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Politics Aside PAGE
THREE: December 25th, 2003 -- Elisabeth, Your mom sent me two books from Amazon, tell her thank you. And you got me a dictionary! My favorite book in the world! Your friend Nancy sent me boxes of clothing and supplies for families in desperate need. I've come up with at least three different manners of transfer without the remote possibility we'd be doing anything wrong. Code name to date: "Operation Osh Kosh Begosh"… Some of my guys got hit today. No word on casualties. But we got fragmented and they went further north into Bagdhad without me. We're crossing our fingers, but it'll be a few hours or maybe a day before we get news. If we get sent on a recovery mission, I can't promise I'll write for a while… Joe. After a year of near-silences and near-misses, on January 6th, 2004, Joe picked up the phone and dialed my number from the well-lit kitchen of his parents' Kansas City home. I was stuck in a clustered Los Angeles mini-mall, buying another pair of shoes I didn't need, when his voice stopped me in my tracks. I put the shoes down, walked outside, and sat cross-legged on the ground amidst a dozen harried shoppers. I couldn't say a word. Three times he checked if I was still on the other end of the line, his accent thicker than I remembered it. A year's worth of questions were in my head, but I just wanted to hear his voice. Something wasn't quite right. The VA. The strain on his parents and friends who couldn't wait for him to come home, but assumed when he came back, everything would be the same. But it wasn't. I felt foolish for ever thinking it could be. Joe started taking sedatives at night to stop him from recalling intimate details of firefights. I would wake up to my inbox filled with five-page emails from him, often incoherent, written under a Trazadone-induced fog… February 14th, 2004: You fight every day to survive because you're convinced that happiness has something to do with geography. You tell yourself, "if I can live through this hell and get home to America I'll never be unhappy again." Well, I'm home. And not only is that not the case, it's the opposite. I'm used to being around guys who you might not even like but you know would run into gunfire to drag you to safety. Now I work with people I wouldn't trust to walk my grandmother's dog. Joe. March 1st, 2004: I read today that over a hundred Iraqi vets as of January reported to homeless shelters. That's inside twelve months of the first shots fired in this war. A soldier I knew disappeared a few weeks ago. Had problems with drinking and drugs after he got out. One day he was talking to his mom about getting a job. And the next, he wasn't there anymore. No one knows where this kid is. He was 21. The postcards to Joe stopped. All conversation stopped. Once he was home, no one seemed to have anything left to say. Joe couldn't sleep through the night, or hold his niece, or steer clear of the drugs that kept his balance. He got a job he went to from time to time. He booked two flights to visit friends. He couldn't get himself on either one. It would be months before he could tolerate anti-war sentiments in any form. July 6th, 2004: It is impossible to be against the war but for the soldier. The war is in the soldiers who fight it. Joe. Joe still had several months of service left, but his tour in Iraq was complete. He wouldn't ever have to go back. July 8th 2004: I'm pro this war, but against almost everything else Bush stands for: his position on stem cell research, gay marriage, the list goes on. Kansas City is now setting records for mercury-related birth defects and brain damage. We can't fish in our streams. I'm not a Republican. But every time I see marines or soldiers on patrol on television, I feel as though I need to be there. I can do that job. I could make a difference in combat. A year to the day that he returned home, on a Tuesday afternoon, I received an email from Joe telling me he'd been transferred to a California base for the week. I asked for his address, begged my boss for the day off work, and drove 130 miles deep in the nowhere desert. After six years apart, we sat face to face again, an endless stream of questions and answers over one shared Hefeweizen. He showed me Blackhawks and tanks and joked about how the desolate army base was just like Disneyland, only cheaper. It was only at the end of the day, when he took me back to his barracks, that I saw a line of duffel bags packed to leave in the morning. It's only a year, he told me. When I'm back from Iraq… He didn't finish the sentence. I watched him reach into his uniform pocket and hand me the worn pages of The Onion excerpts and TV Guide listings I'd sent him years ago, barely legible. He saved everything, he said, and seemed relieved I didn't draw attention to his hands that shook when he said the "Postcard Campaign" was one of the coolest things that ever happened to him. He asked me, for the first time since the day we met, what I was thinking. I didn't tell him I wanted him to stay. I didn't tell him I was terrified that the one thing I did to give him a reason to come home just might be a reason he was going back. Instead, I looked at him and asked, "What are you thinking?" He handed me his army jacket, hugged me twice, and said goodbye.
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For
the next eight months, every single day, someone had something for
Joe on Mail Day. Postcards of Don Shula. Newspapers from the Dean
of Stephens College. Twelve boxes of children's clothing. And over
20 DVD box sets sent from an HBO executive. Anything we could give
to remind Joe of home -- until he was home.
