War

I was going to write a blog about my recent trip to Bahrain (because I had to leave the country then return to get another visitor’s visa in the UAE) but I found the most interesting aspect of the trip was some of the people I met there; most notably, a bunch of American soldiers.

Now while this sounds like the intro to a gay porno I assure you it was all above board. Although I did have my shirt off at one point and the last few hours are kind of a blur... but anyway.

For a little backstory: I was in Bahrain for just under two days and I intended to spend them touring the capital city of Manama where I was staying. I went down to the lobby of the hotel to grab a map, and couldn’t help noticing the sign for the bar they had on the mezzanine level. Figuring I was going to need a few minutes to map out the tourist attractions I wanted to see, I went up to the bar, ordered a pint and studied my map.

It was there I met a friendly deep southerner named John, who was later joined by his mates Josh and Jeremy. That was at 1pm, and I was not to leave until well after midnight.

Besides the drunken friendships we forged, the most interesting thing about meeting these Seppos was getting first hand stories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most if not all of them had been in both theatres (to use the military parlance) and at first they seemed both relieved and a little bored to have been posted to the relative pre-school that is Bahrain.

I won’t lie to you. The beer, scotch, tequila and double jacks were flowing that day. But with it was the gradual unlayering of minds shaped by war. I have read libraries of experience of conflict, but very seldom heard about it in the first hand.

At first the conversation was a pissing contest of war stories. Well, actually, the first conversation was about American football and how it had nothing on AFL, but once we got on to the wars it was all about who had the most exciting story. Driving through Bagdad in a convoy that was attacked, an IED exploding right under the car, a piece of shrapnel just missing someone’s head, mortars dropping a few yards from where they were standing. Dick waving contests, but this was only seven or eight beers in.

Next came loneliness. These guys were all between 25 and 30, married and most had kids. Jeremy had been married less than six months ago and his wife was pregnant. He was stationed here for a year so he knew he would miss seeing his first child born. The heartbreak was tangible.

After that came the surprising confessions of what is essentially post traumatic stress disorder. As we got chummier the real effects of the events in the dick waving stories came out. As the tales of gunfights, mortars and bombs returned the same bragging smiles shown before were gone, and in their place was a pained face looking for understanding. The Vietnam cliché “you don’t know what it’s like man” came to mind.

One told me that the experiences of death and suffering he had were simply impossible to talk about with his wife upon his return home. He had nightmares and couldn’t explain to those around him what they contained. He said he sometimes got angry and hit his wife. I don’t want to excuse his behaviour here, but the look of confused regret in his eyes made me think of someone with a mental disorder more than a wife beater.

This was classic war trauma stuff, fitting any veteran’s tales from Vietnam or the great wars. I know stories like this are a dime a dozen if one chooses to tune into the twice weekly SBS horror docos (or better yet, Al Jazeera cable news service) but it is the first time I have heard it from someone firsthand, let alone a crying man telling me he wishes it could all just go away.

All I could think of was how many other bastards (on the yank’s side and orders of magnitude more on the other) are out there with the exact same experiences. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed many hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives but that is just the tip of the iceberg when considering the true cost they have wreaked upon human kind. Like a cancer, their effects spread out and infect all around them.

The problem with war is that it is so easily to distance yourself from it, or simplify it, or with a bit of work justify it. But that doesn’t change what it is. Send a million men to fight a million more and you have four million victims.

It seems no one gets out whole.