Flight

Iraq

A Chinook whirled through the heavy cloak of night; its lights were off, rendering the helicopter less visible, a camouflaged moving target. When Ray’s boots touched the ground on the U.S. Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah, he walked into a world saturated with smell. Situated six miles southeast of Sadr City, on the eastern side of Baghdad, between a waste incineration field and sewage treatment plant, the olfactory assault, a pungent concoction of burning trash laced with feces, was overwhelming.

“Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of Camp Rusty in the evening.” The flight pilot inhaled deeply, stretched, and grinned at the soldiers as they disembarked and started to choke. “Welcome to your new home, boys.”

Transferred directly from intense, specialized training, the company of men entered a new arena, the proving ground. They were dropped into an active war zone, from which there was no retreat. They silently moved through the base, a maze of engineered, rebar-reinforced T-walls, absorbing and cataloging each detail as their new reality sank in. No turning off the television console here, no changing the video game halfway through because you were tired or had run out of ammo. Each soldier became aware of a brutal new truth: unless severely wounded or in a body bag, there was no way out, not before their orders were completed, and before their major announced game over, you are free to return home.

As they walked toward their sand-bagged encased barracks, their movements kicked up a fine, powdery, beige sand. The particulate matter settled onto their combat boots, uniforms, and rucksacks and covered everything; even the susurrus full-leafed palm, painted with the moon dust, glistened. Even outside food consumption, sprinkled with Rusty Dust, they would find out later, was a gritty affair.

They neared their quarters, ready to settle for the night when a soft hiss drew their attention. Ray looked skyward as the whistle increased in pitch, slicing through the dark.

“Incoming!” someone yelled.

Around them, seasoned soldiers ran for the nearest concrete bunker, engulfed by sandbags. Those who didn't feel they had time hit the earth, forming compact balls, their hands clasped together, arms protecting their necks. A rocket slammed into the roofed aluminum housing unit, flinging shrapnel debris high into the air, and the earth rattled beneath them.

Ray quickly learned that unlike in the movies, one rarely heard the incoming rockets and mortars. If you were lucky, you did. Then you had a few seconds of warning. The night they arrived in Iraq was the first and last time Ray and his unit stood looking into the night, oblivious, unaware of what the sound heralded. Never again would their bodies not respond, every muscle tensing until an explosion and awareness hit simultaneously. They had survived, escaped destruction and severe bodily injury, at least this time.

After the communication blackout was lifted, they learned a soldier had lost his life, and several more were wounded. And so began the vigilance, a constant state of alertness that would not diminish, even in sleep, even when Ray was no longer in a war zone, long after he returned stateside and there was no need for hardwired watchfulness anymore.

****

In the space between sleep and wakefulness, Ray would have his most vivid dreams or clearest memories. Sometimes tangling them apart was challenging. What was an actual memory? What was a sleep-induced reverie? On this pre-dawn morning, he saw Leo, aged nine. Practice was over. A languid fall evening with deepening purple hues was descending. Coach Lightfoot had them gathered on a corner of the football field. He was giving a pep talk for an upcoming meet. Ray saw Leo scrambling up the empty stadium stairs, barefoot, skinny legs sporting the numerous scratches and bruises one has at that age from living fully, a mane of dark hair flying behind her. A little bundle of Sandy fur, close to her heels. She was racing now, and at the top, she flung her arms wide just as a migratory flock of American white pelicans soared over. They were calling, moving swiftly, and for a fleeting instant, pulled into dusk on the wingspan of a child was Leo. She had become part of this flight. When Ray woke with the army-issued sheet jumbled around his hard hips and beads of perspiration on his torso, he knew this was both: a vision and a flawless memory.

****

Like the rapid-fire of his personal military issued, M249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun, flashes of memory would strike in succession. Ray had little control over how his brain presented them, but he did perfect the art of detached observation.

On the battlefield, Ray found his voice. Here, political views and opinions fell away, like a fire destroying all organic material, leaving only the stainless-steel bones of a structure. On the front line, Ray was force-fed an all-out raw experience, pulsing with its own life, terrifying and intoxicating at the same time.

Ray stood atop the third vehicle of the convoy, positioned behind the turret and an M240 Bravo machine gun. They were on Route Gator, following a chewed-up road that skirted the slumbering Tigris River, escorting the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit to an undetonated roadside bomb. Despite being late afternoon, the temperature hovered close to 110 degrees. Sweat soaked every part of his uniform, including his bulletproof flak jacket and field combat boots, as if he had just emerged from a hot, humid, saltwater shower fully clothed. As a gunner, his job was to look for possible threats.

Ray scanned the surrounding landscape. No human or animal activity was detected. There were no ripples in the river. Even the palms hung limply, debilitated by the heat. The safety and success of a convoy's mission pivoted on the eyes, ears, and muscles of its gunners. Usually, on high alert when out of the wire, Ray felt removed. This last operation lasted thirty-six hours, and he had not eaten or slept. But he wasn’t alone. All the men in his unit were beyond exhaustion. Once the EOD detonated the improvised explosive device, everyone could return to base.

In the lull of the moment, all was quiet. Ahead was the carcass of a dead donkey, half on the road, half off. Fighting overwhelming fatigue, Ray slowly closed his eyes, then opened them. Before him rose a mushroom tide of flame and earth. The immense discharge sent the convoy’s lead vehicle arching into the air like a toy. The metal door flew off its hinges and splashed into the river. At the same time, the up-armored Humvee landed upside down in the weeds, and his first thought was, this is just a dream.

The explosive concussion and giant chunks of concrete falling from the sky brought him rapidly to a familiar reality. Within seconds, while the gunners pulled security, dismounts extricated the living from the lead vehicle, quickly turning them over to their waiting medic, Specialist Fisher. Following closely on the heels of the medic was a white puppy. Ray was sure he was hallucinating. There was a cognitive disconnect. Then he remembered, during their drawn-out operation, he and Fisher found the pup alone, shivering with malnutrition, in an empty shelled-out house, and they were bringing her back to base. The pocket-sized creature scampered over to the six-foot deep, ten-foot-wide crater created by the explosion and curiously peered down.

Ray was hauled back into full alert by sniper fire aimed directly at their immobilized unit. Sharp snaps from across the river recoiled in the air all around them. This was how attacks often went: a roadside bomb, rendering passage impossible, would stop the convoy dead in its tracks, and then, while attending to their wounded or assessing the damage, the convoy would be ambushed. Using machine guns, the insurgents opened fire on the trapped assemblage of soldiers and their vehicles. As Ray rapidly turned his mounted 240B aiming for the far western bank, he saw Doc Fisher scoop up the pup and gently place her on the floor of a nearby Humvee.

“On, like Donkey Kong!” they cried from the turrets. The gunners and soldiers on the ground were returning fire with every arsenal they had at their disposal. Ray, on his feet, sighted the dust kick-up of a PKM machine gun. Without hesitation, he aimed, using the iron sites, and fired a 5-7 round burst, then another. Two of Ray’s brothers were dead.

Also deceased was an eighteen-year-old Iraqi interpreter who called himself Jay. They’d seen pictures of his siblings, and learned of his dream to move to America, go to college, and study green technology for sustainable farming. In moments like these, war became personal. Rage became uncontainable. Ray’s sympathetic nervous system, the part of the brain that triggers fight or flight, started a chain reaction, flooding his body with adrenaline, accelerating his cardiac rate and raising his blood pressure. The catecholamine dump pushed his heart, mind, and muscles to perform beyond capacity. Chaos reigned. Survive or die.

Out of the madness, rose a disciplined warrior, who charged into combat, where every decision had ramifications. And history was written with every irrevocable action.

From the Humvee behind him, automatic grenade launchers were spitting hot and fiery. Explosions riddled the west bank. Trees flew in the air, elephant grass caught on fire, and the Tigris churned as if on a high boil. Ray was down to the last of his ammunition and was now firing tracer rounds from his hell belt. He could see them zip across the waterway, joining the immense firepower that shone brighter than the sinking sun.

Like birds of prey, Apache helicopters flew out of the dusk, diving in coordinated flight. They spotted the insurgent bunker from which the attacks originated and let loose 30 mm cannons until nothing was left. As suddenly as the attack started, all was bathed in silence.

Ray collapsed back into his turret, breathing rapidly through his nose and out of his open mouth, trying to regain equilibrium. Once his respirations dropped, he reached into his pocket, extricated a single cigarette (when in a combat zone, he allowed himself two a day), and watched the silhouette of his smoking 240B barrel against the diminishing dusty pink twilight while ash from the burning elephant grass rained peacefully around them. Across the river, he could hear the rounds still on the enemy dead, popping in the fire.

Forty hours after leaving for their mission, they pulled back onto the base. Ray and his men returned their Humvee to the motor pool repair shop to fix the windshield riddled with damage from sniper fire. With exhaustion approximating annihilation, their bodies craving nothing but sleep, they wordlessly dismounted and stepped down into a raucous party.

Salsa and rap music blared simultaneously, emanating from competing speakers, while tee-shirt clad, and shirtless soldiers danced as if no one was watching, sang at the top of their lungs, and drank Saint Pauli's Girl, non-alcoholic beer as if there was no tomorrow. Ray felt he was moving slowly through an alternate reality, a surrealistic split dimension. Starkly layered, the palpable dichotomy of war included the tediousness of procedural regulation when on base–the predictable patterns he and his fellow soldiers carefully knit, almost superstitiously, around them–as well as the terrifying moments in battle and when running for bunkers to avoid incoming rockets–the times when all there was, was the raw, frantic struggle for life.