N.U.G. is proud to present a new contributing author to our staff! Pogue Mahones comes to us after a long tour of Europe, Scandinavia, and the sub-continent. Pogue specializes in undercover research of combat forces, and has been kind enough to share his journals with us here. Soon to be a major motion picture, check out the beginning of his magnum opus Leadership in a Vacuum right here!

Leadership in a Vacuum

Sometimes the best lessons come from leaders that suck.

Chapter 1: Indoctrination

This is all because of those goddamned prostitutes.

That is the thought that kept racing through my mind while the brigade personnel clerk tried to read my orders for the tenth time in as many minutes. 

I had just arrived in my very first combat zone, so I was really trying hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.  This seemingly simple task was complicated significantly by the gunshots and screaming roaring around the office.  The battlefield was strewn with the fallen soldiers of soda cans and Styrofoam food containers covering the nest of ethernet cables spidering through the office.

This is all because of those goddamned prostitutes.

The death toll increased slowly, as one-by-one the ghosts of digital warriors stood up from the battlefield to wander through the office, haunting the screens of those still alive. 

Specialist Moran, the clerk responsible for processing my paperwork, was apparently a master of local area network-based close-quarters digital combat, as evidenced by the gathering crowd of spectators surrounding his desk. 

The room was utter chaos, with not another non-commissioned officer (NCO) in sight.  I could feel my anger at this complete loss of military discipline rising on the back of my neck.  The chevrons of my buck sergeant rank seemed to be screaming at me to put these undisciplined pieces of shit in their place.

The crowd behind Specialist Moran gasped in unison when his monitor suddenly blinked off.  They looked up in slow-motion to see me calmly twirling the power cord and staring at them with the murderous joy of a sergeant about to put the fear of God into a group of privates.

“I’d like to speak to your officer in charge, if you don’t mind,” I growled through gritted teeth.  The group of soldiers looked back and forth at each other, unsure of how to respond. 

Moran’s bloodshot eyes looked up at me sadly.  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?  Thanks a lot, Sarge, we’re never gonna hear the end of this bullshit.”

From the back of the office, a voice boomed in celebration.  “Awww fuck yeah Moran, where are all those gaming skills I keep hearing about?  I just buttfucked your corpse man, what happened?” 

At that moment I realized for the first time that a separate office had been created with two-by-fours and plywood.  The disembodied voice that was cackling obscenities at my victim was coming from that very office.  I had a bad feeling that my disappointment levels were about to increase, but I was still unprepared for the image of a first lieutenant dancing out of the office as if he were riding a horse.

“Check it out guys, this is me fucking Moran’s corpse!”  Lieutenant Darby’s horse riding had morphed into an obscene rodeo.  The LT finished with a flourish, licking his palm and slapping the theoretically-deceased ass of Specialist Moran.  At the top of his follow-through, he finally noticed my presence.

“Well kiss my grits, we’ve got fresh meat for the grinder, huh?” The LT kept riding his imaginary horse/corpse, trotting over toward me.  “Welcome to the shit, Sergeant…Mahones, is it?”

“Thank you, Sir- you were pretty close- the ‘s’ is silent,” I stammered, still in shock over the scene.

“Have it your way then, ‘ergeant’ Mahone,” the LT could barely get the words out of his mouth before cackling over his own cleverness.  “Moran, what’s taking you so long to take care of this ‘ergeant,’ are you trying to stall until the next time I shit down your throat again?”

The LT elbowed Moran in the shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.  Moran simply glared at me.  Suddenly, I could see Moran’s eyes light up with greedy anticipation.

“LT, sorry for the holdup.  The problem is that Sarge’s orders here say that he’s supposed to be going to Saddam’s palace-but Sarge here told us that he came here to fuck shit up and wants to get his hands dirty.  I was thinking somewhere like Forward Operating Base Ohica would be more his speed, what do you think?”  Moran winked at me while using his middle finger to scratch his ear.

LT Darby finally stopped riding his horse to offer me a fancy salute.  “Goddamn that’s hardcore, Sarge.  I would be right there with you if it wasn’t for this case of gout that’s been kicking my ass since we got in country, you know?  Well don’t let us stand in your way of glory-Moran, fix his orders up and get him on his way so I can get on with my buttfuckery.  Happy trails, Sergeant Slaughter!  Knowing is half the battle!” 

The LT hopped back on his horse and galloped back into his office.

“Uh, what the fuck just happened, Specialist?”  Despite my shock, I could feel that fuckery was afoot, and it sure felt like I was the intended target of said fuckery.

“Don’t sweat it Sarge, I just got you hooked up.”  Moran smiled like an alligator offering first aid to a wounded deer.  “I’m sending you to Forward Operating Base Ohica to link up with the cavalry troop stationed there.  Captain Custer and Sergeant First Class Romeo are in need of a high-speed intel guy like yourself.  Here are your orders, and you’re all set to head out.  Just jump on any convoy you can find heading up that way.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an LT to merc.”

I picked up my new orders, almost expecting them to be radioactive.  As I slowly headed out of the office, Moran called after me.

“One tip for the road, Sarge: never fuck with the admins.  Bon voyage!”  Moran spun around in his chair, high-fiving his fellow office trolls.

God. Damned. Prostitutes.

Chapter 2: In the Rear

Recruiters can often seem like used car salesmen.  When a recruiter finds a high school or college student that scores high enough on the entrance exam to qualify for a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) (a.k.a. what our job is) in the military intelligence branch, that sales pitch goes into overdrive.  “Oh man, we’ve got a braniac here!  Let me tell you what’s gonna happen: we’re gonna sign you up to be James Fucking Bond.  You’re gonna get a FAT bonus, you’ll learn some languages, and then you’ll go all over the world being a mother fucking spy.  Or you could stay here in this podunk shithole, smoke weed with your buddies, weigh about 300 pounds, and never do a god-damned thing with your life.  Your call, bud.”

My recruiter was no exception.  As a matter of fact, the above statements are direct quotes from him.

It was the overwhelming exuberance of my recruiter that filled my mind as I tried to square his words with the experience you are about to read.

Remember the two worlds of garrison and deployed that I mentioned?  Well there is a shadow world in between those two worlds that no one talks about.  This shadow world is called “Rear Detachment,” or “Rear D” for short, but this name fails to capture the unadulterated insanity that happens in many Rear Ds. The FOX network tried to pierce the veil of this bizarro world with an extremely short-lived comedic series but failed for a number of reasons.  One of those reasons was that no one believed that such insanity could happen in real life.

The reality is that for a soldier who wants to serve their country and find meaning in their life, Rear D is a nightmarish mutation of the military.  For those who have a modicum of experience in being part of a functioning and effective unit, being placed into a Rear D is infinitely more painful.  Having a frame of reference about “what right looks like” makes the daily scene of most Rear Ds seem like a gang of rabid monkeys has broken into your home and is raping all of your furniture.  Come to think of it, that’s not even an analogy; Rear D is a gang of monkeys sodomizing your home. 

The idea of a rear detachment is to serve as a staging area for a deployed unit: when new recruits come to a deployed unit, they are placed in the unit’s Rear D until they have their equipment and some training, and then they are shipped off to the war.  When soldiers downrange are injured and sent home, they come to the Rear D while they take care of their medical appointments and recover from their wounds.  If those had stayed the only functions of a Rear D, that might have been tolerable, if not honorable work for a young sergeant learning to lead soldiers.  At least, that was how I justified the task at hand when I was told that I was being placed in a leadership position with the Rear D instead of deploying with the rest of the unit.

Alas, there was another population of soldiers who were also a part of each Rear D.   This population was made up of a robust combination of soldiers who did not deploy with the main unit because they had gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave), soldiers that were being court-martialed for a variety of charges, and soldiers being discharged from the Army altogether.  I can pretty much guarantee that the success and quality of a unit’s Rear D will be entirely dependent upon the size of this specific population.

Imagine for a moment that you are a young 18-year old kid from, let’s say New York City.  You were in high school a few miles away from the towers on 9/11 and have first-hand knowledge on the damage that was done that day.  You resolve to take the fight to the monsters who did this and enlist in the Army.  You complete basic training and advanced individual training (AIT) at the top of your class, and the moment you’ve been waiting for finally comes: you receive orders to a unit that is already downrange, meaning that you just need to get your gear issued to you and you can jump in the fight you’ve been training to join for so long.  You report to your unit’s Rear D with enthusiasm and anticipation to get going.  Your first day of in-processing goes well, just a few more hurdles to jump and you’ll be in the fight.  Then you are issued a key for your barracks room and sent off to get some sleep for the next day.  You find your assigned room and open the door, and you are greeted by a human turd hurtling directly toward your face.

In the split second between opening the door and receiving a face full of shit, you can see the loss of all that training, all that excitement, and everything that young soldier holds dear.  If you reviewed it in slow motion, you could probably see the very instant that the light of righteousness in his eyes flicks off, never to be there again.  In one fell swoop, his entire life has been reduced to wiping the human shit from his eyes only to see his new roommate wearing a brown-streaked bedsheet toga and laughing maniacally in-between huffs of canned air. 

This is but one of the many situations that an NCO on Rear D has to deal with.  A normal unit functions like a body’s immune system.  Toxic soldiers that come in are usually handled by the overwhelming majority of good soldiers who either rehabilitate the individual or remove them from the unit altogether.  When that normal unit deploys, what happens is that all those excised tumors are placed into one giant petri dish.  The few NCOs left behind are forced to babysit these tumors on top of preparing new soldiers for combat and helping receive and rehabilitate wounded soldiers coming back, as well as honoring those who have fallen in battle and helping their families as much as possible.  As a result, most of those NCO’s time is spent on the tumors, because they are the most dangerous. 

As a Rear D NCO, the main task is to navigate the good soldiers around the walking gonorrhea nodules in the unit long enough to get the good soldiers onto a plane and away from the cesspool.  In order to do this, accountability of where viruses are located at all times is a necessity.  Morning formations are used as a warning system to identify who the problem is going to be for the day.  If someone is missing, it is critical to find them to ensure their toxins have not spread outside of the petri dish.  Sometimes this absence will be due to nothing more than oversleeping, but often it will be due to something you would never expect.  When a toxic soldier is not at your formation you may just need to wake them up; but you are equally likely to have to stop them from making crystal meth inside their barracks room.

This daily insanity was too much for me.  My pride in my new unit, my enthusiasm to lead soldiers in combat, and my desire to serve my country was put to the test every single day without fail.  Captain Morgan, the acting commander of the Rear D, had apparently already given up hope and spent most of his time hiding in his locked office with the lights turned out.  I could tell that the other NCOs were shells of their former selves and were going down a dark path as well.  It seemed like there was no way out.  My only hope was to survive this ordeal until the rest of the unit returned from the war in nine months.  I steeled myself for the task at hand and gave myself the personal mission to save as many new soldiers as possible in the meantime.  This definition of my role worked for the most part.  Then came the prostitutes.

When one of your toxic soldiers is absent from the morning formation, you might be in for a bad day.  When more than two of them are absent, this likelihood experiences an exponential increase.  On this fateful day, our ill-fated crew discovered that we were missing approximately…all of them, as well as three of our new soldiers.  We knew the shit was about to hit the fan, but we had no idea how much shit or how big the fan was. 

As one of the least broken NCOs, I was tasked to run to the barracks to identify the location of our wayward population while the others gathered reinforcements for what we assumed would be something akin to a prison riot.

While the rest of our unit was entering the combat theater, Captain Morgan had determined that our unit barracks should be renovated.  This was a fine idea, because our barracks at the time were little more than rotten cinder blocks speckled with wasp nests.  The inherent problem was that at the same time, we had soldiers that needed to live in said barracks.  It was the brainchild of my illustrious commander that half of the barracks should be walled off and renovated, while our remaining soldiers lived four or six to a room.  So, we had scrounged up some plywood and walled off half of the barracks.  Four months into our unit being gone, there had still been zero renovations.

I rounded the corner at full tilt, half-expecting to see columns of smoke pouring out of the building.  Instead, it was the very definition of tranquility.  Not a soul was in the area.  Even the federally protected deer that usually graze throughout the day were nowhere to be seen.  I slowed down, hoping that there had just been some miscommunication and all our missing soldiers were just sleeping off a drinking binge.  How magnificent it would be if a few hangovers were the only problem.

As hope for a peaceful day slowly crept into my consciousness, I spotted the new kid from New York sitting quietly in the parking lot.  Still reconning the exterior of the building, I jogged over to Private New York.  About five paces away from him, I realized he had been there for some time.  His face was ashen and streaked with tears.  A cigarette dangled from his mouth, the ashes falling occasionally onto his shirt.  His eyes never moved as I called to him.

“Hey, Private, everything copacetic?” (editor’s note: military leaders love to use this word because we think it sounds cool and don’t realize how much of a douchebag it makes us sound like) “You were told to be at formation this morning, right?  Was there a problem here last night?” I stopped peppering him with questions when I realized he was in shock.  Like a robot, New York pulled the cigarette from his mouth and used it to light another cigarette-a move that seasoned smokers call monkey-fucking.  As if there was a time delay for my words to reach his brain, New York took a long drag from the cigarette and exhaled.  Suddenly his head snapped to point in my direction.  His eyes still had that distant look in them, but somehow, he seemed to recognize me.  Even more disturbing than the glazed-over look in his eyes was his response.

“Sorry Sergeant!” The Private screamed at the top of his lungs. The veins in his thin neck seemed to be straining to break free.  Still looking through me, he continued screaming, “I guess I found it a little difficult to find my way there… with ALL THE GODDAMNED SHIT IN MY EYES!”  At this, the young soldier broke down, sobbing into his hands.

While I tried to wrap my head around this new information, yet more insanity ensued.  I was stammering, trying to think of something to say to comfort Private New York and at the same time trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.  That’s when I heard what sounded like a cattle stampede coming from the barracks.  As if to add to this mental image, someone began shouting YEEEHAAWW at the top of their lungs.

Although I only had a working-level knowledge in battlefield triage, it was clear that Private New York’s state of shock would need to wait while I traversed the area to diagnose what kind of fucked-up rodeo was happening in our barracks.  As I ran toward the yeehaws, Private New York monkey-fucked another cigarette.

If the scene on the outside of the barracks was like a peaceful pond full of water lilies, the inside of the barracks was like the scene from Jaws when the shark eats an entire boat.  The plywood barriers separating the wings appeared to have been blasted off the walls by explosives.  Toilet paper and empty cans of canned air littered the dingy hallway, leading into the darkness like a fucked-up Hansel and Gretel trail of breadcrumbs. 

I should probably wait until the others get here, I thought to myself as I slowly stepped forward.  From the darkness, a loud STOMP echoed off the walls. 

Another STOMP.  

A pale, ghostly glow emanated from the darkness when suddenly, a massively obese and unnecessarily naked hunchbacked woman galloped full speed out of an open door.  Her eyes widened in the darkness as she appeared to realize she was going too fast for her own good, but momentum took over and hurtled the hunchbacked beast into a wall like a failed Kool-Aid Man.  As she spun around I realized that she was not, in fact, hunchbacked-she was being ridden by one of my wayward soldiers who happened to be equally naked.  Without noticing me watching this scene in abject horror, Private “Cowboy” pushed off from the wall with his pale white legs and slapped the ass of his trusty steed, riding her off back into the darkness.

As I stood frozen in place trying to purge this horrific image from my brain, the cavalry arrived.  My peers had adequately determined that more backup was needed and enlisted the help of NCOs from other units.  I stepped outside to see a brute squad a la The Princess Bride, possibly the most welcome sight I have ever seen to this day.  Together we executed a classic pincer move with two groups circling the building on either side and a third group entering the building to flush out “the Thieves Forest.”

I would like to tell you that our brute squad was unnecessary, that once we found Private Cowboy and his trusty steed, all was right with the world and everyone lived happily ever after.  But his is only chapter two, bro.

The inside of the “renovation barracks” was part horror movie and part porno.  As our brute squad pushed forward, clearing the barracks from room to room became a test of our resilience.  More than one NCO in our group reached their limit of what they could handle and had to leave.  Each room was a different clue for us to recreate the insanity that must have occurred within.  Many rooms looked like a tornado had torn through them, littered with broken furniture and strangely colored puddles.  One room was pristine, looking as though it had even been polished in preparation for a room inspection- until we opened the bathroom door to see a soldier sleeping in a bathtub sarcophagus made of tequila bottles and packaging tape.  One particular hallway stood out from the others, possibly due to the “red carpet” that had been spray painted down the entire path.  Each room had a dollar amount also spray painted upon it.  We don’t need to go into what we saw behind those doors, right?  This is supposed to be a wholesome book that you can read to your kids.  Let’s just say that I had a burning desire to scour my retinas with sandpaper in the hopes of removing images of the flesh-based freakshows behind those doors.

After a full two hours of pincering, the battle was over.  Our brute squad had successfully cleared the wings, with only minor casualties (mainly our souls which were condemned for eternity just from the exposure to that depravity).  We had established a makeshift P.O.W. camp full of our wayward soldiers (including a few from other units).   There had been no trace of their clothes in our sweep of the rooms, so all of them were wrapped in blankets and huddled in a circle.  None of the women were willing to produce identification, but all of them claimed to be sisters.  The only response that any of them were willing to provide was “You just wait until Momma and Daddy get here, you’re gonna get it mother fucker.”

When you become an NCO, you think you are ready for anything.  You are full of hope and optimism, eager for your chance to lead soldiers into battle.  The military sends you to leadership school to prepare you even more.  No one tells you that part of your duties will be to bust a ring of huffing  prostitutes set up inside your barracks.  We had called the military police for the base to help us figure out what to do with the situation, but an hour had passed with no response.  We were trying to plan our next moves when our usually non-existent commander and his wife stalked up to us.

Captain Morgan looked like his only goal in life had been to reach the rank of captain so that he could dress like a pirate and pretend that he had invented rum.  With his life goal complete at an early age, he had nowhere to go but down.  Now with sunken eyes, a bulbous nose, and a receding hairline, he looked more like what would remain after his ideal had been keel-hauled.  His attitude reflected his lost ideals, and this day was no exception.

“Mahones, what in the blue blazes is going on here?” Captain Morgan had tried to summon his best pirate captain command voice but achieved only a high-pitched whine that might have been more like a pirate’s wench.  This was appropriate, because his rotund wife dressed in a golden jumpsuit with the word “juicy” adorned all over it more than made up for her husband’s deficit. 

“What are you sons of bitches doing to my daughters?”  Mrs. Morgan’s voice boomed through the courtyard, immediately capturing everyone’s attention.  The circle of girls immediately jumped up and cheered for their long-lost maternal unit while the rest of us looked on in a dumbfounded stupor.

Even now, looking back on that moment, I can feel the slow creep of realization flow through my body like a snake devouring me one inch at a time.  Momma Morgan rushed to her girls, who seemed to flock to her for protection.  At some point, the girls began producing greasy wads of cash and handing it to Momma Morgan.  The very same girls that were before, and remained now, pretty much naked other than the blankets we had provided.  Rather than ponder where the money had come from, I turned on my heels and left to figure out how many bottles of vodka it would take to remove these images from my head.  Since I am still writing about the visions to this day, you can safely assume that I may not have found the solution to my algebraic alcoholism, but please rest assured that it was not due to a lack of trying.

Chapter 3: Bombs Over Baghdad

No shit, there I was: sitting on a concrete pad in the middle of a massive gravel parking lot, trying to hitchhike to a base that no one seemed to know existed.  I had dragged my four overstuffed duffel bags over to what I assessed as prime real estate: right between a gigantic domed tent of a chow hall surrounded by T-barriers—tall concrete walls intended to stop or slow down incoming projectiles, and a trailer carrying massive rubber bladders full of fuel. 

My location was perfect.  I had been pouncing on every convoy that passed through the area like a camouflaged Jehovah’s witness, hoping that I could somehow hitch a ride when my countrymen stopped to either eat or fill up their vehicles.  Most of them just laughed in my face.  One saintly soldier, who I will forever be indebted to, tossed a half-pack of cigarettes to me from the gunner’s mount of a passing truck.  Other than that, all I had to show for my efforts was a full-body sunburn and dry, cracked lips. 

I had been sitting on that boiling-hot concrete pad for so long that my ass felt welded to the cement.  The sun was about to go down, painting the sands around the base an eerie red in the fading light.  My sunbaked skin creaked as I stood up, straining to search for dust clouds in the distance that would signal an approaching vehicle. 

I squinted my eyes to the horizon, seeing no hope available. 

Suddenly, a speaker at the top of a light pole next to my pad began screaming like a thousand banshees stubbing their toes all at once.  I hadn’t been in country for more than a few hours, but I knew that sirens usually mean something is wrong.  Near the chow hall exit, I saw a few soldiers turn on their heels and sprint behind the tall concrete walls surrounding the tent.  One of them spotted me standing out in the wide-open parking lot and began waving wildly.  Not entirely certain what was going on, I started slowly jogging towards the concrete barriers.

The soldier’s waving intensified, so I picked up the pace a bit, my body still crispy from sitting in an Iraqi toaster oven for the entire day.  Jogging felt like my muscles were going to burst out of my sunbaked skin at any second, but something told me I should risk it anyways. 

My gamble paid off when I heard the telltale whistle that every soldier knows as the sound of an incoming mortar.  The far side of the gravel lot I had spent the day in erupted in smoke, and my jog turned into a full sprint to safety.  I’m not sure how or when it happened during my sprint– but at some point, someone put a bunch of shit inside my pants.

As I dove behind the T-barriers panting and aching, all I could hear beyond the rushing of blood through my head was a chorus of laughter around me. Still delirious from the sun, I began to wonder if I had made it to safety or if I had just dreamt the whole thing.

“Holy fuck, I think even your eyes shit themselves out there, bro!” The laughter slowly began to die down, but my heart rate did not. I looked up, squinting in the fading light to see a group of dusty soldiers grinning at me.  The shortest of them reached his hand out to me, helping me to my feet, then looked up at me and asked, “What the fuck are you doing sitting out there, man? You trying to get fucked up?”

Beginning to regain my ability to comprehend the world around me, I managed to stammer an answer. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, I was just trying to catch a ride to F.O.B. Ohica and then everything went to shit.”

The rest of the group looked at each other in shock. I managed to see that the short guy who had helped me up was a Sergeant First Class (SFC)-two ranks higher than me, and normally a rank that signifies a high general knowledge on how to get things done.  As I squinted to see the nametape on his uniform, which read “Gutierrez,” he elbowed the soldier next to him. “Holy shit Jones-do you think this is the new guy that Moran fucked over?”

Jones was the polar opposite of SFC Gutierrez, a 6’4” black dude that towered over all of us. He smirked at me and asked, “Hey bro-are you a Fop?”

I began to think I was hallucinating again, because I had never heard of a “Fop” before. I had heard support personnel being referred to as “Fobbits,” the derogatory term for those who received combat pay but never left the fence-line to engage in combat, but Fop was a new term for me. Jones could clearly tell that I had no idea, so he set me straight.

“Fop, you know—fresh off the plane? Yeah bro, this has gotta be the dude we heard about,” Jones shook his head in a way that I could feel meant that I was being judged to be inadequate as a human being.

“I don’t know if that’s me or not, but I feel like I may be missing some details here,” I was trying to maintain some sense of bearing, but these jokers weren’t making it easy on me. “Are you guys friends with that Moran asshole?”

“Nah bro, fuck that weasel-looking piece of shit,” SFC Gutierrez winked at me, chuckling. “We heard he was joking about fucking over this new sergeant by sending him to Ohica, but we didn’t think he was for real.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to hitchhike to wherever this F.O.B. is all damn day, so I guess he wasn’t bullshitting you, Sarge,” I wiped my brow and slumped against the wall, realizing that I had been in country for less than 24 hours but had already become the laughingstock of the unit.  The others in the group were all trying not to laugh at my predicament but failing miserably.  “Go ahead guys, let me have it.  I would be laughing my ass off if I were you, so don’t let me stop you.”

In an instant, the crew erupted in laughter. It felt like shit to be the butt of the joke, but it was nice to be around what seemed to be decent people for the first time in a very long while.

Gutierrez regained his composure first. Wiping tears from his eyes, he reached up and swatted me on the back.

“Don’t sweat it bro, we can hook you up with a ride to Ohica. We would’ve probably been the ones they asked to do it tomorrow anyways.” He glanced at Jones and winked, which should have tipped me off that shenanigans were afoot.  “You can drive a Humvee, right?

Chapter 4: Thunder Run

As our forces massed around the borders of Iraq for the initial invasion, something interesting happened.  Knowing their forces were no match for American armor and firepower in a force on force battle, the Iraqi military did what underdogs have done throughout history when facing an overwhelming force: they disappeared.  The revolutionary guard dissolved into the general population, only to start up little guerilla groups designed to bleed the Americans through a thousand cuts. 

This lack of conflict left us with a few options. We could have slowly moved forward, securing and reinforcing supply lines and stabilizing the towns one by one as we eventually closed in on Baghdad. We could have maintained our positions until having a more thorough understanding of the country and how to best handle the power vacuum we were about to create. We even could have chosen to invade a country that was truly culpable in the 9/11 plots. The problem with those plans, however, was that they involved inaction. America had just been punched in the nose, and we needed someone to swing back at. Moving forward was our only option.

The main issue with moving forward at the pace demanded by the American public was that no one had been ready for war before the towers fell.  In the mad dash to reclaim our honor, we had failed to stop and make the thing that provided much of our superiority on the ground: armor. Most of our vehicles had paper-thin aluminum doors, and many only had slightly thicker canvas to protect us. Thankfully, we had seen enough post-apocalyptic movies to help us improvise our own armor.

In Kuwait, steel plates were bolted onto doors and welded onto roofs. Sandbags inside the cabs provided the rest of our protection.  No one seemed to consider that this added weight might have secondary effects, such as the door hinges and latches of our vehicles popping off under the strain.  Whenever you turned a corner in one of these dystopian semi-trucks, doors that now had an extra hundred pounds bolted onto them would swing open.  If you were lucky, you caught it early enough to hold the door closed.  If not, when you came out of the turn the door would swing back with all that weight, turning the door into a combination of a gong and a drop forge.  Rope and pulley systems were rigged inside the vehicles to prevent the doors from swinging open in mid-turn, which also made exiting the vehicles more like a combination of limbo and Twister.  The result of all these on-the-spot modifications was that the world-renowned forces of freedom looked more like a post-apocalyptic band of gasoline bandits.

Only one vehicle stood out from this hodgepodge of iron monstrosities. The M1126 Stryker Combat Vehicle was the truck that was supposed to carry our forces into the next few decades of warfare.  Built by a group of meth-smoking monkeys in a dark hole, the Stryker looked like an infant had superglued monster truck tires to a toy boat. The idea was to make lightweight armored vehicles that could be flown around the world at a moment’s notice to bring truth and justice to evildoers everywhere. The Stryker was far from battle proven, but now we had a chance to unveil the infamous American prowess and superiority to the world.   

All due credit to the meth monkeys, the Stryker could really cover some distance.  If you had a perfectly straight, fully paved road, Strykers were deceptively fast.  Picture a rhinoceros with cheetah legs. 

In northern Iraq, this speed made Strykers the dominant tactical vehicles.  Humvees and fuel trucks were rolling bullseyes, but few insurgents wanted a head-on tangle with a Stryker.  The rhino-cheetah moved troops around the battlefield, escorted supply trucks, and basically performed any bitch work the powers that be wanted done.

Enter Sergeants First Class Lucas Jones and Raul Gutierrez. Their teams had been the designated convoy support for our unit since day one of the invasion, and they had the swag to show it. Little squares of metal were welded at random points all over the bodies of the vehicles, but none of the team members seemed to think twice about them. The crews had been preparing for their next voyage for hours with no problem, despite being immersed in almost total darkness. With only the red lights of their vehicles to guide them, they moved in concert securing equipment, fueling the trucks, and occasionally taking advantage of the darkness to sneak up and punch each other in the dick. 

The morning sun had just begun to illuminate the staging area, when I noticed that each of the metal squares had been stamped with a thumbs-up symbol. I walked up to SFC Gutierrez and Jones, who were sipping coffee and watching their teams take care of business.

“Hey Sarge, what’s with the thumbs-up stamps on the trucks? Is that some new kind of armor or something?” The two looked at each other and smirked at my questions.

“Nah bro, those are patches for all the bullet holes,” SFC Gutierrez said lightheartedly, as if every vehicle on Earth came equipped with bullet holes.

SFC Jones looked down at me, still clearly disapproving of my presence. “The patches are for the bullets, but the thumbs-up are for the sons of bitches that are shooting at us.”

I felt immense pressure to know what this cryptic sentence meant, but apparently my face showed my failure at this task. Jones sighed deeply, then went on to explain. “You really don’t know shit, do you? Ok Troop; contrary to the popular meaning we ascribe to the thumbs-up gesture in America, in Iraq the meaning of the thumbs-up has a severely different connotation. Here, the thumbs-up is the equivalent of the middle finger. We drive so fast that we don’t have time to return fire most of the time, so we do what we can to win the hearts and minds of the general populace as we pass through. Do I need to paint more of a picture for you mother fucker?” SFC Jones stalked off to double-check his vehicle, leaving me to absorb his soliloquy.

 SFC Gutierrez laughed, elbowing me in the hip. “Welcome to the shit, fucker. We drive up and down Iraq all day and night for Uncle Sam. We regulate any stealing of his property—we’re damn good, too. But you can’t be any geek off the streets. Gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean.”

“Uh, yeah- I saw ‘Young Guns’ too, Sarge.” SFC Jones returned from his checks as I looked to see if my sarcasm had registered with SFC Gutierrez.

SFCs Gutierrez and Jones gave each other fist bumps, as Gutierrez looked at me quizzically. “Who the fuck is Young Guns, bro? That’s Warren mother fuckin G, dude.” Gutierrez whistled at his soldiers and yelled, “REGULATORS! Mount up!”

SFC Jones slapped me on the back, motioning towards a lone Humvee among the Strykers. “Your chariot awaits, milord. Try to keep up.” With that, he disappeared into the dark underbelly of his Stryker.

The Strykers began to move, leaving me scurrying to my new vehicle before they left me in the dust. SFC Gutierrez yelled from atop a rolling Stryker, “Don’t sweat it bro! Just keep your foot on the gas, and don’t let up no matter what!” With little more than a wave, he dropped through the top hatch.

I managed to get strapped into the Humvee and was looking for the latch to close the door, when a voice from over my shoulder called out. “Here Sarge, use this.” I turned to see the black hook of a bungee cord being shoved in my face.

“Are you serious?” I grabbed the cord and hooked it to the door as securely as I could, trying not to think about the fact that I could still see the ground through the bottom of the door. I stomped on the gas as the last Stryker rolled past, joining the convoy like a little caboose.

A funny thing happens when you slap steel plates to a Humvee body that was not expected to hold so much weight: the top speed dwindles from around 60 miles per hour down to about…25 miles per hour. This might not be an issue when you are cruising around the F.O.B., but when you are in a convoy of Strykers driving down one of the most dangerous highways in the world, it becomes a bit of a fucking problem. We had cruised comfortably through the gates of the F.O.B. in Mosul and had just hit the main highway of the Ninewah Province, a route that my copilot kept referring to as “The Highway to Hell.” I had managed to stick with the convoy despite my obvious handicap and was just beginning to get comfortable with my copilot, who I am pretty sure was the oldest person I had ever seen in the Army.

Specialist Mack claimed to have been a Marine in Vietnam, but I would have believed him more if he had claimed The Battle of the Bulge. His white hair cascaded from under his helmet, and always seemed to be in immediate peril of igniting from the cigarette permanently attached to his lip. As I attempted to find out the story behind how a Vietnam veteran was still serving in one of the lowest ranks of the military, Mack cut me off.

“Not for nothin’ sarge, but you might want to quit yappin and step on it before these fellas ghost your ass,” Mack wheezed in between grumpy drags from his cigarette.

But it was too late. The instant their vehicles hit the asphalt of the highway, the Stryker drivers stomped on the gas and didn’t let up. Trying in vain to follow their lead, I stomped on the gas of my overloaded Humvee. The needle of the speedometer inched up to almost 30 miles per hour and froze there. Panicking, I tried jumping forward in my seat to squeeze an extra mph out of it, but it was clear we had reached our maximum cruising velocity. Meanwhile, the Strykers ahead of us zoomed away in the distance. “They’re going to turn around and escort us to F.O.B. Ohica, right?” I tried not to let my fear show in my voice as Ice-cold sweat trickled down my back and the last vehicle in front of us disappeared from sight.

Mack snorted in response. He slumped in his seat, tilting his Kevlar helmet over his eyes and went to sleep. The gremlin that had planted the shit in my pants the day before seemed to reappear when I realized that it was just me and a narcoleptic geriatric inching down the most dangerous highway in the world in a metal-plated bullseye.