They Were Soldiers… and Young

It started when our daughter – born an incomprehensible 20 years after the last U.S. troops left Vietnam – came home from school anxious for us to watch a documentary she had seen in her U.S. history class.  The film, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, had moved her greatly and she had many questions about the Vietnam War: Had anyone from our family been in the war?  Why were our soldiers there? Were the soldiers really that young?  We watched the documentary online via YouTube and addressed her questions as best we could. Over the course of a few subsequent weekends, she brought home the movies Platoon and Apocalypse Now and continued to ask the occasional question, most of which began with “Why?”.  Being a normal, busy teenager however, her temporary fixation on Vietnam eventually waned as Hamlet, precalculus, volleyball, and Law and Order: SVU laid claim on her limited available attention.  My thoughts, on the other hand, were not so fast to move on:

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Watching the U.S. military machine transform the vast sandscape into a massive complex of hangars, tarmacs, roads, tents, and mess halls, all filled to overflowing with people and materiel, was awe-inspiring.  When the barber shop, convenience store, and other amenities were eventually set up in tents and cargo containers, I became a regular visitor.

One day while waiting in line at the internet tent to get my half-hour online, I struck up a conversation with an 18-year-old queue companion.  He told me he was awaiting his turn so he could send his grandmother an email to thank her for the $100 bill she’d sent him in the mail.  Grandma was apparently super cool and the young troop already had his eye on the video game he was going to buy with the birthday cash.  He knew his tent-mates would be pumped and he foresaw some epic competitions occurring as they sat between the sand berms waiting to be told what would happen next.  He’d heard a rumor that there could be some elite enemy units waiting for them when they eventually crossed the border; had I heard anything about that?  As I left him to take my turn at the computer terminal, I thought about how much he reminded me of my own school-age son back home.  I hadn’t been around soldiers much in my life to that point and I found myself wondering about boys that young being assigned to fight our battles.

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The 20-something lieutenant had been placed in charge of a Force Protection unit.  When he learned I was also from Utah, he started seeking me out, first just to chat and later to seek advice.  He was from a tiny, rural town and this was his first combat tour.  He spoke often to his mom and sister back home often via Skype to give them a blow-by-blow of everything he was experiencing.  He had a hard time with a 30-something sergeant who repeatedly disrespected his authority in front of the unit and asked me what I thought he should do.  I shared personal stories and tried to build his confidence in his leadership role.  Privately, I asked some other folk to make an active show of respect for the lieutenant’s rank and leadership in front of the sergeant.  Things seemed to get better.

After a few months, the lieutenant sought me out one late night after returning from a mission.  As was all too routine, their convoy had been attacked while returning from a visit to an isolated village.  This occasion was a little different in that they’d taken fire over the course of a few kilometers rather than at one ambush site, had suffered a couple of non-life-threatening casualties, and had returned fire for an extended period.  The lieutenant excitedly shared with me that he had gotten his first confirmed kill of an enemy fighter that day.  He had already Skyped with his mom and told her all about it; she was proud of him and was going to tell the rest of the family.  He described the event with a youthful enthusiasm and pride reminiscent of players on my son’s high school basketball team describing last-minute heroics to beat crosstown rivals.  He felt vindicated as a “real soldier.”  I later learned from the commanding colonel that the lieutenant had demonstrated strong leadership under pressure, calmly and maturely taking charge of the situation, deftly commanding his troops and getting every member of the convoy back to the base alive.

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While getting a tour of the base shortly after my arrival, I was escorted into the wooden shack that housed the two-person Counter Remote Control Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Electronic Warfare (CREW) team.  Being computer/electronics geeks, the guys had wired their small space to host four networked terminals so they could play multiplayer video games.  They would regularly invite small combat units that briefly paused at the base to utilize the gaming set-up and the day of my visit was no exception. Four young Marines from an Embedded Training Team (ETT) were using the terminals for a raucous game of Counter-Strike, calling each other names and loudly bragging about their individual skills.  I sat with the CREW guys and the Marines laughing and listening to their trash talk for about 30 minutes before some well-meaning bonehead came into the building and referred to me in some deferential way that made the Marines uncomfortable about the casual manner they had taken with me.  Bummed, but understanding, I left the CREW shack and continued my tour.

A few weeks later, five members of that ETT along with several of the indigenous troops they were accompanying were killed in an ambush after having accepted an invitation to come into a village to meet with tribal elders.  I was told some of the fallen had been amongst those in the CREW shack during my visit, but I had no way to confirm this.  The team’s actions in the battle resulted in several citations for valor, some posthumous.

I wept alone in my room on the night I heard of the Marines’ deaths.  It was heartbreaking to think that those men who died, so much braver than me, were also the kids who had been so embarrassed for having let me hear their youthful boasts of girls and games, and who had seemed to have their whole lives ahead of them when our paths had crossed.

(edited and reposted from September 2012)