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Book: The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows by Brian Castner
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Authors: Brian Castner
Tags: History, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Military, Biography, War, special forces, Iraq War; 2003-
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we running down to Baghdad or not?” Hallenbeck asked. Hallenbeck was one of my team leaders short a robot; his was sitting in pieces on the imminent convoy.
“They’re leaving in twenty minutes,” Hallenbeck reminded me.
I checked my e-mail again, and looked at the phone. I didn’t want to know what the answer was going to be from the General. We needed the robots.
“Yeah, go get in the convoy. Hurry up so you don’t miss it.”
The e-mail from the General’s office disapproving the mission arrived an hour after the convoy left. Thirty minutes later, I drove to my boss’s office to hear my rights read to me. When the convoy returned later that day, bearing three new fresh robots, I was not at the compound to greet them.
On a clear midwinter day, morning frost yielding to a warming desert sun, the line of townsfolk waiting to vote in their first election stretched down the muddy track bisecting the tiny village. Despite threats and attacks they waited for hours, robes and coverings clutched tight against the chill, to shuffle through decaying schools and crumbling halls, emerging triumphant with a single finger inked blue. On that day, the Balad EOD unit ran calls for twenty hours straight: bombs discovered at early-morning ballot openings, investigations of suicide attacks on lines of expectant hopefuls. On that day, the pinnacle operation of the tour, the EOD teams ran to exhaustion. On that day, I sat in an office and read a book, waiting for my punishment.
We had been preparing for the election from the moment I arrived in Balad. Initially, polling places had been the target of threats and hoaxes to scare the local populace into staying home. When plans for the election still went forward, the real bombs started showing up. Daisy-chained explosives outside of government buildings along the path where voters would wait their turn. Drive-by shootings and sandbags filled with radio-triggered mortar shells tossed from car windows into the queuing crowds. Car bombs left overnight and timed for poll workers the next morning. All of those and more, the Balad EOD team disarmed, safed, investigated, and prevented. Without me.
On Election Day, I did not lead my men into battle.
Instead of fighting my war, I just sat, alone, quarantined from my brothers, awaiting my fate, an impotent, mute, broken failure.
I sit on the couch at home, dark night filling the picture window behind me, Crazy sloshing in my chest. I stare at the bottles in front of me. Twitch . The left eye has been bad today. My relief is spread across the tabletop.
I start drinking as early as I can now, as early as I can justify it. Not every day, but more and more. On the days when the left eye is twitching at its worst, it consumes all thoughts beyond the boiling Crazy. And today is the worst yet. Fluttering and jerking, a pounding pulse under the eyebrow and swish of the lower lid. I’m an animal driven mad by relentless distraction, not of buzzing insects but of my own body betraying me. Uncontrollable. Intolerable. Just like the Crazy feeling.
A couple after lunch. Two bottles of beer before dinner. Twitching through my spaghetti.
Two more during dishes. I start to help with the children’s baths, then give up as my eye distracts me from differentiating between the soap and the shampoo. Twitch . Another bottle before the hockey game. Twitch . To the couch and more beer. Twitch. Twitch .
I don’t notice that my wife has already gone to bed. I sit now, alone, and open another. The number of empty beer bottles on the coffee table is growing.
Twitch .
Twitch .
Please let it stop.
Twitch .
I quickly finish and stumble slightly as I put the glass down. The spinning room slows my eye and pounding heart both.
Twitch . Crazy. Twitch .
The last beer in the carton. How pathetic would I look to my brothers now? How would I explain it? Drinking to keep my eye from vibrating out of my skull. Alone in the dark. And scared.
Twitch .
Stillness. A
“They’re leaving in twenty minutes,” Hallenbeck reminded me.
I checked my e-mail again, and looked at the phone. I didn’t want to know what the answer was going to be from the General. We needed the robots.
“Yeah, go get in the convoy. Hurry up so you don’t miss it.”
The e-mail from the General’s office disapproving the mission arrived an hour after the convoy left. Thirty minutes later, I drove to my boss’s office to hear my rights read to me. When the convoy returned later that day, bearing three new fresh robots, I was not at the compound to greet them.
On a clear midwinter day, morning frost yielding to a warming desert sun, the line of townsfolk waiting to vote in their first election stretched down the muddy track bisecting the tiny village. Despite threats and attacks they waited for hours, robes and coverings clutched tight against the chill, to shuffle through decaying schools and crumbling halls, emerging triumphant with a single finger inked blue. On that day, the Balad EOD unit ran calls for twenty hours straight: bombs discovered at early-morning ballot openings, investigations of suicide attacks on lines of expectant hopefuls. On that day, the pinnacle operation of the tour, the EOD teams ran to exhaustion. On that day, I sat in an office and read a book, waiting for my punishment.
We had been preparing for the election from the moment I arrived in Balad. Initially, polling places had been the target of threats and hoaxes to scare the local populace into staying home. When plans for the election still went forward, the real bombs started showing up. Daisy-chained explosives outside of government buildings along the path where voters would wait their turn. Drive-by shootings and sandbags filled with radio-triggered mortar shells tossed from car windows into the queuing crowds. Car bombs left overnight and timed for poll workers the next morning. All of those and more, the Balad EOD team disarmed, safed, investigated, and prevented. Without me.
On Election Day, I did not lead my men into battle.
Instead of fighting my war, I just sat, alone, quarantined from my brothers, awaiting my fate, an impotent, mute, broken failure.
I sit on the couch at home, dark night filling the picture window behind me, Crazy sloshing in my chest. I stare at the bottles in front of me. Twitch . The left eye has been bad today. My relief is spread across the tabletop.
I start drinking as early as I can now, as early as I can justify it. Not every day, but more and more. On the days when the left eye is twitching at its worst, it consumes all thoughts beyond the boiling Crazy. And today is the worst yet. Fluttering and jerking, a pounding pulse under the eyebrow and swish of the lower lid. I’m an animal driven mad by relentless distraction, not of buzzing insects but of my own body betraying me. Uncontrollable. Intolerable. Just like the Crazy feeling.
A couple after lunch. Two bottles of beer before dinner. Twitching through my spaghetti.
Two more during dishes. I start to help with the children’s baths, then give up as my eye distracts me from differentiating between the soap and the shampoo. Twitch . Another bottle before the hockey game. Twitch . To the couch and more beer. Twitch. Twitch .
I don’t notice that my wife has already gone to bed. I sit now, alone, and open another. The number of empty beer bottles on the coffee table is growing.
Twitch .
Twitch .
Please let it stop.
Twitch .
I quickly finish and stumble slightly as I put the glass down. The spinning room slows my eye and pounding heart both.
Twitch . Crazy. Twitch .
The last beer in the carton. How pathetic would I look to my brothers now? How would I explain it? Drinking to keep my eye from vibrating out of my skull. Alone in the dark. And scared.
Twitch .
Stillness. A
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