I’m so sorry—
PART III
Sixteen
She was in love with someone else.
I knew that even before I finished reading the letter, and all at once the world seemed to slow down. My first instinct was to ram my fist into a wall, but instead I crumpled up the letter and threw it aside. I was incredibly angry then; more than feeling betrayed, I felt as if she’d crushed everything that had any meaning in the world. I hated her, and I hated the nameless, faceless man who’d stolen her from me. I fantasized what I would do to him if he ever crossed my path, and the picture wasn’t pretty.
At the same time, I longed to talk to her. I wanted to fly home immediately, or at least call her. Part of me didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it. Not now, not after everything we’d been through. We had only nine more months left—after almost three years, was that so impossible?
But I didn’t go home, and I didn’t call. I didn’t write her back, nor did I hear from her again. My only action was to retrieve the letter I’d crumpled. I straightened it as best I could, stuffed it back in the envelope, and decided to carry it with me like a wound I’d received in battle. Over the next few weeks, I became the consummate soldier, escaping into the only world that still seemed real to me. I volunteered for any mission regarded as dangerous, I barely spoke to anyone in my unit, and for a while it took everything I had not to be too quick with the trigger while out on patrol. I trusted no one in the cities, and although there were no unfortunate “incidents”—as the army likes to call civilian deaths—I’d be lying if I claimed to have been patient and understanding while dealing with Iraqis of any kind. Though I barely slept, my senses were heightened as we continued our spearhead to Baghdad. Ironically, only while risking my life did I find relief from Savannah’s image and the reality that our relationship had ended.
My life followed the shifting fortunes of the war. Less than a month after I received the letter, Baghdad fell, and despite a brief period of initial promise, things got worse and more complicated as the weeks and months wore on. In the end, I figured, this war was no different from any other. Wars always come back to the quest for power among the competing interests, but this understanding didn’t make life on the ground any easier. In the aftermath of Baghdad’s fall, every soldier in my squad was thrust into the roles of policeman and judge. As soldiers, we weren’t trained for that.
From the outside and with hindsight, it was easy to second-guess our activities, but in the real world, in real time, decisions weren’t always easy. More than once, I was approached by Iraqi civilians and told that a certain individual had stolen this or that item, or committed this or that crime, and was asked to do something about it. That wasn’t our job. We were there to keep some semblance of order—which basically meant killing insurgents who were trying to kill us or other civilians—until the locals could take over and handle it themselves. That particular process was neither quick nor easy, even in places where calm was more frequent than chaos. In the meantime, other cities were disintegrating into chaos, and we were sent in to restore order. We’d clear a city of insurgents, but because there weren’t enough troops to hold the city and keep it safe, the insurgents would occupy it again soon after we cleared out. There were days when all of my men wondered at the futility of that particular exercise, even if they didn’t question it openly.
My point is, I don’t know how to describe the stress and boredom and confusion of those next nine months, except to say that there was a lot of sand. Yeah, I know it’s a desert, and yeah, I spent a lot of time at the beach so I should have been used to it, but the sand was different over there. It got in your clothes, in your gun, in locked boxes, in your food, in your ears and up your nose and between your teeth, and when I spat, I always felt the grit in my mouth. People can at least relate to that, and I’ve learned that they don’t want to hear the real truth, which is that most of the time Iraq wasn’t so bad but sometimes it was worse than hell. Did people really want to hear that I watched a guy in my unit accidentally shoot a little kid who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or that I’d seen soldiers get torn into pieces when they hit an IED—improvised explosive device—on the roads near Baghdad? Or that I’d seen blood pooling in the streets like rain, flowing past body parts? No, people would rather hear about sand, because it kept the war at a safe distance.
I did my duty as best I knew how, reupped again, and stayed in Iraq until February 2004, when I was finally sent back to Germany. As soon as I got back, I bought a Harley and tried to pretend that I’d left the war unscarred; but the nightmares were endless, and I woke most mornings drenched in sweat. During the day I was often on edge, and I got angry at the slightest things. When I walked the streets in Germany, I found it impossible not to carefully survey groups of people loitering near buildings, and I found myself scanning windows in the business district, watching for snipers. The psychologist—everyone had to see one—told me that what I was going through was normal and that in time these things would pass, but I sometimes wondered whether they ever would.
After I left Iraq, my time in Germany felt almost meaningless. Sure, I worked out in the morning and I took classes on weapons and navigation, but things had changed. Because of the hand wound, Tony was given a discharge along with his Purple Heart, and he was sent back to Brooklyn right after Baghdad fell. Four more of my guys were honorably discharged in late 2003 when their time was up; in their minds—and mine—they’d done their duty, and it was time for them to get on with the rest of their lives. I, on the other hand, had reupped again. I wasn’t sure it was the right decision, but I didn’t know what else to do.
But now, looking at my squad, I realized that I suddenly felt out of place. My squad was full of newbies, and though they were great kids, it wasn’t the same. They weren’t the friends I’d lived with through boot camp and the Balkans, I hadn’t gone to war with them, and deep down, I knew I’d never be as close to them as I’d been to my former squad. For the most part, I was a stranger, and I kept it that way. I worked out alone and avoided personal contact as much as possible, and I knew what my squad thought of me when I walked past them: I was the crusty old sergeant, the one who claimed to want nothing more than to ensure that they got back to their moms in one piece. I told my squad that all the time while we drilled, and I meant it. I would do what it took to keep them safe. But like I said, it wasn’t the same.
With my friends gone, I devoted myself to my dad as best I could. After my tour of combat, I spent an extended leave with him in spring 2004, then another leave with him later that summer. We spent more time together in those four weeks than we had in the previous ten years. Because he was retired, we were free to spend the day however we wished. I fell easily into his routines. We had breakfast, went for our three walks, and had dinner together. In between, we talked about coins and even bought a couple while I was in town. The Internet made that far easier than it had once been, and though the search wasn’t quite as exciting, I don’t know that it made any difference to my dad. I found myself talking to dealers I hadn’t spoken with in over fifteen years, but they were as friendly and informative as they’d ever been and remembered me with pleasure. The coin world, I realized, was a small one, and when our order arrived—they were always shipped via overnight delivery—my dad and I would take turns examining the coins, pointing out any existing flaws, and usually agreeing with the grade that they had been assigned by the Professional Coin Grading Service, a company that evaluates the quality of any coin submitted. Though my mind would eventually wander to other things, my dad could stare at a single coin for hours, as if it held the secret of life.
We didn’t talk about much else, but then, we didn’t really need to. He had no desire to talk about Iraq, and I had no desire to talk about it, either. Neither of us had a social life to speak of Iraq hadn’t been conducive to that —and my dad… well, he was my dad, and I didn’t even bother asking.
Nonetheless, I was worried about him. On his walks, his breathing was labored. When I suggested that twenty minutes was perhaps too long, even at his slow pace, he said that the doctor had told him that twenty minutes was just what he needed, and I knew there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise. Afterward, he was far more tired than he should have been, and it usually took an hour for the deep color in his cheeks to fade.
