From Thrown Stones: The Herald

By Solomon Smith

Living as a black man in America poses many obstacles. Making the choice to do something positive, I chose the life of becoming a career soldier during the most defining moments in American history, when the rules shifted with unexpected end results. This memoir is a full-spectrum story of love, war deployments, stereotypes, racism, failure, and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Solomon Smith
• Release date: Oct 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781535617185

Solomon Smith

Solomon Smith was born January 12, 1977, in a Harlem hospital. Raised in Harlem, he was an only child in a big extended family. Solomon was always different, and being the only child made him a natural fighter. Trained by some of the best martial artists out of New York, Solomon became a man of various talents and skills, but music, science fiction, and cooking were his passions. In 1997, he enlisted in the United States Army. Still actively pursuing his dreams, Solomon had to become a chameleon in order to achieve them, and for twenty years he did, ending in the most unexpected way. From Thrown Stones is the first of many memoirs. Solomon started writing and creating role-playing games when he was seven years old. He has written many stories, mostly science fiction, and he has written and produced music ranging from R&B to hip-hop. Solomon currently resides in Kannapolis, NC.

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From Thrown Stones

Volume 1 The Herald

Solomon Smith

Copyright © 2019 Solomon Smith

All rights reserved. No part(s) of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form, or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval systems without prior expressed written permission of the author of this book.

I would like to thank and acknowledge Knial piper III for context editing. Follow Solomon and check out the exclusive soundtrack at Www.Miiq.org / Facebook @onekingsol

ePub ISBN # 978-1-5356-1718-5

Mobi ISBN # 978-1-5356-1719-2

Contents

Prologue: Revelations

Chapter One: Lost in the Woods

Chapter Two: Leading the Way

Chapter Three: Divine Right

Chapter Four: Warrior

Chapter Five: Chameleons

Prologue

Revelations

-February 24th, 2008-

How did I get here? I’m out there, living in a fucking war zone. It was the worst place on the planet to be, especially as an American soldier in a post-9/11 world. Iraq wasn’t necessarily welcoming to the gun toting invaders from the West.

This particular morning was cold for a Baghdad dawn. I do have to say though, the 90-degree weather felt wonderful. That is, compared to the last few days, when the temperature had reached over 120 degrees. The sun had been slowly cruising the sky for a while now. To add to this pleasantness, there hadn’t been any mortar attacks so far. In the words of Ice Cube, today was a good day.

I was part of the unit in charge of an aerostat. For those of you that don’t know, an aerostat is like a giant blimp tethered to the ground. This aerostat served to collect information for the ground troops and the officers making strategic decisions. It was like The Goodyear Blimp, just deadly.

That day was the day Sergeant (Sgt) Jordan, Specialist (Spc.) Stuches, and I had to bring down the aerostat to take the strobe lights off and run our daily checks before we launched it up to hang with the sun again. We had been on duty for 12 hours now, and it was almost time to change shift. The dust had been low this morning and the skies were clear. It was a very dangerous morning for mortar and rocket attacks.

Our enemies were nearby, and they were paying close attention. They watched our daily operations in detail and loved to fire at us when they saw the blimp coming down. It was like some kind of sick ritual game they played with us, and we learned to prepare for it. And that giant silver balloon was an easy hit for enemy target practice. For some reason they loved to practice when it was on the ground. I guess they thought they had a better chance to pinpoint our location and kill one of us in the process.

Our Forward Operations Base (FOB) was hit almost every single day. Hell, sometimes those fuckers attacked us and our balloon, two or three times in one day. We had been here for 11 months by this time, and the volley of mortars would cluster in attacks from anywhere from 2 to 20 projectiles at one time.

If this all sounds intense, that’s because it was. It used to scare the shit out of me and rightfully so, but like anything in life, when something happens enough, you just kind of get used to it. By month 11, it didn’t faze me. I just didn’t give a fuck.

It is a weird phenomenon, that is, the mentality of a combat soldier in a war zone. It is like the main ingredient for the omnipotent and dreaded post-traumatic stress disorder. The army had learned to educate us soldiers about getting shell-shocked. We got taught early on about the levels of tension that your mind would exist in, while in combat. No good army education would be complete without a PowerPoint class and some colored charts. To educate us on this issue, they used colors to illustrate each level of tension. Green was relaxed and good, and red was bad, of course, but black was that next level shit. I had been existing in the black for a while now.

I adopted the black-level mentality, and just gave all my fucks to the wind. That soldier I used to know who entered the field scared of bombs dropping on his head, was now plastering slogans on the inner workings of my mind, that read fuck it If a bomb dropped on my head, and I ended up dying that day, so be it.

But once in a while, that thing called civilian sanity returned to me. I would wake up once in a while wondering, with or without worry, Was today the day I was going to die?

My unit, 3rd Brigade, Special Troops Battalion deployed to this hellhole in February about a year prior, back in 2007. In less than a year we had already lost six good men. The aerostat had even been hit by shrapnel from mortar fire at least five times since we had our boots on the ground. One time we even got hit by five mortar shells at once, when we were reeling the aerostat to the ground.

The shells landed and tore the earth to shreds, less than 50 feet from where we were standing. There was an alarm ringing over the yells detecting direction of explosions and others commanding us to take cover, but we didn’t even have time to run and take cover. That was a time I can clearly and convincingly remember thinking, I am going to die.

We were out in the wide open, docking the aerostat, when that first two rounds hit. These ’weren’t the regular mortar types, these were 155mm rounds, these were killers. I didn’t think I would have enough time to make it to the bunker, so what did I do? I just closed my eyes, maintained my command, and continued docking procedures. Training had at least prepared me for keeping my cool in moments like that. But deep down the panic was there. It was there begging me to lose my cool. But I found myself focusing on the irregular situation, wondering if I would feel some type of intense pain or would I just die instantly.

It was all so strange; that lifestyle and mentality needed to survive it. We endured and embraced the suck. Living through that strangeness earned the entire crew combat-action badges.

Shrapnel the size of my hand scattered through the air, penetrating the 3-foot-thick concrete barriers and everything within a 100-foot radius of us. After the earth fell back into its wounds and the dust settled, we were left amazed and in awe and wonder, of how we had survived. We still don’t fully understand how five of us were out there docking that big-ass blimp and left the scene of the crime unharmed. My adrenaline was pumping so hard that at one point I was convinced I’d been hit but just couldn’t feel it yet. It was like the scene in Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson get a surprise attack from the dude in the back room, only to realize onslaught of unexpected bullets had miraculously missed them by inches.

No matter how dangerous the mortar strikes became, we couldn’t let the tether go and risk losing the blimp; we’d be in the colonel’s office for sure. I was proud of myself for placing the mission first. There was one thing for sure. We were a hell of a group of soldiers.

I was thankful to be working with such a good group of men. If you didn’t have good men watching your back and doing their job, it could be fatal. On top of that, out here, one mistake can lead to disciplinary actions. This drove us to keep a cool, calm, and collected composure. This and years of training allowed us to dock the blimp under fire first, then ran for cover second. I never moved so precisely and fast in my life. Like I said, none of us lost our lives that day, but that’s not to say I hadn’t lost my fear of death. If it had been any day it left me, it was that day.

Death and mortars didn’t scare us anymore. The fear of getting hit by a mortar was so constant that we just became numb to the fear and just did our job, like the professionals we were. There were other more direct threats that we had to worry about. Snipers were an ever-present reality out there in the shit.

The shit wasn’t a playground; this was the real deal. Baghdad, Iraq, in the middle of the surge was no joke. Soldiers were getting killed every other day. When a soldier is killed, all communications back to the states, including the internet, were cut off and put in blackout status. It remained that way until the investigation and proper notifications were complete. This was one example of how effectively and efficiently the soldiers out there could be.

Yet for every great soldier, there were equally terrible ones. Dumbass soldiers were telling people over Facebook about other soldiers dying. Some people were finding out that their family members were killed in action before the army could properly notify them. I couldn’t imagine how my girl and kids back home would have felt to hear about my death through a stupid R.I.P Solomon Smith, social media post.

I gained so many new perspectives on issues I wasn’t even aware I had perspectives on in the first place. It was all completely life-changing. This environment and experience was like some alternate universe I had been transported to without my knowledge. But the thing about this alternate Universe was that it affected the universe I was accustomed to.

There were loved ones back home who would have to deal with the ripples that chased me and other soldiers back home. Aside from the threat of death there were troubles and strains that stretched soldiers and their loved ones thin. Some marriages turned for the worse due to the long-term separation. Some soldiers’ families were experiencing financial hardships. even with the combat pay and extra entitlements. I would end up experiencing these tribulations and more during my time in and after the shit. These were many of the instances of embracing the suck I mentioned earlier.

Part of the suck or the shit was terrible living conditions while deployed. Some soldiers lived like sardines in an open bay. The water would go out for days at a time and you could go a week without a shower. All of this coupled with the constant possibility of immediate death was what kept you in the threat-level black.

One thing you gain from all the strangeness was a feeling of unity with those that exist there in that blackness with you. For example, I had love for Spc. Stuches and Sgt. Jordan. They were my battle buddies and my soldiers. We joked and chatted about bullshit while we docked the aerostat in the bright sun, but deep inside we were waiting to hear that morbid alarm. We waited in the cleverly deceptive anxiety of mental states for the C-RAM counter system to notify us of incoming fire.

The first time I heard that bone shocking alarm, my body went into an instant state of panic and fear. My heart dropped to a deepness somewhere, only to return and pound my ribs into shatters. This was followed by profuse sweating. I hated the sound of that alarm. I despised it. The worst thing about it, was that I had to hear it almost... every... fucking... day.

I was a position of authority during the whole ordeal. I could see how someone might think such a position would be unwanted, but I considered myself lucky when the Command Sergeant Major (CSM) chose me to be in charge of this crew instead of putting me on route recon and sending me out the gate to look for IEDs. I appreciated the CSM for granting the honor but appreciating authority in my life wasn’t exactly something that came along every day.

There have been a number of leaders I hated and had less than respect for. There is a saying in the military You don’t have to respect the man, but you must respect the rank. Sergeant first class (SFC.) Tick was one of those leaders. SFC. Tick was our platoon sergeant, so I respected this position, but not him. He was an undercover racist that believed in the good ol’ boy system. He hated everything about me as a person, but when I got promoted, he really started to gun for me. He tried everything in his power to get me removed from the aerostat crew. My General Technician (GT) score was too high for slime like SFC. Tick to have his way. I tested higher than most soldiers who applied for the position, so he had no justification to remove me other than purebred hate. But my GT score didn’t stop him from telling me that he hoped I would come home in a body bag. I was determined to keep his wishes unfulfilled.

It was dangerous to go out the gate, as soldiers were getting hurt every day. The death toll for the campaign was growing by the week and we still had four more months to go. The position the CSM had put me in was a shift Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge (NCOIC). As NCOIC on the aerostat flight crew, going out the gate wasn’t on my daily list of activities. I differed from SFC. Tick in my leadership style; I hoped my soldiers would not die.

The aerostat was designed by Raytheon, equipped with a high-resolution camera that has thermal vision and able to zoom in on targets up to four miles away. We had two crews of six soldiers, all hand-picked to manage their respective positions.

Our primary mission was to surveil, 24-hour operations of Baghdad. We focused on the surrounding area of our forward operating base — Camp Falcon. We were responsible with identifying potential threats, providing over-watch, and locating hostile targets within a four-mile radius of our camp. Sitting at about a thousand feet in the sky, we could watch a family sit down, eat dinner, and then clean the dishes with wild clarity. Other times we would follow a small child through the market as long as we kept our line of sight. So pretty much you couldn’t take a shit without us watching you. And, yes, at times it was our job to do just that. You could see everything from our camera: people showering in their bathrooms, kids playing in the street, enemies pulling up in pickup trucks to fire mortars from the bed and then run like cowards, even vehicles hit by IEDs. Sometimes we saw things so horrible that they never fully left my mind.

We sent dozens of daily reports, overlays with pictures and layouts of our area of operations up to higher. Their intention was to outline anything we thought may be a possible threat. Our stations video feed is monitored by all of the higher echelons, so we had to stick to protocol. We couldn’t just watch what we wanted. That meant we were not allowed to monitor our own camps.

We also had to perform daily maintenance on the aerostat. Our first week of training was strictly for that. In the event of a sand storm we had to rapidly dock the blimp in harsh weather conditions, sometimes under fire. We had to be resilient and focused.

Despite these requirements we found plenty of time to chat about this and that. The skies were clear, and by the time we detached the night lights our conversation had changed subjects. I can remember talking with the other guys about what the first thing we would eat would be once we re-deployed back to Fort Riley. So many different foods came to our minds. We quickly changed subjects again as most conversations do when you’re in Iraq and started talking about home. Conversations often times got back to women, love, and relationships. Spc. Stuches asked me what I had planned to do once the deployment was over.

I had an idea of what I was going to do, but I was still unsure. My situation was complicated and only grew more complicated once I arrived here. My wife was here with me, She was an engineer and a staff sergeant as well. We lived together in the co-ed barracks. It was one of the first married-couples barracks the army had authorized during the surge. She and I had been at war with each other for a while and our marriage was in turmoil before we deployed here. I wanted a divorce, but she wouldn’t let go, and when we received notification that we were getting a married-couples’ barracks, she jumped on the idea. She was seducing and flirting with me in the way she knew I liked, or at least couldn’t help but feel tempted. She had detailed knowledge of me, my interest, my desires, and of course the fact that I needed my own space to record my music.

I traveled to Iraq with half of my studio equipment in the Conex, and the rest strapped to my back with my combat gear. It was pure hell getting on and off planes and choppers carrying all that gear, all the while trying to keep up with the others who didn’t have the extra weight, but I made it happen. Where there is a will there’s a way. My music was my life and Iraq wasn’t going to slow down my progress.

I’ll never forget how much ridicule and jokes I heard on the flights over there. Everyone had 2 duffels, a ruck, and a personal bag. I had three duffels and a second personal bag with my ruck stuffed of wires, microphones, and headphones. I really had to man up for my music. By the time I arrived in Kuwait, I was burned out at muscle failure. So, when she presented that opportunity to have my own space for recording, she knew she had a hold of me. So, I moved in with her and away from SFC. Tick.

What I failed to account for with total attention