The local banks were overwhelmed with cash withdrawals and soon got into the pattern of having their cash supply wiped out each morning, and then renewed each night, as local merchants made their deposits. Their transaction volume soared, but their deposit accounts quickly dwindled to below regulation levels. The queue of customers outside the bank each morning soon became the inspiration for jokes and jeering. “They have to print fresh money each night” became the standard joke.
Lars was thankful that he had a three-hundred-gallon aboveground tank of gasoline at the ranch, and that it was nearly full when the economic crisis set in. He added a padlock to it, but he was worried that someone might try to steal the gas at gunpoint.
Both in Bloomfield and the much larger city of Farmington just a few miles west, many of the retail businesses that remained open were cleaned out, leaving the owners with piles of increasingly worthless greenbacks. Eventually, even the local gift store ran out of inventory. People had become so desperate to get rid of their dollars that they traded them for New Mexico logo T-shirts and coffee mugs made for the tourist trade.
3. The Crunch
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
Pain. That was his most vivid memory of the past two years. It had started with a fairly routine convoy of five up-armored Humvees in the old quarter of An Najaf. His last memory of that drive was of sitting in the sweltering backseat of the Humvee, looking down at a map and gripping a SINCGARS radio handset. Captain Lars Laine had been in liaison with his Afghanistan National Army (ANA) counterpart, discussing the planned locations of a couple of random checkpoints for the next day. The .50 gunner standing above him yelled “Possible device, left!”-a warning that he had spotted a suspicious object that might be an improvised explosive device. Then he saw a flash and heard a loud explosion.
The next thing that Lars remembered was waking up in a field hospital, trying to focus his vision. And no sooner did he realize that he was in a hospital than he passed out again.
He awoke again twenty-eight hours later, more than three thousand miles away, at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, with his head throbbing. He asked in an almost unintelligible voice, “Can you take the edge off this pain?” He vaguely remembered the face of the E-6 male nurse who stood by his bedside. The nurse obliged with a fresh dose of Demerol IV via his Luer-Lock intravenous fluid connector.
The nurse gave Lars some water on a sponge stick that looked like a lollipop. It was as Lars was getting these first dribbles of water that he realized that he had no vision in his left eye. Several hours later he further realized that the vestiges of his left eye had been removed from its orbit and replaced by a nitrile rubber and gauze packing, supplemented with a drainage tube.
Losing his eye put Lars into a brief depression. But then seeing much more badly wounded soldiers around him made him count his blessings. As he later told Beth: “At least I’m walking around on two good legs. Every day aboveground is a gift from God.”
Lars gradually regained some awareness of his surroundings. A male nurse walked up to his bed and handed him a cup of water with a straw. The nurse held the cup while Lars took a couple of clumsy sips.
Lars nodded and said, “Thanks, that’s better.”
The nurse put the glass down within reach on Laine’s bed table and said, “You were delirious. The first time I gave you water on a sponge stick, you tried to eat the sponge. Oh, and you kept repeating some phrases; I think they were Pashto or Arabic.”
“Such as?”
“Two of them that I remember are ‘Wayne riff attack’ and ‘Erf-e-dack.” What language was that?”
Lars thought for a moment and answered, “That was Arabic. Uhhh, well,
“Kinda strange that you’d be using both of those in the same conversation,” the nurse said, looking bemused.
“No, not where I’ve spent the last couple of years, up in Injun Country. It happens all the time, believe me.”
It was while at the Landstuhl hospital that Lars was told the extent of his injuries: Most of his left hand had been amputated. His left arm was broken in three places, and he had six broken ribs. His left eye, left cheekbone, and nine teeth were gone. There were multiple lacerations and second-degree burns to his face, neck, and arms. Days later he was told that he also had a “mild to moderate” traumatic brain injury (TBI). It was much later that he learned that he had lost all hearing in his left ear and had a 60 percent hearing loss in his right ear. This news made Laine doubt whether he’d ever return to regular duty, and pushed him into another bout of depression.
After four days at Landstuhl, Lars was flown on a C-5 to Andrews Air Force Base and transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. It was the most agonizing flight of his life. It seemed to last for days, and the pain was incredible. Lisbeth was there to meet him at Walter Reed. She and Grace stayed at the home of her cousin in Silver Spring, Maryland, for the next five months, visiting him almost every day. Lars spent four months at Walter Reed, where he got his reconstructive surgery and skin grafts. More pain. Then another month at a Walter Reed satellite hospital, getting his hearing aid and glass eye. It was there that he started doing more intense physical therapy.
It was also while he was at Walter Reed that Lars was awarded a Purple Heart, pinned on his pillow by the vice president, who was there for a photo op. Lars caused quite a stir when the vice president asked him what he planned to do when he got out of the Army and went home.
Lars responded, “Home? If I may speak freely, sir, I intend to return to the Big Sandbox and take command of a Civil Affairs Company. I’m not a quitter, unlike some people at the top of the chain of command. Your administration’s Accelerated Draw-Down is premature: it’s putting both American soldiers and the citizenry of Afghanistan in peril. Now, sir, please leave my room before I say something rude about your boss!” Just minutes after the vice president and his entourage left the hospital, Lars Laine was dressed down by the attending physician (an O-6), who very soon after placed a letter of reprimand in Laine’s permanent 201 personnel file.
Finally, he was transferred to Fort Sam Houston Hospital, in Texas. That was where he got the rest of his dental work, his prosthetic hand, and an Army commendation (ARCOM) medal.
Lars jokingly called his spring-loaded prosthetic left hand “Mr. President,” in homage to the movie
Hampered by the letter of reprimand, Lars was never approved to return to active duty without limitations. Then came a frustrating year of branch immaterial duty, pushing quartermaster paperwork at Fort Hood, spending as much time with the MEDDAC oral surgeons and physical therapists as he did behind a desk. Lars held on for that last year to finish his dental work and to get his bump to major-the O-4 pay grade-providing him with a more substantial disability retirement. His branch manager at PERSCOM confided that it was only because of some politicking of the promotion board by two of Laine’s former brigade commanders that he was not passed over for promotion to O-4. Once his promotion to major came through, Laine immediately resigned his commission.
When he was discharged, Lars was thirty years old, and an “O-4, over six”-a major with more than six years of service. He was also suffering from depression. His arm had healed well, and he was back to his normal exercise regimen of running two miles every two days, with two hundred sit-ups on the alternating days. Physically, aside
