From boredom to exhilaration with the troops
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeFrom his rooftop position, Sgt. Santiago Zapata watched the firefight begin after prayer call ended, a rocket-propelled grenade exploding as the muezzin’s voice was still fading into the Afghan dusk.It is a long piece mainly about the time spent killing time rather than the enemy. It gives a pretty good idea about life for the troops in Afghanistan. It is something to think about this Thanksgiving.
Tracer rounds whizzed overhead, mortar shells burst nearby and heavy machine guns clattered. Then as suddenly as it began, it was over. Sergeant Zapata brushed away the powdery dust that coated him like flour, walked downstairs and started to sing.
“Sometimes when we touch,” he warbled, his mind stuck on a tune recorded before he was born 30 years ago. “Hey, how does that song go?”
“The honesty’s too much,” a soldier helped.
“And I have to close my eyes and cry,” yet another continued, in a comically quavering falsetto. (The actual lyric: “And I have to close my eyes and hide.”)
For G.I.’s, life on the front lines has two sides. There are, of course, the adrenaline-fueled moments of fighting, when soldiers try to forget their fear, remember their training and watch one another’s backs.
And then there is everything else, the dirty, sweaty, unglamorous and frequently tedious work of being infantrymen. Filling sandbags. Stirring caldrons of burning waste. Lying in the dirt while on guard duty. Cleaning weapons. And more than anything else, waiting — for orders, for patrols, for the chance to sleep or eat. They even wait for the fighting they know will come.
It is a life of wild pendulum swings. One moment, their sergeants are barking at them to stay ready, eyes focused, rifles loaded, protective gear at hand. In the next, the soldiers are searching for amusement, killing time with the skill of people who have had plenty of practice.
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Here is the Dan Hill song which has always been one of my favorites, though I have never thought of it in this context before.
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