With a Bang

I climbed up a rickety metal latter to the roof of the aid station last night a couple minutes past midnight to get a better view of the city around the FOB. I'd walked past that latter a hundred times since we've lived here and I hadn't noticed it until then. I get a sort of tunnel vision when I'm in my routine. The entire latter wobbled and it's anchors on the wall shifted under my weight in a way that reminded me of my irrational fear of heights and I thought then that flip-flops may have been a bad choice. Actually my entire ensemble was completely unsuited for anything other than curling up in bed with a book. In a tan t-shirt and ranger panties… maybe that demands a bit of explanation. The word ranger in the Army is used in such a ubiquitous manor that I find it hard to relate it to any word I used before I joined. You ranger roll your patrol cap, ranger rig a shelf with 550 chord, anything improvised is somehow associated with rangers. Ranger panties are just really just thin black running shorts, like the ultra short kind that make people uncomfortable to be around you. How they got the name? Ranger battalion uses them with their PT uniform. I wear them to sleep because they feel less like a diaper than my normal PT shorts.

So in my silky smoothes I'm shivering in the cold standing on the roof watching red tracers fly into the air listening to the sound of an entire city literally exploding in celebration. I walked over to two other soldiers, older guys who sounded like officers, watching the fire works talking about the "old days" of the war when we would have been out there shooting off our own weapons to celebrate. All the excitement is gone now, most of the FOB is asleep at midnight. The taller of the two smiled and said "look at these guys, drunk and shooting automatic weapons in the streets, they drive on whatever side of the road they feel like, marry multiple women, and own guns that I would have to get approval from congress to have in the States, and we came here to give them freedom? Seems they already have more than us. I can't even have a beer on New Years." It was hard to argue with that. You give up a lot as a soldier and when you become more of a policeman than a warrior the frustrations only multiply.

I was happy though, standing in a cool breeze feeling the joy of so many people who have lived in fear for years. The sound of gunfire pleases me. I don't know why. It's something in the way that it reminds you of uncertain life is. How random your existence is. We try so hard to mitigate risk; we wear seat belts and paint lines in the street to remind us where it's safest to cross. Our threat advisories give us colors to correspond with our fears. Medicine and vaccines keep us healthier longer but we all die eventually. And how many of our fondest memories are of doing the things we were told we shouldn't? The stupid stuff we did as kids. Sneaking out, drinking, the things you thought you're parents didn't know about when they surely did. It's the thrill of risk that burns a memory in our mind. It's the pleasure of breaking free of convention and forging a path for yourself despite better advice. And as I looked out over the lights of Baghdad I wondered about the chances of having one of those stray bullets come down from the sky and end my life and I thought what better than an AK-47 to ring in the New Year.