Dear Betsy:
I’m glad to hear about your cell phone. It will be good for emergencies. Take good care of it and use it wisely. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say that if you have to bribe someone into liking you, she’s not much of a friend, but we can talk more about this later. I’m FINALLY leaving for Iraq today. I’ll write again when I land. Love you to the moon and back.
Mom
P.S. I hope you’re helping your dad around the house …
*
When Jolene stepped off the cargo jet and onto the flat sand at Balad, it was like stepping into a furnace. Tiny sand granules moved invisibly on the hot wind, insinuating themselves into everything—eyes, ears, nostrils, hair, throat. Jolene wanted to cover her mouth and nose in protection, but she stood tall, eyes watering, waiting.
There was a lot of waiting: for orders, for supplies, for transport. Their trip seemed to have taken forever. From Texas to Germany to Kuwait to Tallil to Al Kut to, finally, Balad Air Base.
Wind blew through the base, hot as fire. In seconds, Jolene was sweating. After what felt like hours of waiting, she and Tami were assigned to a small trailer with wood-paneled walls that were pockmarked with tack and nail holes from previous tenants. A pair of sagging beds and a pair of scarred-up metal lockers were the only furniture.
Jolene dropped her heavy duffle bag on the floor: dust puffed up around it. Dust, she knew already, was one of the many new facts of her life. She sat down on the narrow bed, holding her rough, newly issued bed linens and the pillow she’d brought from home. The bed squeaked beneath her.
“We need some pictures and posters,” Tami said, coughing as she sat down on her own bed. “Like Keanu or Johnny.”
Jolene sighed and looked at her friend. The trailer smelled of dust and heat and of the men who’d inhabited it before them. Wind rattled the room, plied at the windows and doors, trying to come in.
Suddenly an alarm sounded.
Jolene was first to the door. She opened it for Tami, grabbed her friend’s wrist and pulled her through. The alarm and speakers were on a pole just outside their trailer and the repeated announcement—GET TO THE BUNKERS!—was so loud she couldn’t hear anything else.
There were dozens of cement bunkers positioned around the base. Jolene and Tami ran for the nearest bunker and went inside.
There was no one else in here. They sat on the floor inside, in the dark, while mortar fire exploded all around them. Shards of cement rained down. Somewhere close, a rocket hit hard and exploded. The acrid smell of smoke slipped through the cracks in the door.
And then it was over.
Jolene stood up, not surprised to find that her legs were a little shaky.
“You notice we’re the only ones in here?” Tami said. “Where is everyone?”
Jolene opened the door. Sunlight, bright as a starburst, blinded them. Black smoke hung in the air, burned their eyes. Everywhere she looked, she saw troops acting as if nothing had happened. They were riding bikes from one trailer to another, standing in line at Porta-Potties, playing football. She turned to Tami. “They told us Balad was called Mortaritaville. I guess now we know why.”
The alarm sounded again. Mortar fire erupted to their left, a cement wall exploded. Smoke wafted their way.
“That’ll take some getting used to,” Tami said when it was quiet again.
Jolene looked at her best friend and knew they were both thinking the same thing. For the next year, they could be killed any second of any day—while they were sitting in their trailer or playing cards or taking a shower.
How did you handle knowing that any moment you could be killed, maimed, blown to bits? Worse than her fear was worry for her children. For the first time, she really thought, What if I don’t make it home? How will my children survive without me?
*
That night, after a long day spent filling out paperwork, meeting the men and women she’d be serving with, and listening to endless lectures about everything from the scorpions on base to the use of CSEL survival radios, Jolene finally made it to the showers at eleven o’clock. Because there were so few women on base, the shower lines weren’t long, but a woman didn’t walk there in the dark alone. The army had come a long way—but not far enough. “Battle buddies” were encouraged.
After their showers, she and Tami walked back to their trailer in silence.
Once inside, Tami collapsed on her bed and was sound asleep in no time.
Jolene was well past the point of exhaustion, but she was too wired to sleep, so she got out her laptop and started a letter home. She wasn’t connected to the Internet yet, might not be for some time, but she could type the letter tonight and figure out how to send it from the comm center tomorrow. She needed to connect with her family right now, and this was the only means available to her.