When I’m stuck for something to blog about, it means it’s time for a military story. I can only stretch “I liked 2013!” into so many cliché words that everyone else is chatting about right now. ‘Tis the season for reflection, and I can’t deny that. I just can’t stretch something that won’t stretch!
Portraits
It was 2004, and I was deployed to Iraq. Our base was once an Iraqi base, and it was still showing signs of the first Gulf War. The Iraqi military didn’t clean up a lot of the first mess. There was even a downed, Russian built helicopter near one of the buildings my shop supported.
One afternoon I was tired of being cooped up in our windowless shop. The day had been a particularly long one so far. I excused myself with pretenses of using the porta potty (In all honestly, I really had to go, but there were no rules against taking your time).
I walked to the abandoned shower/bathrooms on the other side of our building. The abandoned showers had been thoroughly gutted and nearly destroyed. Two of the brick walls had caved in long before I was there.
I ran my hand along one of the walls that hadn’t been destroyed; though, there were many sizable chunks taken out of brick. Why I stopped at a crack between two bricks and stuck my finger in it, I will never know. Maybe it was the heat? Maybe I was hoping I’d find a dollar? I found one on the side of a road on that base before…
Regardless of the case, I found something wedged there. Arching my dusty eyebrows, I pulled it out and placed it in the palm of my sweaty hand. The bundle turned out to be a series of tiny portraits of Iraqi servicemen.
I took them to our squadron commander because there was something written on the backs of them. She and I headed to the base’s translator.
The translator looked at the portraits and told us that the writing was just their names. He said that the Iraqis were told to ditch everything, hide what they could, and to get out. I felt a chill as he gave me the pictures and said I could keep them. I looked at my commander, and after she nodded, I tucked them away in my pocket.
I eventually made a scrapbook of my deployment to Iraq with various things and pictures. The portraits have their own page in it.
