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.
