Freedom's Fidelity

Monday, April 25, 2005

Fantastic New Blog

It's new to me at least, though the archives go back to September 2004. It's written by an army infantryman currently fighting in Iraq, so not only does it offer some unique insight, but it is incredibly well written. Take a trip to Iraq with this guy:

The IED exploded with a muffled boom that I felt through the soles of my boots, up through my legs and lower body and into my chest. The world was strangly silent in the seconds afterward. I glanced back at the explosion, light colored dust had been lifted off the ground by the shockwave, spreading outward in a ring - low, about a foot off the ground, just now starting to be caught by the wind and drift away. At the center a column of dirty black smoke and dust rose and fanned out into the sky. Brown black near the center, edges outlined with gray. Turning back to the line of traffic outside of the perimeter, a traffic jam that would linger for hours after we had gone.

I was worried about an attack. This could have been a decoy IED, there could be another one near by, closer to the road, larger. Or it could be the signal the begin an ambush. With the clogged line of cars, trucks, buses, carts pulled by donkeys, bikes, scooters, foot traffic an enemy could be hiding anywhere.

His accounts are about as raw and unfiltered as they get, it is certainly not for the fainthearted.

It all begins to wear on you. It makes you mean. It makes you want to hurt people and break things. It creates a nameless white hot hatred in you. All the jacking off and PT and sleep in the world will not cure it. You can talk about it all you want with your buddies, write letters, curse and scream and beat pillows, whatever, it's still inside you lurking like a beast and thrashing to be released. I wanted to be inside the house just fucking shit up. Why? Because it would have felt good. Those that understand what I'm saying know the feeling. Those that don't understand cannot understand, will never understand. They will call us monsters and Nazis, never being able to comprehend that there is hate and evil and rage inside them too. They are too afraid to look into their own dark places and acknowledge the reptile with the sharp teeth and claws that sleeps inside them too.

...I thought about my wife and family while up on that rooftop. The pain that this deployment was putting her through, she didn't work for nearly a month when I was first gone, lonely and depressed in a one bedroom apartment that, suddenly felt all to big and empty. These people we are here to fight, to kill, its one thing to make me feel lost and homesick, it's a whole other thing to visit that on my wife. Now you’re fucking with everything I care about and if I can find them I'll make them pay dearly for it. I'll give them a personal tour of what fear and pain is all about.

It reads like a book, but the writer is also vulnerable enough to let you inside the complexities of emotions and frustrations he experiences.

Getting in and slamming the door shut I looked back at them all. The mother who had given me food and her good bowel, the waving kids, and Fatima, trying to lock it all in my mind.

Days ago I was ready to burn this entire city down and now I had enough food to feed my entire team, I my very well have this families lunch in my truck. I felt something break free in my chest, it hurt, it made me long for this war to be over. Not just for me but for these kind people. My eyes stung and I swiped at them, mad at myself. How can we fight this kind of war and not go insane? On the other street, where I fell, an old man talked about,"The Day of Liberation, the day the Americans came and set us free." Why doesn't the news talk about that? Why don't the people at Home hear those stories? I have been treated with kindness much more often than I have been not here, I wish I could say the same for my treatment at Home, by my own people. More often than not I am looked down upon for being a Soldier. I've been flipped off while in uniform, called a Nazi and a storm trooper, and even been called a baby killer, I've felt the room go cold when I have told people what I do, been fired from jobs, refused jobs, because I am in the Guard. But here, where I worry every single day about somebody being killed, about me being killed I am thanked over and over again.

I don't get it.

The above samplings were taken from the first two posts of his I read. You should bookmark This is Your War and check back regularly. There aren't too many opportunities to watch history as it happens, this blog offers a fascinating glimpse to just that.

posted by Paul  permalink | |