My Vietnam

A Soldier in Iraq Shares His Thoughts: My Vietnam
by Zachary Scott-Singley

Looking out of my Humvee window I realized that this was my Vietnam. We were finally made it to the Euphrates and it was like a jungle to me after being in the desert for weeks. Things were quiet as we stopped for the night before crossing a bridge where some of my unit had been ambushed the day before. Sleep came quickly after so many hours of vigilance.

We woke to the sun and baking heat and I decided that I had time to change my essentials (underwear, socks, and shirt). Sitting back inside my canvas Humvee we were waiting for the call to proceed north across the bridge and into Baghdad.

Baghdad, we were finally going to get there after so many days of fighting and driving. The lush vegetation had its own voice, much different than the harsh desert. Sitting there listening to the sounds around me I was hit by that thought, this was my Vietnam, and it was punctuated by an explosion overhead.

The sounds around me changed from those of life to the screech of war and death. For a split second I hesitated and then it struck me, the absurdity of it all. I was sitting under a canvas roof, and I realized that I had to get out of my truck and take cover. Running with my rifle as death rained down from above time seemed to slow…

I focused on a large heavy equipment truck (HET) that was to my right. Without regard to my body I slammed into the ground under the engine block of that vehicle and looked franticly around trying to see where it was coming from. All I could see were the grasses and palm trees which looked so lush and inviting minutes before staring back at me full of shadows and hiding places.

They could be anywhere I thought as explosions continued to hammer the ground around me. This is it, I am going to die, it kept running through my head like the ticker at the bottom of the news, but it was more of a buzzing annoyance than an actual thought. Then like that it was over. Only a few seconds had passed but those seconds were stretched into an eternity in my mind.

After a few minutes we started to get up and look around, in front of me one of the soldiers from my platoon was yelling, “Holy shit, they are going to kill me.” Yet he held his ground and kept looking for an enemy to shoot at. I was glad that even thought he was afraid he was still functioning, not locked up in his fear letting it consume him like I had seen it do to some. And like that it was over, we were alive and that buzzing in my head, “you are going to die,” turned off, looking back at the truck I hid under I saw that behind the cab was a giant fuel tank. The absurdity of it all hit me, I had been hiding under a fuel truck carrying over 500 gallons of diesel.

About an hour later we proceeded across the bridge, another day closer to Baghdad, another day closer to going home.

Occupation of the Grass

How do you occupy a piece of land without causing some kind of strife? Take something as simple as standing on the grass. If you simply occupy your spot for a few minutes you have probably already killed at least a couple blades of grass. The patch of grass as a whole will survive no problem but if you do something more intrusive like place a child’’s swimming pool on the grass for a weekend you will find that you have almost killed an entire area of grass, however, with proper care you can still make that section live.

My point is that Iraq is like that patch of grass with our soldiers occupying it. We are beginning to get to the point of no return. I believe that a good sign of that point being reached is that we are on the brink of full scale civil war. Our occupation is killing Iraq and soon there will be no quick fixing of the damage we have caused there. Damage which is continuing to be done because we refuse to get off that piece of grass and as we stand there it dies more each day.

It will not be a quick end. It will be like an animal dying slowly of disease, an animal which doesn’t even realize that it is going to die until it is too late to do anything but let it go. At which point do we come to our senses and stop killing Iraq with our helping efforts?

Zachary Scott-Singley is a soldier currently serving in Iraq. He is a SGT in the 3rd Infantry Division (and an Arabic translator).