One Army, One Fight?

I had mentioned once that there seems to be some conflict between the military troops and the civilians who work on base as contractors. Contractors perform much of the base maintenance services, as well as many of the services provided for the military (billeting, food preparation, housekeeping, etc.). There is a constant low rumble between the two factions, with the many military seemingly resenting our presence. Why? Why would they if we are making their lives easier here?

Easy. It's all about money.

I have no idea what the average military troop is paid. I really don't care. One thing I do know is that they are young, very young. I have socks older than the men and women I see on base each day. Yet many feel a sense of entitlement, jealousy at the perceived riches paid to the contractors for providing base services. This translates into whining about all that contractors do, or the fact that some wear the uniform incorrectly, or that some are overweight (from Stars & Stripes):

Most soldiers go out of their way to look professional in uniform, only to have overweight, unshaven and sloppy-looking contractorswearing their beloved uniform. Surely the peoplemaking these decisions can do better than this. I only ask that commanders look back to a time when the uniformwas sacred and onlyworn by soldiers who earned it.
~~
We have standards and regulations when we wear our uniforms; why, then, are contractors allowed to even wear them at all. They make a mockery of our uniform when they don’t wear it properly. Also, since we monitor ourselves and our fellow soldiers on attire, we find ourselves approaching a contractor on their uniform then realize they aren’t military. Why are they allowed to wear our uniforms?
~~
You drive by hundreds of air-conditioning units sitting idle, yet if you place awork order to have an A/C unit installed, it is denied. “There’s no money for new installations,” you are told by amanwearing a T-shirt and shorts inside a nicely cooled building. So you go back to your oven.
~~
I’m a civilian contractor in Iraq and would like to address. First, the point I agree with: The services should raise the pay for enlisted personnel. It will help retention, and they deserve it. As for the other points, I disagree. The “shameless war profiteers” I work with come from all over, but 99 percent of us have one thing in common: We’re veterans. From 20-plus-year retirees and Vietnam veterans to people who served their country and went on to do other things, we are not “shameless war profiteers,” but are people trying to secure a better future for ourselves and our families. Serving your country will not make you rich, but you have a few things to compensate.
~~
I am proud to be a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and dowhatever I can to support the men and women in uniform serving their country so bravely. The letter writer seemed upset over the portion-control issue that was short-lived and is in the past. Both the military and civilians were equally vocal on this. This is a trivial issue, although I would agree that some of us should push away from the table a little sooner, myself included.
~~
I agree that some contractors are pompous and arrogant. Others can be rather poor team players with nothing more to offer than petty complaints. For that matter, certain active-duty personnel also have the ability to exhibit the same qualities. However, a few loose cannons are not usually indicative of all contractors or active-duty members. As a contractor, I take issue with the writer’s “war profiteering” comments...Give me a break! Sure, you can “do it alone.” Nevertheless, a significant erosion in quality of life would likely occur at this base if contractors were removed from the equation.
~~

Firstly, contractors are not paid all that much. Most are here solely for the tax break that they get if they remain for a whole year. And statistics show that 70% of the contractors (in our company) do not make it through a year. In the end, what we work for, if averaged out over the whole week, is around $15-20/hour. Definitely more than you might make back in some Texas backwater, but not alot for those of us from the cities, with substantial work experience, or advanced degrees.

And benefits? We have little. We have to pay a premium for health insurance, but there are no doctors in country to treat us. The military docs will not touch us unless we are dead or dying. There is no dental, no vision, no 401K, nothing. Every four months we get ten days off, payable at straight time only, and an allotment for airfare that never covers the cost of a whole ticket. Those are our benefits.

So why are we here? Some, for a sense of adventure. Some to support the war effort. Some because they are ex-military and enjoy this environment. Me? I am proud to be called a "war profiteer." I am here for the money. Period. These are my tax dollars at work. And I intend to claim my fair share in this ridiculous endeavor. I do not support the war, but am happy if I can make someone else's life a bit better by the services that I provide through my company. I stay out of the politics of why we are here, and when we are going home. I had no job in the states, my unemployment had run out, and I had a mortgage to pay. I am here for the money. Sorry if you don't like that.

The main point is that the civilians are here voluntarily. We did not walk into a recruiting office and agree to serve the country, and then whine when we have to live up to that obligation. We are not 18. We are generally skilled, trained in our fields, and have put in 20 years or more in the workplace back home. Yes, we may be paid a little more than the soldier just out of high school. You forget, we were 18 once, and we also worked for peanuts. It is part of growing up.

And because we are generally 40+, some are overweight. Take a look around back home. About 60% of the US is now overweight. I can recall when I was 18, and I thought the worst thing in the entire world was fat people. I was so disgusted by what I thought was a lack of discipline that I wouldn't even associate with anyone who was fat. Well, guess what? I am now middle aged, and I am fat, following years of dealing with some medical issues that hindered my mobility. Shit happens, kids. At some point, you are just happy to be alive. It matters not what your container looks like.

And finally, the contractors didn't think this stuff up. The government, the one that ordered the military here, decided to contract out some services. They determine our rate of pay. They decide what services that civilians provide. And the contracting companies merely fill that need.

My SO spent time in Viet Nam. He bears the scars both physically and psychologically. For him, the conditions that the military now has in Iraq was unimaginable to them back then. He would have been thrilled for a bucket to shit in, and food that wasn't moldy. Look around you, soldier. There is a war here. Any one of us could be killed at any moment. We are all sacrificing. Be grateful for each day you are alive, and for each person that goes home more or less in one piece. Someday you will look back on this and realize that it never mattered at all that the person servicing your air conditioner was fat.

She's Baaaaaaack!

"Is she your new room-mate?" Marty the Pool Guy asks.
"Yeah...what's that look for?"
"Oh, nothing," he smiles.
"What?"
"She's a little hyper, that's all..."
"Great."

I called it my transitional hooch. It was miserable. I had left the nice one and the nice job, and now lived in what they called "the projects." Rather than having a private bath, I now had to share one with a women who, apparently, was very "friendly." Each night she moved furniture around, for what reason, I don't know, and each night she entertained a myriad of, uh, friends. I would make my 2AM trek to the bathroom, only to find a different half naked man in there each night. They didn't introduce themselves. And they pee'd on my bathroom floor.

After a month, I moved "forward." At least I was no longer at risk for having to share my room, with the sentinal of the other unmade bed across the room perpetually taunting me. The thought of a room-mate made me cringe with horror. But the new hooch was cleaner, smaller, and though I still had to share a bathroom, I shared it with a person that-so far-isn't nearly as, uh, friendly.

Yesterday she returned from vacation, and finally moved in. Last night was our first night. She was banging on the bathroom walls, moving crap around, and had ten-yes, ten-Indian men helping her move all her furniture from her old hooch. I saw the old hooch: you couldn't walk in for all the furniture. She actually had a bar set, for Christ sake. Two tall stools and a matching table. What? Are we entertaining? Drinks at ten?

There was no hope of it all fitting into the smaller room. The sweaty Indian men spent the majority of the day attempting to stuff what they could, in terms of furniture of course, into her room. It wasn't pretty. I don't know what the hell they were saying, but they were saying alot of it. The Indian men here, BTW, are the backbone of this war. Without them, there would be no war. They haul, sweat, shovel, and work in the sun all day, never complaining. And they move our crap around, sometimes with quizzical looks at the way we Americans live here. At this camp, we are all in hooches of varying sizes and comfort levels. The Indians? They live 12 to a connex, stacked like cordwood in flimsy bunkbeds. They pay for their tickets here, and have two year contracts. They are paid a fraction of what the Americans are. They don't get vacations. They can't leave unless they are fired. And they work like dogs, day in and day out, ignored by most of the Americans, who have the audacity to specify in their subcontracts that they must take a shower every day or risk losing their jobs.

Bang, stomp, clatter. By nightfall, it was like living next to a construction zone. What the hell was she doing over there? I put in ear plugs and went to sleep.

Back in my nice hooch, when I lived there, I had some blankets and stuff that made it a little more comfortable. Once I left, I had no desire to pretend that Iraq was home. Dave had crushed me, broken my spirit, left me drifting and I just didn't care. I sent almost everything home. I now have decided that spartan is good, that I never ever want to confuse this place with my other life. Now I have a bed, a nightstand, a lamp, a desk, a flag on the wall, some books, and that is about it.

I rose early, as usual. My eyes were still bleary as I ran the water in the shower, waiting for it to warm up. I looked around: she had hung pictures on the wall, a mirror on the door, and a clock over the sink. There was a new rug on the floor by the shower. There was an entry rug, and a box with all her shoes lined up at the door. It was homey, kind of nice, and there was some attempt to coordinate colors, no uncertain feat given our chronic dearth of logistical support here. I can certainly appreciate that. She had installed a shower curtain with an entire acid-trip of flowers on it, placed a girly-pink candle in the soap dish, and even was so considerate as to place a can of Lysol on top of the toilet tank (I'm trying to convince myself it is not personal). Hmmm. I believe I have met Iraq's own Martha Stewart, and we share a bath.

I'm rebelling by not making my bed today.

Til Iraq Do Us Part

"I'm going to Turkey next week."
"Good for you," says Database Dude.
"Lots of history there, alot of the ruins that I thought were in Greece are actually in Turkey. And there is an abundance of raki..." I say, smiling.
"I'll be heading back home for my first R&R."
"When are you going?"
"December. But I don't know if I'll be coming back married," Database Dude looks glumly at his monitor.
"Oh."
"Sixteen years. Two kids."
"Jeez."

I think of my life, of the chasm now firmly between my SO and myself. Nine years with him, and he barely emails, almost never calls. Over. Over is over, as I told David, as he wrote again of how much he wants to leave his wife of 25 years. "She will never change. We just don't belong together," he states.
"Then you should leave," I reply.
"I have tried so hard to make it work. It is all a sham. She has reduced me to the most basic unit."
I involuntarily perk up at any mention of David's unit. "Then you should leave," I repeat.
"I've got to leave. I've got to get out of this," his voice trails off. "God," he sighs.
He'll never leave. Never in a million years.

Debbie, Lois, Shannon, Joey, Carman...the list goes on and on. Everywhere. Steamy affairs, violent divorces, transitions. People fly home on R&R married, and return divorced. We are all transitioning. The smart ones plan for it. The rest just tag along, forever sweeping up the inevitable piles of shit that become their lives.

Bob sat down glumly. "Guess I'll have to cut off the money."
"Why?" I ask.
"I got an email from a friend when I was at home, said 'sorry to hear that you two are going your separate ways.'"
"Ouch."
"No shit."
"Was she acting funny?"
"No more so than usual."
"How long have you been married?"
"32 years."
"Jeez."

I think no one would take this job if their lives were really on track back home. But time and distance relentlessly chip away at any cracks, claiming one relationship after another as fodder of war.

We vowed til death do us part, never imagining that it would instead be Iraq that would cast the final blow.

Daveland

The days passed, even though I didn't want them to. One after another.

I stood in CJ's office, dreading the moment. I looked at him, his face never giving anything away. He absently clicked his mouse, hesitating.

"So, where am I going?" I asked, sitting down.
"I already told you, Samarra."
"Do you know anything about it? What are the living conditions like?"
"I haven't been there," he says, his face still blank.
"Can you tell me if they are in tents?"
"I don't know."
"Do I have to go?" I asked, feeling my face starting to flush.
He paused, looking down. "What do you want?"
"I want to stay here." I looked at him, directly into his eyes, and felt something breaking inside me. I was exhausted. I was eating benadryl like candy, anything to stop the pain I was feeling. I had no position, and was alone. I emailed Dave, but he never replied. I had left home a broken woman, and struggled with my return.

I hated being here. I hated being alone. I hated being weak. I was everything I hated. "Isn't there a position open here?" The tears started to drip from my eyes. I tried to ignore them, struggling with all my effort to keep my face from screwing into a contorted mess.

"We have assigned you elsewhere," he said, with little emotion.
"I would like not to have to move anywhere." The endless months of twelve hour days, the stress of being bombed each day, the heat, the boredom, the fact that Dave had broken me into tiny little pieces: the destruction of my life laid bare before me.

And I broke. For a moment, I am sure the dichotomy between what my eyes were saying and the blank expression on my face was disturbing. I tried to bite my lip, tried to stop what I knew was coming, but couldn't. And then I just didn't care. I was broken, and I didn't care who knew. I bent forward, looking at the floor, and could think of nothing but David. By the time I looked up again, I was sobbing.

He looked at me, and for the first time I saw concern. "Are you OK?"
"No. No I am not OK. I just have some things I need to deal with, I just need to get through the end of this contract. I don't want to have to move right now."

I felt ridiculous having to explain. I felt ridiculous for being a woman, for loving a man who so easily left me behind. I felt ridiculous for not being strong enough to deal with everything. I always had been before. Yet now, I was crying all the time, and had been since June. It had been a nightmare, and it was not getting better. All I wanted was to return to my hooch, go to bed, and sleep forever.

I looked up. He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers. "You can stay here. I'll give you that slot. Don't worry about what Tom says, I will tell him that you are taking that slot." He paused again. "Are you going to be OK?"
"Thank you," I blubbered, trying to get out of the office as quickly as possible. "Thank you."

I returned to pack up my office, or what was left of it. While I had been gone, they had piled all my stuff in with Curtis.
"Sorry, the other group needed the space."
"Couldn't they wait a week?" I asked.
"No, they knew you were not staying here."
"Fuckers."

I gathered a few things, and sorted through the rest. It was all unimportant now. I didn't need copies of policy. I didn't need procedures. I didn't need anything. I took binders that had followed me from one end of Iraq to the other, and summarily tossed them into the trash.

One day I met the man from corporate that was completing the last details of our project. It was accidental. I hadn't wanted to meet him. I didn't want the exposure. But there he was, explaining the next steps in the process. As we talked, I broke down. I was so disappointed in the fact that my partner on the project had screwed me in the end, and what we had produced was less than I thought it should be. Everything was messed up, and I simply did not have the energy to fix it. I apologized. I knew I could do better. Or, at least at one point I could. He looked at me sympathetically, as tears rolled down well-worn tracks on my face. I didn't even care. It didn't even matter.

Curtis left for R&R, and I had the office to myself. When everything had been packed, I looked around. His stuff was piled in boxes on his desk. We were all transitional. We were all just bodies. No one really cared what we wanted, there was no such thing as a career here. We performed a function, then moved on.

I got up, closing and locking the door. I opened up my old emails from David, and collapsed onto the desk in tears. He loved me once. He said he did. The messages were filled with sweetness, anticipation, hope, dreams. I tried to read through them, but the agony of what was no longer there made it impossible to continue. I shut down the computer, turned off the light, closed the blinds, and wept. For the next eight days, I sat in there, weeping, hiding, wishing incoming would finally do what I lacked the courage to do. No one asked what I was doing. No one said anything at all. Every three hours I got up to go to the bathroom, and made no effort to hide that I had been crying. It didn't matter. I didn't care what they thought. My life was over. On the ninth day, I took my one box and my computer, stood up, turned off everything, locked the door, and walked out of my promising future. It was all over.


I sat in the trailer the first week with a new employee who refused to do any paperwork because he hadn't yet received training. I explained that the training course here would provide little help to what his duties actually were. He ignored me. He had no background in the field, but had been brought into the group by Tom. And was getting paid more than I was. I tried not to resent him, but I did.

He spent hours each day arranging pictures of dead Iraqis on his computer, earnestly reading his pocket-sized bible and praising GW and our fine war. The days became a blur of tense boredom. I sank deeper into my private hell, unable to escape, unable to think, unable to breathe. I checked my email, but nothing ever came. No message from David saying that he had made an awful mistake and wanted me back. No invitation to meet him in Dubai. No apology for what he had done, no request for an address to mail me the money he still owed. I stifled my tears, breaking down the minute my colleague left for lunch each day. As the July heat rolled into August, he left for R&R and I was left mercifully alone.

Each day I wept. Each day the pain got no better. Days would pass where I would do nothing but cry, then return to my hooch and cry all night. My eyes were permanently swollen. I barely slept, barely ate, barely moved. Sleep was hopeless. At most, I got three hours. I became a zombie, rising earlier and earlier, until one day I just stayed up straight through. The circles under my eyes grew with each passing moment, and my hair began to fall out in clumps. I tried to care, but really didn't. I looked at the heaps of hair on the bathroom floor each day and felt only a distant curiosity.

I would drive around the camp, sobbing, trying to avoid driving past the places that held the memories most dear. I was being ripped apart, every day, all day, all night. I did not feel as though I would survive. I did not feel anything rallying inside of me. I just gave up. I didn't care if they fired me. I didn't give a shit what happened from then on.

No one knew. It was not something that I could share. Only one person back home knew what had happened, and she worried that I was having a nervous breakdown. I laughed. How fucking perfect is that??? The prospect of my own personal destruction amidst the hellish backdrop of Iraq seemed divinely poetic. I was on my own. I had made my bed, and had to sleep in it. So I started to blog, and created 'lost in daveland', the sad homage to my lost love. Blog or die.

As I wrote, I wondered what he was doing, imagining all the projects that he said he needed to complete. I wondered if he was getting along with his wife, if he was screwing her the way he had longed to do in all those months over here. I wondered if he had planted tomatoes, if he had canned them, if he had a zillion cold beers on his deck in front of the lake. And I wondered if he had returned to work, back to the job he hated, back to the life he despised, back to the routine that had so sucked the very joy from his soul. But to me, he was as good as dead. To me, he had cut me off as though I was nothing. There was no explanation. One day he was there, the next day he was not. To me, his actions were violent in a chicken shit way, wanting to strike at my heart without the annoyance of personal accountability. He was good at that.

I could avoid him no longer. I could not do this. I was dying, and I knew it. I simply needed to hear his voice.

By September, he had returned to work and I found his email address. I shook as I typed. I was terrified he would be angry. I was frozen in fear when I hit send. I knew he would not respond. Why would he? Why would he need to after he had so efficiently eliminated me from his life? Why would he ever face what he had done?

And then he answered. His email was short, abrupt, but opened the door a crack. He did not want to speak with me, he did not want to hear my voice. So we emailed a couple of times. And for the first time in three months, I went to sleep without crying.

I spoke with him for the first time last week. I called, my hands shaking when I dialed. When he answered, my breath caught. His voice is my comfort, even after what he has done to me. I fall into his soft voice, remembering what it was like to hold him. We danced around the obvious. But we talked. And for the first time in months, I have again laughed. David does that to me.

Yet I listen to him, about how much he wants to leave his wife, about how he wants her to be the one to leave, about how she discovered our affair. I have heard it all before. There is no way I can know what the truth is. There is no way I can know when he is lying to me. I know he is, but I have chosen to ignore it. He says he wants out, but when I send him emails with links to support, he doesn't lift a finger to contact them. He says she is violent, but when I give him phone numbers to call, he doesn't. I send him links to books, something he can read to gain some insight into why he needs to stay in a relationship that doesn't work. He won't read them. I send him questions to evaluate what he thinks and feels, and he blows them off.

He says that she may leave, that she can't "get over" what happened, yet he still won't allow me to do anything that would reveal that he is again speaking to me. He hides his emails to me from her. He won't call me, it would show up on the bill.

He has not apologized. He really doesn't understand what he has done, how much he has hurt me. And I can't understand why he doesn't get it, why he doesn't realize how powerful love is, how one is broken when it is lost, and the fact that he was worth it to me, that he was that important in my life, that he could have been my future. The only way it makes sense is when I conclude that he has never really felt love, not that kind. Not the honest kind, not the one that is soft, juicy, warm, trusting, and comforting. Not the kind that gets up in the middle of the night to get ice cream for your sore throat. Not the kind that holds your hand when you hurt. Not the kind that listens with rapture to the incredibly boring details of your job. Not the kind that drives you to become more than you are, to grow, to learn, to meet new people. Not the kind that fixes your favorite dinner even when you are an asshole. Not the kind that celebrates the anniversary of the first night you made love to eachother. Not the kind that changes your entire life, making you want to hug strangers on the street. Not the kind that carries you through, from here to the bitter end, always supporting, always trusting, always caring, always loving.

When a conversation goes well, when I think he actually may be ready to leave, I start feeling the same old love. The one that never died. The one that I could not kill for the life of me. I start dreaming of working together again, of traveling together again. I start dreaming of lives where we would be happy, and together. I cannot stop myself, no matter how irrational it is.

He actually spoke of returning to Iraq, saying he missed it. When he said that, almost in passing, I felt disgust. He had callously thrown us away, all to return home, all to rush back to the life he said was killing him. How was I to feel, knowing that he hated her, but she was the better choice then to remain with me? He made the decision, blaming other things, but it was his own cowardice that drove him, his own fear of change, his own inability to accept responsibility for his life. He tossed me out of his life, like garbage. He hated Iraq, all he wanted was to return home. Back to the predictable, back to the safety of knowing exactly what his life would be like forever. Even if his life would be one of misery.

But I knew he would want to come back. It is inside of us. It is a craving for growth, discovery, truth. It is needing more than others do, needing more excitement, needing more intellectual stimulation. Needing to see the exotic, needing to feel, touch, smell the world. I knew when he left that the decision would kill his soul. I knew he needed Iraq like I did, just like I did. We hated it, while loving every minute.

Daveland.

Labor Day

I took a day off yesterday.

I used to not take them off, it seemed pointless when we lived in tents, no one wanted to be stuck on a wet cot in a leaky tent for a whole day. But the endless hours of work start to grind, and you start to resent giving back what few benefits we get with this job.

I long ago lost my ability to tell what day it is. I only now know when it is Saturday because no one emails me from home on the weekends. Yeah, Saturday and Sunday are the black hole of my life. Nothing. No communications. Everyone "back there" is resting, fixing the house, doing whatever the hell they do on weekends. Me? I haven't had a weekend in forever.

So yesterday I awakened at 4AM, determined to enjoy my day of privacy and leisure. I laid in bed, trying desperately to return to sleep. It is always a fantasy to be able to take the day off, and to sleep all day. We all talk about it. Yet it never happens. A fork lift drove by at 7AM with a pallet of Mozn, followed by the dual Blackhawk milkrun to the IZ flying directly overhead, vibrating my bed more than any 25 cents could ever do. As if that wasn't enough, then a car bomb shook the trailer. Pointless. But I wasn't going down without a fight. I swallowed some more benadryl, put in my ear plugs, and covered my head only to be annoyed by the death throes of the camp generator: a low frequency vibration shaking my bed in a rhythm that became more intrusive the more I tried to ignore it.

I finally got up and fixed some coffee. Irish cream or some such thing, suitably sweet and loaded with more caffeine than a body should have. By the second cup on my glorious, relaxing day off I was shaking slightly and pacing all five square feet of floor space in my hooch. Took hours to calm down, reading the juicy details of a murder trial, writing, embroidering. I finally gave up and cleaned the bathroom. It wasn't dirty.

For lunch I treated myself to a can of tuna and some stale tortilla chips, anything to not have to leave the sanctity of the hooch and report to the DFAC on my day off. The empty tuna can smelled so bad after it sat in the heat of the garbage sack in the hallway that I had to dress and take it outside, then shower to clean myself of the God-awful, is-that-really-what-it-smells-like-down-there odor.

I got bored, and decided to check email, only to be electronically harassed by my boss for checking email on my day off. By the afternoon, I had run out of things to do and had purchased $5000 worth of furniture online for my bedroom back home that I can barely remember and probably won't see for months.

I decided I could no longer afford to take days off.