The last thing Stoner said to me was, “I’ll see you in Iraq.” I don’t look forward to seeing him there or in any other combat situation. Iraq doesn’t scare me. Stoner does.
We ended up being in the same squad at the 2004 ROTC Training Camp: Stone and Stoner in bunks next to each other. No surprise.
I saw at once that he was gung-ho. I watched how he cleaned his gear that first night and tried to follow his lead. That is, until he made his bunk. His bunk was beautifully made. Tightly tucked and all that. But I didn’t see the point. I was going to lie on my bunk when all my gear was set.
Not Stoner. At about half past midnight that first night, he lay down on the concrete floor in his camouflage skivvies and went to sleep. That was too much for me. I slept on my bunk.
We were up before reveille. Want to guess why? Frigging Cadet Stoner was wiping the top of his metal locker with paper towels. He woke up the whole squad moving around. But we all learned from him. We got wet paper towels and cleaned. I even wiped the floor under my bunk.
It was Stoner who gave me my nickname for the summer. We were waiting for our physical that first morning and swapping stories. I guess I was talking too loudly, or something. Anyway, I didn’t hear when they called my name. That was when Stoner gave me my label: “Rock! They’re ready for you to show us what you’ve got!” I gave him the finger and went to do my turn with the drop-your-drawers routine. I was Rock for the rest of the camp.
I didn’t think Rock was very creative.
That’s the way it started. Over and over, that first week, Stoner seemed to set his sights on me. He was sharp, but I decided I had good reason to be wary of him.
The first Wednesday night was the last night he tucked his bunk and slept on the floor. Wasn’t his decision to sleep on the bunk. It was pretty simple. We were issued rifles on Thursday and told there would be bed checks on some random schedule to be sure we were sleeping with our rifles. I wanted to harass him about his change, but I didn’t.
We had the morning off on Sunday, July 4. Stoner was the first one to stir. I lay still and listened. He started polishing his boots. Two others got up: Suggs and Stims. What the hell. I did too. It was kind of funny in retrospect: the four of us sitting there in our skivvies polishing our boots and talking just a little above a whisper.
Suggs asked if we thought we’d be in Iraq next summer. I looked at him, wondering how naïve he could be. “Hell, yes. Iraq is going to be our little war.”
Stoner stopped polishing and glared at me.
“What? Don’t you think so?” I asked.
“Look, Lame Brain.” He whispered. “There is an election this fall. Don’t you read the papers? Dubya is not going to let us enter an election with a war going on. That bastard Saddam will go to trial, the Iraq people are going to celebrate the end of the dictator’s reign, and the Army will be coming home.”
“You hope.” That was my response.
Stims startled us. “I hope it’s over. I’d rather not leave my wife and child and go to war.”
That knocked me over. We’d been together for two weeks through all kinds of things and he’d never said he was married.
“You’re married?” Suggs grinned, “What’s it like being married? I mean, sleeping with a girl every night?"
Simm had our attention. "First thing you should know is that you sleep with the same girl every night. That got us to laughing quietly. "Second, he went on, "Let me say that it's better than sleeping with a rifle."
The guy had a damn sense of humor.
“Finally, I have not had long enough to really know the answer to your question. Check with me … when we meet in Iraq.”
Suggs couldn’t leave it alone. “What about you, Stoner? I know Rock has a girl. Her letter comes in the Thursday mail.”
“My girl’s in school out in California,” Stoner responded.
“That’s no good, man.” Suggs couldn’t shut up his crap. “You can’t be shacking up by long distance.”
Stoner didn’t like this inquiry. Me neither, for that matter.
“So, what about you, Rock? How deep are you into that girl you write?”
“Cadet Suggs. Let me tell you a valuable lesson my mother taught me when I was nine years old. My family was about to move to another state and I had just kissed my first girl. I bragged about it to my mother.” I stopped polishing and gave Suggs my best who-raised-you look. “She told me that real men don’t kiss and tell. I decided she was right. So, I say to you: leave it alone!”
He just laughed and summarized his findings, “So, one married, one roaming, and two virgins.”
“For all you know,” I responded.
We must have been talking too loudly. Someone yelled for the four horny boot polishers to pipe down. Well, he actually said something else we should do, but let that lie.
Stoner pushed his boots under his bed, lined up just right. He pulled some running shoes from the bottom of his footlocker and, talking to no one in particular, ended the conversation this way: “I’m going running five miles or so. When I get back, I’m going to dress and go to the eight o’clock chapel services.”
He was pulling on his running shorts when he looked at Suggs. “It seems we have one asshole in the platoon who is going to compose the Kinsey Report for First Squad, Third Platoon, Company C.”
The three of us leaned over to watch the disappearing figure - barefoot, carrying his shoes, and out for a run. While I didn’t particularly like Stoner, I admired him.
In fact, I decided to get my gear and go catch him on the run. Didn’t help. Stoner was hard to make friends with.
He first began to scare me after I shot so well on the rifle range. I guess it surprised the cadre and maybe even me. I grew up on a farm, so I had a little experience with a rifle. With this M1 rifle, you make a few clicks for distance, a little allowance for wind, and then get three dots in a line. Hold your breath and pull the trigger so slowly that even you are surprised when the damn thing fires.
I was asked if I was interested in being assigned to a sniper unit in Iraq the next summer. “Sure.” That got me a good bit of attention from the cadre, as well as from the students.
Stoner was clearing his plate after dinner a few nights later at the same time as I was. "Yu know why the officers like you, don't you?" he asked I waited for his answer.
If I had a lineup of the guys in the platoon and was told one of them would be made an assassin, I'd pick you as the one."
"Really," I was stunned. “And, how come anybody would pick me out as an assassin just by looking at me?”
“It fits with your demeanor and if they hung around you much longer, they’d be sure.”
I shot back at him, “With your bunk so close to mine, it’s a wonder you can sleep at night.”
He stood there glaring at me. There was no smile on his face when he answered. “Maybe I’ll follow our President’s example and choose a preemptive strike.”
I looked around and was happy to see that Suggs was hearing all this.
“Look,” I challenged. “Why don’t you and I agree to meet off Post next Sunday morning and settle this face-to-face?”
Stoner just turned and walked away.
Guys in the same squad ought to be buddies, to watch out for each other. Not me and Stoner. We were competitors to the end.
The cadre had put up two guys from each platoon in a competition for the outstanding cadet from the entire summer camp. Both Stoner and I were chosen from our platoon.
Eighteen of us were grilled all morning that last Thursday. After a full morning, ten made the cut. It was an icy stare I got from Stoner when my name was called before his. He took no pleasure that we both made the cut.
The scheduled was for us to appear before the panel again at one thirty. I was going up to our barracks to relax after lunch, and there was Stoner in the Headquarters Office. He was standing before an ironing board in his underwear as he pressed his shirt and pants. I figured that was probably a good idea. When he came up to our area, I went down to press my stuff.
Our cadre officer, Major Madigan, came in just as I was tucking in my freshly ironed shirt. “Turn around. Let me see how you look,” he said.
He looked me up and down and then shook his head. “If you win this, it will be on your personality, Mr. Stone. Because, you look like shit!”
“Sir. Thank you, Sir.” I responded, turned sharply and left. “Bastard,” I thought to myself.
Sadly, it was true. My clothes hung on me after missing so many meals during bivouac the previous week. The regulation issue shirt was gathered at the waist in wrinkles. Even the pants seemed too big.
I was still muttering to myself as Stoner walked by on the way to the room where the last interviews would be held. He didn’t pause, but I jogged and caught up with him.
I tried to be relaxed. “I’d rather go with the others to the Post pool for a swim.”
He smiled. “Why don’t you request it?”
I kind of laughed. “I might as well. Major Madigan has already told me I look like shit.”
That stopped him. He turned to me just before we started up the steps to the Battalion Headquarters Building. “Good man, Major Madigan.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered.
The ten of us sat in a line with a half dozen officers behind a row of tables in front of us. They grilled us some more. The questions were not on tactics or military maneuvers such as the morning’s had been. Now, all the questions were about current events, public policy, and global strategy.
Because we were in alphabetical order, Stoner was next to me. He was asked what his opinion was of re-instating the draft. He argued that the military had shown it was perfectly qualified to handle the War on Terror which is being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We don’t need a draft,” he said. “The current Army is capable of taking care of the terrorist.”
I knew he had screwed up. Stoner’s position was the position of the Secretary of Defense and of the Commander-in-Chief, and it was clear that we were able to win the war with the troop level we had. But most professional military officers thought that our troop level would be woefully inadequate to keep the peace. “Keep the peace” was the key.
So, I took the risk: I interrupted before the officers could ask the next question. I volunteered that I did not concur. That got silence. I could feel the shock coming from the other cadets because I had broken the procedure.
I was told to continue.
I talked about the problems that will incur when units get circulated back to Iraq after one or two tours. I talked about the importance of having the civilians in the States to think of the soldiers as their sons and daughters, not just someone else’s sons fighting over there. I ended by saying that if this is a war, then we all need to act like we are a nation at war and to decide that, just as the soldiers are called upon to sacrifice, so the American people must be willing to sacrifice.
They liked it.
After the interviews were over, we finalists joined the other cadets at the Post pool. I was in the water horsing around with guys from the platoon when a Lieutenant Colonel came into the area. He quieted everyone down and, when everyone was still, he announced that I had been selected as the top cadet at the 2004 Summer Camp. I was speechless. For a few minutes there, however, I thought I would not be able to accept the award because the guys around me were holding me under the water so long.
On Friday morning, we had our last parade and some colonel from the Post Commander’s Staff pinned a ribbon on me. Afterwards, we were bussed to a lake for a hamburger cook-out lunch. Somebody started the chant to throw me in the lake: “Throw the Rock! In the lake! Throw the Rock! In the lake!”
I pleaded for them not to get my new ribbon wet, so they stripped me before they threw me in. I figured some of the officers thought my buddies throwing me in naked was fun and appropriate. And other didn’t like the lack of decorum. But they weren’t going to be a prude before their comrades. The female cadets? They were either use to it, or would soon be.
Of course, Stoner had to get his last lick. When I was walking back up out of the lake, I saw my shirt and boots sprawled on the ground. Stoner was standing near the grill holding my socks and t-shirt. As I walked toward him, he dropped the pieces along with what was already on the grill, one by one. The buckle for the belt that had been in my pants had started to melt.
He didn’t get the laugh he might have expected. Everyone who saw what was happening just stood there. Stunned, I guess. Wondering what I was going to do. Even the cadre was watching.
My first impulse was to beat the shit out of him. Then, I got rational.
I turned my back to Stoner and my smoldering clothes, raised my hands over my head, and called out: “This is no time to settle scores. It’s time for us to celebrate. We have finished our test! Our battle is over there … over there across the ocean.” I’ll admit I was pretty animated standing there before God and country as bare as when I came into this world. “A year from now, most of us will be in Iraq. And by God, we’ll show them who’s got balls!”
They laughed, and then the laughter turned to a cheer. It was a cheer to celebrate the comradeship that we had forged by taking what the cadre had dished out. At that moment, if someone had produced an airplane and offered to take us to Iraq, we would have gone without a second thought.
It was Stims who brought some boxer shorts. “Good show, man!” He laughed. “Bare ass and all.”
The bus ride back to the barracks was loud and rowdy. We were drunk … drunk more with the satisfaction we had with ourselves than with the low alcohol beer we had consumed at the cookout.
Major Madigan was standing at the steps to the barracks when we got there. He extended his hand and greeted me, “Congratulations, Mr. Stone.”
I took one step back, saluted, and shook his hand, “Thank you, Sir.”
Stoner? The only thing he said to me during the thirty-six hours we had left on that Post was the promise as he passed my bunk that evening. “See you in Iraq.” That’s all. I took it to be a warning.