Sun Lit Days, Green Lit Nights

At first glance it does not seem too hard to write a fictional story involving a green light right? Starting with the obvious right away we got green traffic lights, plenty of possibilities there. Where I live the gas prices displayed on the stations illuminated signs are in green. You could write a whole story based on how those green light prices make you more miserable everyday as those prices go higher. In fact I just realized today most ATMs flash a green light when being used by a customer. If you really wanted to swing for the fences here, could you imagine if somehow DC gave you permission to use their intellectual property rights to the Green Lantern? We are talking home run on that.

But what if I were to tell you that for a majority portion of one calendar year in my life I saw anything or anyone as an object made of green light? For sure its was a different hue of green for different situations. Some objects were perceived as darker or lighter shades of green, different resolutions of the green light, amongst other things. And while I was watching, observing, tracking etc. absolutely every green lit object in my field of sight to the point of staring them in the face, not once did anyone ever see me. Groups of people would walk by deep in conversation, solitary figures alone in their thoughts would too. I would directly look at either/or with the same results, they had no idea I was ten feet away from them, watching them like a hawk. But how could they possibly even know I was there? These things happened at night, and but save the moon for illumination, the darkness was abyssal. But not for me and my people, we owned the night. We were the Night Stalkers, NEVER SLEEPING, ALWAYS CREEPING. Please accept my fictional account of owning the night in Iraq.

For the uninitiated, oftentimes veterans when asked to recount a war fable usually try to start from a point of mutual understanding. The best way to do that is to try in your head to pick out a popular movie, video game, basically anything that can help foster understanding. For me, I will make this story analogous to the movie the Matrix. Right away it has the seeing the world as green lit objects nailed, but also when inside the Matrix the machine world has a green hue. Also similar to the Matrix, when you die in this green hued world, you die. You also have machines of war, but this time some are on your side, and some are trying to kill you. Unlike the Matrix, and despite my most sincere wishes, I am no where close to as handsome as Keanu Reeve is. My girlfriend is not my dream girl Trinity (I don’t even have a girlfriend) and most importantly, no one can dodge bullets like they can.

Let's talk about the concept of choice, both potentially leading to a catastrophic demise. When it became abundantly clear to us that we were not getting any welcome parade, there would be absolutely no feelings to us as liberators, the Red pill was forcefully swallowed, and we found ourselves in a pretty tight situation. No armored vehicles ( why would you guys need them, you are going to be their heroes). No crew served weapons or heavy artillery (the whole liberators thing again) and the very worst situation that any military history book will tell you is bad. We were deep, deep into enemy territory, in effect surrounded, no armor or heavy weapons. No nothing. So the first of many tough choices were made right there. Do we intend to live or die?

After we all agreed living sounded like a good idea, we established a Forward Operating Base (FOB) fortified it the best we can while rapidly informing Central Command (CENTCOM) of our precarious situation and did the only thing we could do, develop the situation. Now you have to understand we were a reserve unit, and while complety staffed by competent Officers and Enlisted personnel, we were not an Infantry unit. Our mission was combat support, and we were trained and equipped to do just that. Not to close with, engage, and destroy the enemy with synchronization of firepower AKA the job of the combat arms. Please do not take this as any slight towards any military member in the country, we were all in the same horrible situation. We were all presented with an Elephant to eat. And how to you eat an Elephant? Like anything else, one bite at a time.

Choices were presented that we had to make. Just like our boy NEO. The most critical? Water, and where the hell are we getting it from? Our convoys that were supposed to replenish us from Kuwait were being ambushed so much that sometimes we were rationed to two liters of water a day. Sounds like a lot? Well here is the rub. FOB are by nature primitive environments basically used with the purpose of giving us a place to defend and wait for help. So, absolutely no electricity, no plumbing of any kind, no way to launder your clothes, no where to bathe, no bathrooms for that matter. So, its 120 degrees out. You have not seen one example of any of the creature comforts of home, and people want to kill you. So that two liters of water is a lot, because if you don’t hydrate you are dead. What did we have to cut out? Every other function water can be used for besides live. Bye bye showers, laundry, brushing teeth, anything and everything is gone besides just drinking water. That sucks.

You are probably wondering where we went to the bathroom. I will describe it in detail. And its going to sound disgusting and may violate “ community standards”, but this is how we had to live, all Veterans have earned the right to tell the truth good, bad, or ugly, and I make zero apologies for that.

So, we cut 55 gallon barrels that were empty in half. Surrounded by the most basic of privacy (camouflage takes priority, cant be modest in war) this is where women did #1 and #2, but not males, we could only do number two in there, hold in our urine, then exit the bathroom and urinate into one of two places. A trench in the ground literally called the piss trench, or urinate into PVC pipes driven into the ground at 45 degree angles. Sometimes the ground these pipes were driven into ground so saturated with urine that the piss pipe also pissed on you.

What is the reason for such an absurd scenario? Remember, we had nothing even resembling plumbing. So three times a day the drums full of feces were dragged into an open area, doused with Diesel fuel, and burned. Yes, three times a day we had to burn our own feces to get rid of it. The reason males has to pee somewhere else is because if the feces are too urine soaked, it will take forever to burn. Who had to do such a thing? The male who tried to be cute and do what is natural, pee and defecate in the same spot. There was a soldier who spent his whole tour in Iraq catching these dudes and saying, “tag, you're it!”

Personally the worst choice for me ironically was when we were equipped with proper body armor. At that time it was called the Interceptor armor. An outer vest to stop small arms, and a ceramic plate inserted over your heart and lung to protect heavy rounds. But there was just one problem with that. At that time our biggest killer of us were roadside bombs. The generally explode when you drive over them, and the blast enters the car as if you were sitting on it. That left males with a tough choice. Which part of my anatomy do I want to protect more? My heart or my genitals? Well you are already wearing an armor vest. Only armor down there was your boxers. So do you choose to sit on that ceramic plate to protect your genitals and roll the dice not getting shot in the heart, or do you go all in and disregard your genitaia? Choices. I can not speak for every dude there, but I came home and helped create three beautiful children. That was my choice. That is why in the opening paragraph of this story I alluded to constantly watching over my military family using night vision equipment that makes everything you see bathed in green light. That was my choice to stand on the wall and assure my brothers and sisters got some resemblence of sleep, our only real luxury we had was sleep. But a prerequisite to that was a few dudes who were never sleeping and always creeping, watching over them. That was not a choice for me, it was an honor and a privilege.

I guess the biggest choice left would be if I would choose to join again knowing what I know now. A million times yes. We chose to wear green tinted glasses so our family, friends, loved ones and our fellow Americans never have too.

God bless all our war dead, you will NEVER be forgotten. Any fellow veteran reading this I thank you for your service and sacrifice. God bless our Military, and God bless The United States of America.