Consolations

I hate being on call
on the weekends, but
if I keep my eyes peeled
and my heart is open
there are consolations.


***

Particular as Pathway

The faces wash past on the city street

infinitely varied but somehow all the same

in the blinking blur of an indifferent eye.

I am looking for that one familiar face that

will give all the others meaning as well,

the particular as pathway to the whole.

When I see it coalesce from the swirl

of humanity a bright spot forms in my 

otherwise dreary and dead existence.

It’s a focus that longs for connection, to be 

tethered to someone that keeps me from

floating off into the isolation of space.


***

A Bag of Bullets

Deployment becomes a reality.

The plastic case houses an M-16 rifle and I am checking it in with my duffle bags at the Nashville International Airport.  The sergeant who brought me down from Ft. Campbell wishes me luck and returns to our base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.  I have to catch up with my new unit which has been deployed for six months of a 12 month rotation in Iraq.  I tell the airline employee checking my bags what is in the case and he asks me to open it and show him that the weapon is empty.  

He is visibly curious about the weapon and asks questions about the type of bullet it uses and other technical aspects as to its functioning.  This information is unknown to most medical officers such as myself, but I’d served a few years as an infantryman in my early twenties and that kind of information had been drilled into me.  I politely answer his questions and grab the charging handle to lock the bolt to the rear so he can see that the chamber is empty.  When he is satisfied I hit the release and the weapon jerks in my hand as the bolt slams home.

***

There is a two hour layover in Amsterdam where I am free to roam the airport.  I have a friend who lives in the Netherlands and has been a great source of support in my conflicted existence as a physician, soldier, and (poor) Christian.  He is unable to meet me at the airport for this brief window of time, but then I see someone at a departure gate talking to an airline employee that I can almost swear is him.  It is like a mirage in the desert where my mind creates features that may or may not be there.  He is an older gentleman with a ruddy complexion and graying hair that is thinning but with a full beard.  I stare at him intently, willing it to be true.  Is it him?  Is he looking for me?  I move in closer and he turns in my direction.  I see he is similar to my friend, but not the same and I feel a return of the heaviness that affects me both in body and spirit.

***

I step off the flight at Kuwait’s main airport wearing civvies and sporting a light beard.  I’m greeted by a sergeant on this end of the trip who drives me through the city at night and then out into the desert for a few hours.  He feigns curiosity, “What’s with the beard?” a bit of a smirk detectable in his voice.  I explain I have been traversing international airports and did not want to stand out as a target.  That shuts him up.  

We arrive at the transition base sometime after midnight and I am dropped off at an empty troop hanger that can house hundreds but it’s just me and a single forlorn cot set up in a corner.  It is cold, but that will change when the sun comes up.

Sleep is fitful.  Dreams are hard to quantify.

Morning finds me disoriented and still alone.  I take a “combat shower” (get wet, shut off water, soap up, quick rinse, get out) and reluctantly shave my beard.  I am not Special Forces after all.  It is stifling hot and I can barely breathe as I walk the base and check in with the appropriate personnel, my M-16 like an albatross around my neck.

The time is off by several hours from what I am used to but there is little separation between night and day here with incessant activity around the clock.  It is sometime around 2am now and I can’t sleep, so I put on my PT uniform and shoot hoops on an outside court that sits in the middle of a cluster of buildings that, as it turns out, are filled with carrels for watching movies or playing video games.  Entertainment in limbo is essential for survival, apparently, though I tend to enjoy passing the time by reading.  A few sleepless soldiers show up and a game of 21 gets started in the cool night’s breeze.

***

Places like this in the Army are interminable.  They are holding tanks to transition soldiers to their particular units where they may have to stay for hours, days, or even weeks while an unseen hand moves up and down the system to figure out when and where to send them.  Time becomes meaningless as typical reference points simply cease to exist and the brain is fatigued as a result.  The sleep-wake cycle becomes like a wheel that has become disengaged from your car and disappeared into a ditch.  

Fifteen years prior in Korea as a young soldier in the 2^nd Infantry Division it was an enclosed area known as the “Turtle Farm” used to corral and house the new soldiers arriving in country.  It was next to the main drag on base and soldiers driving or walking by would see us gazing out forlornly through the chain link fence and taunt us with “Turtles!” (a Vietnam era term for replacements who were perceived to be slow in coming).

***

I eventually find myself on a fumey cargo plane headed to a base just outside of Tikrit on a former Iraqi airbase.  One of the buildings there functions as our clinic.  I arrive late at night and am offered water pulled from a massive pallet of shrink-wrapped plastic bottles of it.

Over the coming weeks and months I explore this desolate landscape.  It is a flat expanse of dirt and sand that stretches in all directions.  On the way to the chow hall I pass a stand of trees planted in rows that are dead or dying.  Rusted pipes connected to defunct pumps can be seen poking up through the friable ground no longer functioning to water this manmade grove.  A little farther down is an outdoor soccer stadium surrounded by a muddy track, the stands pocked with shrapnel scars and crumbling in the desert. 

***

Once again I am thinking about my weapon.

Officers are issued a 9mm pistol that can be carried unobtrusively in a shoulder harness, but I was late to the game and so all the 9mm’s were accounted for.  As a result, I was given an M-16.  Once you are issued a weapon it must be kept in your possession at all times.  No one thought to issue me bullets when I arrived in Iraq and I did not ask for any.

The thought of carrying a weapon designed to kill people is appalling to me on so many levels.  A sea change of ideas and priorities separates me from my time as a young infantryman now that I am in my thirties, a physician and father.   As far as I am concerned it is simply an elongated piece of metal meant to remind me of decisions made by my younger self who I have become estranged from.  I have learned to find other uses for it, though.  

The Colonel and I are walking the road to the chow hall for dinner.  The sun is sinking below the distant desert floor and painting lovely swaths of orange and pink in the sky behind the stadium.  I step off of the road and tell him I want to take some pictures of this silhouetted scene.  He seems a little irritated, but humors me.  The light is too low for a clear shot with my little camera and I cannot stand still enough to keep it from coming out blurry.  That’s when I experience an epiphany.  I shove the barrel of the rifle into the dirt to stabilize it and sit the camera on the flat butt that would normally fit into my shoulder.  I am now able to get some clear shots.  The Colonel sighs and softly grumbles, but this is a unique opportunity to capture something beautiful in this godforsaken place.  It is unfortunate his stomach is obscuring his view.                           

***

It is half way through my deployment and I have been tasked to transfer to our headquarters on the outskirts of Mosul.  The Combat Support Hospital unit there is returning to the States with its attached psychiatrist and the new one needs a fill-in.  Have shrink, will travel.

The Black Hawk helicopter sweeps us up over the perimeter fence and I feel my stomach flip flop into the territory of Iraq proper.  The landscape continues on as a flat and washed-out beige for quite some time, spotted only with the occasional village whose buildings and houses look like something from Biblical times.  I see a solitary robed shepherd moving across open land with what appear to be goats in tow.  Mountains appear under us an hour or so into the flight.  They are full of rounded peaks, ridges, and ravines.  My eyes rove to find a single flat spot for an emergency landing if needed.  There are none.  Mosul appears soon after the mountains and I feel the helicopter begin to bank over the Tigris River.

Our unit commander is a stickler for details which helps her fit into the Army nicely.  It is an essential skill in an organization with such a high turnover of personnel.  At some point she realizes what others have overlooked.  I do not have any bullets in my possession.  She is pissed about this.  She is pissed I wasn’t issued any in Tikrit.  She is pissed I did not seek them out when they were not forthcoming.  She tasks her armorer to issue me the prescribed amount of ammunition and I soon find myself in possession of a plastic bag filled with at least ten pounds of loose bullets.

I carry them to my hooch, clear out a space in the back of the cabinet where my gear is stored, and cover them with a flak jacket.  Not a single one will make its way into my rifle to be fired and find purchase inside another human being.  That is not my role here and I will not be forced into it.  RIP bullets.

The Church is a Hospital

It is a hospital for the spirit

where the Great Physician

works tirelessly to heal and

nourish the sick and dying.

The priest is his assistant

and helps give the medicines

and prescriptions for change:

Holy wine, oil, and water,

read the Holy Scriptures, pray 

without ceasing, confess and 

forgive, always and everywhere.

The “medicine of immortality”

is there spooned from a chalice
says St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
his voice echoing down from

the 1st century to comfort us

in our modern malaise. 

***