Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 17, 1993 TAG: 9310170224
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID WOOD Newhouse News Service
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They are young enlistees - 20 or 21 years old, maybe 23 - in the peacetime military.
They have fled dead-end jobs and souring college careers, hoping to escape from the commonplace of shopping malls, television reruns and dreary routine.
Their idealism has conjured up visions of manliness and valor, of patriotism, visions of doing great deeds, of standing for American principles and values in a turbulent world.
Now they know better.
Like most American soldiers today, they had not seen a shot fired in anger until they were dropped into the war zone.
It hits them like a physical blow - the stifling heat and choking dust, the crashing din of heavy-lift helicopters, the confusion of shouted orders, the air heavy with the stench of raw sewage and burning tires and unburied corpses, the nearly sexual release of firing on full automatic and the horror of seeing what a few enemy sniper rounds can do to the human body.
It melts down their idealism into two fundamental goals: Keep my buddy alive; keep myself alive.
"You always have a deep fear inside yourself that you might be responsible for getting one of your buddies killed," a Marine says one day in Somalia.
"You would do anything for your buddy, for your squad leader, for the whole effort."
It is in this crucible that America's warriors are finally and conclusively separated, separated from their high school buddies back home, from their families, from the politicians who sent them here, from the society they serve.
Sociologists call it camaraderie. That is like confusing sex with love.
Here, as a buddy reaches out a steadying hand, as a sergeant shoots a confident thumbs-up to his platoon, as a nervous private feels the breath of his buddy and knows he is alert and covering him as they man a dangerous nighttime checkpoint, as a grief-stricken trooper weeps uncontrollably in the arms of another, here grows a physical and mental love that is strong and direct and shorn of artifice.
There is us - and them.
Out there, the human beings who happen to be Somalis become potential targets, even the solemn-eyed 12-year-old girl who might be hiding a hand grenade.
A colorful market becomes a potential ambush site.
Street corners and alleyways are measured in terms of fields of fire.
A dusty Somali corpse is something to be stepped over. It might be booby-trapped.
"There are a lot of Somalis who deserve to be simply killed," a senior officer says in Mogadishu one day in a moment of bitter candor.
It is a widely shared sentiment, especially among the youngest men here, who take on the most risk.
Again and again, they cram into the shuddering helicopters that rock and twist sickeningly above Mogadishu's rubbled landscape before setting down close to a screaming mob.
Lock and load. Sprint out to set up a defensive perimeter. Sweat stinging the eyes, adrenalin churning in the stomach. Panting into the radiophone. Nightstalker, Badger. I'm two miles north your pos, returning hostile fire over. Say again over.
The older men, the commanders, carry less risk but all the responsibility.
They care for their men as for their own children. Sending them into battle is as hard a thing as they will ever do.
"You beat yourself up on this: At what point are you willing to take casualties, at what point is the goal worth a life," a seasoned lieutenant colonel muses one day in Mogadishu.
"You train your guys hard and you take care of them, and when the time comes you make your decisions. And when you arrive at the Pearly Gates and they ask, `Why did you get all those people killed,' you can say, `I had to do it for the principles I believe in.' "
They will carry these kinds of burdens themselves.
Desert Storm, and the public acclaim that greeted warriors returning from the Persian Gulf, are gone and forgotten. Today's warriors come home unremarked.
Somalia, and perhaps other conflicts ahead, are not great crusades with the nation's vital interests in peril and a clean victory to be won.
Instead, they are messy, murky affairs.
Even popular villains are rare, and the conflicts hold no personal claim on most Americans. They are soon forgotten, except by those who were there.
During a long night's watch in Somalia, a gunnery sergeant struggles to explain.
"When you're on exercises, there's a lot of horseplay. When you go in for real, people get quiet. You start to miss all those things you took for granted - waiting on chow line, cleaning the barracks, being stuck in traffic.
"And for those who come back, they're changed. The guy that didn't ask that girl out, he's gonna ask her out now. The guy that blew off his daughter's homework, he's going to be with her now.
"And for us, there's still going to be a lot of horseplay. But we know each other. It's deep. We were there and we made it."
He pauses for a long moment. Then he says, softly: "This thing has substance."
by CNB