Nothing Happened Last Night

Nothing Happened Last Night
©2010 Stephen L. Palmer

	It gets dark early here.  It’s barely 19:30 and it’s getting dark outside.  I take a walk down to the portable toilets  to  relieve myself; all  the water  I  have  to  drink  in  this  heat  has  me  going  two or three times a night.   Better than heat cramps, I guess.  How can I describe this smell?  You can get used tomost smells.  I’ve lived near chemical plants and oil refineries in Pasadena, TX.  After a while you don’t even notice it.  I’ve been here for eight months now, and I still can’t get used to this smell.  It smells like diesel fumes mixed with raw sewage and left out in the sun to ferment.

        I guess I can’t complain too much.  I’ve got a desk job, for the most part.  I don’t go outside the wire.    I  don’t  kick  in  doors  and  I  don’t  have  to  worry  about  roadside  bombs  or  sniper  fire;  just  the occasional mortar or rocket.  We’ve got a pretty nice defense system.  It tracks incoming rounds in the air and determines point of origin and projected point of impact.  It sets off alarms where it’s expected to strike and transmits the suspected launch site to teams which go to investigate.  Usually all they find are scorch marks on the ground.  Yeah, it was launched from here, lot of good that did us.  The defense system also uses a Gatling gun that fires some insane amount of rounds per second to try to knock in incoming round out of the sky.  Nine times out of ten it gets it, too.

        Insurgents  are  pretty  smart  at  this  point.    Face  it,  we’ve  either  killed  or  detained  most  of  the stupid ones by now.  They do some pretty sly stuff like freezing mortars in the tube before setting them up.  When the ice melts and the mortar drops, they could be miles away.  Hell, they might be the same guys  selling  you  bootleg  DVD’s  at  the  bazaar  or  tending  the  fields  outside  the  gate.    It’s  not  like  they wear uniforms or anything.

         It’s starting to get late, so I head back to my CHU.  It’s a Containerized Housing Unit.  That’s a fancy name for a trailer split into 3 rooms, each housing 2 soldiers.  Each CHU is surrounded by concrete “T-walls” to protect us from blast shrapnel.  I guess that’s nice, as long as nothing lands right on top of you.  That would just ruin your whole day.

        I lie down and read for a while.  Every so often I get an email to respond to.  Oh yeah, we have internet.  We chipped in to buy an $1800 satellite system that we pay $1500 a month for service on.  We split it up between a dozen or so soldiers so we can keep the rate under $100 a month each.  On a goodday  we  can  get  a  good  enough  connection  to  get  Skype  to  make  a  call,  but  most  of  the  time  it’s  just email  and  instant  messaging.    I  can’t  complain  though.  We’ve  got  it  easy  compared  to  lots  of  other soldiers.

        After a while, about the third time I’ve dropped my book and lost my place, I give up and submit to sleep.  I really am tired and should try to get a good night’s sleep.  I turn off my reading lamp and listen  to  the  sound  of  F-16’s  taking  off  as  I  drift  to  sleep.    They  sound  something  like  a  freight  train running through your bedroom, only a bit louder.  Surprisingly, they don’t bother me so much anymore. It’s amazing what you can get used to; and what you can’t.  THUD!

	A worrisome dose of adrenaline pumps through my chest as my eyes jolt open.  Every muscle in my body clenches but I manage to resist the urge to sit up.  You’re always safer in the prone position.  As I listen to my heart pound for a few seconds I realize that I don’t hear any announcements.  It must’ve just been the guys in the next room closing their door.

	Have you ever been near an explosion?  They’re really not that exciting; almost never like what you see on TV or in the movies.  No fireballs, no rolling thunder, just a loud boom and a lot of mess to clean up.  We get mortar or rocket attacks here almost daily.  This post is pretty large so most of the time all you hear is a loud thud, accompanied by what feels like someone dropping a bowling ball next to  you  on  a  raised  floor.    Loudspeakers  start  proclaiming,  “There  has  been  an  indirect  fire  attack.  Remain  under  cover.”  This  repeats  a  few  times  until  we  get  the  “All  clear,  all  clear,  all  clear.    All personnel are now released.  Remain vigilant for UXO’s.” message.  You can tell what status you’re in by the gender of the voice.  If it’s a male voice you need to stay under cover.  If it’s a female voice then you’re being released.

	So  after  I  lay  here  another  thirty  minutes  or  so,  I’m  back  in  that  half-asleep,  half-awake  state where you really don’t know if you’re awake and thinking or asleep and dreaming.  Thoughts of work I have to do start blending with fantasies of my fiancée in awkward yet erotic ways.  Somehow it seems wrong that she should be here in Iraq, but the dreams are so vivid and believable that I just go with it.  So there I am inventorying the equipment that’s on my property books while she slips up behind me, herbreath warm across the back of my neck.  Suddenly I’m no longer at work, but resting on a couch with her, wrapped in each other’s arms...  THUD!

	Okay, I’m awake again.  It’s amazing how I can still smell her hair when I wake up from a dream like this.  My heart is pounding but this time I recognize the sound as the compressor in my oversizedwall air conditioner kicking in.  You’d think they would do something about that, but I guess when it’s over 120 degrees Fahrenheit outside you really do need a unit that large.  You would think that I would get used to all these thuds and bumps.

	A couple of months ago I did have a rocket impact a couple hundred meters from me.  I had just sent  my  girl  a  message  that  I  was  heading  out  of  my  room  to  take  a  shower.    I  stood  up  from  my computer   and   heard   the   announcement,   “INCOMING,   INCOMING,   INCOMING!      TAKE   SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!”    It’s  a  male  voice.    This  message  only  plays  if  the  tracking  systems  detect  something coming to your immediate area.  I counted to myself, 1 – 2 – 3 and heard a loud shriek passing almost directly over my trailer.  What followed was not one of those little thuds that keep waking me up, and it was a bit more intense than someone dropping a bowling ball at your feet.  It sounded somewhat more like someone crashing a tractor-trailer into your living room.  Windows are shaking and dust I swear Icleaned is falling from the ceiling.  That one hit the parking lot of the coffee shop about two hundred meters away.  Luckily there were only a handful of injuries, none fatal.  It did  blow the doors off of a Ford F-150 there in the parking lot.  Like I said, big BOOM, loud and messy, but that was months ago.

	I reach my arm up over my head to tap the light on my alarm clock.  02:48, still time to get some sleep.  I curl up around my pillow, which I’ve affectionately named after my fiancée, and try to get back
to sleep.  Thoughts race through my head about deadlines for work to be done, suspense’s on reports due and I can hear my Sergeant’s voice nagging in my head.  I must toss and turn another hour before drifting off to sleep again.  I’m guessing I fell asleep again, anyway.  It sure doesn’t feel like it.

	So I’m lying here and now something is irritating my eyes.  I open them to see sunlight piercing the slits in my window blinds, forming rays that lead directly to my face.  With a moan I look up at my clock to see that it’s now 04:35.  What kind of God forsaken country doesn’t use some form of DaylightSavings Time?  This is way too early for sunrise.  I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep again, so I go ahead and turn off my alarm that was set to go off an hour from now.

	Throwing on some slippers, I take a walk down to the wet trailers where I can shower, shave and brush my teeth.  There is hot water at least.  Hell, that’s a joke.  All the water on this post is shipped here from Kuwait.  It sits in containers outside in the 120 degree heat all day.  There is no such thing as cold water.  Not from faucets anyway.  I stumble out of the shower, past a dozen or so other soldiers trying to get ready for the day at the same time.  I start the water to shave and rest my arms on the sink.  Looking at myself in the mirror, it seems there are new lines on my face every day.  I keep thinking that the bags under my eyes won’t be there tomorrow.  I just need a good night’s sleep.  Ha.

	I meet the XO and a couple of other soldiers to go for a short run; only three miles or so this morning.  Run back through the showers and then by the mess hall for some chow.  I finally make it in to work to see your email asking how things are going.

	Nothing really happened here last night.  How was your day?


Stephen