Stressful to have zero room for error yet knowing that despite your best efforts and all appropriate safety measures, you will always stand a reasonable chance (because you are operating what amounts to a deadly video game by satellite link) of taking out unintended targets? i.e. screen goes blank at the wrong moment, i.e. you’re relying on a spotter for the go sign, i.e. the spotter makes a mistake, i.e. the spotter is high on the drugs the army gave him to deal with the stress of zero tolerance for mistakes, i.e. the zero tolerance ban is lifted and you are now stressed that you are entitled to make a few mistakes, which in your mind, because of how you were raised, amounts to firing blindly down a dark alley knowing that unintended targets are downrange: women, children, babies. i.e. you finally get to wondering if hunting people in the dark with hellfire missiles fired from an office chair thousands of miles away is morally questionable–if not outright inhuman behavior.ei. ie. ieie ie ieieieieeiieieieieiieieiieieiieiei?

Then, after crashing your car DUI on something, distressed over one or many of these considerations, they call you in.

Take this pill, soldier. it will relax your mind. allow you to let go, to carry on, to do your duty, to not fail. plus, you got a sweet gig. drone operators are entitled to all the combat pay and combat privileges that adhere to a frontline grunt muddying themselves over there on the frontlines up to their elbows in camel shit. that’s right. he doesn’t get any perks you don’t. and you’re way back here CONUS seeing your wife every night and getting a piece here and there. you’re doing combat time and getting combat pay. and not just for the time you’re flying the operation, see? you get it when you’re over there shopping at the class 6 buying booze. all the combat pay and combat privileges of the sorry bastards out there on the frontlines. you think those shmos would even be out there if they knew what a “drone operator” was? They’ve positively never even heard of 32 X-Rays!!! Plus, you have been through very intensive training.

Plus, you are the best we’ve got.

Plus, this whole nation, this whole country,
we’re all counting on you, son.

(You would think with all that easy CONUS duty, would be low stress, right? Probably bunch of typewriter geeks.

To get out of country?
To get out of this camel shit?

Fuck, I’ll push all the buttons they got.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/world/asia/air-force-drone-operators-show-high-levels-of-stress.html?_r=1

Air Force Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: December 18, 2011

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WASHINGTON — Nearly half the operators of drone aircraft have high levels of job-related stress, mostly linked to long and erratic work hours because of a tremendous increase in the use of the aircraft, the Air Force said in a new study.

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In a survey of nearly 1,500 Air Force members, including 840 operators of Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk drones, the Air Force found that 46 percent of Reaper and Predator pilots and 48 percent of Global Hawk sensor operators reported what the Air Force termed “high operational stress.” It did not specifically define high operational stress but said operators were judged to have it if they rated their stress levels as 8 or above on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 representing the most stress.

A smaller but still significant number — including a quarter of Global Hawk sensor operators — had what the Air Force called “clinical distress,” which was defined as anxiety, depression or stress severe enough to affect an operator’s job performance or family life.

The Air Force has long known anecdotally of the job pressures on drone pilots, who use joysticks and computer screens to fly their aircraft, most typically over Afghanistan, from bases in the United States. But the study, conducted by the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, was the first to try to quantify the strains.

The operators in the study were divided into three groups of people who work hand in hand: Pilots who remotely fly the drones, sensor operators who control the cameras that bring the battlefield into view and mission intelligence coordinators who communicate with troops on the ground. There was also a difference among the drones in the study: Predators and Reapers are armed, and Global Hawks are not.

In one surprising finding that challenged some of the survey’s initial suppositions, the authors found limited stress related to a unique aspect of the operators’ jobs: watching hours of close-up video of people killed in drone strikes. After a strike, operators assess the damage, and unlike fighter pilots who fly thousands of feet above their targets, drone operators can see in vivid detail what they have destroyed.

“The going-in assumption was that we were placing these guys under a great amount of stress because of all this video feed,” said Col. Kent McDonald, the chief of neuropsychiatry at the school of aerospace medicine and one of the study’s two authors.

In one-on-one interviews with 85 operators, the authors found that many felt a sense of accomplishment in protecting troops on the ground. Soldiers and Marines who get pinned down in insurgent fire in Afghanistan often call in airstrikes to get themselves out of trouble, and a drone that comes buzzing overhead is a highly welcome sound. Guided by communications with American troops on the ground, drone operators are then able to aim their missiles directly at insurgents. “These guys are up above firing at the enemy,” Colonel McDonald said. “They love that, they feel like they’re protecting our people. They build this virtual relationship with the guys on the ground.”

Wayne Chappelle, the chief of aerospace psychology at the Air Force school and the study’s other author, said he learned in the interviews that ground troops sometimes sought out the operators by e-mail after a successful strike. “They would want to just say, ‘Hey, thanks, man,’ ” Dr. Chappelle said.

Both Dr. Chappelle and Colonel McDonald said that 4 percent or less of operators were at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, the severe anxiety disorder that can include flashbacks, nightmares, anger, hypervigilance or avoidance of people, places or situations. In those cases, the authors suggested, the operators had seen close-up video of what the military calls collateral damage, casualties of women, children or other civilians. “Collateral damage is unnerving or unsettling to these guys,” Colonel McDonald said.

The percentage of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder was 12 to 17 percent, the authors said.

In contrast to nearly half of drone operators’ reporting “high operational stress,” 36 percent of a control group of 600 Air Force members in logistics or support jobs reported stress. The Air Force did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with military pilots who fly planes in the air.

The biggest sources of stress for drone operators remained long hours and frequent shift changes because of staff shortages. The Pentagon has about 7,000 aerial drones, up from 50 a decade ago, and in the next decade expects its number of “multirole” drones — ones that spy as well as strike, like the Reaper — to nearly quadruple, to 536. The Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined. There are about 1,100 drone pilots in the Air Force.

The study did not include drone operators for the Central Intelligence Agency, which uses drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iran.

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THE MAIMED

“Many of us who are here carry within us death. The smell of decayed and bloated corpses. The cries of the wounded. The shrieks of children. The sound of gunfire. The deafening blasts. The fear. The stench of cordite. The humiliation that comes when you surrender to terror and beg for life. The loss of comrades and friends. And then the aftermath. The long alienation. The numbness. The nightmares. The lack of sleep. The inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most. The regret. The repugnant lies mouthed around us about honor and heroism and glory. The absurdity. The waste. The futility.

It is only the maimed that finally know war. And we are the maimed. We are the broken and the lame. We ask for forgiveness. We seek redemption. We carry on our backs this awful cross of death, for the essence of war is death, and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. We drag it through life, up hills and down hills, along the roads, into the most intimate recesses of our lives. It never leaves us. Those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil many of us harbor within us. This evil is intimate. It is personal. We do not speak its name. It is the evil of things done and things left undone. It is the evil of war.

We do not speak of war. War is captured only in the long, vacant stares, in the silences, in the trembling fingers, in the memories most of us keep buried deep within us, in the tears.

It is impossible to portray war. Narratives, even anti-war narratives, make the irrational rational. They make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They make the illogical logical. They make the despicable beautiful. All words and images, all discussions, all films, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. There is nothing to say. There are only the scars and wounds. These we carry within us. These we cannot articulate. The horror. The horror.

War gives to its killers a God-like power to take life. And there are those here tonight that have felt and exercised that power. They turned other human beings into objects. And in that process of killing they became objects, machines, instruments of death, war’s victimizers and war’s victims. And they do not want to be machines again.

We wander through life with the deadness of war within us. There is no escape. There is no peace. We know an awful truth, an existential truth. War exposed the lies of patriotism and collective virtue of the nation that our churches, our schools, our press, our movies, our books, our government told us about ourselves, about who we were. And we see through these illusions. But those who speak this truth are cast out. Ghosts. Strangers in a strange land.

Who are our brothers and sisters? Who is our family? Whom have we become? We have become those whom we once despised and killed. We have become the enemy. Our mother is the mother grieving over her murdered child, and we murdered this child, in a mud-walled village of Afghanistan or a sand-filled cemetery in Fallujah. Our father is the father lying on a pallet in a hut, paralyzed by the blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. Our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside Kabul, widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. Our brother, yes, our brother, is in the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaida. And he has an automatic rifle. And he kills. And he is becoming us. War is always the same plague. It imparts the same deadly virus. It teaches us to deny another’s humanity, worth, being, and to kill and be killed.

There are days we wish we were whole. We wish we could put down this cross. We envy those who, in their innocence, believe in the innate goodness of America and the righteousness of war and celebrate what we know is despicable. And sometimes it makes us wish for death, for the peace of it. But we know too the awful truth, as James Baldwin wrote, that “people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” And we would rather be maimed and broken and in pain than be a monster, and some of us, once, were monsters.

I cannot heal you. You will never be healed. I cannot take away your wounds, visible and invisible. I cannot promise that it will be better. I cannot impart to you the cheerful and childish optimism that is the curse of America. I can only tell you to stand up, to pick up your cross, to keep moving. I can only tell you that you must always defy the forces that eat away at you, at the nation—this plague of war.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child?
A long ways from home
A long ways from home

Towering about us are banks and other financial institutions that profit from war. War, for some, is a business. And across this country lies a labyrinth of military industries that produce nothing but instruments of death. And some of us once served these forces. It is death we defy, not our own death, but the vast enterprise of death. The dark, primeval lusts for power and personal wealth, the hypermasculine language of war and patriotism, are used to justify the slaughter of the weak and the innocent and mock justice. … And we will not use these words of war.

We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation…”

– Chris Hedges

“ALYOM…AKU…DEJAJ!!!”

On days they were having chicken
and the perimeter was insecure
I would repeat this

last transmission from their kill team before the signal goes dead: “big bird is fighting back…super sharp beak…”

romney’s look of bored contempt?–“never send a man to do a missile’s job…i say it every time.”

these people (cartoon general included) experience war like a tv show on their laptops. “ugh, my battery is dying” is the extent of their discomfiture. they are little more than drone operators sucking on tootsie rolls at holloman afb and complaining about their handsets: “ugh, why does this handset keep sticking…”

craven hollow suits should not be able to send killers to do a job they don’t have the stones to do themselves

they are the true drones of war, and expect to be saluted for it: “not just zombie, imperial zombie!”

if you’re not willing to choke out bird bird yourself, and risk getting beaked, go back to selling cars you

zombie drone

paper tissue patriot

motherfuckers

I run on the UNM North Course with Abigail because it is the only open green space that is close to me. Running is something I do for my mental health. It is one of the coping mechanisms I have found to keep myself level-headed and under control.

Normally I confine myself to the trails that go around the golf course, but on occasion, such as when the sprinklers are on, or there is no one in the vicinity, I run out across the grass. It is not that unusual to run on the grass. The university hosts annual X-country meets on the North Course, and any damage done to the grass by runners is negligible compared to the golfers’ divots.

Because I am familiar with the game of golf, I am very aware of the dangers posed by errant shots. While running with Abigail I am continually observing where people are situated on the golf course, both for our safety and also to avoid obstructing play. I know the golf course is not a park, and that I am a guest. So I act accordingly. I am always mindful of play, never leave any trash or waste, and keep away from the greens and bunkers.

On this particular morning, it was drizzling. Only a handful of golfers were on the course.

As I neared the water fountain by Indian School Road, where I was headed to fill a container for Abigail, a man in a cart called out from behind me.

“Hey, you run on the outside of the course.”

I raised my hand to acknowledge him, and continued running the road to the water fountain. I was calm. I had seen him near the green on the 3^rd hole, knew that there was no one on the 2^nd hole—tee, green, or fairway—and had crossed the fairway well behind him in such a way as to cause no obstruction or distraction with his playing. I saw no need to engage with him. Get your water and move along, I thought.

But then he called a name to my back which I see no need to repeat here. It is sufficient to say that I immediately changed direction and found myself running towards him calling out, “There is no need for that, sir.”

Simultaneously, the man changed the direction of his golf cart so that he was moving away from me at his top speed—10 miles an hour or so.

I will not lie. My immediate sense of what I was going to do was not pretty. I meant to twist one of his golf clubs around his neck—not so as to hurt him in any way, but just so that he would be faced with the inconvenience of playing the rest of his round with a golf club wrapped around his neck. Plus, he would be denied the use of that club. While twisting it like a pretzel around his neck, I meant to repeat, “There is no need for such language, sir.”

But as I ran towards him, and as he continued steering his golf cart away from me, I looked at Abigail running at my side, and just like that, as abruptly as that—I came to my senses.

I was not going to teach that old man a lesson that morning by wrapping a club around his neck like a pretzel. For one, it would be traumatic. For me. The whole time I would be worried about hurting him. But it was Abigail I worried about most. It would be traumatic for her. And Abigail was there to protect me. To keep me safe. To keep me calm. Safe and calm.

So I stopped running. Just like that. I spun on my heels and Abigail and I went right back towards the water station as though the altercation had never taken place. I filled a container of water for Abigail, and then drank myself.

When I looked up I could see the man had stopped his cart half-way up the hill and appeared to be on his phone. As I found out later, he was calling the authorities. Which in this case turned out to be: Richard. Richard from the clubhouse. Richard who I know. Richard who knows I painted the clubhouse when I was a student, who knows the legacy of my war is holding myself together with masking tape and safety pins and long runs around the North Course.

So Abigail and I continued with our run: Up along the trail beside the 4^th fairway, out towards Stanford, then back towards the 2^nd hole. The course was nearly empty. Whenever I could, I ran in the grass. When I got near the clubhouse, I bumped into Richard parking a cart. I told him what happened. He assured me he would have a talk with the name-calling curmudgeon. Good enough, I thought. Abigail and I were safe. We would stay safe if we kept moving. Keep on moving.

We pressed on together, me on my two legs, her on her four, desperate running animals, fugitives from comfort—across the parking lot to Lomas—over to the Duck Pond—past the Memorial Chapel—across University and through alley after alley after alley all the way to Roma, Martin Luther King, and home.

Where:  Botts Memorial Hall, Special Collections Library, 423 Central NE (Corner of Central and Edith)

When: Sat. Sept. 15, 3:45-5:00PM

Music by the Fukien Ministers

Suggested donation: $2 – $20

Espresso bar

Come meet the director of Listening Horse, Gus.

www.listeninghorse.org

PLEASE READ AND SIGN CHANGE.ORG PETITION LINK AT BOTTOM

Dear Sir,

I am calling out to you from a great distance, as though across a great chasm, a great divide. For in the years since I left your command, in the years since I left Company A, 3^rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), I have broken ranks. I am no longer level-headed, I no longer have a fix on the enemy, and I am no longer capable of carrying out offensive operations.

I think you understand what I mean when I say this. I have not left the crucible.

Of all of my commanders you were the most like Westhusing. The most ethical, the most conscientious. I imagine you knew him or were aware of him even though he was Class of 1983 and graduated USMA eight years before you did. Our tribe is small, after all. West Point, Infantry, Ranger, etc. It is not a path that many walk.

More than a decade has passed since I left your command. You are nearly the same age and bear the same rank now as Westhusing when he left us on June 5, 2005.

Colonel Westhusing was my final commander. No one came to replace him.

Like you, Westhusing was a man of principle, courage and conviction. He was Honor Captain of his class. The note he left behind, which I was unable to obtain until I returned stateside, reads in part:

I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more.

I have read your Silver Star commendation from Iraq and have seen the picture of you cradling a wounded young Iraqi girl in your arms on the streets of Mosul. None of it surprises me. I remember you telling us as at Fort McNair, when you introduced yourself, that your family came first. I remember thinking it was a little odd—not quite the Army way. Now I understand. Seeing that child in your arms I understand perfectly. And I know that the weight of her in your arms, her grievous injuries, her helplessness, and your wild desire to save her, is something that has become a part of you, something you will take to your grave.

If our paths ever cross again, as I hope they do, in my handshake you will feel something of her weight, some willingness to share in her weight, just as I, looking into your eyes, expect to feel that some part of Westhusing lives on. That he somehow endures through us, through our shared remembrance, our coming together in his name to walk in the mountains.

I was nothing like Westhusing and never will be. The only honorable thing about me was my intention of leaving the Old Guard for the Q Course, putting the Tomb of the Unknowns and Brasso and the command to fire three volleys behind me forever. Instead, I went to law school.

I did not volunteer for Iraq. On paper I could have avoided going. But when I was dialed up by the 98^th Division, an old WWII unit, I went. We were trained, after all, to go to the sound of the guns, were we not?

The recent funeral for Major Kennedy, an Afghanistan casualty and fellow West Pointer, was a large affair at West Point, and commanded the attendance of the entire Corps of Cadets.

I contrast this with the funeral for Colonel Theodore S. Westhusing, which commanded little attention and even less attendance. And yet Westhusing was an exemplary West Pointer. He devoted his life to Duty, Honor, Country. He left a comfortable teaching position at West Point to volunteer for duty in Iraq. This is something that no other among us can claim.

On the first Saturday of every June, I walk the 26-mile spine of the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico in memoriam of Colonel Westhusing. This has become known as Operation Skywalk. I begin at dawn and finish at dusk.

This letter is both to inform you of this event as well as to extend to you a respectful invitation. Colonel Westhusing’s predecessor, Colonel Pippins (now retired) has informed me that he will be coming next year: June 1, 2013.

In closing, whether or not you are able to participate, I shout my regards to you as though across a great mountain divide, and hope that you can hear me.

Respectfully,

Alex Limkin

Dear X-

First off, this is not a love letter or any sort of effort to rekindle old flames. What we had together in Santa Monica in the late 70s—holding hands during the scary scenes of The Red Balloon, sharing pink lemonade—was special. There’s no denying that. But that was kindergarten. A lot has happened since then. For instance, we’re both married with kids. So, a moment to reminisce and we’ll move on.

Also, this isn’t a rant about our acting careers having panned out differently.

While you went on to win Golden Globes and Oscars, I never made it past being an extra in Spielberg’s E.T. That was back in the fourth grade. Maybe I was too shy for the limelight. I don’t know. After those three days of work in 1981—and all the canned pop a boy could hope for—I turned my back on Hollywood and became just another brainy Asian kid from Woodland Hills.

But it’s not like I didn’t do anything. I refined my dodge ball skills at Balboa. I joined the chess club. I read The Hobbit. I played Mattel Classic Football relentlessly on the long bus rides to school.

And then, still a child, just 17, I lied about my asthma (recruiter’s advice) and joined the Army.

Which brings me to the point of this letter—Listening Horse.

Listening Horse is a horse therapy program based in Santa Fe, New Mexico that helps our military veterans and others reconnect with their spirit, their humanity and their will to live in the aftermath of trauma.

Wounded and struggling veterans often rely on drugs (prescription or otherwise) and destructive behavior to manage their conditions and escape their pain and anguish. Listening Horse provides an alternative, known informally as the “Third Herd Way.” (The term “third herd” comes from the practice of military units referring to their third platoon as “third herd,” a term meant to evoke the sense of unity, trust, and acceptance often present in a platoon of close-knit soldiers.)

The “Third Herd Way” recognizes principles long understood by Native Peoples but largely overlooked in the Western world: that animals inhabit a world that has grown increasingly apart from our own, as we have become increasingly denatured through our modern lifestyles. For the “Third Herd Way” to work, the world of horses must be recognized as no less precious than our own, with their sense of reality just as viable as our own, etc.

Listening Horse is predicated on the belief that we can heal ourselves through persistently courting this beautiful and alternate dimension of the animal/herd experience, which is grounded in the present moment. To this end, every veteran is expected to approach the horse on the horse’s terms. By doing so, the veteran begins to enter the reality of the horse and actively form a meaningful bond with them.
The experience of this bond may result in personal transformation. For some, it may be the first time they are assisted into the saddle of a horse they have bonded with, and realize the exhilaration of doing something they never thought possible. For others, it may be the first time they ride bareback with the reins slack in the hands, and feel an absolute sense of oneness with the horse, grounded in the present moment and filled with trust. It is here in this dimension that lasting healing may occur.

Because Listening Horse helped me following my return from Iraq, I have been doing what I can to help Listening Horse. I contribute the cost of four bales of hay monthly and I help out with fundraisers, which are usually garage sale events. I am also running the 17-mile Imogene Pass Run on September 8 from Ouray to Telluride with my service dog, Abigail, in an effort to raise additional funds. Gus, the director of Listening Horse, doesn’t like to accept help, but he knows he needs it for the program to survive. Listening Horse is free to participants, and relies on volunteer contributions.

Just to be clear, you are the first celebrity classmate I am approaching about helping out with Listening Horse.

Here’s what I am hoping you and your family can decide on:

An annual tax-deductible contribution in perpetuity as long as Listening Horse exists and as long as the hardworking four-legged band members of Listening Horse (now comprised of Promise, Zorro, Sugar, Doc and Jack) live on. The hope for the program is $50,000 a year.

Listening Horse can be found on the web at listeninghorse.org and on Facebook at facebook.com/Listening Horse. For more information, the secretary of Listening Horse, Flannery Davis, can be contacted at flannery@listeninghorse.org.

In closing, I know that many worthy organizations compete for your attention. Listening Horse does not want everyone’s attention. It wants to remain small and special. With your help, it can.

With kind regard,

Alex Limkin

P.S. E moved to Tokyo so we’re all spread out now ;-)

“Hey, take a picture of me taking a dump,” Paul said.

We were down by the Hudson River at the Joint, climbing around on the black cliffs that went up 100 feet or so from the banks of the river to the road above.

It was late summer 1993 and we were 21 year-old plebes at West Point. We could drink but we had no booze, drive but we had no car. So we monkeyed around down by the river, as far away from the grounds of West Point as possible without being considered AWOL.

Paul had an 82^nd Airborne combat patch and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge (CIB) from Desert Storm, which made him hotshit at West Point, kind of untouchable, whereas I had been an intelligence weenie, which subjected me to additional hazing. The truth is I coveted the CIB on Paul’s chest, knowing what it would have meant for me there at the Joint. Just one look and people gave him a wide berth.

Paul didn’t talk much about his CIB other than to say they gave it to him for seeing some dead bodies on the highway, people that had been cooked. He was kind of dismissive about the whole thing, about the CIB, about Desert Storm.

I don’t know why I had a camera with me but I did.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you want just the one, or kind of like a sequence?”

I had not yet taken a photography course but it was something I wanted to do, only I knew it would never happen there. Not at the Joint.

“Do like an action sequence,” he said.

I assumed he was going to boulder up to some spot he had picked out and then strip down. I don’t know why I thought that. I guess it struck me as somehow more seemly.

In actuality, it made more sense to strip down and then climb up, which is what Paul did, leaving on only his shoes.

I tinkered with the camera to avoid having to watch.

Out across the river I could see two sailboats making their way upstream. I wondered who was on board. Every now and then there were girls in bikinis.

It was my fantasy to swim out there, have sex with the girls, and never come back.

“Now watch where you’re standing,” Paul said as he began climbing.

“Don’t worry about me,” I answered, still looking at the boats.

Paul found a nice bucket hold about 20 feet up and squatted in against the cliff.

“Okay, you can start shooting already.”

I could hear a change in his voice from the effort.

“Man, don’t pop a blood vessel.”

I found myself grateful for the camera. Somehow it was easier to observe the whole thing through a viewfinder, as though I wasn’t really there. It helped that I had to manually focus the lens. It gave me something to do.

Paul’s shit was incredible and disturbing. It grew longer and longer until it finally resembled a tail.

“I can’t believe it’s not breaking off,” I said. “It’s like a snake escaping from your ass.”

When Paul laughed, the tail, which was easily two feet long, broke free. I clicked the shutter, catching it in freefall.

I guess I should have been more worried about Paul, even though he was the one that went on to graduate and I dropped out after a year, flipping burgers at the McDonald’s in Highland Falls outside the gates of West Point to earn gas money home.

Three years later he was a new lieutenant attending the Air Defense School at Fort Bliss, and I was completing an English degree on the G.I. Bill in Las Cruces.

It was only about 60 miles away so I drove out to see him.

Paul didn’t look well. A couple hours into the visit, while we were driving to get some food, he confessed he was taking anti-depressants and seeing an Army shrink. It all seemed pathetic to me. That he had signed up for Air Defense also seemed pathetic. The whole visit was depressing. I felt sorry for him and didn’t want to be like him. That was the last time I saw Paul.

The next year I reported to Fort Benning for IOBC and Ranger School. I was going to be a killer after all. Next stop was the Republic of Panama and a penthouse in Punta Paitilla. I forgot about Paul, forgot about the big turd he dropped off the cliff at West Point, and about the bodies he saw burned along the highway in Desert Storm.

When my turn came, I went to Desert Storm 3.

Now I got me a war badge, too.