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some fat chicks . . . I’m going hoggin’ tonight, boys!”
    This exchange caused the table of Gravediggers to explode into laughter and applause. Eight years of college may not have yielded Private Van Wilder a degree, but it had helped perfect his ability to spin yarns of excessive debauchery.
    Sitting on the far side of this verbal smackdown, near the aforementioned section sergeants, were the final four members of the Gravediggers: Specialist Flashback, Specialist Prime, PFC Cold-Cuts, and Private Romeo. Specialist Prime, a well-traveled former trucker who knew more about the American continent than Lewis and Clark combined, was going into painfully specific detail about the machinery of a Stryker’s engine with Specialist Flashback, my vehicle’s driver and another product of Main Street USA.
    â€œHooah,” he automatically responded to Specialist Prime’s prompts, using that ultimate army crutch word and unofficial motto: “Hooah” meant “yes,” “no”, “maybe so,” “fuck yeah,” “fuck no,” and “FUCK,” depending on the situation,
the tone, and the user. In this case, I was pretty certain my driver was employing some subtle Iowan sarcasm, but Specialist Prime either disagreed or didn’t care. Their technical conversation continued.
    Private Romeo, a smooth-talking Puerto Rican who had adventured as a professional dirt biker in a past life, was teaching a very interested Staff Sergeant Boondock and Private Van Wilder how to cuss in Spanish. Or how to admire a passing female’s backside. I was too far away to tell for sure. Private Romeo had come to us just before we left Hawaii, and just like PFC Cold-Cuts, he had become a devoted family man very early in life. The Gravediggers’ resident joker, PFC Cold-Cuts had taken years off of my NCOs’ life spans, and the reason was simple: He was smart and capable and wanted to know the why of things. Not that that was a bad thing, but sometimes in the military there is no why, or there’s no time for why. There’s only time for mission execution. As a result, Staff Sergeant Bulldog had taken PFC Cold-Cuts underneath his very firm wing and tended to explain why as only he could: “Shut the fuck up and do what I tell ya to do. Dat’s why.” Even PFC Cold-Cuts couldn’t find any holes in that explanation.
    As I watched the platoon joke, clown, and ramble their way through the holiday dinner, I couldn’t help but think about the country that had produced them. These were the men in the flesh that society only celebrates in the abstract. The NCOs had served in the army long enough to stop caring about the whims of the American culture they protected so effectively; the Joes were just removed enough to not fully recognize how the same society that reared us had detached itself from us the day we signed our enlistment papers. In a volunteer military, we fought for the nation, not with it.
    SFC Big Country issued guidance for the evening’s preparations to the junior NCOs, and then we stood up and exited the chow hall. Spirits were high, I thought. So was morale. It was a good day to be alive.
    Such would not always be the case.

OUT OF THE WIRE
    The first time I rolled out of the wire , I wasn’t as nervous as I probably should have been. I’d woken up with a strange sense of calm that morning, something I attributed to the fact that I was going on a leader’s recon and thus would be attached at the hip to the platoon leader whose
unit we were replacing. It was still his show, and with the Gravediggers staying back at Camp Taji for the day under the supervision of SFC Big Country, the burden of leadership melted away like a renegade iceberg finding itself alone in the Caribbean. I was there to listen and absorb—a welcome break from my normal occupational hazards and duties. It was New Years’ Day 2008, and my unit—the