“I lost a couple more friends this week,” Andrew says, plainly. “One was from G4 (Andrew’s West Point Unit) named Garrison Avery.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell him.
“It’s alright man,” he shrugs. “If I’ve learned one thing while I’ve been over here, it’s that I’m a soldier, and our number one job is to kill before we die. Some people are just better at the former.”
“I think I saw that on a Hallmark card somewhere.”
“Probably.”
It becomes clear rather quickly that to talk about war with a deployed soldier as literate and well-spoken as my brother is to volunteer for an exhibition in dark comedy. We don’t avoid the talk of death, nor our place in the hereafter.
“I’ll probably go to hell for that,” he says after making a crack about the pope.
“I’ll save you a seat,” I assure him.
Despite the artillery at my brother’s fingertips, the greatest weapon in a soldier’s arsenal is humor, though a humor of a very bleak and disturbing variety. It’s tickling the funny bone by way of the jugular. And I seem to be just about the only civilian who has the stomach to play along.
“You’re freaking people out back here,” I tell him, referring to a recent e-mail detailing a fierce firefight with some outgunned assassins. “But I laughed my ass off reading [the e-mail].”
“That was the intent, to make everyone laugh,” he says. “Can you just picture me saying to my guys ‘Kill that piece of shit’ and laughing to myself?”
Some of this may be false bravado. I doubt the laughter came during, but I don’t doubt for a second there was laughter after. And thank God. If it weren’t for the sick sense of humor we share and Andrew’s usual cocky bluster, I’d be worried about him.
“I’m a superhero,” he tells me.
“Well, just stay away from tights or I’ll start to wonder about you?”
“I’m wearing some as I speak.”
Why am I not surprised?
Some Letters
“What happened to those letters you were supposed to give me?” I ask.
When Andrew came home for Thanksgiving, his last weekend in the States, we sat in my bedroom for a spell as he debriefed me on all the information he’d absorbed during his run-up to deployment. After the dry-erase breakdown of Andrew’s battlefield, he first mentioned the letters.
Though my brother had yet to deploy, our family was experiencing our own special trip through the seven stages of grief. The letters were a symptom of that stage my brother and I spend so much time in: anger. With the larger political focus his domestic digs afforded him, my brother intended these letters as a rigor mortis laced middle finger to the administration, and it was my duty to see them delivered to the editorial staff of the nation’s major newspapers. But in the commotion of Andrew’s departure, they never changed hands.
“I’m glad I didn’t give them to you,” he says. “Now that I’m here they seem kind of stupid.”
The moment Andrew hit the dirt of the Middle East he stepped out of the realm of political speculation and into the grave perils of war. For all of Andrew’s eviscerating critiques of the administration during Thanksgiving weekend, it all seems very much, well, silly now. And very much beside the point. Asked if he ever feels the repercussions of presidential decisions, he answers no. But that’s not to say he doesn’t notice W’s fingerprints from time to time.
“I have about 9 conspiracy theories I’m developing,” he tells me. I can almost hear that trademark Rockwell brother shit-grin spreading. “Presidential level conspiracies.”
Yet the more I talk to my brother the more it feels as if the soldiers in the Iraqi theatre are driven to succeed almost in spite of the administration's ineptitude. The letters Andrew wrote were a way to rub his death in the President’s face. Then I he landed in Iraq, and he realized that his success on the battlefield would be an even greater F.U. to the people who put him in harm’s way.
“I’m excelling here like I never have before in my life,” he says. Andrew’s drive in Iraq makes Oprah look like Homer Simpson.
“Do you not worry about sleep over there?” I ask.
“Sleep?” he responds, as if he were unfamiliar with the word. “I sleep when I can’t function anymore.”
And probably not a second sooner.
“Start missions at 0500 and keep going until 1200 the next day. That’s about 31 hours.”
“Is this your choice, or the Army’s?”
“My choice.”
While it seems some soldiers are intent on forgetting where they are whenever possible, my brother has accepted his situation and plans to make the most of it. Aside from the occasional episode of 24 (“It’s an addiction over here. I’ll have half the battalion watching it with me.”), Andrew is neck-deep in intelligence, plotting and planning.
“I’m going to kill [Zarqawi],” Andrew swears, and one doesn’t accomplish that playing XBOX.
“There are [video games] all over,” he says. “I just don’t have time for them. Although I did play an awful lot of GBA Zelda in my free time (while shitting).”
And one suspects that, like his hero Jack Bauer, Andrew rarely has time for that.
“I’ve been working the satellites at night. That’s why I haven’t been sleeping. Watching particular buildings real-time thermal. I do missions all day. Then go get on Falconview and see how our daily ops effected particular people. I’m trying to turn myself into the Rain Man of the area.”
“So you’re a go-getter,” I say. Then he reveals an ulterior motive for his work ethic.
“Makes time go quickly.”
Brothers
The hardest thing for me to reconcile when my brother left was that I didn’t believe in what this war was about. I couldn’t handle the idea of Andrew risking his life for something I didn’t believe in. But that was before his men fell into the equation.
Naturally, there are those jingoistic soldiers who will dedicate every kill or victory to their Commander-in-Chief. Then there are others, like my brother, for whom the President is just some abstraction, completely irrelevant to their situation; the fight is all about their brothers-in-arms.
Last week we spoke and as the conversation progressed I sensed a dramatic shift in his temperament. He had just come off a tremendous military victory, nabbing Al Qaeda’s number 4 in Iraq and seizing an enormous cache of weapons. Yet there was something bubbling underneath; the victory did not come without a cost.
“I lost four Iraqi army soldiers yesterday,” he confessed. “Whatever it takes these mother fuckers are not going to kill anymore of my friends. It won’t happen.”
For the first time, I realized that the brotherhood of the American soldier had expanded to include those who had never set foot on American soil. Unlike the faceless enemy that takes cheap shots from bushes and alleyways, the Iraqi soldiers have stepped up with great risk to themselves as well as their families, and that sacrifice has not gone unnoticed by my brother.
Specifically, my brother seems to have embraced his interpreter as a close confidant. How close?
“I gave the 9 mil we found [in the weapon cache] to my terp as a gift,” he tells me.
Of all the men in Andrew’s command, this is the one I’d be most anxious to meet. A former Baathist who reads my brother the local news every day, he is working towards a visa so he can join his sister in Detroit, but he can’t get one until the war is over. He’s also a Christian who appears to be my brother’s major insight into the machinations of Iraq. I have a feeling that a good deal of what Andrew relays to us at home comes, at least in some part, from his terp. With the knowledge of this ally, no longer will my political musings suffer for want of an Iraqi face to empathize with.
How is Andrew Doing… Really?
“Look man, I’m like 11 weeks into this,” Andrew says. “That leaves 41 weeks. Four of those will be spent at home or heading home. Time’s really starting to fly. The dollars are starting to add up. It’s freaking sweet.”
My mother called me when she got Andrew’s firefight e-mail. Whenever we get a particularly nasty correspondence from him, my mom makes sure I know about it immediately. I can’t say why. She always seems nonplussed by my reaction; I never share her horror.
For me, the horror ends when the e-mail arrives. As soon as I see Andrew’s name in my inbox I know he is safe. My brother is trained as a soldier. As best he can, he has prepared for what he will see. And as he tells me: “I still haven’t been nervous yet. I haven’t had my asshole pucker up. I wouldn’t worry too much about [me] if I were you. If I die it’s because I fucked up.”
“Comforting.”
“I don’t fuck up.”
For most of us, the fear we have is the randomness and the disorder of what is going on over there. But the more I talk to my brother the more I realize that it’s not as random as we might believe. The enemy is using tactics just as we are, and Andrew is breaking those tactics down with every waking hour. And he’s pissed.
“Phil, I’m serious when I say this. I broke their intelligence network. It’s all over for them in my area. I’m dead serious.”
I can’t help but smile hearing that, because I know if it isn’t so now, it’s only a matter of time before Andrew makes it so. My confidence in my brother exceeds any respect I have for the enemy over there. And the more I talk to him the more confident I become.
I’ve become a barometer of worry for my mother. I think that’s why she’s always so anxious to pass on word of my brother’s e-mails. She wants to see my reaction. I’ve assured her that she’ll know when Andrew has had a really bad day, because I’ll be worried. I know my brother. I know his mind. I know his heart. And right now both of them are fully invested in leaving his mark on Iraq. He’s the type of guy they’ll be telling stories about for years, Iraqis and Americans alike. “Remember Rock? That was a crazy fucker…” they’ll start. Those of us at home already have an entire library of these tales, and he’s writing an entirely new volume as we speak. And this one has a much bigger budget and much higher stakes.
Still, I’m confident, and fortunately I had the foresight to see that some days my confidence might waver. Luckily I made a quick observation on Thanksgiving that will save me a lot of worry over the next year. After watching my brother in the foyer of our home, saying good-bye to his family, I was struck with a powerful sensation and immediately rushed to my room to write it out on my whiteboard. It’s one sentence, one observation, I read immediately upon rising every morning. I’m going to share it with you now to use during those times when you don’t share my unshakeable confidence.
Take a look.
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