Either Peace or War

By Graydon McWilliams

When my friends discuss deployments to Iraq, we break them into three separate and unequal parts. The first deployment is when America started in Kuwait and pushed north to Kuwait. "Our deployment," is when I met the majority of friends that I still talk to today. This book refers to, "THE deployment," because it's the one we discuss the least and remember the most.

This book won Second Place in The Book Fest Fall 2022.
https://www.thebookfest.com/award_entries/either-peace-or-war/

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665726344

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Copyright © 2022 Graydon McWilliams.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-2635-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2633-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2634-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912290

Archway Publishing rev. date: 06/29/2022

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Dedicated

to the families of veterans who had questions they were afraid to ask and to the veterans who could never find the answers to unasked questions.

In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a war is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.

—Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato

CHAPTER 1

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I MISS WAR. THAT SOUNDS CRAZY, but there is a feeling about war that is irreplaceable. It becomes its own wonder of the world. The roaring power of it leaves you with an overwhelming perplexity of new sensations: the pressure of explosions and the way concussions push through your body and reverberate in your head. During an explosion, air somehow splits and turns to a magnificent bloom of fire while the ground vibrates with ferocity. There are brilliant flashes that hit one of your senses the way that lightning strikes a tree and snaps it like a wishbone. It happens so quickly that time feels like it’s slowing down. It’s hard to find it outside of a war. It’s that sense of death that holds time in place.

How blinding the darkness can be. To most of the guys that I knew, war brought assurance in the same way that an owl feels confident at night. It’s the constant practice of patrolling on foot or while mounted in your vehicle with night vision. I could sprint through the woods in the dark or drive down a road with night vision. Reflecting on it makes me want a cigarette. Lighting up after every patrol, I thought, At least, it can’t get any worse. The next week I’d pull a packet of Camel’s from my shoulder pocket, click my butane lighter, torch a cherry into place, and exhale a, Fuck me. It’s worse.

The measurements of better or worse were never a straight line. An algorithm of how long a mission was came in summations; how hot, how dangerous, how boring, or the number of people injured—all had to be plugged into a mental calculation. There was no right or wrong answer. Each of us held our own interpretation of the patrols. Everyone has his or her worst day.

The mental fault line seemed to crumble the longer we were there. One day closer to home may seem better to a family member, but a guy overseas may not see it that way. Anxiety would etch higher. The closer we got to redeploying home, the more our nerves kicked in and worry seeped out.

Think about making it to the eleventh month of a twelve-month deployment, only to have your insides blown outside. Or see a vehicle explode in front of you and know that it could have easily been you. The longer you’re over there, and the more you see, the easier it is to come to terms with how quickly you can die. It left me with a feeling of worthlessness. It seemed pointless to do anything that would impair or repair our states of wellness.

In the States, you show up for roll call and head outside. Then there is an hour of running, push-ups, and sit-ups, for the sake and purpose of preparing for battle and becoming stronger and faster than the enemy is. You rehearse until practice becomes a reflex—quick, quick, quick. In Iraq, there’s little need or purpose to it. You’ve spent all that time stateside, preparing for it. Now, you’re in combat. What’s there to prepare for? You’re there. It’s time to do the damn thing, kick in doors, fire back at the enemy, be a hero, and earn your place in the parades. But then you actually do the things, and it’s not all you thought it was cracked up to be.

Bulldoze through the patrols, drive, walk, and fill sandbags. You tell yourself that you’ll come out of this, fitter, leaner, and healthier, by the time you get back to the States. You read books before you rack out, trying to keep your verbalization honed into a civil tone for when you redeploy home. Focusing on the science of terminology and teetering less on jargon, you tell yourself that when it is done, you’ll be cashing that GI Bill at college.

If you don’t pay attention to how much you swear, every third or fourth word is, Fuck. The number of times a soldier swears in a sentence takes on a language of its own. So you read literature or poetry and try on classic works. But Charles Bukowski seems to fit your lifestyle more than William Shakespeare does. Crossword puzzles and chess games are your entertainment. They are small pushes that don’t feel like homework. Then you go to the gym to stay in shape.

The constant worry of war is that you’ll do all these things to better yourself and prepare for life after duty, only to be blown into so many small parts that the little bits go into quart-size bags and the larger parts go into the gallon-size bags. All those plastic bags are consolidated into a solitary black nylon body bag. If you’re the only one that was killed that day, it’s easier for those remains to be correctly identified.

Once you learn that all your preparations for after duty don’t help with the afterlife, books and weight training aren’t as tempting. When you see it firsthand while helping with the recovery of a body—the plastic parcels filled with toes, fingers, and questionable pieces—the naïve person you were before that deployment molts off you like a baby’s skin.

You’ve earned an education in combat, and you see how little you can control the way that you die. You may as well enjoy yourself. Smoke two packs a day, cuss, dip, spit, and skip opportunities to exercise. Then double up on Twinkies and Ding Dongs. There are two in a pack. Let’s get diabetic. Then go masturbate as your blood sugar spikes and get twice the high because the somber reality is that it might be the last day that you get to smoke after hand sex.

One evening at a bar, I told my brother that I was mulling the idea around of writing a book. I missed the feeling of duty, the hope that I was working in a field of the world that cultivated something larger than a job, and the responsibility of not only fighting an enemy but also saving a country.

I always thought that calling the army a job was bullshit. It was a duty. In some right, it was a noble act where my small actions would churn up something greater. I told him that I missed it. He put the whiskey glass down, looked at me, and said, I understand that. There are few places you get to see an entire building knocked down with rockets and machine-gun fire from an attack helicopter.

My brother joined the army his last year of college and a year before starting medical school. It was no surprise when he was sworn in. When he joined, it seemed like a fiscally sound chess move. I was with this group of Rangers, he started. Not like you, he said palming his whiskey. Real Rangers. Third Battalion needed a medical officer for a mission, and I volunteered to go.

I started laughing. He knew how annoyed I got when civilians said that I was a Ranger. Going to Ranger school—a leadership school—does not mean you are in Ranger Battalion. I don’t know exactly how to put it in worldly terms. I suppose it’s like saying you graduated from a university, but it was only community college. I thought you were the battalion’s surgeon, I said, with a slight questioning tone. How does it spin around that any combat force, much less a Ranger Battalion, snags you?

Well, we all have bosses. The battalion executive officer told me to find a volunteer medic for a mission. He asked if I thought I could find one in time for an operation with the Third Battalion. They were doing an air assault early in the morning, and they needed support. I said, ‘Of course, I can find a volunteer, sir. Me.’

You … mother …, I said. My mouth gaped at his audacity.

He signaled to the bartender and politely asked for two more drinks. Brother, I volunteered for everything. He beat his hand against the bar while he laughed. "Including that one time with Third Battalion. For some reason, they needed a medical officer, and I got to tag along.

"We’re walking down a street. It’s daylight by now. The mission was to find a target and ask him for intelligence on someone from the area. Nothing over the top. This wasn’t a top secret, sexy mission. Go to a town. Make contact with someone and get some information. The streets were empty, but I didn’t think much of it. Who wants to hang around when a dozen armed men are walking into their neighborhood?

Rifle shots fire off, and a team huddles around me and pushes me into an alley. The building wasn’t tall, but there was enough cover for us while this local starts shooting at us from a rooftop. Now some of the units I went into sector with had to ask three levels of command to get help. They called their boss’s boss’s boss before they got firepower from any helicopters or indirect fire. With the Rangers, it wasn’t so much of an issue. He grinned.

No shit? I asked.

He was buzzed now, and he grinned at my sarcasm. "I don’t think these guys were used to a captain walking with them. They have me tucked behind a wall when the shooting starts. It’s loud and reckless. There’s dust kicking up and that zing-snap sound when the bullet hits close and ricochets. I can hear the radio from someone in the group with me. There’s no asking for clearance and no calling to higher for permission. Fire for effect and cleared hot.

Out of nowhere, this attack helicopter shows up. The damn thing is almost directly over us. It’s just down the street, maybe half a block away, he said extending his whole arm behind him. Then the missiles and machine guns start up. He slings his arm forward, mimicking a missile. The hellfires unzip the building right down the middle, and it collapses on itself—implodes. The explosion rocks my chest, and there’s dirt everywhere. Before the sound wave leaves my ear, I’m smiling in awe of what the fuck just happened. There was a building. Then no building. Gunfire and rockets. A three-story building piling onto its first floor. Then silence. Concussions and a shock wave. Then peace. An Apache helicopter screaming through the rotors and then a clear sky—not even a cloud. If you’re ever going to write a novel, write about those moments.

My brother was justified when he gave me that advice. Any attempts to explain what life was like in Iraq are worthless if you white out the sensitivity of combat. If you haven’t been to war, anyone that has been doesn’t give a shit. Don’t feel obligated to tell your new veteran acquaintance that you were going to swear in but (fill in a valid excuse that no one cares about). I always have two impressions from someone who hasn’t been. I feel bad that the person didn’t because we won’t feel that connection. And I’m so glad that the person didn’t so that I won’t have to feel that connection.

There’s a romance to it. If you were like me, and you went to war, you were shot at, you felt the blasts, and you moved something dead, you’ve taken some of my pride away. The more people who have that experience, the more pride that bleeds out of my heart.

When you read about it or watch it on television, the timeline of what and how quickly it happened is compressed. You need to live it. The waiting, walking, and mundane miles of boring days are what make it special. You can’t show up for the days of excitement. The daredevil who shows up for the hour of a firefight is less than shit. You’ve got to put in those tiresome, long days. They are an investment toward the thrilling moments. Putting your time in on both is how you earn trust.

It’s hard to decipher how fast time moves when something bad happens and how snail slow time goes when nothing is happening. You can’t blink, fart, sneeze, smile, frown, or light a match in the time it takes for an explosion to blow a vehicle sideways or cut a person in two. And the very split second it happens in front of or to you, I swear that it feels like the whole world stops spinning until your mind catches up.

I dare you to explain sex to a virgin. Tell that person how electricity shoots through your body, mind, and if you’re lucky, your soul. You can feel someone quiver over you while you’re holding them. You cannot explain war any better than you can explain the feeling of sex, taste of chocolate, or sadness of cancer.

Controlled detonations were a bolt of excitement that went through the chest. The enemy would bury an explosive or booby-trap a car or house. If we found it first, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) was called out to extinguish it in a safe manner. They blew it up but in a way that hopefully didn’t kill anyone. It was like practicing safe sex. We were put at a safe distance, but the excitement was ever present. We sat in the armored vehicle after an enemy explosive had been found and waited for the ordnance disposal to come. It could take an hour or a day. The longer that I waited, the more relieved that I was to see them.

Once they set charges and initiated the blast, all eyes were on the point of detonation. We could see the shock wave coming, an instant before it hit our lungs like surfers who saw their wave before the wave reached them. It was a moment before they rode them, but they could read the surf.

I’ve always thought that the best person to ask for a war story is someone who hasn’t experienced it. That individual loves to talk about it. I’ll brand that person as an asshole for asking what my tour was like. All they really want to hear is a gruesome story they can pass off to their friends. The less we know of each other, the higher degree of asshole that individual is. When someone that I work with or a friend of a friend asks about my experiences, I don’t lie. I simply tell a story that he or she never saw coming.

I explain the tale about a soldier who needed a suppository and his friend volunteered to help deposit the pill. It’s a crude story but less than most war stories.

That’s the story I fall back on when someone randomly asks me about Iraq. It’s humor when they expect tragedy. You can’t explain a year’s tragedy over dinner with family. For some fucked up reason in my mind, a suppository is more appropriate for after-dinner chitchat because we’re not that close. I haven’t even told my family most of this.

I don’t tell them how it feels when the road explodes next to your Humvee or how the armor shakes with violence. I don’t talk about the split second when I realize that I’m OK. There’s a rage or a forest fire in my gut. I’m out there to help. The enemy was planting artillery shells under the road. I took it personally every time.

I can’t explain the explosions after a dinner over beer. I don’t tell them about the gunfire. I say, I have all my fingers and toes. I didn’t lose anything or leave something behind. But those are lies. I did leave something. It wasn’t an appendage. It was a part of me—an indescribable portion of my soul. It was so minute, there was no title for it. It’s an important enough piece, that every veteran understands what part I’m describing.

All the preparations and rehearsals for combat are nothing more than that—practice. They have their place, but you can’t out-train war or get ahead of it. Here are three small letters in a destructive word: war. It’s enormous. The reach of it goes beyond a distance. War can propel a person through time, as he or she clings on for dear life. I saw war. My children did not. I hope they never do. But they can see the effect of it. I see my actions reflected in their eyes.

I decided to keep a log of my time in Iraq and send the events that had happened in letters. My hope was that every two or three weeks, I would acquire two or three pages. I would write enough to send to my girlfriend, Leah. After my second patrol, I decided that it might be best if I didn’t send those letters home. Maybe I would just hold onto them until the timing was better. I couldn’t send letters about what was happening.

We went to help recover a vehicle that had been hit by an improvised explosive device (IED). After we got to the site, the fourth man was pronounced dead on the medevac flight to the hospital. The other three soldiers had been killed instantly from the explosion. The pieces were everywhere. A hole stretched across the entire width of the road. The asphalt had split open around the circumference of the blast.

The bones of the Humvee were black from the smoke and fire. Ash from the tires and flammable bits had collected under the frame and drive shaft. The entire roof had been blown off and the doors had gone with it. The top had settled ten feet from the road, next to an empty field. It was a tangled and contorted armament. It was hard to imagine how powerful of an explosion it must have been to twist that thick of steel. I’m sure that you believe that you can see it and that your imagination can produce an image of the vehicle. The metal axle was twisted like a candy cane. The tires had burned so hot that the metal wires inside the rubber were exposed and welded to the rim.

Picture the cases of water bottles and additional ammunition cans that were tucked with the prepackaged meals inside the truck. One of the most essential items that I remember seeing was a fire extinguisher, which had been rendered useless because the red chamber had been punctured by shrapnel.

I was assigned to go with a security detachment for the battalion commander and sergeant major who wanted to go into the sector and observe what had transpired. The seventeen of us left in four vehicles to pick up the pieces that they had left.

CHAPTER 2

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T HE COMMERCIAL PLANE LANDED ON the runway like a fat-ass albatross flopping onto a couch. Throughout the cabin, soldiers, with groggy-looking eyes, began stretching and grabbing at equipment. Piles of body armor, weapons, and sensitive items were crammed behind and under airplane seats. There were piles of clothing and piles of soldiers wearing them. Everything was stale from the twenty-six-hour airplane ride.

Heaps of grayish-blue body armor were handed out to their owners. Everyone donned their armor and grabbed their weapons, which had no bullets, as if they were about to walk off the airplane into combat. It wasn’t combat. It was just Kuwait. The rows of soldiers waddled down the aisle like slugs. It might have been the jet lag or the two Ambien pills that were issued to everyone. The large gap in time zones meant that everyone was to ingest one sleeping pill on the airplane and one after we landed in Kuwait.

There had been a break in the trip. We got off the plane in Germany when it was refueled and restocked with meals. Like I said, this bird was a fat-ass albatross. Fat asses need to be fed.

You could tell which guys on the plane had taken the sleeping pill too late in the flight. They stumbled into Germany. They were lethargic and dopey eyed. A few of them wandered like lost children at an amusement park.

It took an hour or more for the airplane to be refueled. I can’t remember exactly how long it took. I had swallowed my sleeping pill too late in the flight. The refueling was long enough for us to walk down the stairs, stretch, start to wake up, get impatient, give up, and lie down to nap on the floor, only to be told it was time to stand up and board the plane, however long that took.

From Europe, it was another four-to-six hours until we touched down in Kuwait City. I’m not exactly sure how long it took. Jet lag and trying to keep up with time changes on my watch was confusing. The flight was all a fog. My memory was a fog. The cabin was body-odor fog.

A stewardess opened the door of the airplane and let the semi-cool air escape from the cabin. The atmosphere of Kuwait sought refuge in the cabin of the albatross. The smell of two hundred grown men on a daylong flight, slow baked in a commercial airliner and then sizzled by the heat of the Middle East, lingered.

Smell that? Grommet said as we shuffled closer to the door. The burning-garbage smell? Like it’s been smoldering, and then someone tossed dirty diapers and rubber tires on the fire to keep it going?

I can smell something burning, I said to him. I could smell how hot the air was too.

That’s Kuwait. All of it smells that way. Nothing’s changed since last time, Grommet said, crinkling his nose.

A caravan of buses lined up on the runway. Everyone filed off the plane and loaded into the caravan without checking through customs. They had small, worthless curtains over the windows—sheer, white cloth that kept the occupants unseen—on our drive from Kuwait City to the military camp.

We staged at the camp. It was a dull time. Containers full of our equipment were shipping straight to the base in Iraq. All we had to train with in Kuwait were the weapons and equipment that we had brought with us on the airplane.

Most of the unit seemed revved up with excitement, but they had nowhere to direct it as the buses’ wheels spun in the long, sandy landscape. There were miles and miles of sand. It was thick and made up of dark, tiny pebbles. A beach without an ocean wasn’t its only description. The largest desert in the United States, the Great Basin, even had sagebrush and cacti. Kuwait had nothing. The land was lifeless and large. It wasn’t only the landscape, but it was the country—coarse sand that you shuffled through and that you kicked off the toe of your boot with every step. The treads of your boot would sink into it. The barrenness would have been depressing if not for the prospect of combat. Kuwait was a stepping-stone. Everyone was ready to push to Baghdad, but we were stuck in this pit for weeks.

I shouldn’t be harsh on the land. There were things there that I had never seen in the Midwest. I saw camels and bedouins. It was the first time that I saw a mosque. Muslims worshipped there by kneeling and touching their foreheads to the ground as a sign of humility. It was a peaceful thought that Muslims cherished their religion enough to pray five times a day.

What stuck out most is that we didn’t drive on actual roads—at least, not paved roads. The transparent curtains covered the windows on the bus. But a few of us would pull them back to look at the nothingness: no houses, no subdivisions, and no paved or unpaved roads. There were barely any paths to speak of. Packed trails in the sand from wheels were the only lines to follow. Half a dozen buses that left the airport were following each other. I would peek out the curtains of the bus and look for a road or simulation of a path.

I was watching a small group of Bedouin people riding camels when one of the other buses pulled up alongside us, as if we were on a four-lane highway and not in the Arabian Desert. I assumed that we would move in military fashion, follow-the-leader style. The buses slithered through the beach and moved into the camp like a mirage.

I’d saved the last Ambien pill, which had been issued at Fort Campbell. Near the end of the first week in Kuwait, it was time to pop. A long day at the range was planned. I had never tried or needed sleeping pills before we left Fort Campbell. I didn’t like to take Tylenol or aspirin. I was worried that if I took it too often, it wouldn’t work—a conspiracy theory that my body would build up a tolerance to it. A few antibiotics and low-dosage steroids for an allergic reaction to poison ivy were the most that I’d taken.

The trouble was that someone had tried to wake me two hours after I had taken the Ambien. An officer from battalion operations shook my shoulder. Sergeant Mac, he whispered. My eyes barely blinked. They kind of opened but then rolled back, and I drifted again. Gripping me harder, he shook me.

Don’t shake the baby, I said through the drugs.

Sergeant Mac, you need to wake up. There’s a Red Cross message for you. Someone in your family passed away. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Chaplain Birch is waiting outside the door for you. He’s going to escort you to the telephones.

I slipped on my sandals from under the cot. I was still wearing the shorts and shirt that I’d gone to bed in so that I was ready for physical training in the morning. Stumbling outside the tent, I was met by the chaplain. I kept trying to clear my head while he talked. He told me how bad he felt and that I should follow him. He was talking through my Ambien haze. That pill had messed me up. I felt drunk, but I didn’t want the chaplain to catch on.

The chaplain, Captain Birch, had the kindest face of any man in the battalion. I didn’t know him that well. We’d only met briefly in passing. He was easy to spot because of his long limbs and light complexion. If you gave Abraham Lincoln a buzz cut and shave, I believe that he would have looked like Captain Birch. He had a lumberjack’s athleticism, which made him too tall to lose in a crowd. The few times that his name was spoken, it was always good-naturedly. Some of my friends affectionately called him Chappy. My gut or the pill in my gut told me that if I explained that I’d taken my pill, Chappy would understand. The difficulty of walking in this state took too much focus. I kept my mouth shut and stayed with the task at hand, doing whatever he told me to do and nothing more.

I can’t recall if I snapped to attention or even saluted when I recognized him. Being the chaplain, he was comfortable with going through military protocol or skipping it. His easygoing nature made me less self-conscious while I stumbled through the sand in my sandals. The small pebbles grew three times their sizes while I walked on Ambien. I was Alice in Wonderland.

What I vividly remember is that his large hand fastened over my shoulder and led me to the call center. Chappy’s long arm was cocked and guiding me to a building. I will forever think of his long-reaching arm and secure grip as a shepherd’s crook, his tool to maneuver the lambs of his fold.

Sergeant Mac. The Red Cross sent a message for you. I’m sorry. Your grandmother has passed away. I’m not sure which grandmother. The message didn’t specify paternal or maternal parents.

I did a half-spit and half-drool thing, where my saliva hit the sand but hung out of my mouth. It was more like exhaling slobber. The pill was hitting me hard. And the dry air gave me cotton mouth.

It’s all right, sir.

Are you OK? You seem out of it, he said.

Good to go, sir, I said wiping spittle off the corner of my mouth. I took the sleeping pill the medics gave us. I need to get my calling card if we’re going to the call center, I said while looking back at my tent.

I have a card for you to use. Don’t worry about going back. We’re almost to the call center, and you’ve had a death in the family. There’s a phone reserved for you in a corner desk. I don’t think anyone else will be in there at this hour.

Chappy opened the door for me. I lost my balance when the lights hit and leaned heavily on Chaplain Birch for support. I will uphold you with my righteous hand, I said to him.

"Oh? You’ve read Isaiah?

No, sir. It’s something I remember from Bible school. It was a verse from my early Baptist days.

Chaplain Birch’s eyes softened. Before you call, I need to be direct with you, he started. The battalion has been in Kuwait for a short time. I don’t know that the brigade commander is going to allow you to return home for the funeral, the chaplain explained with an easy tone. "If your family asks when you’re going to return, you can promise them the chaplain is asking for you. Do not promise you will make it back for the funeral. Even if you were on the next flight from Kuwait, I couldn’t say you would make it home in time for the burial."

Sir, I don’t want to go back. That flight was terrible. And you think I should go back for the day, turn around, fly back, and hope to keep up with the battalion moving into Iraq? That’s too much flying, traveling, and Ambien. One trip across was bad enough. God, it sucked. There flew my early Baptist days.

Chaplain Birch looked at me, unsurprised and nonjudgmental. He looked at me with agreement, except for the part where I took the Lord’s name in vain. Chappy didn’t have to tell me that he didn’t appreciate it. He could have corrected me or spouted a verse on why I was a sinner. Instead, he handed me a prepaid calling card. I’ll let the commander know you won’t push a grievance to fly home for the funeral. Take as much time as you need. Call whomever you want to. Would you like me to wait outside? he asked.

No, sir. I don’t know how long I’ll be. I can find my way back.

I dialed my parents’ home, but there was no answer. Next, I tried my sister, who gave me the quick details. But later, I couldn’t remember what she said. My mind was cloudy. I remembered calling her. I’m almost certain that she told me it was our maternal grandmother. I felt like I was sleepwalking and in a groggy state.

Finally, I called Leah. Fortunately, my mom had called my girlfriend earlier. Mom had given her a brief idea of what had transpired. My mother’s words were, Leah, my mom passed away. She passed in her sleep. I thought you should know in case you hear from Graydon.

After Leah explained what she knew, I mumbled, It doesn’t sound like they’re going to let me come home. I’m not sure when I can call again. I’ll try to call Mom tomorrow.

Your mom needs to hear from you. Try again as quickly as possible, Leah said. Do you hear me? Call your mom.

I will. I’ll try in the morning. I’m not sure what time it is right now. But in five or six hours, I’ll call her. I love you.

I love you. Be safe, Graydon.

When I left the call center, I caught a glimpse of the chaplain on my way back to the tent. I was taking short strides through the sand and moving my eyes from where I had stepped to where I was heading. His tall Abe Lincoln figure was outside the door of a tent, sitting in a folding chair. Nobody was outside at this time of night unless he was on guard duty or smoking. Chappy watched me pass and raised a few fingers from his knee in a gentle wave. He was waiting to see if I needed to talk.

In the morning, we were slotted for the rifle range. It seemed like a joke to me. Soldiers were to board the buses and drive to a shooting range somewhere in the sand. We could all line up at the edge of the camp and fire our weapons without hitting anything. There was nothing but sand outside the perimeter. Instead, we were told to load into the buses after breakfast. That’s army safety for you. They would drive us to a better place to shoot at the nothing.

I found a window of time to call my parents before we left and after I had had coffee. It was in the middle of the night for them. I knew that they would be home and that they wouldn’t sleep well until I called.

I didn’t think you would make it home for the funeral, my mother said. We’re all going to miss you. Is there anything you want me to tell your cousins?

No. No, there’s nothing. I’m sorry Grandma passed. I’ll miss her.

We all will.

I better go, Mom. Love you, I said and then ended the short call.

The company was consolidated and waiting for our rides to take us off the camp. Chaplain Birch was making his way through soldiers, wishing them luck with sighting their weapons. He was smiling and patting soldiers on the collar with the crook of his staff arm. Chappy seemed to be in a good mood considering that he had had to babysit me for the duration of the night. He made jokes about how we were going to Iraq whether our weapons were zeroed or not.

Some of you might not be saved, but we’re all sinners. Don’t add another sin and march to combat without a zeroed rifle. God will forgive you. But the rest of your comrades will think you’re a dumbass. He laughed. No excuses today. If you get frustrated or your rifle doesn’t shoot straight or jams, you come visit me at Sunday service. We can pray for the sins of your rifle and soul. He noticed me and politely asked how I was holding up. Sergeant Mac, did you get a chance to call your family this morning? I talked to the commander. They can’t send you home.

I understand. I didn’t expect it. Immediate family only. I know the rules, sir, I said with an easy tone.

Chappy hung out in the staging area and talked to everyone as they boarded. He didn’t go to the firing range. I don’t think he even carried a pocketknife. But he was good for morale. His big heart made everyone around him feel easy. Officers weren’t always the most approachable until you had a rapport with them. But Chappy wasn’t most officers. He gave as well as he got. We called him Chappy because he let us. He could have stopped the nickname at any moment but accepted it with an endearing smile. The man was a well