Lance Uppercutt Wants To Fight The War

WarBlog 6
1 February 2007

Hatred. Dark. Cold. Breath hits the air and freezes, falling and swirling as it dissipates. Sleep until hungry; begrudgingly trudge through unyielding mounds of snow to the chow hall for what passes as food. Eat until tired; slip on the ice back to your tiny, frigid room without windows that you hate. Days turn imperceptibly to nights, nights to days. Seconds turn into minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days and nights again. Sleep until hungry, eat until tired. Seconds, minutes, hours. It's impossible to tell how long I've been a prisoner in communist Russia—a year? Two? Oh, 30 hours? It felt longer.

Well, it's not exactly communist Russia, but it used to be. I've been shipped to Manas, Kyrgyzstan for the remainder of the deployment, destined to fight that other war, the one in Afghanistan just a few hours away. The bleak horizon to the north points to barren Kazakhstan and the enormous rugged mountains to the south lead to hundreds of miles of impassable terrain. There is no escape from the cold tents, the dirty latrines, or the solitary hours spent huddled in bed praying for an end to the cold. Manas is a wonderful cure for the will to live.

Nearest I can tell the purpose of a military is to make you hate anything and everything in your life and then focus that hate onto the enemy. They're doing a bang up job at the first part, but I can't for the life of me figure out who my enemy is supposed to be. I'm not sitting in a foxhole aiming rounds at Al Qaeda members, I'm not battling insurgents in Iraq, I'm battling my own mind's inability to understand what I'm still doing in the Air Force, I'm fighting my urge to go crazy. I hate everything. I hate Manas as I hated Turkey, probably more so. I hate the cold and I hate the useless mountains without ski lifts. I hate the food I eat and the books I read. I hate that I'm not a better man. I hate that the Cavs are becoming a terrible basketball team. I hate existentialism. I hate Jessica Biel for not knowing that I exist. I hate my worthless space heater. I hate that I flirt with this girl I work with (the one with the perfect nose) despite having no more than a passing interest in her. I hate that she reciprocates because it means I'll have to tell her at some point that I don't really like her. I hate that she told me that she once tried to take me home with her but I was too oblivious or drunk to notice. I hate missed opportunities. I hate my prison cell of a room. I hate waiting for my plane to be de-iced. I hate that I can only get two beers a day and that neither of them are free. I hate the BX and everybody on this base. I hate that I can't remember enough Russian to thank the guy who mops the floors. I hate the Air Force and I hate the C-17. I hate not being in Seattle and I hate not having a TV. I hate that I haven't had a decent conversation in three months. I hate all the things I'm flying into and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I hate the ammunition, I hate the soldiers, I hate the diplomats, congressmen, and generals, I hate the fuel trucks and the helicopters. Most of all I hate the fucking Red Bull and Starbucks Espresso Double Shots and Girl Scout cookies.

The only bit of cargo I can't find it in my heart to hate are the emergency patients we routinely bring out of the combat zone. I don't hate the marine with burns over every part of his body except what his body armor covered. I don't hate the special operator with the hastily stitched and stapled gash that started from the right side of his face and continued down to the left side of his beltline. I definitely don't hate the grunt with the head wound whose two best friends died when the Humvee he was driving hit an IED. I do hate that he asked me—and whoever else would listen—where his buddies were. Were they okay? You can't expect yourself to answer those questions, but you also can't help hating yourself for knowing the truth and withholding it. I don't hate these pieces of damaged cargo, but I do hate that it's been so long since I could remember what they're dying for.

I figured I could sum up all this hate with a single counterpoint of something that I love—or even like—and this would turn out to be a pretty endearing passage in an otherwise tirelessly vain exercise in self-pity. Except I can't. My mind is numb and my blood is running cold from the useless nature of my work. Here in my government issue room, in my government issue running suit, under the government issue watch cap that hasn't left my head in days, my government issue brain is crapping out. While I'm stuck here, isolated from anything or anyone I used to care about, I can no longer think of anything that means shit to me.

Sign me up for war, I guess that means I'm ready to die. And I hate it.