On a Chinook, somewhere between Gardez and Khost, summer last year (photo taken by a colleague)
Yesterday as I waited for a colleague to get checked out at the medical facilities at the PRT (we think she has malaria), I sat outside and had a chat with a 20-year old medical officer (who I'll call Mike for the sake of anonymity).
Mike was short and stocky, soft around the edges with cropped hair, of Filipino origin. He was wearing a khaki tee-shirt, army slacks and boots and smoked one red Marlboro after another as we sat in the sun.
My heart went out to this little chap and I asked how he’d ended up in the army here in Afghanistan. He was so young, but there he was acting so tough – pinching his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, flicking it away deftly once he’d finished with it.
He furrowed his brow and spat, taking a swig of water then pulled out another cigarette. He told me his parents couldn't afford to send both of their kids to university, so he signed up. He hopes to go to school (university) in a few years' time. I believe the military help pay for their recruits' studies once they've served for a few years, but it’s so sad that he was in that situation in the first place, that he didn’t feel he had a choice.
Mike pretty much talked at me for 45 minutes without stopping. He talked quickly and earnestly without ever making eye contact, as if he were on ecstasy. He hopped from one topic to the next, I couldn’t follow his train of thought, but I sat and listened.
“Man I’ve seen some f****d up shit. This guy came in the other day, he’d had his face blown off in an IED explosion – we had to perform a cricothyroidotomy, it’s a lot easier than a tracheotomy, there’s less damage done to the nerves, recovery time’s faster. Tracheotomies really mess with your voice box. I don’t think he made it though, I didn’t see him again after that.”
“The thing with the army is, you have to keep up. It dun' matter if you’re not as fit as the rest, if you can take the pain or can outdo your peers, you’re ok. The army’s all about being there for each other, we push each other. I’d do anything for my buddies. Back before we deployed, we’d get up at 4.30 and run for 8 miles. I hate the cold, but they stationed me in Alaska. WTF?”
“I love jumping, but jumping out of a plane in Alaska in winter? WTF? I love to surf. I’m from California and me and my buddies surf all the time. You gotta get on the board right. I can’t snowboard though. I get back from surfing all day and I watch TV.”
“In Alaska when you go running when it’s negative 30, you can’t touch your eyelashes ‘else they’ll just fall off.”
“I don’t touch the women here on the base. You see people in and out here with all sorts of weird shit. Man there are so many STDs on army bases, I don’t go near the women here. Not worth it. That means abstaining ‘til I’m home. That’s cool.”
“The thing with training, when they train you to become a soldier, they f***k with your mind. That’s what it’s all about. It’s all brain games.”
“These Afghans, man they love their pills. They’ll go for years without seeing a doctor, then they come in with these problems. I’m treating this police guy from Sayed Karram. He got his leg shot 15 years ago and has been wearing this splint since then – now all his muscles have atrophied. He never changed his bandages and he had all these sores. I told him ‘you do what I say now, you hear me?’ He came back a week later, all his sores had dried up. He can’t do anything with that leg though. There ain’t no physical therapy this guy could do to make it better.”
I hope the US military treat their boys well when they get home, that they get the counseling they need. I expect most don’t realize that they need it. I wonder what Mike will end up doing, whether he’ll leave the army and study, as he wants to.