anything else. Church claimed that Mount Rushmore was the single most impressive monument on the planet. This statement was met by a spat of laughter and the following statements from some of the guys:
Is this your first time outside of South Dakota?
Dude, have you heard of the Great Pyramids?
China has this wall that they’ve built, and I’ve heard it’s pretty impressive.
Church dismissed the sarcasm with a wave of his hand and patiently waited out all of the laughter and eye rolling. He then referred to the Pyramids and the Great Wall as crumbling exercises in amateur architecture—that they’re the kinds of things kids create with building bricks. But the great stone faces of Mount Rushmore? He argued that humans would be extinct for thousands of years, all manner of infrastructure would have long melted back into the earth, and the faces of those men would still be plastered on the side of that mountain. By the time the gorillas in the Congo had evolved themselves into higher thinking beasts, they’d eventually stumble upon Rushmore, and whatever god they had worshipped up to that point would either be erased, or would have its visual manifestation.
Jesus Christ, he said. People get all worked up over the likes of Easter Island and Stonehenge and all that crap—could you imagine some Neanderthal coming out of a forest clearing and seeing that shit carved into the side of a mountain? Those men are gods for a long time to come.
He pointed his finger at Murphy and nodded his head at something none of us understood. He said, Mount Rushmore my friend. That’s where you need to go.
And that’s how it went most of the time—a lot of bullshit to fill up the time. And some of that bullshit involved guys explaining how Uncle Sam ended up calling the shots, and though each person’s story has its own unique details, it wasn’t difficult for me to trace dominant themes among my peers. Here’s how I figure it: there’s three different motivation types for joining the service. The first type is guys like me. We’re the guys that joined up because the military offered opportunities we weren’t going to get anywhere else. Growing up, I was a normal enough kid. I played on the football team, but I wasn’t good. In a small town like mine, if you were able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time then there was a varsity spot lined up for you. The same thing went for my academics—I passed my classes but I wasn’t on the track to win a Nobel Prize. I might have been able to cut it in college, but nobody in my family had ever went and I’m not the pioneering type. It was my idea to graduate high school, find a decent, bottom-tier job and, in time, work my way up to a position that made a half-decent buck. So when I was a senior in high school and we had some Army recruiters come to the school during a job fair, I initially went to their table because I needed to prove to my guidance counselor that I had visited at least five tables. My whole perception of the military was steeped in action films and World War Two dramas, and so I couldn’t imagine a place for myself within its system. But the guy sitting at the table was real charismatic and he got to talking to me about what the military was really about. And really, it is a goldmine of opportunity. He mapped out all the different paths available to me as I advanced in my career. He explained to me the opportunities I’d have with going to college, officer school, flight school, and so on. It seemed like the best thing to do, for me. I could be a mechanic, or a I could be a general. On top of all of that, I was also paid to stay in good physical health, and I would have opportunities to travel the world. And fine . . . so maybe being stationed in a foreign country as an occupying military force doesn’t exactly qualify, in the traditional sense, as “traveling” or “seeing the world,” but it does offer a view that I couldn’t get from my own neighborhood. The recruiter wasn’t lying about that.
But, the fact is, I was seventeen years old at the time and I got caught up in something that I didn’t understand. Making the decision to be active duty in the military isn’t exactly like deciding on which college to attend—you can’t approach your commanding officer mid-semester and ask to switch to the major where you don’t get shot at. And I wasn’t the only one with doubts. Maybe the other guys in the unit wouldn’t admit it openly, but I could see it in some of their eyes. It’s difficult to keep a poker face when you’re constantly thinking, “what the fuck did I get myself into?” Part of me was glad to know that I wasn’t the only one to make this mistake, and that little observation gave me some comfort in regard to my own stupidity, but when I realized that these were the very guys that I would rely on to save my life, I became nauseous.
Sometimes we’d go off base disguised in civilian clothing, but when a dozen guys with the same buzz-cut are sitting at the same table in the same restaurant, it was crystal clear who and what we were. Now, I was proud to be a serviceman, but I was always uncomfortable when civilians would come up and let me know how proud they were of me. I was even more uncomfortable when the people would express their pride after I had consumed enough alcohol to kill a small mule. They didn’t seem to be bothered by my glassy eyes and stupid grin as they’d thank me for my service and thank me for protecting their freedoms and tell me how brave I was and make sure I knew I had their full support. I guess it was a nice thing for them to do, but I sure didn’t sign up for any of those people. They didn’t so much as cross my mind. I didn’t think once of defending freedoms or branding the world with an American flag, or getting shot at. I was an opportunist—I thought of it as a job—and so I didn’t care for people treating me like I was a hero when I felt like anything but. Loggers and fishermen were more likely to die in their line of work than I was in mine, and yet I’ve never heard anybody thank a logger for his or her service.
The second type of motivation for enlistment is what I call the John Rambo effect. This theme is self-explanatory—these guys had seen the Rambo films a few too many times. And I don’t call it this because of the super soldier, rabid individual accomplishments of these servicemen, but because of their burning desire to blow shit up. These guys love blowing shit up, and the military offered them an appropriate, if not glorified, outlet to do so. These guys are great to have around at times—they’d whoop and holler and give high fives whenever we got out on the range. And when they weren’t on the range, they would whoop and holler at their video games as they blew shit up on there too. They would continually grunt their satisfaction at the weapons and instruments of war around us. They’d snap pictures with their shirts off, sunglasses on, and assault rifles shooting from the hip like you see on movie posters. I’ve seen the Rambo’s get the same praise from civilians that I was so uncomfortable with. They were always very cordial and accommodating to the admiring civilians. I imagine I could always tell what they were thinking when civilians would come up and tell them how much they admired their sacrifices—the Rambo’s would smile and nod, I don’t know what this person is talking about because I’m just here to blow shit up.
The last type of motivation is for the idealistic folk. The Henry David Thoreau’s of the world. The Jude motive. Soldiers like Jude joined up because they wanted to join in the battle against evil. They envisioned an America that’s always under attack and always being plotted against, and they saw it as their duty to protect it. These guys love America like I wish I could love anything. For them, any country that wasn’t America sure as hell wanted to be, and it was their duty to help those countries along on their democratic path. Heroes of these soldiers include: Babe Ruth, Toby Keith, Ronald Reagan, Jesus Christ, and Superman. These soldiers don’t just believe in things, they believe in America. I envied these men and I tried to be infected by their idealism, but it’s not something that is easily transferable. Maybe more time with Jude would have touched me with his attitude, maybe not.
And as if my mind wasn’t fragile enough following 9/11, it did me no favor to suddenly realize that even these guys—the Teddy Roosevelt’s of the unit—had their doubts. Maybe not in regard to the war, but at least in their responsibility to it. For Jude, it was his wife. It seemed to me to almost be a slip of thought when he first mentioned his marriage. He wore no ring and when I surprisedly mentioned that I didn’t know he was married, he tried to pretend like he hadn’t heard me and then attempted to change the conversation. I didn’t
