Buzzed

Sunday 5^th April 2004, 4am – 65 days home out.

No sleep, on the fags again, new scrip for happy pills.

Losing weight, not sure how much, don’t have scales.

Doc says to write down my thoughts, says he wants to understand me. He doesn’t. He won’t read this.

There is little time to reflect on how long you can bear it. This is unhelpful thinking anyway. For the only choice is to hold on through the heat. Still, peeling one’s sunburnt skin away provides something to do in the evenings. And it is somewhat satisfying, as if you are starting over new, the dead cells forgotten on the floor. But each day is the same and the dead are not forgotten, but a nightly presence in your subconscious groaning for something to be done. And what tortures you most is that you don’t care much about them. As long as you survive, as long as you get out.

This is not the attitude they encourage here. They want teamwork and together. But they must know that we all feel alone. If they acknowledge that we feel anything at all. We are meant to just take it. And I think I could, if it wasn’t for the heat. My God, nothing prepares you for the unrelenting pursuit of the desert sun! The nightly freeze should come as relief but it is often scorched by a thrum of blazing destruction, marked in streaking paths across the inky sky. I forget the exact moment, but I once stood staring at the rockets, abandoning my post, position and duty for a full minute. There is a beauty in the burnt umber trails but then there has always been something uniquely compelling about destruction, something fascinating about death. Otherwise few of us would be here. There’s some that will say that they joined up for love, for pride, to protect. But that will never be enough; basic logic would outweigh this flimsy sentimentality, silence this vapid posturing with a primal voice that calls, “but I want to live.”

I’m not sure of the exact numbers but at a guess, I would say that – myself included – a third of the front line army personnel would not pass a basic psychological evaluation for a bottom-level desk job. That’s true of this regiment at least. And here we are in the twenty-first century, giving these lunatics – for there’s no escaping that’s what we are - tanks and guns. Really, they’re no more than toys to us. Half the time they may as well be; the triggers on the guns break, the gears on the jeeps stick and the uniforms fall apart. The helmets are the worst, and heat up faster than anything. Your brain just boils but there’s little lost there. It’s the sweat that gets you. It makes the helmet slide around more and brings the flies. Most days you’d like to take an injury from a minor explosion for a few days relief from the buzzing. But the noise doesn’t go away when you leave, it gets worse. It’s only then you realise that it’ll always be there, that drone. But it’s not the flies; it’s a voice telling you to beware. Of what, or of whom, you’re not sure.

It’s nice to be a little less scared everyday though, and gradually you’ll adjust. Narcotics help. They do. Not sharing, or telling people how you feel. But numbing it all, stopping everything, thinking about nothing. Of course this isn’t possible, and it’s fairly likely that in a few years time you’ll have to sit in a shrink’s chair and rehash it all with a considerable amount of pain.

Out there you willed yourself not to die, but now you’re reluctant to live. It’s stupid to think that they don’t understand, the one’s who haven’t lived it. Because they don’t, of course they can’t. But that’s not what bothers you. What bothers you is the buzzing, the whispered warning. Because you’re worried that when you’re finally ready to hear it, it will be asking you to beware of yourself.

I could say that I never imagined myself here, that this isn’t what I wanted from life. That would seem appropriate. It might even help me out a bit. But even for me that sounds trite. It’s not true; I’m hardly surprised that this is how it’s turned out. And I’m worse than all of them, all the ones you read about because I knew all along that this was some fucked-up shit and that I was heading straight for it.

I could understand things better than the rest of my lot out there; I was good with stuff like that. I was a smart kid, smarter than someone like me has any right to be. Blame my mum for bringing me to the library after school, blame my dad for drinking and brawling, blame me for being too scared to do anything but hide in my room with my homework. Maybe my mum wanted more for me than this, but by the time I was sixteen, I couldn’t stick school, couldn’t stick England, I just wanted out. I don’t think she felt much of anything when I left home but my dad cried when he came to my passing out ceremony. He said I looked like my granddad, that he would’ve been proud. His dad was never in the army, I think he was losing his marbles; the drink got him in the end.

I like the uniform though, the way it looks on me anyway, the way people look at you when you’re wearing it. Like you’re doing something impressive by channelling working-class anger and daddy issues into this ridiculous war with only a very abstract idea of an enemy. You know they gave me a medal? I imagine it’s pretty hard for people to believe. Well, I was surprised too. A medal. For what? Being an Essex fucking cliché? Congratulated for being an under-a-fucking-chiever. I think the whole thing is funny. That they want me to say sorry. To feel guilty. Fucking hilarious. But there is nothing going on up here, no remorse, no images flashing through my head, no nightmares. Nothing. Just buzzing. And when I kicked that fucking Iraqi’s head in, when I pissed down his throat, the buzzing was so loud I could barely hear him scream. Fucking poetic, if you think about it.