coalition forces creative writing 101

a few days ago, i went the this base's scrap yard. we needed some metal and a few other things; on tuesdays you are allowed to dig through everything and take whatever you want (for official use, that is). balad air base has been here for a long time, so if there's one thing in the scrap yard, then there will be a huge pile of it. the first thing you see is a broad expanse of generators. they are all here because they are broken, but i suppose they have some useful parts. then there is the pile of air conditioners, followed by at least a few thousand folding cots. rope, barbed wire, cables, small engines, scrap metal: then the military vehicles. row after rusted row of bombed-out, shot-up, burned, crashed, and crushed humvees, tanks, and armored personnel carriers (APCs). each one of the vehicles has a tragic story behind it, and someone probably died within each one; each skeletal cab like a fruit rind around a dark seed- a fruit that beckons its seeds within and uncreates them- a perfectly symmetrical end to life.
the seats aren't comfortable. the air conditioning can't keep up with this climate. the side windows are eight-inch squares of 3-inch-thick bulletproof glass. a humvee is not a pleasant place to be in a battle. most of the body is made of fiberglass. the area around the cab is a combination of steel and kevlar sheets. they may look intimidating, but that all changes when you've seen one close up that has failed to protect its owners. shredded and pockmarked steel. frayed skeins of kevlar, faded from the sun (a known and pervasive weakness of kevlar). bullet-proof glass with bullet-holes in it. most of them are only burnt husks. many seats are missing. the military is fastidious about human remains.
tanks with armor 5 inches thick that looks like melted wax: imagine sitting inside a sweltering steel box while 10 to 20-pound shells impact your armor with enough force to form a craters the size of a basketball. i picked through the debris; boxes crumbled to reveal blackened and melted MREs. thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition laying about like fossilized poppies- the heat from the fires caused the powder to explode, leaving burst cylinders everywhere. signs of daily life- maps, water bottles, hand-written labels on levers and buttons. a hefty piece of bulletproof glass that melted into a huge yellow raindrop. sandbags that melted and slid off the turret, leaving green trails of plastic like flaming slugs.
the experience was a sobering one, at once both poignant and mysterious, and more moving than any sanitized memorial wall or tower could ever be. and no, i'm not allowed to bring any of that stuff home with me.
at one point, i stepped off the top of a tank onto an ammo box, but the ammo box gave way and i fell onto the lowered loading ramp; i did kind of a somersault on the way down and put a nice gash in my hand, but i'm all right.
i was wondering if when a soldier is killed his gear gets placed back into the supply system for reuse.
life is getting more serious as the days go by- i think that as the officers and chiefs get acquainted with the base and get briefed, they take into account more and more the gravity of our duties. (which i can't discuss :-) me, i already had a pretty good handle on where i am, so it's a nuisance to have constant eruptions of leadership in areas that i have already figured out.
before we left, i made up a number of decals for the airplanes here. all i can say about them is that they are on all of our jets, somewhere (secrets are lies! secrets are lies!). last night i was dispatched to the flight line to apply one of these decals to a jet; it was the last jet to get the sticker because it was in the air on a mission when i put on the others. i got there early and watched the plane land and taxi towards me. something you may not know is that, with a few exceptions, jets are louder from the front than from the rear. the exceptions are when it first starts up and when the afterburner is on. most of what you hear when they fly by is the sound of the air passing over the first-stage vanes at hypersonic speed.
the jet shrieked furiously as it turned towards me and stopped. the engine quieted abruptly and the canopy opened; as the pilot crawled out, i set up my ladder and climbed up onto the rear of the aircraft. the engine, shuddering to a slow halt as the turbine spun down, sent tremors through the fuselage into my boots. for a few seconds, my body and the jet were vibrating- moving- in perfect unison. part of the 26,000 pounds of thrust in that machine was transferred to me, and from me to the sere night air, in the form of motion and tiny amounts of heat- giving away energy the way a charging lion might run you down and continue after its prey without ever even acknowledging your existence. something mighty and terrible; something powerful and aware, but choosing not to beware of you; leaving you smaller. i rubbed some dust off of a skin panel and it was warm, trembling, tensed... a sharp, crouching beast under my feet. the jet had come back with fewer bombs than it had left with- somewhere, at that moment, there were craters and devastation- leaving the strange round tracks of a war machine along a wild but calculated hunting-trail. as i finished my job, the jet got refueled and inspected. i pulled away in the van, and it was preparing to take off again for another mission.
i understand why i am a symbol of death to some people. i understand the hate, fear, and awe of standing powerless beneath the subjugative whim of a faceless power. once you finally understand the jet as a machine, you can control it. but when you have experienced the jet as a bestial agent of secret and ancient principles, you can understand what it's really doing- you can understand what is really filling up that airplane-shaped piece of space.
conscience is actually two words: con, and science. con you know from contradict, condemn, conflagrate, and contest. it means 'against'. science comes from an older root, meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate'. when parts of your life contradict other parts, there is conflict. condemning your bad parts will get you nowhere. when your mind cuts itself into two opposing realities, that is conscience. this is where the old cartoon gag of an angel on one shoulder and the devil (also an angel, interestingly) on the other comes from. it goes as far back in history as early religion, when people tried to reconcile their often mutually exclusive internal desires with two opposing internal beings- a physical one and a spiritual, otherworldly one.
i was thinking that when i get home, instead of a 1,000 yard stare like real vets get, i might have like a 10 or 15 yard stare. "i try to talk to him, but his eyes just burn half-way through me...."
well, goodnight everyone. i'm spending way too much valuable sleep-time writing. i cleaned the filter on my a/c today and it's just perfect in here now.