Unspoken Abandonment (12 page)

Whenever we park the trucks, at least two guys have to stay and watch them to make sure nobody steals from them or straps a bomb underneath. The last thing you want is to drive off and get blown to hell twenty feet down the road. Our simple rule is
that we
wi
ll deal with you
bother
ing
us, but nobody touches the vehicles. If someone touches the vehicle
they get an M16 in the face fast
,
and
at least one
person
always tries to open a do
or even with us standing right there
.
When that happens,
they have two options
:
they can
walk away or
be
carried away. They know we
a
re not
playing
around, and they always walk.

There have been a series of “syringe
attacks
”
in Kabul recently
.
A w
om
a
n
, a man hiding in a burqa,
or
a
child will
walk up to a soldier and stick them wit
h a needle. I have no idea what
these needles
are loaded with
, but I sure as hell do
n
o
t want to find out. They
prefer to
use the children to do this because they know we are a lot less aggressive with little kids, and they can actually get close enough to touch us.

A
nother guy
and I
were watching the vehicles when the beggars came. The trucks were parked along a busy sidewalk, on a street crowded with people, bicycles, donkeys, carts, and pedestrians
. The air was so thic
k with soot and smog it was enough to choke you. I was at the rear of the vehicles, and my buddy
took watch at the
front.

The beggars came
,
and the women and children started swarming us. I put my back against the truck and pointed my rifle anytime someone came to
o
close for comfort. It
i
s heartbreaking to point a gun at a
kid
,
but I’m not dying here;
I am just not going to let that happen
. Having my back against the truck does
n
o
t give me the best view to see what my buddy h
as going on up front, but I do no
t have to look over my shoulder this way.

The beggars usually keep their distance and say things like “please
food” or “dollar
please.” I heard my buddy yelling a few times for someone to get back. They do
n
o
t speak E
nglish and have no idea what we a
re saying, but a rifle in your face with someone yelling should be a good enough indicator. I heard him yell a few times, and I yelled to see if he was alright. He said he was, but we needed to leave. A woman in a
burqa reach
for my buddy, and he reacted by smashing the butt of his rifle against her head, dropping her instantly. I did
n
o
t see it happen, but I saw the traffic instantly stop. People started running toward us and screaming at us. The guys in the nearby shop saw what
happened and came rushing out.

The guys had to force their way through the crowd, and people were yelling and spitting on me as I waited for the rest of the guys to get to us. Once we were all
at the vehicles
and accounted for, we loaded into both vehicles and started inching through the crowd. I wiped the spit from my face, as I could hear rocks hitting the vehicle. Once we broke past the crowd, we were back inside the compound within
just
a few minutes,
and
nobody
was
hurt except for that woman.

Today on Chicken Street was a perfect example of how quickly shit can fall apart here. You can go from calm and stable to completely out of control in a matter of seconds, and once it starts
,
there is no way of stopping it.

March 26,
2003
:

Nothing happened today, and I
a
m tired. Even if something had happened, I do
n
ot feel like writing. I a
m becoming very exhausted; I wish I could take a vacation.

March 27,
2003
:

My life in Afghanist
an can be summed up in one word:
“misery.” My job here is to sit in a tiny wooden box, hoping that I do
n’
t get shot or bl
own up. Then I go out on patrol
in the city and hope I don’t get shot or blown up. Then I go out
on missions to the middle of nowhere, hoping I don’t get shot or blown up.

It i
s starting to become like second nature, when a car slows down or stops near me on the street or under my OP at night, I
take a breath and pray it does no
t explode.

Inside the
Camp Eagle
compound
, it is dirty and old, but it i
s relatively nice. Sometimes it
i
s just nice enough to let
me
forget
where I am for a few minutes;
h
owever, one look into the street from the wall is all it takes to
remind me exactly where I am
. All
I
see is
violence, poverty, and disgust
on a daily basis
.

Sexual
assault on young boys is
rampant here, and no one seems to care. Every morning, at the end of shift when the streets are busy, I
see scores of young children walking alone in the streets. Some of them are just barely five years old.
All too often
I
wi
ll see at least one car stop
,
with some
degenerate
getting out and grasping a child’s hand,
and
lead
them back into the car. The guy will then drive off with
the child, and we all know what i
s going to happen to them. We are strictly forbidden
from
interfer
ing
in “legal
matters” in Afghanistan, and I a
m supposed to just pretend I do
n
o
t
see what i
s happening. Some child
, practically still a baby, is being driven off to be raped by
a
pedophile, and I just have to say, “Hey look, it’s
almost time for breakfast.”

This morning
, a
guy on a bicycle was struck by a car. The traffic was moving slowly, so
the bicyclist
was
not
hurt. It was
n
o
t anything major, but of course it had to turn into a fight. This fight was over almost faster than it started. The bicyclist got off the ground, and stood in front of the car that struck him and began yelling at the driver. The driver got out, and what seemed to be without a second though
t
, he pointed a handgun at the bicyclist and started firing, with one round clearly striking him in the head. The bicyclist’s body
dropped dead
to the street. He did
n
o
t go flying back like in the
movies;
in fact
,
he didn’t move forward or back at all. It looked almost as if his knees and legs just gave out from under him, and he fell strai
gh
t down.

I raised my M249, and the driver looked up at me as he got back into his vehicle and drove away. I watched him drive off. This guy was shot dead, less than twenty feet in front of me, and all I could do was watch. Unless we are threatened directly, we cannot act. Afghans
are allowed
to do whatever they please to other Afghans, and
as
long as they do
n
o
t pose a direct and immediate threat to us, we have to just watch.

The traffic began to back up
as I was
announcing
the incident over the radio. Another driver got out of his own vehicle, dragged the dead body to the side of the road
,
and then
returned to his vehicle to drive off as if nothing had happened
. He dragged the body like it was a tree branch which had falle
n,
and he had
seemingly little regard that it was actually a person who had just been killed.

I
a
m really starting to wonder why I
a
m even writing in this thing anymore. People keep journals to remember things
,
to relive
and share cherished memories, but I do
n
o
t want to remember any of this. I wish I had a delete button to just erase
nearly
everything
I have seen here
.
I thought this was going to be something that I would wan
t to keep and remember forever.
For me, t
his
experience
has
evolved itself into
anything but that.

March 28,
2003
:

Midnight to eight was another long
,
uneventful night. I spent most of the shift just looking out into the cold darkness and thinking. I was thinking about home, thinking about life, thinking about my dreams, and just thinking about any place but here. I think I wrote before that every day in this place seems to take away another piece of me. It
is like I a
m a wall
,
and every day takes a
way another brick. I a
m starting to wonder how many bricks can be left. How long before one piece too many
has been taken away
?

I have been absolutely exhausted lately, and I have
n
o
t slept in days.
With
the weather getting warmer
each day
,
the temperatures are rising, and
there are
mice everywhere. Throughout the night
in the OP, the mice
are running across the floor and over my feet.
Any time I try to sleep
,
the
y
run across me as I lay in bed. I close my eyes and try
intently to pretend they are not
there, but before long
,
I
will
feel one on my pillow or walking across me.
Whenever
I eat
, especially in the OP
s
,
they come out
in force
. If I put my food down
, even
for a second, I have to wave my hand to shoo them
away
from my
meal before I continue eating
. They are everywhere.

All I did tonight was try to imagine being anywhere but here.

March 29,
2003
:

I was at the north gate for the midnight to eight shift, and
I got
settled in for the night. I had just started eating the dinner I brought with me
, and
at around twelve thirty, I heard three rapid gunshots. The shots were extremely close. I dropped to the floor and heard another three shots, rapid fire from an automatic weapon. I grabbed my M249 and moved towards the barrier to return fire. As I got to the barrier, there w
ere
about fifteen to twenty
more
rounds fired, and I saw the OP just to my east returning fire.

With virtually no artificial lighting outside of the compound, it was
nearly
impossible to see more than twenty or thirty feet past the wall. Being in the middle of a city, it is hard to just blindly shoot back. Within seconds of the last rounds being fired by the shooter, a vehicle was revving its engine about a block to the north, and I could just see it for a second as it drove west and out of sight. Approval to exit the compound was initially denied, until about fifteen minutes after the shooter
,
or shooters
,
fled
the area.

Just after sunrise, a few of us went to look around the area for any signs of where the shooter was. About seventy-five yards north and east of the compound, one of the guys found a pile of 7.62
mm
shell casings in a narrow alley.
These are shell casings from the type of rounds fired by a standard AK47 rifle.
The alley runs north and south, and the south end, where the casings were found, has a clear view of th
e compound. The north end of this same
alley is
the area from which
the vehicle fle
d
.
This s
ounds like useless information to have now that it
i
s over, but whoever is
positioned along the north wall will know
where to shoot
back
if the shooter
returns
.