Fifteen years ago, I lost a friend in the biggest gut punch of my life—to that point, anyway. By that time, I'd lost a cousin and two grandfathers. In high school, one friend was shot to death, and another friend and teammate was murdered at our homecoming party. I lived in Oklahoma when the Murrah Building was bombed, and I was one of millions that watched the Twin Towers fall. While I lived a charmed life in many respects, I was aware that life isn't fair. I was 24 and had been in Iraq for just over nine months. Death was all around us, and, even when it wasn't, it wasn’t far away—like an approaching storm. We were briefed each morning on the number of attacks in our AO the previous day. We read in Stars & Stripes about the KIA throughout the theater. We'd arrive to Iraqi Highway Patrol headquarters and learn that officers we'd trained the previous day had been arrested for running death squads. Other days, the IHPs would find bodies of their tortured and murdered colleagues dumped outside the compound overnight. We witnessed IHPs die in explosions—I almost shot one in the smoke and chaos immediately following one—and saw so-called insurgents executed after attacking the compound in broad daylight. We weighed the pros (doing the right thing) and cons (being murdered) of exposing corruption in the IHP hierarchy, and we marveled at the terrible luck of the woman who was flattened by a concrete T-wall in a fluke accident on the side of Route Irish. Everything inside the wire was muffled by the sound of a thousand generators, like summer cicadas. Outside the wire, small arms fire were our wind chimes, warning of shifts in the hostile winds, and distant blasts—from IEDs or car bombs (VBIEDs)—reminded us the storm could come any minute. We acted like the storm wasn't coming, like we didn't mind getting wet, but it was all a lie. We focused on the clear skies in front of us, pretending not to notice the highly-charged clouds to our backs, convincing ourselves that lightning couldn't strike us. That changed somewhat, at least for me, when SFC Isaac Lawson of the 49th MP Brigade to which we were attached was killed by an EFP in June. Then again in August when we heard the play-by-play of a soldier's death on the MEDEVAC frequency. We convinced ourselves that these were men who knew the risks when they signed on the dotted line. They were admirable and courageous, and they died in service to their country. We told ourselves they played the game knowing the rules, as if that made their deaths any less tragic. But the Iraqis, the born-in-Baghdad civilians who never asked to be saved, they were the epitome of collateral damage. Their deaths just seemed cruel. A few months into our tour, I befriended two of those civilians, boys named Ali and Ahmed. Fifteen years ago today, the storm broke, and lightning struck Ahmed. A suicide bomber killed him and his mother while they waited in line at a gas station. I wrote about it at the time and again after I returned. A decade ago, I spoke about it with my wife through StoryCorps. That was made into an animated short. A part of me is glad that Ahmed's memory lives on through it, but then I realize I'm just trying to make myself feel better and Ahmed's still gone. TEARS IN BAGHDAD
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I am an attorney and aspiring writer today, but I was once a grunt in a Humvee barreling down Route Irish in south Baghdad. Fifteen years ago, I mourned a man I never met, got back to the base, and tried to forget about it. Below is what I began writing one night in 2007 when I couldn't sleep and couldn't forget about it. When I was in Mrs. Riner's junior English class at MacArthur High School, we were required to read John Cheever's The Enormous Radio. The premise was simple. A couple in the 1930s were given a special radio that allowed them to hear all their neighbors' conversations. At first they were elated, but, ultimately, they were haunted by the miracle of their ability. They could hear all the horrors of society that usually go unnoticed or are covered up and sterilized . . . and they couldn't turn it off. They couldn't change the channel. Like most high school boys, I soon forgot both the story and the assignment. But seven years later I felt that couple's horror and instantly remembered The Enormous Radio. It is not the best writing I've ever produced, and I like to think I've grown as a writer since then. It still encapsulates what that day was like, though.
Two or three years after I published the original blog post, SGT King's widow contacted me. She had searched her husband's name and found my story. My heart sank. I never wanted his family to read that, to feel that, but that is the risk we take when we share others' stories. SGT King's widow was grateful I wrote about her husband, that someone cared about his death, but it could easily have gone the other way. How would I feel if someone wrote a second-by-second story stitched together from the 911 calls on the day I lost my brother, niece, nephew, and de facto sister-in-law? I don't know. I keep that experience in mind when I consider how to tell the story of the Babbs Switch fire and ensuing mystery. These are people with loved ones. They did not ask to be public figures, and it would cause great pain to those loved ones for someone to misrepresent the people they knew. It is a great responsibility to tell others' stories, and I hope I am up to the task. |
JustinTelling the story of the incredible Babbs Switch fire and mystery. Archives
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