remove the cartridges from my magazines and disassemble
the magazines. Back in the States I never did that. Back in the states
I never left a full load of thirty rounds compressing the spring for weeks
at a time either.

We have added more pills to our arsenal. I am now a walking
pharmacopoeia. I have pills to take if I am exposed to Anthrax, pills to
take against malaria and pills to take (only when ordered) to make my
atropine useful against a wider spectrum of chemical agents. I also carry
sets of Atropine and D-Pam Chloride for myself. In the event we are
overcome before we can use them, we will be dosed with all three sets of
the injectors. To prevent muscular contractions from causing injuries,
when all that atropine hits the system at once we also have (and only to
be used when buddy-aid is done) an injector of Diazepam (i.e. Valium).

I am not sure this reassures me.

I saw a swift today. It was small, some sort of flycatcher. The
twittering of birds is growing (one of the first thoughts I had,
spontaneously, in Russian was while running. I heard birds, and though,
"ptitsi" because it seemed right. Then I decided it was
ontomotopaiaic). Guarding the motor pool I don't think the sound of them
ever faded.

We are slaves to rumor. The news is so fragmentary that we cannot get
anything approaching perspective. We get the impression (from TV) that we
are not doing well, but from here things seem to be pretty well contained.
Part of this is because I get some reports that won't make it to the
news. They are too minor to play well, though they are important, in the
big picture.

On the other hand we suffer from the traditional idiocies of
bureaucracies. A/519 is the unit which is supposed be the driving engine
of the Bn. We are to gather the information Brigade will turn into
intelligence.

To do this we need to know what has been happening. To find that out, I
have been watching television news, because the most minor of reports
seems to be dearer than gold. Being the Order of Battle NCO, I am
supposed to know as much as I am allowed, by clearance, of what has been
going on, so I can brief the interrogators going, "into the booth," on the
present situation. I get stale reports, pulled from units we support. The flow is running backwards

Then there are the more prosaic sorts of rumors. Zawacki and Corporal
Hannifan came back from the PX. Zawacki had a collapsible chair (the
short that squeeze into a columnar shape and come with a bag). It cost
eight dollars.

I asked if there were any left. The response was positive, and (according
to them) everyone in line bought one, there might be enough for me to get
one, if I left right away. Dilemma: The duty day was not done, and I
feel odd dashing off, to wait in a long line, when it is not for something needful.

SFC McBride said, "Go sergeant." Twice I did not need to be told.

The line to get in was about an hour. It had grown while I was on my
way. Standing with my gear on my back, first to get in, then in the line
to the register (I am out of cash, so all has to be bought in the longer
line for credit/check cards). That took another half-hour. Wondering if
they would all be taken when before I could pay, and then collect mine.

It's blue, and not perfect, but then again the perfect is the enemy of the
good, and it is so much better than perching on my footlocker, or
cross-legged on my cot as to be wonderful. It is the best chair I have,
and as such it is swell.

30 Mar

Another clear day. The morning wind was from the north, by afternoon it
was from the south, carrying the ash and the smell of the trash fires
toward the mess hall. I did laundry when I got done with what needed
doing. Meditative. Hauling water, mixing soap and clothes. Squeeze,
wring, repeat. Haul more water, rinse. Use the rinse water from my socks
and shirts for my uniform. That took maybe half an hour. I read some of
"Viscount of Adrihlanka" and wrote some letter in the hour it took things
to dry. Then I took a shower.

Bliss. The start had hot, not warm, not tepid, not even very warm, but
hot water. Hot enough I had to add some cold water to bear it.

On my way from chow I noticed a tent stake. These are not your ordinary
tent stakes. They are made from 1" rebar, bent to have an eye at one end
and two-feet away they are pounded to a rough point. This one happens to
be at the edge of a walkway, where we turn to throw away our plastic
plates. It has been polished, like the ringbolt on the Surprise, which
Capt. Aubry has burnished with his boot.

Earlier I was at Bn. On my way back to the tent I heard the slippery
sound of Chinooks (the twin-rotored helicopters that look like flying
bananas) winding up. I watched for a few minutes, but Chinooks have a
long warm-up and I decided to move along (the day was in the
eighties). As I turned to go the note changed. I turned (forgetting just
how long the wind-up is) and watched some more.

Helicopters are more fascinating to watch lift-off then planes. Planes
make a smooth transition (and helicopters can), they start slowly, speed
up and rise. Choppers just change note, the blades bite, a cloud of dust
swallows the beast and then, rising triumphant from the stew of dirt and
air comes a flying insect, huge and gracile, posting over the land.

There were three of them.

The other thing of note today was that we got more people. A/223, the
unit I actually belong to (though not the one which has, "operational
control," of me {this may matter when it comes to being sent home, and
then demobilized}) got in.

Three weeks a world of difference makes. They are bright eyed and
eager. We seem tired and not quite weary. At breakfast I sat next to a
pair of captains. They were talking about the night they spent in Camp
Wolf. Apparently the incoming siren sounded twice during chow. They
referred to it as, "A pair of air raid drills." There is not yet a
meeting of minds. They want a taste of the sandstorms. We want to be
shut of the dust. They have had the war on TV, it still seems distant to
them. They think the weather is romantic.

They don't seem to connect that I sound like a two-pack a day; for forty
years, smoker with the romance of the shamuuz. Time, on the other hand,
will cure them of that. I don't know if I can envy them. I don't think I
was ever eager to be here. Duty bound, and willing to perform it, but
eager? Not in this lifetime.

There are rewards. When I am crunching reports, synthesizing the data,
making sense of what the analysts have distilled from the information they
got, and then handing it back to the rest of the company as stuff they can
use to get more info, that is fun, and I like it.

And the things I get to see, the birds, the rocks, the sun behind the dust
I so complain of, the interplay of people making the best of hard times
these are also beyond measure.

01 APR

Preparations. Sooner or later we will move forward, so we prepare. The
risk of our being attacked enroute are slim, but we are not (for obvious
reasons) going to blow it off as though it were impossible (the army does
a very good job of worst case planning. We don't always do the best of
dealing with it when it comes, but we prepare for it).

So we are drilling on what to do if we get contact, how we will sit, and
scan while we move (that painful staring out at nothing, looking for
something, and hoping to not find it. Guard duty at night is like this,
only worse, because there is nothing to look at and the imagination runs wild).

We go over the weapons we have, how to use them while moving. We look at
where our limits are (so we don't shoot ourselves by mistake, because we
missed a bad guy and weren't paying attention to what was behind the
target). We sandbag the vehicles (against mines). We practice radio
drills. We try to think of anything which could go wrong, and how we plan
to counter it.

The practice makes the coming convoy seem less ominous. We will be
prepared. Ignorance is the father of fear, and we are working to make
certain we are not ignorant.

People are actually starting to be relaxed. No raids, no cries of, "Gas,"
no immediate threat. And we have something to move towards, so the
waiting (while ever present) seems to be less onerous. Their will soon be
real work to do, for everyone.