qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyui

opasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfgh
jklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvb
nmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwer
tyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopas
dfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzx
“Resolution”
cvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmq
wertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuio
From the collection Three Christmas Stories

pasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghj
By Lee Sarter
klzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbn
mqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwerty
uiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf
ghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxc
vbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmrty
uiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf
ghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxc
-ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2011-
 When we go out, I feel a pit deepen itself in my stomach. I imagine like a pothole on a
street, only it’s all this acid and churning that’s carving it out instead of tires. I don’t think that’s
how it really works, but it feels like what that would probably feel like. If streets could feel
anything, I guess.

The sun preserves you where you stand, like some mummy that doesn’t know he’s dead
yet. It’s so bright the color drains out of everything unless you have sunglasses or a visor or
something else over your eyes. The light actually stings them deep, which is a weird thing to
feel. Like the jelly inside is about to boil for just a second, then it settles down. By then, you’re
cursing or rubbing them, which probably stops the pain more than anything.

Your fingers get stiff and strong, your toes swell into clubs, your hair frays, your skin
dries and hardens into flakes, your voice becomes loose and low like a mumble when you aren’t
barking back and forth with everyone. We all like to think your eyes sort of toughen up too.
Get used to it like the rest of you. That’s gotta be bullshit, though, otherwise every single person
who’s from here would have eyes like goddamned Eagles. They wouldn’t need scopes or
binoculars; they could just see you wherever you were.

Hell, in that way, maybe it isn’t bullshit. I swear they always know where we are, no
matter what we do.

All the medics I’ve asked about it say its bullshit, though. According to them, if your
eyes aren’t protected, the sun reflecting off the light colored dirt around here can make you go
blind in under thirty minutes. That sounds wrong to me, but I tend to listen to them about that
sort of thing. They’re trained to know all the weird ways bodies react to weird things invading
them. Like the fever that comes after taking shrapnel or the cold sweats you can get when you
get one of the crazy ass stomach flu’s that always seem to hang around the camps, no matter how
damn hot it is outside.

And holy shit, does it get hot around here. But that’s only half the battle, only half the
year. If you stood in one spot near the cat litter foothills of the sharp mountains, you’d have the
chance to freeze to death and die of heat stroke, all within a matter of months. Lucky you, right?
Lucky me.
 I’m not standing still, not even close, but it can still happen with that extreme. Only we
don’t worry half as much about the weather as we do the Natives. From what I hear, most of
them aren’t actually natives to begin with, but it’s easier that way. Saves time when you’re
calling out the directions of snipers or RPG’s. We aren’t here to work on our cultural sensitivity
or to improve our nuanced understanding of their history or their society, no matter what the
suits or theorists might tell you.

For that matter, we ain’t collecting on the debt owed from the twin towers either. I don’t
think that was ever it.

I remember all the talk about the War and the capital “T” Terrorists that were in the cross
hairs. I remember the yellow ribbons printed on bumper stickers, the flags printed with colors
that don’t run. I remember all the TV specials; story after story about the families with personal
ties to the city, America’s Mayor’s city. GiulianiWorld and all its weeping boroughs as an
epicenter emblazoned with NYPD or NYFD, transmitting chills through all the millions that
watched from a distance.

I remember it all too clearly if I’m telling the truth. It’s why I broke up with my girlfriend
when we graduated. And why my mom cried for two days straight when I showed her the papers
I signed to make it all official and binding. I explained in terms of honor and duty, of feeling that
pull to serve like a tug at my conscious. She saw it more like an inevitable undertow; deep down
she knew it was a matter of time.

She was proud, but a lot more besides that. Worried. Angry at me, but furious at the
situation mostly. She said it wasn’t the same as when Dad served, that the game had changed. I
said I knew all that. I said the recruiters and information officers told me all that.

What they don’t tell you, what they can’t really tell you is how fast you go from thinking
about all those reasons for going to none of them making any difference anymore. They don’t
share how quickly all the extremes switch back and forth.

Cold melting into hot.

Calm exploding into chaos.

 Alive writhing into dead.

The trick is to never let it seep in, or at least ignore it when it does. Each one of us has to
come up with a way to do it on our own. There isn’t much at all about seeing the forest for the
trees in the field manual. That’s a You problem, not a We problem. The We problem is making
sure as many of us are alive to deal with the You problem as possible. In a way, that’s the sign of
victory- when you have more soldiers trying to forget what just happened than the other side.

A lot of the guys drink or otherwise fuck themselves up on a regular basis. As regular as
their jobs and C.O.’s will let them, anyway. That’s the easiest way, to just wipe the blackboard a
few times. You might not get rid of all the chalk, but at least you have a harder time telling what
the pictures were. Some guys play or make music, rapping to beats in large circles of guys or
playing some country, things like that. Some play versions of basketball or baseball, adapted to
fit what they have for equipment and space.

None of it works that well for me. It’s all stuff from home that just makes it even clearer
that we aren’t home. Not even close enough to make a convincing version of it. I just don’t look
back. Like I said, reasons don’t really make too much of a difference after awhile. Or anyway,
they don’t have much of a place if you’re worried about what’s going on. History doesn’t decide
whether the stalled truck up the road is laced with bombs or not, whether you’ll survive or not.
The only thing that’ll keep you alive is going to be you, no matter how close or good the guys
around you are. You’ll have to decide to breathe or gasp when the time comes, not Douglas
MacArthur or Robert E. Lee or George Washington. Not even the guys you talk about home
with, the guys that know what you’re thinking while you think it yourself make the ultimate
difference. If you don’t fight to live, you will resolve to die, there isn’t much in between.

So starting today, I’m only looking forward. From this point on, what’s done is done and
gone for good. Sitting here before we head out on our last patrol of the day, I need to exercise
some demons:

Lopez, Washington, Cranston, Leonard, Leiner, A. Smith, R. Smith, Douglas, Richards,

Charles, Carter and any others I’ve forgotten or haven’t heard about yet- they’re gone. That’s it.
Shed a tear or throw a fit, nothing is going to change that fact.
 Innocent people get killed. That’s part of a war where the enemy dresses up like
civilians. If I refuse to shoot, someone will shoot for me. If I don’t kill them when I have the
chance, they might kill me when they have the chance. If I don’t blink, they will learn to see
without blinking. I can’t change any of it, they won’t change any of it, so there we are.

Whether we’re liberators, conquerors, bullies, companions, saints, police, trainers,

makers, sinners, devils, angels, redeemers, saviors, power hungry, blood thirsty, out of touch, on
the ground, or any other descriptions or labels makes no difference at all. They can’t make any
real difference at all. We are way beyond that. I am way beyond that. The only thing that does
matter is that we are here. I can’t save us, I can’t destroy us. I am along for the ride, just like
everyone else. Conflict has a mind of its own once it finds a place to flourish and it has here for a
lot longer than we can take credit for. This is the lip of the human volcano, bubbling and
changing with its own momentum. You just have to find your own way through it.

So today, I start losing my hindsight.

I will be smart.

Whether we’re checking some old hot spots like today or are hauling ass directly into
blood curdling shit, I will make sure to keep my head up. I’ve heard some of the Canadians say
fighting is like hockey: for the most part there’s a plan, but everyone knows what the goal is and
will take their chance at it. And the second you aren’t paying attention, when you don’t have
your head up and searching, is the second you get hit and the lights go out.

I’ve never played hockey, I’ve never really liked hockey, but that sounds about right to
me. Put your head down and you’ll be lucky if it’s you who gets hit and not the guy next to you
looking the other way. We’re a team, but we don’t go down as a team. We go down as
ourselves, for better or worse.

I will be tough.

One of Dad’s friends, this old crusty Vietnam vet, talked to me when my mom asked him
to. He said “If you’re lucky, you won’t see much in the way of action.” It wasn’t what I wanted
to hear at the time, but that doesn’t matter now. I do know what he meant and I’ve come to think
he’s right, but by that standard we’ve got to be the sorriest bunch of no- luck wretches in history.
I’ve seen the movies, I’ve heard the stories about Vietnam and it sounds like it was hell, so I
have no doubt that he spoke from very personal experience.

Here we don’t get that mystery of the jungle or the tension of the country changing
against us back home. Here and now, the real rub is knowing if they miss you in the ambush,
they’ll try and get your family and friends back home. That’s something September 11 th
absolutely did. I don’t know, maybe the country is changing because of that right there, maybe
I’m out of touch, but it seems like the damage is already done and the change has happened. All
that’s left is dealing with the residue.

We aren’t the same People who went to Vietnam or even Desert Storm for that matter. I
was pretty little when that happened, so I’ve grown up in the aftermath. That war was like a
confidence boost. When I think about it, it turned out to be more of a PR campaign for the U.S.
as a superpower than it did a slap on the wrist of an overreaching dictator.

In Vietnam, we were fighting a war for ideas, to keep the American Way as the flag
bearer of how things should be done. Then we shit on it and lost track of the reasons.

In Desert Storm, we were fighting for that American Way again, but more to update the
world on how it had grown and changed. In the years without a large scale fight, our technology
grew and our tactics became refined. In many ways, it was like a World’s Fair for all the
governments- here’s the future of how war will be fought and won. Even the civilians saw it.
That’s what I do remember- scratchy, 90’s night vision video showing indiscreet buildings
engulfed in bright white plumes of fire all over the nightly news.

And now, all that time and effort, all those lives, they don’t mean shit for me right here,
right now. Sure, we wouldn’t be as advanced as we are without those fights, those men. Tactics
evolve with technology, or because of technology. That war showed a kind of end to what had
been known as war,a sort of high point. At the same time, we’re still killing and being killed the
old fashioned way. Street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, but aren’t completely sure
of who we’re fighting. We’re still planning and executing imperfectly, with aircrafts both
manned and not. It all looks very much the same in this war, really only the efficiency has
changed.
 I will stop thinking so much.

It’s a habit I didn’t develop until I came over here. I’ve been accused of being a lot of
things, but cautious is not one of them. I hate Seinfeld for that reason. I would never want to be
friends with those people. Not only are they terrible human beings, but they are so damn neurotic
I would probably just slap them repeatedly.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m just as bad now. Now I do wish it was as entertaining
as they make it look on that show. In reality, thinking that way, to that degree, shreds your nerves
to pieces. Out of nowhere, I’ve become completely freakish about my toothbrush. I don’t know
why. No one has ever done anything to it, I’ve never seen anyone do anything to anyone else’s
toothbrush, but I will pace for at least ten minutes after I use it in the morning and before I go to
bed. No particular reason, no particular fear, just a general sense of panic. It’s gotten bad enough
that I bought a protective case for it and am now stuffing it in with my day-to- day gear I carry
on my vest.

There’s no use for it in combat. If anything, it probably takes up that little bit of space I
will need someday for more important equipment. The truth is I just can’t help it. If I don’t know
where it is, know that it isn’t being violated in some vague way, I start to feel like a rush of terror
come over me. Of all the things to be afraid of, it’s a damn piece of plastic and some bristles that
keep me up at night. I simply can’t help it for some reason.

The world will never really know what happens here.

I’ve heard this whole war, the one against terrorism on all its fronts, is the most reported
war in the history of mankind. Although it seems like World War II was well covered, I imagine
that is probably right. Even now, years since the whole avalanche started a president ago you
can't go a day without running into an imbedded reporter or photo journalist or blogger of some
damn kind. These people astound me. And by that, I mean piss me off, mostly.

They come on their own or are sent by this newspaper or that association to record what
happens. More like stretch and butcher what happens. If you take any one event on any given
day, you can easily find something someone will call scandalous. There are so many parts of our
jobs that to the untrained eye look horrible. If you want the truth, the whole truth, you have to
follow the course of the war. There’s a line that runs through all of it- repel, attack, counter,
react, regroup, etc. This is the one place where it does pay to have an eye on history, if you can
even call it that.

With no context, cooking lobster could look like a barbaric ritual. Killing gophers can
resemble genocide. Hell, if just one cockroach was able to grow a brain and figure out what was
going on, we could have a whole revolution on our hands. The fact is, if you want to understand
why we fight, where we fight, you have to understand the losses and the gains, otherwise it’s
hard to see what you are really looking at.

There’s method to this madness. There has to be. It’s what we all trust in, no matter what
else we might feel about being here. We have to trust that what we do, even if we don’t
understand it, is ordered by people who know the context of what we’re trying to accomplish
here.

The dead will stay silent.

It’s for the better that death is so complete. So final. I don’t think I want to know what
the last thoughts of my friends were. I don’t want to know what they left unfinished or how
much pain they felt before they slipped into shock. I have no idea and don’t want one about
whether Carter knew his legs were blown off, if the IED was strong enough to give him brain
damage before he went into shock and died. If there was enough sense left in him to wonder if he
was going to make it through.

I’d rather not know if Lopez thought about the trip we took to Germany when we finally
got leave at the same time. Whether she thought about those two weeks we planned on getting
drunk and stupid in Berlin and Munich with some people she knew. Whether she regretted that
we stayed in the hotel and fucked most of the time instead. Whether she wished she’d fallen for
someone else in boot camp instead of a grunt that didn’t know what he wanted.

All of this I don’t want to know because I do know what Aaron Smith was thinking.

The outskirts of the town were dotted with these simple mud huts, which seemed to turn
to dust if we drove our Humvees close enough to them. We played a version of Jenga with them,
as best you can with multi ton vehicles anyway. Most of the morning was tense, but we didn’t hit
any fighting, just some false alarms. As we pulled into what could be called the city limits, we
were all pretty relaxed and joking around.

Before we knew what happened, we were pinned down on a road surrounded by

crumbling buildings of this nothing town. It was a stronghold for the enemy, which we knew at
the start of the mission, so the ambush wasn’t completely surprising. It wasn’t any less brutal
though either.

Robert Smith was a newly minted officer with his first command of anyone. He was cool
and collected until that early afternoon. He yelled for return fire, he called out positions of
gunners he was able to decipher through the noise and dust. As he was calling in our situation on
the radio, leaning into the door of the vehicle, machine gun fire ripped across his ankles and legs,
just tearing them apart. He fell to the ground with only one foot attached, but just barely. Aaron,
Robert’s younger brother who’d somehow arranged and been promoted to be under his brother’s
command ran to the Humvee from a cover position. He never thought about it, he just ran
instinctually. All that time as kids fighting with each other, all those jabs and jokes at each other
came back to him in a rush and he just ran to help his screaming brother.

The minute Aaron stood up from his cover I knew what was going to happen. I could see
the eyes of the men shooting at us from close range in the shadows, like it was in horrifying slow
motion, shift toward Aaron. They quickly followed with bursts of star- shaped fire from the
muzzles of their AK- 47’s, each with a corresponding thud and tear as they bullets found their
marks. Each terrifying pellet exited with a spray of blood for all of us taking cover to see. He fell
a few feet in front of me, gasping for air. I pulled him under the door of the Humvee and hoisted
him into the seat. I saw my friend, a person who’d saved my life in more ways than one, leaving
us. His eyes fluttered as he tried to leave keep them open. He took a shallow breath and lifted his
head.

“I just wanted to tell him I love him. And that he’d be OK.” His once tuned nerves
slowed to near stoppage, no longer reacting to the gunfire still buzzing all around us.

Neither brother made it back alive. And maybe Robert already knew it, but even so, he
died never hearing Aaron comfort him with those kind words. Aaron acted because he was solely
thinking of comforting his big brother, but died knowing he would never be able to say what was
most important to him. Again, you’ve got to think they had at least some understanding of each
other, but you never know with brothers.

The problem is, I know. The ending of a lazy day turned into a five hour firefight as we
slogged through the remainder of the town and outlying huts.

We ended up getting back to the base and Robert to the medics while he had a glimmer of
life still in him. Once on the table, I told him what happened to Aaron, why he got shot, and what
he said to me through the pandemonium. He muttered and squeezed my hand weakly, trying to
comfort even as he gave in. His face tensed sharply, and then relaxed completely along with his
chest and arms. At twenty- one hundred hours, the Smiths officially lost two generations and so
much more in terms of potential.

Though brothers are rare, I’ve been through dozens of similar situations since. No doubt
there will be far more to come, if I’m honest. Given a choice, I’d much rather not known any of
what Aaron was thinking, or seen the look of loss that washed over the dying Robert’s face in his
own last moments.

The living will always have the last word.

You can train for most of your life, you can sharpen yourself to kill, you can practice
survival and techniques, but when it really comes down to it, you live or die by some stroke of
luck. Even though I’m not lucky in how that old burn out vet thinks of it, I’m still alive. There
are lots of people, some of them much better soldiers than I am, who died for no other reason
than for a lack of luck. A ricochet here, a few centimeters too far on the shoulder of a road, those
little moments add up eventually.

The truth is, some people are much better witnesses than they are soldiers, but we all end
up in the same place regardless.

I’m tempted to feel guilty about it. Hell, I felt guilty about it for months after the brothers
died. After awhile, I just couldn’t do it anymore. People win the lottery, that’s a fact. People
inherit money, that’s a fact. The truth is none of those people did anything at all to deserve what
they got. Pretty much anyone can buy a fucking ticket with numbers picked by a computer. The
only skill it takes is to decide how much to spend on making it feel like you have a chance.
 And what’s luckier than being born into one family versus another? In that way, it is like
a genetic lottery, but I’m sure you have even worse odds with that one. Everyone is born, not
everyone buys lottery tickets. You have a one in several billion chance of being born, surviving
it, and living in a family that is rich in a rich country that lets them give away their money when
they die. I don’t think they feel guilty about it, so why should I?

In our case, being here and doing all that we’re doing, we really do deserve to die. I don’t
have anything against it, that’s part of my resolution, but it doesn’t take too big a stretch to know
that killing is killing, regardless of how you justify it. I am glad I’ve killed most of who I’ve
killed, because they would’ve done the same to me given the same chance, but it doesn’t change
that fact.

I’ve even come to think the whole value of human life above all others is a lot of bullshit
too, honestly. You don’t have to look far for examples that can easily prove we aren’t actually
that great at all. We’re the only animals who kill for fun or honor or ideals or whatever else the
suits would want to call it. We’re one of the only animals who fuck for pure fun. We’re the only
animal not only capable of destroying ourselves and every other living thing on the planet, but
are actually willing to go through with it in so many different ways. If it isn’t the nukes, its
plastic bags, or car batteries, or hair spray.

Maybe that’s the real secret to people. It isn’t that we’re good and just fuck it all up in the
end. Maybe the thing we don’t want to admit to each other is that what we’re actually good at is
ruining a good thing, even if we’ve made it. So when we’re out here rustling houses and families,
setting road blocks and generally just waiting until we can get the hell out of here, we’re doing
what we’re supposed to be doing. In that case, it’s the wonks, the people standing on the
sidelines that are the real drags on our species.

While some of us are out doing the work, making sure we all go down in as big a flame
out as possible, others are just watching it all go by. Whether they know it or not, their little
worlds depend on people like us, like me, punching a hole through that fake backdrop. It’s
people like me, those of us who are still alive, who fan the fire so everything burns down to ash
and can start over again. Life and death are the same coin, just like what moralists would call
good and evil. What we don’t want to admit is that it’s all the same damn thing. There is no real
difference. There is no real morality or fate or plan to everything. What’s there is chance,
whether you want to be a part of it or not.

Well, I don’t know why I’ve written this much, but there it is. Guess I’ve had too much
time to think about this shit. Or it’s the day. Maybe something about the holidays, whether or not
it actually feels like them. I hate to say it, but it’s just another day around here. Maybe there’s a
little more desperation than usual to make it back in one piece, but I don’t know. It’s damn hard
to measure something like that, regardless of where your thoughts are.

We’re heading out on patrol to check some old strongholds of some fucking group or
militia or whatever. All the guerillas have been backfilling lately, so we have to retrace our steps
too. They all look and sound and act the same after awhile, honestly. It might as well still be
back when the whole thing started. They might as well never have been liberated in the first
place if we’re just going to keep looking over our shoulders.

This will be the first long patrol since we lost Washington, so I’ll be driving the lead
Hummer this time; a promotion, I guess. That’s how I’m going to look at it, anyway. Maybe this
is like a try- out to start toward Specialist or something. Only forward, never back from here on
out.

Here’s to better luck or death before we can know the difference.

- PFC Justin Wilder, 10th Mtn. Division

Christmas Day, 2009

 Dear Mrs. Wilder,

It is with the utmost of sadness and regret that I have to inform you that your son was
recently lost in the fulfillment of his duty.

We at command believe it is only right that you know the circumstances of his passing.
He was in the lead position of a convoy carrying weapons bound for an official group of Police
Force trainees in Kandahar. Sometime before the arrival of the convoy, local insurgents were
tipped off as to the nature and destination of the cargo. As a result, the convoy drove directly
into their trap.

It was during this time of incredible chaos your son, PFC Justin Wilder, sprung into
action and rallied the members of his immediate team. Solely as a result of his quick thinking
and amazing poise under fire, all but fifteen men in the forty strong force tasked with protecting
the cargo escaped with their lives. Most importantly, the cargo reached its destination and
served to support the otherwise overwhelmed government forces in their fight against the
insurgents I’m sure you have heard so much about back home.

It was during the protection and delivery of the cargo to the elders of the clans that your
son was shot by a sniper hidden in the surrounding mountains. The cowardly nature of the attack
was quickly suppressed and the sniper found, but could not be brought to justice before
threatening further lives and, as a result, being shot himself.

I wanted you to know your son was a special man and a talented soldier. His empathy
and humanity shined as an example to all who serve in this and any other country or theater of
combat. Without soldiers like your son, we would never be close to achieving the success that we
have enjoyed in this worldwide campaign against those who seek to destroy our way of life.

In some small way, I hope that this letter serves as a comfort to you. If nothing else, I
hope that you can at least understand the courage and commitment to Democracy that your son
furthered through his work here. I can assure you he and the lessons he so nobly taught his
fellow soldiers, as well as the compassion he showed to all humanity, will live on in the hearts of
his compatriots.
With my deepest sympathies,

Captain William Tate, 4th Brigade Combat Team