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Reaction from soldiers

I am breaking ranks to post a few lines about the military. Normally, while I am here I do not do that kind of writing. The reader might think me disingenuous if I suggested I have never seen American soldiers here. The compromise then is, I will not tell you where I have seen them, when I have seen them, or what their task was or is.

They, like so many of you out there, too are confounded they have met an unescorted American civilian here. "How'd you get in here, man?" I am asked over and over again. They, like so many of my readers (before I brought it out in the clear), are conditioned to believe only appointed or anointed people may visit here. Even the Kurds and Iraqis are often befuddled as per the example of the guy I wrote about the other day who insisted I was a mercenary.

I have never been sure where this comes from because it is not written anywhere. The only thing I can offer is our media news casts and popular television shows about the region create a collective notion that one must be a secret agent to be here.

None-the-less, the American military folks I have talked to seem genuinely interested in my travels. I guess on a second thought, if I can walk around here without a bullet resistant vest and a body guard, they have done their job.

If they are in a group, there always seems to be one that asks with a worried face, the question of my getting here. "How the hell'd you get here man? What are you doing here?!" One comrade will look on, another will always scan the street. They glance at me for a second, then it's back to scanning the street.

One fellow reminded me of my own angst when I was in the military 30 years ago. He said it was hard to go home on leave and watch people only worried about what color shoes to buy. "Then I must come back here and be shot at," he added.

Perhaps he could take peace in my offer that his work in the outposts that work behind the scenes in forgotten duty stations have somehow made shoe choice back home a taken-for-granted, but necessary freedom. Even the Kurds are shoe-centric and they are in the war zone.

I myself could not come home on leave and spent three years in Germany at the bitter end of the Viet Nam era in the Cold War Europe that was then divided. I was one of around half a million U.S military personnel stationed in Europe.

An American tourist in Germany once asked me,"What country are you from, that uniform looks American." Then she said, "I did not know there were any American soldiers here."

I told the soldier here in Iraq, I still am bummed about the tourist 33 years ago. "I write about people in this new war to uncomplicate my anxieties about a couple past ones," I told him.

"I think what you are doing is important," he said after a thoughtful pause. "Be careful," he continued.

"Thanks, I will be fine," I said then added. "I think it better I tell you to be safe."

Bob Keith
Northern Iraq