Soldier

After five years as a student at the University of Texas at Austin, I joined the Army because I wanted a challenge. I wanted adventure. Then I started basic training on September 11, 2001, and got more than I expected. After serving multiple tours in Iraq—patrolling city streets in the dead of night, hunting down insurgents, shooting at the enemy and being shot at—I will never be the same.

by Matt Cook

July 2008

(Page 6 of 6)

We stop traffic moving toward us in the northbound lane. We lay all of the men facedown and search their pockets. Every single one has an IP or some security identification that states that he is a major or a colonel or has some connection to Sheikh Ahmad. We search their vehicles and find dozens of assault rifles, pistols, and IA uniforms that they are not supposed to have.

Then the M-240B machine gun opens fire from a truck and sends orange tracers into the street. Allen feeds the heavy belt through the chamber, keeping a tight squeeze on the trigger as a car races toward our position. The car does not slow and is almost directly on top of us. Allen feeds the automobile with more rounds, but it rolls past him and into my line of sight, twenty meters away. I squeeze off round after round and watch as they penetrate the flesh of the driver. This is it. This one will blow. I lower my weapon and wait for the explosion to rip apart my body. But it does not happen.

I open the driver’s side door, and an old man falls out limply onto my leg, smearing dark-red blood along my thigh. I drag him away from the car as Doc falls to his knees and checks his pulse. He looks peaceful. He has a neatly trimmed silver mustache that matches his hair, and a vague smile rests on his face. His eyes are open, and his pupils are opaque. They are nearly completely covered by cataracts.

I check his glove box as we wait for more IP to arrive. I find a wallet and rummage for his ID. Instead, I find a student ID for Tikrit University and a photo of a young man with his arm around the waist of the driver, who is leaking from holes I’ve just drilled into his chest and neck.

We take pictures of the location of the car in relation to the truck. We photograph our cones and chemical lights and every measure we took to get the vehicle to stop. We photograph the mass of traffic that we have backed up.

The IP arrive and do not recognize the man. They wrap him in dirty blankets stained from oil recovered from the back of their truck and toss his body into the bed. They crush his head as they repeatedly slam the tailgate until it closes.

A platoon from Bravo arrives to help us load the others. I put a sandbag over Gimpy’s head and choke him tightly around the neck as I walk him to my truck. He is getting enough air to cry. I shove him into the backseat, closing the door into his legs, and ignore his bellowing. Perhaps if he’d have just been sent to prison somewhere, this would never have happened. We return to the FOB. I spend hours filling out sworn statements. We turn in the weapons, uniforms, and evidence we gathered. I sign more sworn statements and detail the incident, which will be investigated. They are always investigated. I sit through an escalation-of-force class, mandatory retraining that follows every incident, usually given by a captain who rarely leaves the wire. I have sat through many.

I lie on top of the bunker in my shorts and sandals and wait for a mortar or a rocket to spit into the FOB, daring it to hit me. They are becoming very predictable. The sun sets beside me, the roof still warm from absorbing the late summer day’s heat. I see the old man’s face in my head clearly, and I am regretful but not sorry. What if it had been a car bomb? It has become them or us. How could I have known?

Then I wonder if there are any traces left of the old me. Someone who was compassionate and caring and felt connected to the world. I wonder if I will ever get that back. I wonder if the old man spoke to his son before he left today. I should call my father and tell him that I love him. But I don’t.

A STRANGE LAND

I am home. Or, to be more precise, I am back in the United States. It is November 2006, and it is freezing at Fort Campbell. I do not want to be here. My mind is not home; it is not where it should be. I appear to be all right, but I often fake it. I spend much of my time staring into space, waiting for something to happen.

I will be honorably discharged in a couple of weeks. My best friend, David Broyles, also served in Iraq, and he and I often compare ourselves to an abused spouse who lacks the conviction to leave her lover. I am only 28 years old, but I fear I will never be better at anything else than I was as a soldier. I am unorganized and cluttered and have never been more insecure.

It’s five in the morning, and I’m patiently watching a sergeant first class organize his office. Somewhere buried in his drawer is a stamp that he must put on my clearing papers so that I can get out of the Army. But to get the stamp, I must sit through a briefing about why I should join the National Guard or Reserve component. He is a lifer, and misery loves company.

“You know, Sergeant, you seem very busy, and I do not want to waste any more of your time,” I tell him. “I have absolutely no desire to join the Guard. So if you just want to go ahead and give me that stamp, I’ll be on my way.”

“Why are you getting out, Sergeant Cook?”

“Let’s call it an exodus from an undesirable place.” I laugh. He looks at me as he takes a swig from his Mountain Dew, which leaves little bubbles in his mustache.

“Let me just give you a quick rundown about what the Guard can offer you.”

“Really, Sergeant, I appreciate it, and I know you have a job to do, but you’re wasting your breath.”

“You know, I can put you into a Guard unit with the promise that you will not go back to Iraq.”

“Going back is not the problem. I’m not getting out because of Iraq. The problem is I don’t want to be in the Army.”

“No? Okay. Then this is what will happen. You’re going to get out and be placed into the Individual Ready Reserve, and I would say there is about a 99.95 percent chance that you’re going to be back in Iraq within a year.”

“What if I get called back in and don’t report?”

“You’ll be AWOL and prosecuted as a deserter.”

“You know, when I enlisted, the recruiter called it the Inactive Ready Reserve. The key word there is ‘inactive.’”

“It’s a draft for us so there doesn’t have to be one for civilians. There are just too many people getting out and not enough coming in. Give me your clearing papers.” He painfully pushes the dark ink over the appropriate line and shakes his head. He has officially destroyed my morning coffee buzz.

I choke up when I speak to my platoon for the last time. I can’t get out much of what I am feeling or what I want to say. I didn’t think it would be so hard. I hope they know that the greatest honor of my life was serving as their section sergeant. But I did not seek out anyone else to say goodbye. The rest of the battalion has already forgotten me. That is the way of the Army. I am leaving and they are going back. It’s that simple.

My heart pumps faster as I drive closer to Austin. I exit Sixth Street and drive through downtown, looking through windows into buildings, looking at people working in those buildings as if I am watching them on television. Austin normally feels so comfortable, but I do not feel at home. I do not think I can fit back in with the people working in the windows of the buildings downtown. I already miss the easy pose of a soldier being among soldiers.

I wear a face that does not match my emotions. Friends and family tell me to take time and relax. I do not want to take time or relax. There is an urgency in me they do not share. I’m drowning in inexplicable guilt, and I am uneasy about dealing with life’s old irritations.

A year later I have escaped the recall trap that I worried would befall me. I’m taking classes at UT again. I’ve grown my beard out a couple of times. I’ve put on and lost a few easy pounds. I have managed to hide my insecurities better than I did a year ago, but that unshakable guilt has never left me. My platoon is now back in Iraq, and when I wake, I often wish I was with them.

Most of the time I feel as though I’m lost between the beautiful and tragic remnants left in me from my varicolored war and this naive world of American normalcy. But I am getting by. I am certainly not without my flaws, but my shortcomings have been replaced by miles of stories that I would match against Hemingway’s any day. I never found the war hero inside of me, but in my rite of passage I found a worldliness and particular understanding of life that has made me a better man. And I never won my ex-girlfriend back, but I do not regret a day I spent in uniform—I’m immensely proud of my service. If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned what a truly remarkable thing it is to be a combat veteran. Now I want to live an exceptional life for those who never left the desert.

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