I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [52]
Fortunately there was no drama. Despite my fears, it was just Lance Armstrong and Kid Rock firing off a few rounds of ammo into the desert below. The whole thing was nuts—too crazy for words.
I had to remind myself: We are at war. And those words are crazy enough.
A female soldier—I believe she was a sergeant—explains to me that the problem is going to be when these young troops go home. In Iraq, they have no booze or sex. They have no outlets. They are going through hell. They will arrive home ticking time bombs—the men and the women.
During both tours, I meet a lot of National Guards-men. As my friend the comedian Kathleen Madigan says, this isn’t the way it was presented to those guys at the recruiting office. I doubt if a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan was played up in the brochures.
I spend some time talking to an army colonel. He’s in the Oregon National Guard. He was a gym teacher and a coach in the school system there. He’s already been here for one tour of duty, then he returned home. He started teaching again, and now the Guard has brought him back. Maybe in World War II you ask schoolteachers to go to war, but in this war? Really, is it all hands on deck for this one? For Christ’s sake, the guy is a teacher. He teaches—shouldn’t that exempt him? When they are forcing us to take teachers out of the classrooms, haven’t the terrorists won?
I doubt the colonel would agree with me. He knows his men need him as much as his students do, if not more. I don’t agree, but I’ve come to understand that this is the way a soldier thinks. He has to think that way. He has to when he is here.
I can’t remember all of the hundreds of stories that the troops shared with me. I wish I could. Every one of them should be told.
There’s one story I heard that has truly stayed with me. A woman soldier in her late forties and I began talking very early one morning, as she was policing the area. She had a friend, another female soldier, whose husband, another soldier, was back in the United States with their daughter. He had been called up and was going to have to ship out to Afghanistan. This will leave their daughter without a parent at home. Apparently having a child at home with at least one parent isn’t vital to the welfare of the country. So the woman I was speaking to told her friend that she was set to go home—her tour was over—but that she would stay on so that her friend could go home in her place. Her friend still had five months left on her tour. She convinced the base commander to let them change places. Talk about “The Gift of the Magi.” To put oneself in harm’s way for a friend.
The woman’s generosity took my breath away.
Now that, my friends, is a Christmas gift.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Jake Morrissey, who fooled me into writing this book and whose advice was invaluable.
Hank Gallo, who has always helped me write a better book.
My parents, Sam and Jeannette, to whom I owe everything. And my brother Ron, who is always around even though he really isn’t.
Willie, Jennie, Gus, Leo, Neil, Machiko, Sophie, Mark, Steve, and Janet for letting me write about them, and whose friendships I cherish.
Betsy Boyd, Kathleen Madigan, and Lenny Hughes for their input.
Shannon Kennedy, my assistant, who helps create space where there isn’t any.
Frank Moreno, Jeff Costa, Ben Brewer, and John Bow-man for keeping me sane.
Steve Fisher, my literary agent, for successfully scamming another book contract. Jim Gosnell and Jackie Miller-Knobbe, my agents, and Mark Lonow and Joanne Astrow, my managers, who had to deal with me writing