When the smartest, most virtuous of your three brothers goes off to war, you do a lot more talking to family members than usual, you do a lot more staring into the middle distance at nothing, and you make a couple Google alerts. A Facebook page devoted to the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division—which he’s in—keeps posting new photos of guys standing around in the desert in Kuwait, training, acclimating, getting used to the terrain, and when you know one of the guys in those photos is your brother you spend a long time staring at all those heads, trying to find him. Still haven’t found him in any of the photos, and he still hasn’t updated his Facebook status since he left, but the other day he sent an email to Dad:
Hey Dad it’s Mike,
I guess this Email works out here too. Thank god cause the internet is slow and it takes forever to login to my Army Online Account. Anyway, I arrived safe and I should be here in Kuwait for another week or two. They are slowing moving guys from our company up to Iraq and I’m not quite sure when I’m going.
Well….it’s really hot out here. Hot enough where you don’t even want to leave your tent to go to the bath room, let alone for to the dining facility. Meals have been missed on account of weather. It also doesn’t help that everything seems to be about a mile walk from the sleeping tents. There’s a lot of sand that gets picked up in the wind so the sky looks polluted all the time. I haven’t seen blue sky since I’ve been here. I have seen camels and desert with absolutely no vegetation whatsoever.
Well, my time is almost up for the internet so I’ll tell you more later. I’m keeping a journal too. Anyway, I love you and if you could forward the love to the rest of the family…especially mom. Love you guys!
Love Mike
Strange to imagine a soldier out in a tent in sandy Kuwait on his laptop, but that is the scene. Here’s another picture from the Facebook page. None of them is my brother. Except possibly the guy in the very back on the right. Pretty hard to tell.
Glad that you heard from him… that last picture made me think, do many soldiers bring their own laptops? I guess that’s a little surprising to me — both that they let them (though, I wouldn’t see why not) and just logistically (will they bring them along when they go to Iraq? What if they’re going somewhere where excess stuff is a liability?).
that must be so hard and frustrating and scary. hugs.
That’s got to be hard to see so many people and know that one of them’s your brother but not know which one. Props to your brother for serving. Hugs to you and your family while you sweat out worrying about him.
perhaps the editor of the stranger should keep his personal life on his personal blog and refrain from mundane updates on, what is for most people, a random soldier.
@5
Perhaps the reader of the slog should read something else.
@6
is this not the stranger’s blog and not frizzelle’s blog?
@5 &7: Frizzelle is part of the Stranger’s staff and this is a community of people who interact on a daily basis, some of us for the past few years. His brother is involved in the war, which is part of the news, and the intersection of the two (personal and political) is a good angle. It’s not only valid Slogging, it’s good journalism in that it may make people re-think the situation. If you don’t want to read it, scroll past.
Yay for the 1st A.D.!!! My old division… too bad they’re stuck in that sandy shit hole.
@5 & 7,
It’s not like he’s talking about his laundry or washing the dishes. The wars are an interesting topic, Frizzelle happens to have a personal stake, so why shouldn’t he talk about it?
Creeping jesus, your poor brother. Ugh. I really hope this works out for whatever he’s got in mind.
@8
i can accept your explanation of the intersection being blurred especially in this format. however, i would like you to explain how you think this will make people ‘re-think’ the situation. what are your assumptions of the stranger’s reader’s opinions and what is this post illuminating?
you are correct that i should scroll past, i have been doing it for years regarding his brother and the buildup/execution to/of the war. but this post was particularly irking, i mean he informs us of a new photo but he can’t even identify which is his brother. surely i’m not the only one who finds this baffling. also, i’m aware i’m giving this more energy than may be needed but again this has been brewing in me for some time.
thanks for response.
it’s easy to dismiss the individual stories of our soldiers because there are so, so many of them, and maybe some people feel like by focusing on just one at a time we miss the bigger picture. Too many people don’t care or want to know about the mundane, soul crushing realities of being out there. They imagine it’s all big exciting explosions and thrilling rescues. While there’s definitely a fair amount of that, there’s also a bunch of waiting around in tents, pissing into gatorade bottles because you can’t get out of the tank even though you’ve been sitting there with no action for hours, sitting in a 110+ degree trailer waiting for ridiculously slow internet connection, and so forth. It’s a lot of sand and piss and garbage and waiting, waiting, waiting.
To quantify: My fiancee was in the army and was part of the surge. I had never known or dated an Army man before. During his 15 months in Baghdad he sent e-mails, pictures and letters describing everything he saw and did out there. I felt a lot like the author of this blog post did. I studied every picture, trying to soak in every little detail, because the man I loved was in this environment that I knew absolutely nothing about. A few months after he finally came home, we had a party with some of his army buddies and after a lot of drinking, they started opening up and talking about their experiences, shared or otherwise. Much of what they talked about are things that millions of other soldiers went through, but for me that doesn’t make it less important. The experience of each person is unique and deserves to be heard, if the soldier (or family member) wants to talk about it. I think Frizzelle is sharing a perspective that also deserves to be heard: A person who is maybe not super pumped about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but DOES love their brother, who is over there, and wants to understand what their loved one is going through.
I hope I expressed myself clearly.
Isn’t it strange to be receiving updates like this, Chris? When my friend was in Iraq for his second tour (he’s currently serving tour #4) he started sending lots of pictures, posting them to his myspace, sending videos. It’s kinda strange. Supposedly, television coverage of the Vietnam war made it more personal and brought it into people’s living rooms. So what are we to make of all this first-person footage we get from our friends? Apparently #5 doesn’t think first person reporting from Iraq is anything new, but I find it incredibly interesting.
Thanks for the update Christopher, I have been wondering about your brother since your last post and I appreciate you keeping us all in the loop so to speak… Glad to hear he is okay.
5
7
What’s your problem?
It’s no more boring that the rest of the shit that gets posted.
@11: Instead of looking at a band of faceless soldiers, we look at that picture and remember that not all soldiers are redneck fucktards blaring Drowning Pool out of their Humvee while taking potshots at dogs and Iraqi civilians. Not only is Frizzelle’s brother over there, so is my cousin, my brother’s best friend, and probably quite a few Sloggers have friends or relatives in the service.
Maybe re-think isn’t the right word, maybe re-consider or reflect are better. His posts make me remember and reflect on what these people I (and others) know are willingly going through.
@13
re: “Frizzelle is sharing a perspective that also deserves to be heard: A person who is maybe not super pumped about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,”
“If there’s one message I’d like to send to all the liberal pussies (and penises) out there, that’s it: Let the military do its job.”…”I don’t have any information about the war’s impact on the environment or women’s rights or the production of oil. I don’t know the first thing about the Turks versus the Kurds, or France versus us; and I am skeptical, hopeful, and in the dark about our president’s commitment to nation building. I’m not the guy to see about geopolitical consequences.”…”if Iraq turns out to be an unconquerable quagmire, I might regret writing this, too.”
from: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Conte…
@16
see post #18
@17
“that not all soldiers are redneck fucktards”
of course not, i’m not generalizing here.
jessica @ 17, the individual humanity of soldiers does not change the fact that they are pawns in a foolish, brutal, illegal attempt to cling to our global hegemony. and pawns is generous. there is no noble cause there, anyone with a modicum of awareness has know this for 6 years, yet they volunteered, and volunteer to remain in the service of empire, anyway.
i don’t want any of them to die. i don’t want any of them there. but i’m not going to get misty about their hellhole of a training base, or flag-wavy about their illegal war crime of a mission.
Did someone say redneck fucktards?!
eeehaaa!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzbdY_rPt…
Thanks for the update on your brother. I’m glad to hear he is okay.
@18
Pardon my language. “Super pumped” was not a respectful way to describe a person’s feelings on the wars. I had a lot of trouble reconciling my own feelings about them when I fell in love with a soldier.
Well said Jessica. And I am glad to hear your brother is still in Kuiwait and doing well, Christopher.
@meh: Personal war stories are very interesting, and many people here are very happy to hear about Christophers brother. You obviously don’t know anyone in service to make the flippant bullshit comments you have made on this thread. Just sayin.
@25
actually i do, i have a cousin who served two tours in iraq. i come from a military family – uncle & grandfather. being flippant about chris’ posting doesn’t mean i’m disrespecting anyone but chris. fyi
I’m not quite sure what’s uninteresting about a “here’s a letter from someone I know describing what it’s like in Kuwait” post. I definitely enjoy getting the perspective from both Chris and his brother. I finally got around to reading Jarhead, and the “what’s it like to be a soldier, particularly in a modern war” aspect was completely fascinating.
If you’re not interested, then skip it, like most everyone does with certain authors/topics on this blog. It’s kind of weird to complain about it in the comments…
This is why sometimes I don’t want to watch the BBC or CBC coverage of Afghanistan, cause I might see one of my friends get blown up.
On behalf of the rest of us, thank your brother on our behalf.
It’s a shame he’s with the 1st AD and not the 101st Abn. When I was withthem every day was puncuated with hot chicks, cool air conditioning and $1 beer nights at the local live music bar.
Nah, just kidding. It kinda sucked. Good luck in the big kitty litter box!