[This story is for John, who finishes his active duty tomorrow, but did not get any cool war stories to tell, except maybe about paper trays jamming or having to file papers for 15 hours straight, but anyway he’s a god damned war hero, so show some respect, hippy]

I was sixty clicks southwest of Baghdad, sweating under the angry sun. Around me it was dust and rocks, parched and porous, broken by spindly scouring brush trees that gave shade only to the scorpions. I looked down at the dead Iraqi at my feet and fingered the still-warm muzzle of my M-16. It was the day after Christmas.

“What happened, Corporal Weekes?” asked Sarge. I chomped on the stub of my cigar and considered the question.

“Those men there,” I said, pointing my gun at the bodies on the sand, “those men were just in a war.”

Now, let me back up for a minute.

It was the day after Christmas. The men and I were sixty clicks southwest of Baghdad, picking our way down a sun-baked mountainside with the Euphrates just a cool, dark memory in the distance. I lit a cigar and set it between my teeth to burn for a while.

“Weekes, you take point,” said the Sargeant. “Yes sir,” I said. I generally took point.

“Hey, maybe you’ll see Saddam,” laughed Brooklyn, in his thick, New York accent.
“Yeah, make sure you hit him in the head: then we can all go home,” added Ox.
“You better believe I wouldn’t miss if I got a chance like that,” said Preacher, squinting as he drew a bead at some invisible target on the horizon.
“Don’t point that thing unless you’re gonna shoot it,” said the Sargeant.
“Aww, but the safety’s on…”

I left them behind and moved forward, maybe a little farther forward than I should have. In fact, pretty soon I was out of sight, not so much because of the distance, but because of the large boulders, and the way the goat path twisted down the mountain. The wind blew their voices away, and soon it was just me and the desert. That’s just the way I liked it, though: the only peace I’m interested in is peace and quiet.

After a couple of minutes of creeping silently along, though, I stopped and smoked for a minute to let the rest of the men catch up. I figured they couldn’t be more than thirty yards away. Sarge would tell me to stay closer. I took a drag and blew it out.

I smelled something. There was the smoke from my cigar, and the incense of the desert, but there was also a different kind of smoke. It smelled like a cigarette.

I crouched and looked around. On a bluff about fifty feet above me I saw movement. It looked like a squad of Iraqi commandos, hidden behind some boulders overlooking the trail. One of them was smoking a cigarette, picking dirt off of his rifle. They didn’t seem to see me.

Due to my careful approach, they hadn’t noticed me coming down the trail, but I knew they wouldn’t miss the rest of the men, who must have been almost in their view now. I tried to get a clear shot, but from my angle I could only see the tops of their heads over the rocks they were sitting behind. On the other hand, they had a damned clear view of the trail. Sarge, Brooklyn, Ox, Princey, Johnson, and Preacher were walking into an ambush, about to be fish in the proverbial barrel.

Well, not if I had anything to do about it. I ripped a grenade off my chest, and pulled the pin out. Lobbing it side-arm, my goal was to get it high enough to do any good, never mind trying to hit anything with it.

I never found out how close I got, but the Arabic shouting let me know they’d seen the grenade. Some of the Iraqis dove for cover, others just hunkered down and said their last prayers to Allah.

Gunfire erupted everywhere around me, as the confused soldiers desperately tried to hit someone they couldn’t see.

I scrambled over gravel until I was pressed against the cliff wall, and it was then that I realized that the high ground wasn’t always an advantage. Some of the Iraqis who had abandoned their position were half running, half-sliding down the slope, and I picked them off as they came into view.

Then, a shot from off to my right barely missed me, and I looked over and saw that one of the Iraqis had found another way down the slope, and was going for cover, spraying bullets as he ran.

I fired back at him and crawled forward, staying as low as I could, until I found a cluster of rocks to stay behind. The Iraqi was firing at me, and bullets were whizzing just over my head.

I threw another grenade, blindly, to keep him quiet, and maybe drive him out. No dice; he wasn’t falling for the same trick twice. He kept firing, hitting the group of small, powdery rocks, barely the size of a bread basket altogether, that were my only shield. They wouldn’t hold forever; already they were crumbling, chips exploding under the Kalashnikov fire.

Still holding the cigar clamped in my solid jaw, I made up my mind not to die hiding the in the dirt, hit by a stray bullet, like a damned coward. I replaced the clip in my rifle and stood up, leaping over the rocks and charging toward the Iraqi, bellowing at the top of my lungs that he was a son of a bitch, and would die.

Well, I guess I chose the right time to get brave, because apparently the Iraqi had just fired his last round. I filled his chest with lead as he fumbled, wide-eyed, to replace the clip in his own weapon. He sank backwards, his chest a map of blood dotted with 5.56 millimeter points of interest.

I spun around to take on the remaining soldiers, but saw that no one was alive. My first grenade had apparently caused an avalanche, and the Iraqis who had remained in their position had been covered with sand and gravel.

Just then, Sarge and the men came around a corner, guns drawn, sweeping for activity. They saw me, and I gave them the all-clear sign.

“What happened, Corporal Weekes?” asked Sarge. I chomped on the stub of my cigar and considered the question.

It was the day after Christmas, with the hot desert sun drawing drops of sweat out like tear-gas clearing a bunker. The desert air was dry, but dusty, and the birds had all flown away. We were sixty clicks southwest of Baghdad, and so god-damned far away from home.