Midnight in the Valley of Kwong and Sanchez

On an early morning in 1991 Pete the Marine chambered a round of 5.56 and peered into the dawn over a berm. 20 years later he chambered a Vicodin and peered into the mirror over the sink.

"Cessation of all major hostilities."

Iraq Rolled

Peter looked real hard at the sand in the palm of his hand. It was funny looking – not like the sand back home on the shores of Lake Michigan – this Saudi sand looked like like tiny balls of light-colored mud. Pete imagined being real small and kicking the little mud-balls around. “Hrrmph,” he thought to himself, aloud. A lot of his thoughts these days were coming out as single-syllable grunts.

Dumping the sand from his palm, Pete held his rifle with both hands again and lifted up his head to peer out over the berm. Nothing. That song kept going through his head...

“Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you”

“Uggh. Rick Astley,” he thought to himself. He rolled back down the berm a little , popped his canteen and took a drink. He thought about the first time he had heard that song – it was his last year in the dorms at college, most likely, and there was that guy down the hall who wouldn't stop playing it...over and over and over. It seemed like that tape was the only one he owned. If he made it back to the States alive, Pete thought, he would buy a copy of that album.

He crawled back to the top of the berm and strained his eyes to see what, if anything, was going on around that little shack near the intersection of two roads – maybe it had been a gas station or something at one time. Now there were just some Iraqis holed up there and laying down suppressing fire for their pals scurrying across the road to a drainage culvert. “Hrrmmph,” Pete thought out loud again. He shouldered his rifle.

A bang and a “shush” of an old-school M72 LAW from somewhere down the line made Pete turn his head. When he looked back, the Iraqis were not firing, only smoking. The squad to his left was getting up from behind the berm and advancing. Pete the Marine smiled and sang quietly to himself,

“Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you...”

It looked like it might be a long day. Thank God for that.

Perspective

Pete stretched his back against the inside of his T-shirt - he felt the fabric and the sweat and the sand kind of pull against his skin, and it felt good. Good the way that rubbing your eyes when they're tired feels good.  His back was a little tired and his skin felt chafed and his muscles just plain ached, but here he was, sitting in the sand on the outskirts of some nameless town.  It was late in 1990, the men of the First Marine Division were having a quiet moment, and Pete was writing a letter.

"Dear Tom,  Thanks for your letter.  Tell everyone I'm just fine.  The weather is pretty hot but not unbearable.  We're all ready for whatever is coming next, so don't worry.  I spend a lot of time with weapon maintenance and keeping things clean, so I try not to think about where I am too much."

This did not look anything like Chicago, Pete thought to himself - how can I not think about where I am?  That was dumb.  Nevermind.

"Days are pretty long and I never know what's coming next or where we'll be next so I just keep focused on what I'm doing today. It helps."

"Don't worry about sending any of the things you mentioned. I don't think we'll be here long enough for me to read them, and we could move anytime, anyway, so don't worry.  I'll just get home soon and read them when I get back. Thanks for thinking of me in the bookstore though - when I get back, remember me at J.R.'s Liquors, too, OK? Ha ha."

I would give my eye teeth to sit and relax with some of Yeats' poetry, Pete thought to himself.  I shoulda' said to send it. Oh. Nevermind.

"The Saudi sand is holy, so I am not allowed to send any to you, as you asked.  I will therefore discreetly drop the envelope alongside my boot before I seal it.  Anything that gets in and safely makes the trip home you must treat very carefully. Promise?"

"I miss you guys, but I know that I'm where I am supposed to be.  Keep us in your prayers, Tom, and tell everyone I'm fine.  Tell Moose he owes me a beer when I get back - I haven't seen any flying carpets. Write me again soon if you get the chance.  Your friend, Peter."

Pete discreetly dropped the envelope next to his boot.  As he reached for it, he pushed it along the ground a little way, allowing some of the holy sand of Saudi Arabia to get in.  He quickly picked it up and sealed it. Pete stood up next to his Humvee and stretched his arms out, feeling the hot sun on his dry skin.  He heard some Aerosmith coming from a tapedeck in the distance, and thought back to a party one night somewhere in the North Chicago suburbs.

Chicago seemed very far away, and the sand of Lakefront Beach in Evanston seemed infinitely holier.

The More Things Change...You Know the Rest

My friend Pete S. came back from Kuwait late in 1991, I think, and he was never quite the same.  A high school teacher who went to Kuwait with his Marine Reserve unit and came back a battle-hardened Marine.  He had a hard time putting the high school teacher part back into the equation.  It was hard to be a husband and father again, too.  He thought it had something to do with adrenalin addiction - he was forever craving the adrenalin high that he found in the desert and in Ras al-Khafji with Iraqi bullets whizzing past his ear.  The smell of burning petroleum, the darkened desert sky and the wild Humvee rides down some deserted highway with burnt-to-a-crisp Arab bodies littering the landscape.  You remember the photos.  You remember the boys who went and fought.  You remember the men who returned.  A fast war in a fast time for a generation that grew up fast and yet never grew up.  CNN covered it all.  You were there.

Pete wanted to teach history and he wound up making history - yet it was history that has been largely forgotten and eclipsed by "what came next."  Kind of like the veterans of the "Great War" - World War One - being ever in the shadow of "the Greatest Generation."  When I would ask my dad about my grandfather and his service in the US Army artillery back in 1918, there was never much to tell...Dad fought in "the Big One" and naturally that was where it was at - it was what he knew, and as far as his generation cared, it was the war that mattered.  Lots of parallels between those two sets of wars, in some ways.

Pete has disappeared.  I have no idea what happened to him.  He had a hard time getting his life together, and he drank a lot after the war.  He moved to Chicago with his marriage on the rocks, and I never heard from him again.  I have Googled him many a time, I have tried in vain to find him.  I guess in some ways that missing yet not forgotten friend is the converse of who he and his brothers in arms are and of the legacy they have left.  Still in the history books but largely forgotten.  Those men who raced across the desert listening to Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses and  raced into history and into a middle age that hit them with a nasty recession and a different world - a world framed by 9/11 and the hyper-connected society.  I pray that Pete broke free from the addiction and has kept whatever job he hopefully found.  I pray that his dreams gradually contained less and less images of sand and smoke and boys who quickly became men.