RESURGENCE

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The general walked over to the couch and lay on it with his shoes on. He closed his eyes and the memory from the Iraq war came rushing back to him. Long before he became a general, Kurt Penn was a regular soldier stationed in Iraq to help America destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Tonight, he felt a similar chill in his bones as he had felt on a hot August afternoon in Iraq about thirty years ago. 

He recalled the life changing event: 

He was sitting by himself in the corner of the big tent where hundreds of soldiers were eating lunch and enjoying the luxury of shade. He had just finished eating his meal of prime rib, mushroom soup, and steamed broccoli. The only thing left on his plate was an apple pie for dessert. As he ate the pie, his mind flew back to his favorite bar in Philadelphia. He longed for the bar’s special hamburger with bacon, caramelized onions, and mushrooms. Out here in the war zone, even though the cooks tried their best, the food never tasted as good as back home; it lacked the scent of American soil. He had programmed himself to think of food as just an energy source, which enabled him to walk and lift his gun to shoot if necessary. 

A thought crossed his mind, and he saw his favorite sandy beach with his friends sitting around a bonfire. Someone was playing a guitar as pretty girls danced around the fire. He tried to block the nostalgia out of his mind and broke that vision. The afternoon sun combined with negligible breeze had made him very thirsty. He got up and walked to the water cooler on the opposite side of the tent. A familiar feeling of dread surfaced in his heart—something he had experienced the day Jake was killed by a suicide bomber. Jake, his best buddy during the war in that hellish country, had often talked about liberating the people of Iraq. It was one of those misguided Iraqis with a belt of explosives and a twisted perception of freedom, who blew Jake and eleven others to pieces. After that day, he stopped believing that those people could wrap their heads around the concept of freedom and liberty. The idea of enlightening and educating the Iraqi people to see the endless possibilities of democracy faded away from his mind. He firmly believed that the sooner America captured the Iraqi nukes and got out of there, the better it was for everybody. He longed to go home and kiss his country’s soil and knew it would taste rich, sweet, and heavenly. He longed to see strangers smiling at him and him smiling back. He tried not to think about freedom or peace or love, but often failed miserably to do so.

He slowly made his way across the tent and quenched his thirst with a big, cold glass of water. The feeling of dread kept getting stronger by the minute, and he couldn’t find any reason behind it. He looked around and saw about two hundred soldiers enjoying lunch under the tent, and suddenly realized that his hand was on his handgun.

I’m going nuts, he thought. I’m not psychologically fit to serve in the war any longer. I should quit and go home and let someone fresh and enthusiastic take my place and save the world. I could go live in the country and be a farmer and write poetry about life, nature, freedom, love and death. I could write about death, and more death, and more death, and people would still love it. I should go see a doctor. A doctor might fix my head.

He took a deep breath and and slowly made his way to the kitchen, which was at about a distance of thirty yards from the tent. He circled the kitchen twice but wasn’t sure of what he was looking for. Suddenly, he felt a clarity to his thinking, as if the fog had been lifted. An Iraqi man dressed up as a soldier was walking towards the lunch tent. 

Is he an Iraqi? he thought. I don’t know.

With each step the Iraqi man took, an unsettling feeling of panic stirred in Kurt Penn. Before he knew it, he had drawn his handgun out and was taking aim. He fired. The bullet hit the Iraqi man in the head and the lifeless body hit the ground with a thud.

Kurt Penn was honored for preventing the most deadly suicide bombing attack of the war. If he had not shot that man, scores of soldiers would have died and hundreds wounded. A medal and a promotion later, Kurt Penn spent eighteen more months in Iraq.

He woke up from his dream with sweat all over his forehead. He got up and drank a glass of water. The feeling of dread was as strong as he had felt on that fateful day in Iraq.