Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván Page A
Authors: Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
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With Iraq, I have mental pictures. The emptiness of the desert. The terrible decimation of entire city blocks. A dead American private. The charred body of an Iraqi boy. The rows of Sunni men sitting quietly in a jail cell, staring blankly ahead like souls in purgatory, waiting to be cast into hell. I remember the smile of my Iraqi friend, Maher, only a few months before his death. The smell of his apple tobacco merging, like a bad dream, with the awful stench of the town of Hitt. I am haunted by the way a man stepped into an alley, and why I almost shot him, even though I didn’t know him, and why that kind of experience, day after day, breaks you down.
I wish I could make you hear the whizzing of tracer rounds when Syrian soldiers ambushed us along the Iraqi border. It was four in the morning; there was nothing for miles but a flat line where the dark earth met the black sky. And then the Syrians were there, rising over the edge of the dirt berm that marked the border, firing machine guns and heavy munitions from a Soviet-made BTR tank. I was so outraged I just stood there and stared at them through my night-vision goggles. “I can’t believe we’re being fired on!” I yelled, watching their dismounts reload. “I can’t believe we’re being attacked by the Syrian Army!”
We returned fire. We pushed them back. I wish you could hear that sound, too, the steady det-det-det-det-det of Pfc. Tyson Carter’s M240 machine gun and the hammering of our .50 caliber machine gun, because it was all instinct, all adrenaline and discipline, and that was our cadence. Luckily, we didn’t take casualties, and when we returned to base later, just as the sun was burning off the night, we were flying. I mean, I was angry. I was pissed off that we’d been attacked from across the international border. But I was exhilarated, too. A firefight is one of the most intense feelings in the world. It was only later that the weight of the encounter hit me, when the high was followed by the low, like the cold ashes after a fire burns off.
And that’s the contradiction of Iraq. For many of us, it was the greatest time of our lives. Iraq is the country where we found our purpose, where we did the work we are most proud of, and where we encountered people and places we can never leave behind.
But it was also a complete disgrace. The place where we lost our ideals; where the Army we loved sold us out for careerist brass, a war-porn-fixated media and military-industrial-complex corporate greed; where the only honor and integrity seemed to exist among the troops on the line. If I could give you one word to describe why I came back wounded from Iraq, it wouldn’t be combat. Or fear. Or injury. Or death. It would be betrayal. Betrayal of our troops by their commanders. Betrayal of our ideals. Betrayal of our promise to the Iraqis and to the people back home. Where does incompetence become criminal? Where does selfishness become moral failure? How many lies can be told before it all becomes a lie? I don’t know for sure, but in Iraq a line was crossed, and I’m outraged as hell. I can’t get over it. Because good people died, and they’re still dying for the same reasons today.
“Why do you want to tell that story?” Mamá asked me when she heard about this book. “Why do you want people to know you have problems? Who will ever hire you?”
I understand her concerns. I am very private, much more so since Iraq, and very ambivalent about sharing my life. But I don’t want to tell her that. I don’t want to admit to her that working on this book has already caused months of pain, but that I feel compelled to tell the truth nonetheless. Who in their right mind wants their mother to worry?
“I have to finish it,” I tell her. “It’s something I have to do.” It’s war and healing, I want to tell her. It’s pain. It’s triumph. “Don’t worry, Mamá,” I say finally. “It’s just a book about Tuesday.”
And to
With Iraq, I have mental pictures. The emptiness of the desert. The terrible decimation of entire city blocks. A dead American private. The charred body of an Iraqi boy. The rows of Sunni men sitting quietly in a jail cell, staring blankly ahead like souls in purgatory, waiting to be cast into hell. I remember the smile of my Iraqi friend, Maher, only a few months before his death. The smell of his apple tobacco merging, like a bad dream, with the awful stench of the town of Hitt. I am haunted by the way a man stepped into an alley, and why I almost shot him, even though I didn’t know him, and why that kind of experience, day after day, breaks you down.
I wish I could make you hear the whizzing of tracer rounds when Syrian soldiers ambushed us along the Iraqi border. It was four in the morning; there was nothing for miles but a flat line where the dark earth met the black sky. And then the Syrians were there, rising over the edge of the dirt berm that marked the border, firing machine guns and heavy munitions from a Soviet-made BTR tank. I was so outraged I just stood there and stared at them through my night-vision goggles. “I can’t believe we’re being fired on!” I yelled, watching their dismounts reload. “I can’t believe we’re being attacked by the Syrian Army!”
We returned fire. We pushed them back. I wish you could hear that sound, too, the steady det-det-det-det-det of Pfc. Tyson Carter’s M240 machine gun and the hammering of our .50 caliber machine gun, because it was all instinct, all adrenaline and discipline, and that was our cadence. Luckily, we didn’t take casualties, and when we returned to base later, just as the sun was burning off the night, we were flying. I mean, I was angry. I was pissed off that we’d been attacked from across the international border. But I was exhilarated, too. A firefight is one of the most intense feelings in the world. It was only later that the weight of the encounter hit me, when the high was followed by the low, like the cold ashes after a fire burns off.
And that’s the contradiction of Iraq. For many of us, it was the greatest time of our lives. Iraq is the country where we found our purpose, where we did the work we are most proud of, and where we encountered people and places we can never leave behind.
But it was also a complete disgrace. The place where we lost our ideals; where the Army we loved sold us out for careerist brass, a war-porn-fixated media and military-industrial-complex corporate greed; where the only honor and integrity seemed to exist among the troops on the line. If I could give you one word to describe why I came back wounded from Iraq, it wouldn’t be combat. Or fear. Or injury. Or death. It would be betrayal. Betrayal of our troops by their commanders. Betrayal of our ideals. Betrayal of our promise to the Iraqis and to the people back home. Where does incompetence become criminal? Where does selfishness become moral failure? How many lies can be told before it all becomes a lie? I don’t know for sure, but in Iraq a line was crossed, and I’m outraged as hell. I can’t get over it. Because good people died, and they’re still dying for the same reasons today.
“Why do you want to tell that story?” Mamá asked me when she heard about this book. “Why do you want people to know you have problems? Who will ever hire you?”
I understand her concerns. I am very private, much more so since Iraq, and very ambivalent about sharing my life. But I don’t want to tell her that. I don’t want to admit to her that working on this book has already caused months of pain, but that I feel compelled to tell the truth nonetheless. Who in their right mind wants their mother to worry?
“I have to finish it,” I tell her. “It’s something I have to do.” It’s war and healing, I want to tell her. It’s pain. It’s triumph. “Don’t worry, Mamá,” I say finally. “It’s just a book about Tuesday.”
And to
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