What’d they have for dinner tonight?”
“You didn’t eat? You would have loved it, Goldsmith.”
“Why is that, Durk? What’d they have?”
“Two chicken fingers.”
“Two chicken fingers?”
“Nuggets really, then a pitiful scoop of mashed potatoes and green beans that tasted like soap.”
“So you’re telling me you’re still hungry, then?”
“Oh, fuck yeah!”
“Let’s see what we can scrounge up.”
Combat Outpost Apache is a huge improvement over Ur. It’s right by the storied Tigris River, has trees, and the surrounding city is plush compared to the shit filled slums of Ur. Apache has an indoor gym and an actual chow hall; life is looking up. At eleven o’clock at night, on our first night at Apache, Durk and I walk into the chow hall. The place is deserted, and a large, unopened box of breakfast sandwiches sits on a table. Durk and I tear into it and throw the sandwiches in a microwave.
“What do you guys think you’re doing?” A figure emerges from the darkness. I’ve never seen this guy before. He’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt, so there’s no way to tell his rank. I’m cautious with my speech.
“We’re using the microwave.”
“What are you eating?” The soldier who steps into the light has an ill-mannered expression and soulless, reptilian eyes. He has the posture and grace of a troll. There’s a hump on his back. I name him Quasimodo.
“We’re cooking the sandwiches we found on the table. We’re hungry.” Who does this guy think he is?
“You can’t do that! You can’t come in here when you want and cook food!”
I get that nervous feeling in my stomach that tells me a fight is coming. “Well, it’s a chow hall, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we do here? Eat?”
The microwave beeps and turns off. I pull out the sandwiches, brush past the vulgar stranger, and walk out into the main room. Quasimodo stays skulking in the semidarkness.
We tear into the steaming cellophane wrappers and try not to burn our fingers. “Can you believe that guy, Durk? We should’ve—”
“Excuse me.” I hear an unmistakable accent: the voice of a white man from the Deep South’s bayou country.
“Yes . . .” I turn around in my seat. This guy’s in a proper uniform, and I recognize him. It’s Boss Cook.
“Hey, I know y’all are hungry, but you can’t just tear into things in our storeroom. Those sandwiches are for everyone’s breakfast tomorrow.”
“Oh, we apologize. It’s our first night here. Not really used to the swing of things yet, you know.”
Now, this is civil. This is how people should talk to each other.
“That’s all right. Next time, if you guys are hungry, just let us know and we’ll whip up something for you.”
Somehow, I doubt that, but all right. “Well, that’s awfully kind of you.”
“Y’all have a good night, now.” Boss Cook walks away.
We finish our sandwiches, sling our weapons, and walk out the door. Boss Cook watches us leave as Quasimodo appears behind him. Quasimodo is angry and makes as if he wants to chase after us. Boss Cook pats him on the shoulder. “There, there, relax. We’ll get them yet; you’ll see. Give it time.”
* * *
Patrolling the city from midnight to sunrise is always a rough mission, but now it’s morning, time for breakfast. Not that breakfast is ever spectacular. The eggs have the consistency of plastic, and the sausage is crumbly dog meat, but it’s food. Quasimodo serves breakfast, and he looks mad. He splashes eggs on my plate. They splatter everywhere, and even get on my uniform. He plops one sausage into the eggs; everyone else got two.
“Can I have another sausage?”
“I know you ate my Swiss rolls.” Quasimodo’s voice slithers when he speaks.
“What?”
“You! You assholes ate my Swiss rolls!”
Disrespectful peon, worthless piece of shit! Quasimodo is a private and a cook; I’m a sergeant in the infantry, a leader of men. If he’s going to call me “asshole,” he’d better precede it with my title.
“First off, what the hell is a Swiss roll?” This is funny; this guy is genuinely upset. I’m just happy that someone’s thievery has made this worthless pog suffer.
“Ding Dongs, all right? They’re like Ding Dongs! And one of you bastards took them out of the freezer.”
Ding Dongs. Fair enough. I’ve been patrolling all night, on streets where people actively seek my violent death. In unbearable heat, the infantry on Apache work themselves half to death just to get through the day. Out in sector, people are dying. Our efforts out there keep the cooks and all the other pogs safe. Someone lifted your seventy-cent treat out of your private freezer—all right. When was the last time you wore your body armor? Do you even know where your weapon is, pog? Are you actually accusing me of Ding Dong theft?
“Look, none of us took your Ding Dongs. Now, give me another sausage.”
He growls and throws the most shriveled-up, disgusting one he can find on my plate. This is the opening salvo in an unavoidable war. We both know there’s no going back now.
Fucking with cooks is dangerous. On a small combat outpost like Apache, they control access to all food. Every hot meal I eat is dished out by a cook’s spoon-wielding hand. These cooks are power hungry; they enjoy watching soldiers grovel for their rightful rations. When I enter the chow hall, I enter hostile territory. The war consumes me; chow time is never casual dining. The cooks try to shaft me on food; I demand more. Sometimes they cave in; sometimes they don’t. Some days are worse than others. I never know what to expect, and that is the worst part.
Cooks are support. Their purpose in life, their contribution to mission success, is to feed the infantry, the men who actually fight. At Apache, they serve two hot meals a day: breakfast and dinner. Lunch is sandwich meats, processed cheese, and bread. Most of the time, cooking consists of throwing large bags of precooked army rations into boiling water. The cooks also keep the chow hall stocked with cereal, chips, sodas, and other junk foods for off-hours snacking. The Thundercats, the ragtag crew of Iraqi laborers led by the mayor, actually do the stocking and cleaning; the cooks order them around. Every fourth night, a resupply convoy brings food, water, fuel, and other supplies onto Apache. The infantry must provide men to unload the convoy; the cooks order them around, too.
The cooks don’t leave base, wear body armor, or carry their weapons, and it is a rare thing to see them outside. Their free time is spent in their air-conditioned cave lair. The cooks have no desire to do anything beyond the bare minimum. They do nothing to improve the taste of the packaged rations, fail to stock the snack foods, and never serve the infantry with dignity or respect. The cooks don’t address the infantry leaders by rank. Only Command and his minions are treated with obsequious displays of reverence and ample servings of food. They keep the tastiest, choicest food locked in their pantry and refrigerators. The cooks have tender steaks, gourmet freezer pizzas, and other premium foods that the infantrymen will never see.
Time passes, and conditions deteriorate. No matter how bad things are, they only get worse. Breakfast is originally served from seven to nine in the morning, then seven-thirty to nine, then eight. The men are missing meals while the cooks make less food and get to sleep in later. Meanwhile, at dinner the cooks adamantly refuse anyone seconds: “Must have enough food for everyone.” At seven on the dot, all the excess food is thrown into the garbage. Every night, piles of steaming edible food lie in the garbage. Using bizarre Communist logic, the cooks starve individual infantrymen to feed the collective. “No seconds!”
The simplest meal to cook is lasagna. Naturally, it’s the cooks’ favorite, and we can expect it every fourth or fifth night. They burn it, sometimes severely, and the portion cannot be expected to feed a small boy, let alone an infantryman in Iraq. It makes the men sick every time they eat it, but they either suffer in the bathrooms or go hungry. The cooks watch as the Thundercats eat all the lunchtime sandwich meat. Soldiers come back from midday missions and find nothing but scraps. The infantry eat the scraps. Frequently the chow hall is completely barren of any vestige of food. There is no cereal, milk, bread, or even potato chips. I ask the cooks to restock. They ask me, “Why?”
The smart infantryman keeps his mouth shut and does his best not to engender the cooks’ ill will. Once on their bad side, he finds nothing to look forward to but reduced rations and enhanced abuse. We infantry cannot understand how these pogs hold so much power over us. We cannot rationalize our own impotence or our leaders’ unwillingness to do anything about it. The men murmur dissent and share tales of misery and woe. There are plots and sick fantasies of revenge against our oppressors. Our complaints go unheeded by Command. He ignores the commonsensical wisdom that a happy soldier is a well-fed soldier. Why does Command want us hungry? We’re hungry, and our leaders do nothing for us. The infantrymen of Apache are a lowly lot in need of a champion.
* * *
“Sergeant Todd, the men are hungry. Can you ask Command to do something about it?”
“You mean you’re hungry, Goldsmith.”
“Well, yes, but so is everyone else.”
“Calm down, Goldsmith; you’ll survive.”
Nothing. I’m going higher.
“Sir, the men are hungry. Can you do something for us?”
LT knows something I don’t, and just chuckles. No help from the old man, either.
Command leaves the FOB periodically to talk to the infantry leaders on Apache. These little junkets are known as morale surveys. He wants to know how everything is going.
“Any complaints?” Command’s aura demands silence, but a hungry man is unafraid.
“The food at Apache is horrible. The cooks starve us and there’s nothing in the chow hall but junk food. No one does anything—”
Command interrupts me. “Any real complaints?”
“The men are hungry. We’ve repeatedly complained about the cooks, about the food, and nothing is done. It’s all the men talk about. On guard, out on mission, all we think about is how we’d love to torture and brutalize and—”
“That’s enough! If there’s no other business . . .” Everyone else is silent. “. . . then I’m going to get lunch.”
As Command walks off to the chow hall, I can see his thoughts. These soldiers! Always bitching and complaining about something. Why, in my day, we’d be happy if we had a tarp for a chow hall, and a bit of saccharine in our canteen.
He’s lost in his thoughts when he bumps into a soldier standing in front of the refrigerator. It’s Zschlitsky, scraping the mayonnaise-encrusted rim of a metal container for the last scraps of tuna fish. A slab of melted American cheese slices sit in another container. The cheese looks as if it has been ravaged by rats. In desperate attempts to peel off slices, a hundred soldiers have used forks, tongs, and their fingernails to hack and peel away at the block, with limited success. Other metal containers are completely empty.
Command stands behind Zschlitsky and waits, but Command is not accustomed to waiting. Zschlitsky does battle with the cheese cube, and Command’s patience breaks.
“What are you doing with those disgusting scraps of tuna and that hideous block of cheese?”
Zschlitsky doesn’t turn around, so he doesn’t know who is addressing him. “You must be new here.”
“Well, no . . . Soldier, where’s lunch?”
Zschlitsky turns around triumphantly with his spoils: the last dregs of the tuna fish and twenty slivers of American cheese on two slices of stale bread. “What you see is what you get.”
Command declares, “Worst chow hall in Iraq!”
The cooks are assembled and berated behind closed doors. “Things are going to change around here!” Command lays down the law, and, of course, nothing changes. Things only get worse.
My rants and objections are ignored, but I won’t stay quiet. The leaders think it’s funny, that I’ve lost all perspective and am losing my sanity. And they’re right: I am losing my mind. It’s obsessed with the absurdity of the situation and with my all-consuming hatred of the cooks. There’s a sinister purpose behind their attempts to starve us. Someone has to be making money. In the end, it always comes down to money. So who’s in on it? Is Command using our hunger to control us?
I hope Command knows how dangerous this game is, because the men of Apache are close to mutiny. He imagines that we are a beaten lot, but the hungry have nothing to lose, and the man with nothing to lose is a dangerous adversary. Nothing is outrageous; new horrors have been perpetuated and allowed to go unpunished. It is time to change tactics and escalate the war. They have yet to see how far I am willing to go.
* * *
Pigpen, another of Boss Cook’s minions, is serving chow tonight. He is large, fat, pimply, and sloppy. Pigpen wears a perpetual five o’clock shadow and the same greasy, sweat-stained T-shirt. He drips sweat into our food as he serves us one-handed. His other hand clutches a PSP gaming console.
“Hey, sir! How you doing this evening?” The officer in front of me is a pog who shuffles paperwork around all day. “Here you go.” Pigpen deposits two heavy servings of meat and noodles onto the officer’s plate.
When I step up, Pigpen scowls. He moves his ladle to the most burnt and congealed corner of the tray, scoops out a miserly half portion, overturns the ladle, and lets the food drip onto my plate.
I look down at the slop, then stare into piggish eyes. “Give me more.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Give me more food. I’m hungry and I weigh two hundred and thirty pounds. I’ve been kicking down doors and clearing houses all afternoon. This isn’t enough food.”
Boss Cook emerges from the kitchen and stares at me from behind his minion.
“Nothing I can do. You get the same as anyone else.” This is a lie, and the swine knows it. “Now, move along so that the others can get their dinner.”
I don’t move one inch. In the past, the cooks have relied on the masses, the soldiers in line behind me, who groan and laugh and shout to move me along, but not this time. Boss Cook is perturbed by my immobility. He senses some new element tonight, the devil’s trickery, and he is afraid.
“No more? Okay.” With one giant swipe, I shove every bit of food on my tray into my mouth. I’m chewing vigorously as I leave Pigpen at the serving line.
“Boy! That was good!” Most of the soldiers in the crowded chow hall are watching me. I drop my empty tray and start aggressively panhandling food. I become a vulture.
“Done with that?”
“You don’t want that piece of chicken? Can I have it?”
“Excuse me, Sergeant, but those noodles look delicious.”
Any scrap of food, no matter how small, gnawed on, laced with salvia, or crusted over with burnt sauce, belongs to me. I don’t discriminate. I bum scraps off of private, sergeant, and officer alike. Every eye is riveted on me now.
The infantry are blessed with the presence of a female in the chow hall tonight. She doesn’t like my antics and is about to dump her half-eaten dinner into the garbage cans. “Are you done with that? Do you mind if I . . .” Her disgust is obvious when she shoves her tray at me. I smile gleefully as I eat her leavings. In this bizarre, sexless world, this is rape. Command’s minions mutter, “This is disgraceful.” The hungry soldiers laugh and cheer me on. And I’m not done yet.
I ate my original dinner in five seconds and demolished the scraps of a half-dozen soldiers, but the monster is still hungry. My eyes alight on the garbage cans. “I don’t know what it is”—I direct my booming voice towards Boss Cook himself—“but I’m still hungry!” I plunge into the refuse. Digging past the surface layer, I rummage around in the deep until I grasp something substantial. As I gorge on the discarded remains, I start feeling bad about eating so much while the others go hungry. “Anyone else want any? This is some fine eating!” Nobody joins in, so I pile some trash food onto a plate and bring it over to a table.
Hunter calls out, “You still hungry, Goldie?”
“Nah, kind of full now. Probably finish this and pack it in for the night.” The impotent rage, all the questions and suspicions of the infantrymen, are channeled into laughter. The men cheer while the cooks are silent, and for the first time, they know fear.
* * *
“You shouldn’t eat out of the garbage, Goldsmith.”
“But I’m hungry.” There had been a few more incidents. Last night I ate six tough horse steaks, three of them out of the garbage.
The mayor sighs. “I know you are, I know.” The mayor sympathizes with the common infantrymen of Apache.
“What do you want me to do, submit?”
The Mayor glances furtively to his left, then his right. The chow hall is nearly deserted, but we still speak in subdued tones over the morning’s breakfast: crunchy neon-yellow eggs, hardtack biscuits, and pigeon gravy. “The shipment of protein shakes came in last night.”
“Those actually exist? I’ve only heard rumors.”
“Oh, they exist.” The mayor reaches into his pocket and pulls out an aluminum can. It’s shorter and wider than a normal can of soda. “Try one.”
The can is heavy with the promise of goodness, and I’m trembling.
“Go ahead, take a sip.”
I pop open the top, and a heavenly scent wafts upward. When I tip the can back my mouth is flooded with thick, sweet, substantial vanilla syrup.
“Delicious! Where’d you get it?”
“I have my ways. I have a case of twenty-four in my room right now.” The mayor is powerful, connected.
“So there are a lot of these. Are they going to put them out in the chow hall?”
“There are a lot of shakes. Command has a case, too. The cooks have the rest.”
“The cooks! Then . . .”
“Yeah, the men will never see them.”
“Fucking bastards, I outta butcher the whole lot of them—do everyone a huge favor.”
“Goldsmith, you want your own case?”
“What . . . how?”
“I have the combination to the cooks’ storage room.”
The mayor fills me in on the details as we pack up our trays and walk out the chow hall.
“Give these away to the guys.” The mayor hands me a couple of shakes. “Now you shouldn’t have to eat out of the trash anymore.”
“No matter how hungry or how full I am, it’s my solemn duty to protest. I don’t eat out of the garbage because I want too; I eat out of the garbage on principle.”
* * *
At three in the morning, Combat Outpost Apache is empty. Men come in and out of red-eye patrols, but they’re either going out in sector, or returning and going straight to sleep. I strip the name and rank from my uniform, put a black cap on, and repeat the lock’s combination as I lace up my combat boots. I’m travelling light; I have no weapon and I’m going alone.
The storage room is behind the chow hall. I’ve never been here before, so I take my time tiptoeing through the gravel. A loud creaking sound makes me pause, and notice I’m breathing hard. Calm . . . calm down . . . I feel more tension and adrenaline now than on any raid I’ve been on in months. Unlike our operations out in sector, this means something. It’s the best feeling I’ve had in months.
The door and the combination lock are just as the mayor described them. Punching in the combination, I half expect it not to work, but the mayor knows everything, and the door swings open with a screech.
The lights are on! Are the cooks up at this hour? I crouch down and sit perfectly still. I’m all right; there’s no one amid the shelves of food. There are amazing foodstuffs inside, things never seen in the chow hall: blue Gatorades, coffee drinks, marshmallows, and all manner of canned and dried foods. Failure confronts me when I can’t locate the shakes, but then I find them right by the door. Glorious heavenly bounty! Cases of protein shakes are stacked to the height of my shoulders. I shuttle one case outside, then another, close the door, and I’m gone.
The first raid is a total success, and more follow. Eager soldiers go on raids with me; I reveal the combination to others and trust them to do it themselves. Few have the requisite courage to go through with the operation. The cooks realize they are getting robbed, but they don’t want to publicly admit to hoarding. Periodically, they move the shakes from place to place, but to little effect. I have a system in place, and I have spies.
The infantrymen selected for resupply duty work closely with the cooks. They hate the cooks as much as I do. They report to me every time a new shipment of shakes arrives. I steal cases and kick them back a few cans for the information. I’m always rich in shakes. I give them away to friends and tell everyone how I got them. The protein shakes become highly visible on Apache. Everyone knows they exist, and the cooks have no choice but to throw a few token cases into the chow hall every couple days.
The protein shake raids liberate me from the garbage cans. They satisfy my hunger, my thirst for meaningful adventure, and my obligation to strike at my enemy. All of a sudden, it doesn’t matter that the cooks deprive me of food—I make up the calories with my new liquid diet. They get no complaint from me, and they hate it. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, and the cooks know it. The shooting war cools, but the hatred remains.
* * *
Back from the morning’s mission, and I have only one thing on my mind: cold-cut sandwiches washed down with a protein shake. There is no fear as I step through the door of the chow hall—the age of hunger and tyranny is over, and the cooks are rarely around during lunch.
But today they’re all assembled. Pigpen sweeps as Quasimodo and Boss Cook stand around and bullshit. They ignore me when I walk in, even though we have the place to ourselves. I stride over to the refrigerators, only to become extremely annoyed. There’s no meat.
“Hey!” There’s no anger, no commanding tone in my voice, simply energetic curiosity. “Isn’t it time to put out the meat?” It should’ve been out fifteen minutes ago.
Silence for a moment before Pigpen answers me: “We have to finish putting up these tables.” A few tables are collapsed in the corner. Quasimodo and Boss Cook continue doing nothing.
“Well, it’s lunchtime.” I’m cool, I don’t want a battle today, just a sandwich.
“Hey, Sar-gent!” Anger and backwoods righteousness surge through Boss Cook’s bumpkin speech. “It’ll be out when we’re done.”
Not today. I will not be frustrated. Boss Cook’s outburst has given birth to wrath. I am in no mood to take this pog’s nonsense. “How hard is it to grab the meat? Where is it? I’ll put it out.”
Pigpen stops sweeping, and even Quasimodo casts his hateful eyes downward. Boss’s authority has been challenged; events are steadily building toward the point of no return.
“I say once, and I say again: it will be put out when we’re good and ready! Roger that!”
“No! It’s lunchtime. Put out the goddamn meat!” All protocol goes out the window. I don’t care anymore. My speech is guttural, more animal than human. Draw, coward!
“At ease yourself, Sar-gent!” Boss Cook’s slow drawl seethes with ignorant fury.
“Look, my men and I have been out all day. You are support. Your job is to support me. FEED ME!” The argument attracts a small crowd of onlookers. The mayor is among them. I can hear his voice.
“Calm down, Goldsmith. Just get out of here. Walk away.”
I hear the words, but they have no effect. “No! I’m sick of this. This is their job. Fucking pogs! I’ve been out running combat patrols—”
“Don’ tell me about runnin’ no combat patrols!” I wait for elaboration, curious what this pog is going to say. But I’m disappointed. “I . . . I will cut your neck with a Skilsaw!”
The mayor, the lone voice of reason, continues to exhort me. “Get out of here, Goldsmith. You hear me, walk away. Come back later.”
Violently pacing, fists clenched, and shaking uncontrollably, I stare down Boss Cook. His face is red and he’s also shaking. In all the world, there are only me, Boss Cook, and the voice of the mayor: “Get out of here; walk away.” My muscles are tensed. Unless he backs down and runs out of the room, I’m going to indulge in extreme violence. I’m going to rip Boss Cook’s face off.
“Just leave, Goldsmith!” The words are final and scream authority; they reach me.
“Fucking pog!” I give in and allow the mayor to walk me out the chow hall. In my violent shouting match with Boss Cook, I have stepped over the line. He is a cook. I am infantry, yes, but he outranks me. I have powerful friends, but I have also openly defied ironclad rules of military etiquette. Apprehension replaces anger when I run into LT.
He’s laughing hysterically. “Yeah! You told him, Goldsmith!”
I can’t speak; rage has divorced mind from tongue. But LT’s words let me know there will be no trouble. The mayor and LT calm me down and restore my sanity. The first sensation to replace anger is hunger. I want a sandwich.
I walk calmly back into the chow hall. The sandwich meat is out. Pigpen and Quasimodo sweep, and Boss Cook watches them silently. He looks tired. I make my sandwiches methodically and spare nothing. They are the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. They taste savory, richly satisfying, and well earned, just as if I had hunted the meat myself.
* * *
The skirmish is over, but the war continues. There are more shake raids, and the cooks continue to deprive me of my rightful rations. Until the day I leave for America, I eat food ladled out to me by my bitterest enemies. I know murderous fury, the rage required to strike down my fellow man. Their hoarding and denial of food was without cause or reason—traitorous, sinister, and unforgivable. The cooks had cold and evil hearts. I have no lasting animosity towards the Iraqi insurgent enemy. I understand the motivation and courage of the men who bombed me, shot at me, and tried their best to kill my friends and me in legitimate and honorable warfare. The cooks: Quasimodo, Pigpen, and, most of all, Boss Cook, have no such understanding from me.
The war is not over.