Read Online Off to War by Deborah Ellis - Free Book Online Page B

here at Fort Bragg. It’s good because I’m close to my school. It’s right over the hill. Dahshan’s school used to be close, but he goes to one in Fayetteville now.
    Dahshan — We used to live in Fayetteville, in the city, and it was okay. It was just where we lived. But when we moved on post, it was like being back in Germany, only bigger. Instead of spending five minutes to get to the shops, like we did in Germany, we spend an hour to walk there and back. Fort Bragg is the second-biggest army base in the US. Only Fort Hood is bigger, in Texas.
    When you come on the base it’s like a whole other world, because all these strange things go on and you can see them all. If you just walk around, you can see Burger King over there, with kids yelling at their parents to get more food, then on the other side of the street you can see soldiers training or headingoff to their barracks to sleep, and you can hear gunfire sometimes in the morning from the training, and bombs exploding in the forest. Tons of stuff.
    The gunfire’s not scary because it’s not like the war stories, where you hear gunfire and you hear people yelling and dying. You just hear it. It’s nothing alarming. It just goes off, and you’re like, okay.
    Malia — I hear the trumpet at night sometimes, and in the morning. It’s very cool.
    Dahshan — At night it plays taps. In the morning it plays reveille, and at the end of the duty day it plays retreat. I don’t always hear it.
    Malia — I can hear it because my window’s open. It’s a nice sound to hear before I go to sleep.
    Dahshan — I think they play it on all the bases. When Mom first heard it in Kansas, she was looking for the bugle guy, but there wasn’t one, it’s all on tape. In Kansas it was on blast, on big speakers, so it sounded like someone was blowing an actual trumpet in your ear. Here it’s more like someone is playing a trumpet under your window. It’s much quieter. Here you can pretend not to hear it — and sometimes you don’t — and you can keep moving if you’ve got some place to go. But in Kansas there’s no way you can’t hear it, so you have to stop.
    You’re supposed to stop your car, get out and stand at attention, or at least stop driving. At Pope Air Force Base, which is right next to Fort Bragg, they play the national anthem, too, and soldiers all have to stand still and salute until it’s over.
    Malia — I don’t have a military ID yet because I’m seven, but Dahshan has to have one. It’s got his picture on it.
    Dahshan — We have a curfew on post, too, of 9:30 if you’re under eighteen, which is really trying on Saturdays when I want to stay at my friend’s house for a little bit and I have to go home.
    You can go anywhere you want to on the base, as long as you can make curfew. It’s on you. Well, there are some places we can’t go, like we can’t go watch the soldiers do target practice, and most of those areas you can’t bring a POV into anyway. POV is a Privately Owned Vehicle, like out on Chicken Road where the ranges are.
    Malia — We went on two trips to Florida, to Busch Gardens and to Disney World, on a tour bus from the base, and it was not comfortable at all.
    Dahshan — The seats didn’t go back like they were supposed to, so when you were sleeping, you had to sit straight up with your head and shoulders slumping over. It was a nine-hour trip. They were good trips except for that, though. It was all paid for by the army, or most of it was, even the hotel. Sometimes there are day trips to DC, too.
    Malia — Disney World had a great pool. I’m a good swimmer. There are pools on the base, too.
    Dahshan — Everything is great here, as long as you can get to it. One thing on base that Mom likes is that there’s one main road, and if you can find that road, you can usually get to where you