I’m sure you’ve heard that there are no atheists in a foxhole. First off, it’s called a “fighting hole.” I once asked my DI where he wanted me to dig my foxhole; he smacked me so hard up the side of the head I remember seeing Tuesday. Then he calmly explained it’s a fighting hole. Lesson learned. I was in the mountains of Afghanistan a year or so after that instance; Sam Brannison and myself were assigned a forward outpost position. Not sure what he’d done to be on the shitty end of the stick; I had been caught trying to ferment mouthwash into something passable as alcohol. Didn’t work. Still got in trouble as if it had. Want to talk about the injustice of it all? The lieutenant that passed down the field judgment reeked of whiskey. Whatever. Now I knew where to liberate some stock when I got back to base.
So Brannison and I are tasked with digging a fighting hole. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the standard Marine Corps issue tri-fold shovel. It’s roughly the size of a toy you would buy for a child, and Afghanistan, well, it’s comprised mostly of cement. Natural cement, in the form of granite-like dirt and boulders the size of tires. On a good day, we’d be able to scrape a few inches of earth to hide in. The enemy was active in this area, and we weren’t feeling overly confident in our ability to make it through the night.
Typical talk of all fighting people everywhere revolves around food, home, and invariably, members of the opposite sex. We covered all those topics just as the sun went down over the horizon. Once the night settled in, the conversation became more somber. Not how I would normally while away an evening, but we moved on to religion. Yeah, I went to services on Sunday, but mostly because it got me out of the sand and into an air-conditioned tent. And in the off-chance there was a Maker, I wanted to make sure the lines of communication had been kept open. I had my doubts about the presence of an omnipotent, omnipresent deity, but again, what harm was there in playing all the odds? Brannison was Methodist, not that this made the slightest difference to me, just part of the narrative.
“I think guilt is the primary weapon favored by Catholicism,” I told him. “My mother got an advanced degree in its use.”
“Not too late…you could convert. As a Methodist, you would learn that we toss food around instead of shame.”
“I like your religion better; guilt weighs way more than food.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” he responded as we toasted with our canteens, which, unfortunately, were filled with water and not sacramental wine.
Brannison and I were friends in the Corps; can’t say we would have been close outside the confines of battle. He was entirely too straight-laced. But he was a good guy and a great shot. Plus, right now he was watching my back; all of that equated to us being best buds. We made it through the night with only one report to make. Two weeks later, parts of Brannison were sent back to the states after an IED on the side of the road blew up the Hummer he was riding in. I think of him often and even went to a few Methodist services to see, and yeah, they like their food.