Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers Page A

crystal clear.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in An Nasiriyah. Ahmed did some translating. We talked to some children who gathered around us, pointing at our weapons, waving to us. Some of them imitated us, walking the way they thought we walked. I guess we looked funny to them in our desert camouflage, Kevlar helmets, and Molle vests.
    Were they so used to the killing that they could go on with their lives so easily? Did the wailing of the woman for her grandson seem too familiar to them? They were only kids, for God’s sake.
    The children either wore American-type clothes or long shirts that came down to their ankles. Some spoke to me in Arabic. I forced smiles but my mind was in chaos. The sight of the dead boy had scared me, as had the walking away from him. I looked over at the small crowd of Iraqis gathered around the body. They were wrapping him in cloth.
    Some 3 rd ID guys came over to where I was standing with some candy and started passing it out.
    â€œThey’re like all kids,” the guy next to me, a stocky sergeant with a southern accent, said. He offered me the box.
    â€œYeah.” I took the box.
    â€œYou get used to the killing.” He said the words softly. “It don’t help much at night when you’re trying to sleep, but you get used to it.”
March 25, 2003
    Dear Uncle Richie ,
    I’m writing this letter but I probably won’t mail it. I probably won’t save it, either. Today I saw a stranger die. I saw what the M-16s could do. I don’t know why the kid started to run. Maybe he was afraid. But what happened was that he was killed, and we left him lying on the ground. At first I was really sad, depressed. Then I felt myself trying to shut it out. I started by telling myself that he was probably one of the guys who wanted to kill Americans, but that was a dead-end street. It just didn’t work. What works is to put it outside of you. To let it be not part of who you are. I know I won’t ever be able to talk about it. I wonder if that is the reason you never talked about anything that happened in Vietnam.
    On the way back to our base I saw that Jonesy’s hand was shaking. Nothing else, just his hand. I thought about putting my hand on his, but I didn’t. None of us in First Squad talked about what had happened.
    The medical truck was all goodness. So were the medics who deal with Civil Affairs. They put out white tables and took out boxes of supplies. All the Iraqis recognized what was going on and started edging forward.
    â€œYou know what they have over here that they don’t have at home?” Marla asked me as she leaned against the fender of the Humvee. Her hip was touching mine.
    â€œArabs?”
    â€œLame people,” she answered. “Most of them look all right, but you see a lot of people with birth defects and things they would have taken care of in the States.”
    She was right. There were more crippled people and blind people in Kuwait and Iraq than I had ever seen at home. For many of the Iraqis it would be the only medical treatment they’d ever get. The two guys and two women doing the medical stuff treated anything, from chest colds to rashes. It was weird. On one side of the square, there were people washing the ground where the kid was killed. On the other side our medics were looking at sores and passing out antibiotics.
    And there were some Iraqis who just stood silently.
    The kids began to get over their shyness once they saw adults talking to the medical people. They surrounded us, pulling at our gear, asking for candy, sometimes just trying to touch us. One kid had on a Derek Jeter Yankees T-shirt. I liked that.
    I kept my eyes away from the house we had searched. Over and over I told myself that the kid had used the rocketlauncher, that he had tried to kill Americans. Maybe he even had already killed Americans, and he was the enemy. In a way I was cool with that. In my head I could deal with his being