by Ali Watts
We are four weeks out from REFRAD (Release From Active Duty) and Weber and Marion’s constant chorus of “Won’t be long now!” is running on serious repeat. Last week, it got annoying enough for Sergeant Oliver to apply some physical training as corrective action to get them to stop, but now it’s working its way to beyond funny, on the borderline of hilarious. And the rest of us being on the brink of laughter every time they find the perfect place to say it only encourages them to say it even more. It’s become an unspoken challenge amongst the entire platoon to hold out, and the first person to laugh out loud deserves a gauntlet of arm punches that almost always ends in an all-out brawl of at least five versus one.
About nine days into being in-country, Marion sat down at the ECP (Entry Control Point), stretched his legs forward, and clasped his hands on top of his helmet so his elbows stuck out like triangles on either side of his face. “Only twelve months to go,” he declared – as this was prior to our surprise mandatory extension delivered during month ten – “Won’t be long now.” The plastic patio chair beneath him, having weathered an unrelenting sun baking down on it for who knows how many years, snapped a leg and he tumbled onto the ground before he could brace himself. Corporal Graham tossed the chair out over the furthest barrier we were responsible for and some local national came by to claim it even though it was trash, because they always found a way to repurpose our discarded and useless stuff, even lopsided chairs with missing legs.
Though we didn’t know it yet, month six wasn’t even the halfway mark when an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blew right up through the left side of the cab of the eleventh truck in the convoy lineup, driven by Specialist Chang. He struggled to get the tourniquet out of his mandatory self-aid pouch because his right shoulder was dislocated and his left hand was riddled with shrapnel, so it ended up being a little longer than ideal before the medic was able to get to him and pull it on his leg, tightening it down above the knee because everything up to that point was pretty well shredded. Even though the other two in the truck were also banged up by the explosion, it was Chang who really needed the medevac and when he complained of being cold despite the temperature that June night holding steady in the low triple digits, the medic assured him it was on the way by taking his hand and saying, “Won’t be long now.” He lost consciousness on the flight out but made it back home for another surgery, where he never woke up from the anesthesia.
The DFAC (Dining Facility) served monotonous meals for over fourteen days during month eight, as the food supply dwindled down because the trucks contracted to restock the kitchens kept getting attacked and rerouted or destroyed. As the rest of us stared down at dry, thrice-warmed meat patties paired with a leftover noodle casserole crusting on the edges, Private Reynolds doused his plate in hot sauce and cheerily suggested the trucks would eventually make it with a sing-songy “Won’t be long now!” It was barely worth the walk to pick over whatever non-perishable powdered ingredients were mixed into the remaining supplies when the trucks finally rolled in, and the cooks celebrated by preparing a huge feast. That night we dined on fatty steaks the size of our plates, skewers of giant shrimps slathered in butter and garlic, steaming baked potatoes piled with cheese and bacon crumbles, and strawberry topped cheesecake for dessert, all of us going up for more like we’d never run out of food again.
Sometime around month thirteen, Weber’s fiancée sent him an email with the news that she was three months pregnant, and since he hadn’t been home since month seven, the math didn’t quite add up in his favor. After coming back from the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) computer center, he spent hours chucking rocks as hard as he could against the cement t-walls behind our living area and after a while the whole squad was out there throwing rocks, too. We taped up pictures of people who abandoned us over the last year and aimed at their faces until the pictures were scraped and torn and dangling in shreds just like they’d left us. Staff Sergeant Faltys made us remove the pictures before leaving, but the next day there were targets spray painted on the walls and the day after somebody added “Won’t be long now” above them.
We’ve been counting down the days for a month now and with our replacement unit’s arrival, the RIP/TOA (Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority) period starts tomorrow. Up until they arrived in their fresh and clean uniforms that haven’t yet been permanently penetrated with the dark stains and constant stink of sweat, we weren’t convinced we’d ever leave. It’s almost too much to believe how close we are to not having to wake up and don our gear and listen to the briefing for whatever mission we’ve been assigned to do that day. As much as I’m looking forward to dumping these musty, worn-out boots into the first garbage can I see when I get home, I can’t help but feel like the past fifteen months have been something I’ll never experience again, and in my early onset nostalgia I head outside to find Weber and Marion and a few others circled up and telling stories like we’re already gone. Everyone ends up laughing, and someone mutters a rhetorical question, pondering if we’ll ever end up missing this hellhole of a place, and I don’t say it out loud, but I know I’m not the only one who thinks, won’t be long now.
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Ali Watts has generally no idea what she’s doing except putting one word in front of the other before rigorously deleting and starting all over again. She is a loyal OIF veteran with a cracked sense of self and an unmitigated amount of sarcastic commentary. California-born and Wisconsin-raised, Ali has somehow settled down in Nebraska. She’s nervously compiling collections on love and war (aren’t we all?) because that’s where her heart lies. Please don’t step on it on your way out.
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