Little Girl

Months ago I was gunning on the lead humvee of our patrol south of Lashkar Gah in an area that sits in the shadows of the ruins of a once great fortress built during the time of Alexander the Great. It was our first patrol in the area and we were the first US forces in that area in a year. We were in our up armored humvees with our gregarious American flags whipping in the wind like we were powerful knights moving across the landscape.

There was a little girl sitting on top of a wall that ran close to the road. She saw us from a good distance and as she sat straddling the wall she was waving wildly in her dark red dress. I could see her excitement and beaming smile from a good distance away. My heart was filled with a feeling of joy. When we passed her my heart sank. Her left eye was severely swollen and even though it looked painful as hell she still looked happy.

This is not my first rodeo, she was not the first sick child that I have seen in a war zone and I know that she will most certainly not be the last. Yet, those few seconds have lasted much longer in my memory. I saw the little girl again in a few dreams and I have seen her in the faces of other children that we pass routinely. I went on leave and I saw her again when I held my niece.

This week we were moving through the same area. This time I was driving the third humvee. When we passed the same wall she was there again. I got so excited that I was waving just as vigorously as she was and I said to my gunner excitedly, “That girl is there again, she’s there again!” He had no idea what I was talking about because he was not on our team when I first saw her and I have told few others about her and almost no one about the dreams. As we continued past her I told him that the last time we passed she had a very swollen eye and it broke my heart. Because of our speed and my position as the driver of the humvee she looked fine. My heart was lifted I felt a feeling that has been hard to come by since the first time I saw her. It was a feeling that would only last a long second. My gunner told me, “She looked like she didn’t have one”

A good soldier wears ballistic goggles to protect his sight and enhance his vision. Sometimes a good soldier wears them to hide the welling up of tears.

An Old Photograph, A New Memory

There was a photograph taken of me once where I was sitting on a beautiful beach. I was on vacation with the woman I loved. I was just back from my first tour in Iraq and I could not have been anywhere else in the world at that moment that would have brought me more happiness. However, the photograph captured the truth; it froze a moment in time when I could not have been father from where I really was…

I have been thinking about that picture because an old man brought a young child to us while we were at a police checkpoint. He brought the young child to us in a wheel barrel. The child was severely burned over half his body. Some soldiers tried to help but as an army, the world’s most powerful one, we did not do enough. The child will probably die before to long because the type of care the child requires is out of reach for most Afghan’s. What keeps echoing in my thoughts is that dying is probably the best hope for him.

Since the type of mission we are on has not and probably will not put us in a position where we will be heavily engaged with the enemy, today could be the type of battle that stays with some soldiers for a long time. I hope it does not because I have fought that type of battle before. I hope that today is just another day for the other soldiers on my team. I hope they will not have dreams of the young child. I hope that when they are home, far away from this place, a photograph is taken that will not be a portrait of a tormented soul.

What will photographs show about me?

I Can Read (written sometime in July)

Do you remember when your parents said you were to smart for your own good? It was probably immediately following the time when your mother asked your father in your presence to go to the store and get some I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M for after when the kids go to bed. It was also about the same time you realized your parents were to dumb for their own good because you learned to spell the year before.

That in essence is the overwhelming feeling I get every day as a Police Mentor. Not that I am to smart for my own good, I proved that false by volunteering for this again thinking some how it would be different. But my parents (i.e. the levels of leadership high above my own chain of command) do not have a C-L-U-E.

In my case I was a mentor of sorts during my first tour in Iraq. Albeit the mission was slightly different, we were expected to “Go forth and do great things” with minimal direction, zero training, and extremely limited resources. I still regret that we could have done so much more if the jerks who said, “Go forth and do great things.” would of provided the resources necessary. The kicker is this job makes that year look like a C-U-P-C-A-K-E.

All I want are the direction and resources necessary, not some R-E-M-F telling me everything I need to know is on a hard drive. Apparently they forgot I could read and what I heard was B-S.