The Lost Squad

It was another July fourth, sitting around the barbecue pit watching the coals burn out. It had been a good meal, and now I was enjoying the quiet time with my son.

"Dad, you were in the army, weren't you?" my son John asked.

"Yeah, a long time ago during the first Gulf War," I muttered, knowing the next question that was coming.

"Well, what did you do?" he asked.

"I got lost."

"What?"

"I got lost, and missed the war. Everything fell apart for us, and we didn't even make it over there before the war shut down.

"Is this why you don't mention your service that much?"

"It's kind of a simple way of looking at it, but yeah, I guess it's because my war stories suck."

"Well, how about you tell me, and I'll decide," he said.

"Fine, if you want to be bored and tortured, go grab me some beers," I said, setting back into my chair and closing my eyes, as he headed off into the kitchen.

I never made it into a shooting, war, but it wasn't for lack of trying. I missed Panama, well, as much as someone can miss a steamy jungle, but the Gulf War, that was supposed to be mine. My unit had trained for years in desert warfare. We knew the heat and the sand. We had trained both overseas and here in the US, and everything was for desert tactics.

I spent years living on the edge of deployments. Most people don't realize it, but units in the military get put on alerts all the time. If there is a dictator somewhere rattling his sabers about the Yankee Imperialists, you can bet there are quite a few men and women who have just had their lives uprooted and now are experiencing the joys of living out of duffle bags and not knowing if they will go home at the end of the day. Looking back, I guess it's a sacrifice in its own way. Maybe not the glamorous way to call yourself a vet, but it's still a sacrifice. I guess the saying is true "A vet is someone who signed a blank check for their country with their life." It's up to the army and fate on how much gets taken.

My eyes refocused as the 6 pack of longnecks dropped on the table in front of me. I popped two open and handed John one as he sat down.

"I'm telling you son, this is a tale of despair and disappointment. About the hardest thing a soldier can do is not go to the big show. You spend all your time breaking yourself down and building yourself back up into a finely tuned killing machine. You sacrifice your dreams and hopes of normalcy. You've given yourself to the gods of battle, and to get turned away is the ultimate in rejection. "

"Dad, you're drunk." John never minced words; too much of his mother's way in him for that. I took a long pull off my bottle and looked at him. It suddenly struck me how old he was, and where this conversation might turn. Suddenly the sixer didn't seem to be enough booze. We may have to break out the real hooch if this goes where I think it is.

"I'm not that drunk," I said. "Men in our society are driven to test themselves. You played baseball. Imagine training all season to hit the ball. You spent hours with your bat, just getting used to the feel of the wood grain in your hands. Hell, you slept with it. You spent days studying the perfect hit. You know the sweet spot like the back of your hand."

John slowly nodded, absorbing what I was saying. I continued, after another long sip.

"You spent weeks in the cage, hitting everything that came your way. You felt the sun bake you, and the ice freeze you to the bone. But it's never the real thing. You don't know if you can hit a real live ball. Sure, you've done it a thousand times in the cages, but to face down a real ball thrown by a live pitcher, is a completely different thing. You lie awake at nights, telling yourself it won't be any different, but deep down, you know it will be, and you hope you will pull through."

"Dad, the story..."

"OK. Just remember what I said and think about it. I was in an infantry unit when Iraq invaded. We were supposed to deploy with the rest of our company right off the top to Saudi Arabia, but we stayed behind with some broken vehicles. We spent two weeks loading our vehicles up on train cars, offloading them, driving them to the port, driving them onto ships, driving back off of ships; you name it, we did it. Because it was just 10 of us, it was easy for the brass to forget about us. We got bumped off of 13 different planes going into the country, and were left sitting on the tarmac."

"How could they forget you guys?" John asked.

"The brass already saw that our company was in place, so they wrote us off as just a paperwork mistake. We finally got onto a plane about a week before the US invaded. Unfortunately by that time our pilot was so worn out we somehow ended up almost crashing in Algeria."

"What?" John said, "I never heard anything about that!"

"Yeah, well why publicize your mistakes?" I shrugged and opened another beer. "We finally got in country about two days after the invasion. I think they just did that so that we could say we were in a combat zone. We never got out of Saudi, and three days later we were herded back onto a plane. We landed in Germany and guarded post housing for about six weeks. We then went back to Kuwait and ended up filling in for the headquarters companies so that they could rotate their guards out. I never saw an enemy soldier that was armed. "

"How long were you in?"

"Ten years. I spent ten years, preparing to hit that ball, only to miss out on the game."

"That must have been rough for you guys."

I opened another one, as I thought of the toll it took. One guy killed himself the night we went on alert. He only had 15 days to go before he was supposed to get out and marry his high school sweetheart. She had made him promise not to make her a soldier's wife, and he couldn't bear the thought of an involuntary "extension" with a real possibility of not coming back. I still have his dog tags; he gave them to me before he closed his door and shot himself.

Two got divorced. Their wives could handle the whole war thing without a problem; it was the constant bouncing around that wore them down. Not knowing whether your husband is crashing through enemy lines in Kuwait or sitting at the pool in Germany from one day to the next can be trying.

One went mad while in Kuwait and took off through the desert with a machine gun screaming he was going to kill someone or die trying. I was just happy he was too picky to take out his blood lust on the rest of us. We never saw him again, but occasionally picked up rumors of a wild man running through the desert.

Coming home was pretty bad. Most of us were depressed over everything and coming back to the states meant the end of our chance to test ourselves. It made it hard on the families, who couldn't understand why we wanted to go back. They were just upset and bewildered why we weren't happy to be back with them. We were happy to be home, but to us it felt like we didn't deserve to be home. Others in our unit had gone to battle and came back victorious, and deserved their parades and reunions. On the other hand we bounced around lost in a giant maelstrom of bureaucracy until we finally returned, with nothing to show for our time.

Most of us stayed in touch. The phone calls usually start around January, and end around July. We all kind of tiptoe around the subject of the war and our lack of decent action. Usually we just focus on the good times before the war with all of the other peacetime activities that no one thinks about. None of us reenlisted after that, though. Most of us were o.k. with the killing aspect, but we couldn't handle the rejection.

Too much to explain, though. "Yeah, it was rough. Now it's my turn, John" I said, bracing myself for the response. "Why are you asking this?"

John reached forward and opened himself another beer. I had never really flaunted my service, it seemed wrong, with so many soldiers these days getting killed or maimed in our current "actions". My whole division lost less than 50 soldiers during the first war, and most of that was due to accidents. I didn't even get to fire my rifle, so it's hard to stand there next to those youngsters who lost so much. Hopefully I didn't give him the wrong idea.

I looked down and saw the last beer open in John's hand, next to a form that apparently hasn't changed that much-enlistment papers. I swiped both of them and read the contract. Four years in artillery: not that it matters much these days, roadside bombs aren't picky.

"Well son, congratulations". I said. "You will probably hate me for this, but I hope your years are just as boring as mine. I may have been disappointed in my service, but at least I got to stick around and see you grow up."
"Dad, your years don't sound that easy. Two of your friends got divorced, one killed himself, and one ran off. Mom won't talk to me about any of those years when you were in without swearing. No offense, but you haven't let go. You still sleep with a rifle, and I was probably the only kid in school with his own gas mask. You chose to be in; they chose how to use you. It doesn't sound like you had much of a choice in it."

"Smart kid," I thought as I looked over the backyard, glancing at the "garden beds" that were conveniently M-16 sized with false bottoms. You spend ten years digging foxholes, it can be hard to sleep without one, even if it is just for decoration. Maybe my time in had touched me in more ways than I thought.

"I guess you're right, son. It was murder on your mom, and she never really understood why I was so depressed when I did come home. It probably wasn't easy for you either."

I drained the beer and looked at him. "Have you told her yet?"

"Nope," John said and emptied his bottle.

My wife had been through me for ten years of army service, putting up with deployments, alerts, lockdowns, and just about every other stunt the military could pull. She had raised John practically alone for the first couple of years. She endured me coming home at all hours of the night, spending more time with my squad then her. She gave up her dreams and career to live in government housing and try to single handedly raise a child while I was gone living the life of a modern day gladiator.

And now we have to tell her that her only son is joining up. I mulled the situation over, thinking that fireworks don't always come in cardboard tubes and came to the only rational conclusion that presented itself.

I tossed John the keys. "You're driving." I said. "We're going to need a lot more beer."