Beautiful Children

Back from another mission to the south. This trip reinforced my secret opinion that I am a wasted resource being deployed to these far-flung outposts. I spent three days doing absolutely nothing, apart from walking around making small-talk, advertising that I was there and available. It was a small outpost and the medics had a few Soldiers in mind when they thought of who might benefit from seeing me, but no one sought me out for consultation.

On the fourth day of doing nothing productive I hitched a ride on a convoy that was headed back to my home FOB. As usual for this country, it was painfully slow and bumpy, banging along at 10mph over terrible roads. Driving slowly through villages I am astounded by the beautiful children here. Most of them are dark haired and dark eyed, but some are light or red haired and blue-eyed. The little girls are clothed in brightly colored gauzy clothing, the boys in plain white, tan, or brown loose fitting shirts and pants.

At one point in a small village a dented Toyota sedan pulled onto the road and inserted itself between our gun-truck and the 5 ton truck behind us. Our gunner called out that a car had pulled into the convoy, which is an unacceptable breach of security. A crowd of school-aged girls minding two or three toddlers were standing around off to the side of the road, giving us thumbs-up and staring up at the huge armored vehicles. Our driver braked hard and slammed the truck in reverse, suddenly accelerating backwards to force the car off the road and out of the convoy. I watched the dark eyes of the nearest child widen and her mouth tighten in fear as she picked up the small toddler at her feet and twisted around, shielding the child from imminent threat. I was struck by both her obvious fear and her beauty. She was absolutely beautiful in a way that seemed so familiar.

When the Toyota pulled off the road, intimidated by several thousand pounds of armor and the matte black barrel of a heavy machine gun, we reversed direction and proceeded to crawl up the road. The girl relaxed slightly and placed the child back in the dust. As she disappeared behind us, her face remained in my mind and I wondered what her voice sounded like, whether or not she went to school, if she had ever danced to music, if her parents hugged her and told her they loved her. I thought of my daughter.

Later, in Gardez City, a small black-eyed boy ran alongside the truck, waving to us and holding his thumb up. In his left hand he delicately grasped a kite made from sticks and discarded thin blue plastic. The surface of the kite was ragged with holes and it was small, maybe 12 inches across. But I could tell by the way that he carefully held the kite that it was precious to him. For a kid in the US it would have been nothing more than a piece of trash. I couldn't help but see my son running after us, his small hand holding a favorite toy.

Seeing beauty and echoes of familiarity in the Afghans keeps my mood and outlook moderated to some degree. The anger and fear fades when I look at those kids. This seems to last only as long as the relative calm and mundane progress of days is uninterrupted by death and destruction. When the loud and messy reality of war reasserts itself into my life, those darker emotions roll over me. By virtue of being confessor and psychologist for dozens and dozens of Soldiers, I know I am not alone in this.

Being able to maintain a consistently rational and humanistic perspective is, I think, impossible for me. To completely rise above prejudice and irrational anger I would need to let go of my fear of death, and let go of my attachment to my life and my hypothetical future-- become some kind of selfless warrior.

This darkness that overwhelms rational thought is something I didn't understand before this year, even though I am getting only a small taste. I think this may be one aspect of what separates combat veterans from everyone else. There is something visceral and crude that crawls up your spine and sits on your soul.