No Escape: A post-blast Vignette
I.
A stretch of desert road cutting through a broken country, nearly indistinguishable from any other in Northern Iraq. The sky is clear blue, and the terrain flat, nearly featureless. In the foreground, a younger, more innocent version of me is kneeling in a large blast crater. Even now I find it hard to believe that just moments before, a car was sitting on that spot, loaded with explosives and waiting for us. My rifle is slung, and I have my bayonet in hand. I’m probing through dirt that is still warm from the blast, looking for evidence. Hot bits of twisted steel, pieces of burned wire, anything that could tell me what the device was, and more importantly, who made it. In the background, a cluster of armored trucks sit in the middle of the roadway. Soldiers are out on the ground gathered around the wounded, trying to render aid. Some of them are still screaming.
II.
The door of the truck that I was driving is still open- in my haste I have forgotten to close it. We were the third vehicle in the convoy, our position chosen by chance at the mission’s outset. That first deployment would teach me one of the maddening realities of war, bad luck will kill more of your friends than bad decisions. That day, we were lucky, the car bomb detonated just in front of us, spidering our bullet-proof windshield and peppering our truck with shrapnel. We were unharmed, but the truck in front of us hadn’t been as lucky. After rolling 50 yards, leaking transmission fluid, oil, and blood out onto the pavement, the truck finally came to a stop. You can’t tell from the photo, but I’ve never been happier to do a post-blast investigation in my life. The task that would ultimately prove fruitless, but it gave me a sense of purpose at a moment when I was feeling particularly powerless.
III.
An Iraqi village rests on the horizon; like small towns everywhere, this one is populated by innocent people just trying to make a life for themselves. Once our wounded are put on a helicopter and medevaced, we’ll go to that village and question the locals. We’ll ask them, who parked the car next to the road? Have they seen any strangers in the village? Who is attacking the Americans? And they’ll reply as they always do, that they don’t know anything. Part of me is furious at them for not helping us, but another part of me understands. We come in the day and hand out food, coloring books, and soccer balls. The insurgents come at night, and threaten to kill their families. These people are caught in the middle, and are just trying to survive a war, desperate to not get involved.
IV.
This was the first time that anyone had ever tried to kill me. This was the moment that I realized that this wasn’t just a great adventure; an extended camping trip in a foreign land. This was a war. I could die. Over the following days and sleepless nights, I replayed the scene over and over again in my head. I considered all of the possibilities, the things that could have happened, and the things that may happen next time. I pictured a Chaplin and an officer in his dress blues knocking on my parents’ door. I could see my mother weeping and my father trying to argue because they didn’t even know that I was in Iraq. But no matter how much they cried or shouted, there is nothing they could do to change what has happened to their son.
V.
That experience opened my eyes and showed me the truth of what could happen; of what I risked each day. But while my perspective on life may have changed, the mission in Iraq had not. There would be more convoys, more bombs, and more people would die. But I had to stay; I had to do my job. I had taken one oath and spoken it aloud before god to serve my country. But more importantly, I had made many more unspoken oaths. To my friends; the men and women that were there with me, my extended family. And so I stayed, a prisoner of my own conscious.
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Philip Granath is a sophomore pursuing a Baccalaureate in English and a concentration in Secondary Education. Philip completed his first novel in 2017.