[From Max]

There is no safe place here. The threat is underfoot. It’s in the ground. It’s in the walls.

The body is thrown clear. Torso one way. Legs another. Both legs and the near-side arm. That’s the trifecta. Everyone else is knocked flat, or knocked out. Burned. Peppered with shrapnel.

Insurgents hear the blast and come running, swinging AKs and PKMs.

The night passed quickly, and I was getting ready for shift change when the phone rang. I heard urgent voices in the background.

“What’s up?”

One ANSF down. Dismounted IED strike. Triple amputee. I breathed a small sigh of relief the moment I realized it wasn’t an American. We rushed to get the MEDEVAC request processed.

It was a tense moment, but we made efficient work of it. I woke up the head shed and quickly briefed them up. I returned to my desk and took the phone back. The lieutenant on the other end wasn’t talking. I waited patiently, listening to the noise on the other end of the line.

The MEDEVAC bird arrived. From wheels down to wheels up seemed like heartbeats. The helo was barely airborne when I heard someone on the other end of the phone shout:

“Secondary! They hit a fucking secondary!”

For a moment my head spun with possibilities. Did the bird hit it? Did the dismounts hit it?

I waited for more information to flow up. People began to filter into the operations center. They saw me with my ear glued to the phone. Radio handsets crackled. No one spoke unless absolutely necessary. The temperature in the room rose exponentially as people shuffled in.

The company commander for the platoon in question walked into the room. He was barely awake. I scribbled information onto a sticky note and passed it to him. Battle roster numbers. His expression didn’t change, but I didn’t want to hear whatever voice was going through his head at that moment.

His first sergeant walked in behind him. He crouched next to me. I quietly handed him what information I had. I highlighted one line on the screen: the injuries. His reaction was a bit more obvious – though desperately understated for the situation. The first bird was already gone, and we had no way to get them to double back. A second MEDEVAC was ordered from farther away for the US soldiers.

I looked at the company commander. He said little. He took out his notebook and made careful annotations, taking the phone when necessary. His face was a mask, but his eyes betrayed him. There was no detachment there.

He’d arrived only a few hours before.  There was a memorial service in the morning for one of his soldiers. Then the strike happened.

His embattled company has taken more casualties than all of the others combined. Now more of his boys were fighting to stop the bleeding. The night before, while the bombs lay undiscovered, the commander shook my hand and welcomed me to his company.

Summer is coming. Almost time for the poppy harvest. That’s when the enemy’s real money flows in. It’s getting hot here.

[From Max]

The boss called me into his office. I strolled through the open door and stood casually at parade rest. The command environment here is not that formal, but small acts of professional courtesy reduce the ambient stress level.

“Relax, sit down . . . “

He waved toward his couch. He was working on an e-mail. I settled down on the cushions. He finished what he was doing and squared himself with me.

“You came here under . . . less than auspicious circumstances,” he began. “I don’t know all of the particular details. It doesn’t really matter.”

I pressed my lips tightly together, my hands resting in my lap. He went on to compliment me. It was the second time in several days that I had been told that I was doing good work. Conducting myself as a professional.

When I first arrived here, the colonel told me – point of fact – that the circumstances of my transfer were immaterial, and that how I carried myself would speak to my character. Life ain’t fair, man the fuck up. I tried not to hang my head. My anger and disappointment must have been obvious to everyone. I am notoriously stony, but anger bleeds off me like an overheated engine block.

A man must sometimes bow, but I try not to kneel.

I went through various stages of malignant rage, never quite reaching acceptance. I took some consolation in what effect I could have on the battlefield. Stalking known areas of interest with surveillance assets. Striking with airborne weapon platforms.

This kind of warfare is litigious as Hell. JAG lawyers fight us at every turn.

Once I learned to work the system, I stopped caring about the lawyers. I managed to co-ordinate several strikes in a row, one of them a dropped munition previously denied to us. My initials may not be on the document, but I own some of the responsibility for the white-hot Jackson Pollacks we made.

And I could always tag along on patrols, if I didn’t mind working without sleep.

I have a good working relationship with the guys around me. There are bad days, but our humor and cohesiveness has improved my mood and helps to pass the time.

When I had finally settled into a routine, with a sense of confidence in my ability to do my job well, I was pulled aside and told that had better tighten up my kit. I was going back to the line.

I would never have asked for another platoon.

[From Max]

I have been asked, lately, what meaningful work is. I call most of what I do, from day to day, women’s work. Tedious, repetitive tasks. Ever more complicated reporting procedures. Ever-increasing amounts of bullshit. I look at some far-off date on the calendar knowing that this will end and I’ll go somewhere else to be frustrated and tired.

Once in a while, my job becomes crystalline. Like when I watch the fireball from a 500 lb bomb push smoke and debris into the air. A building rests beneath that cloud. The enemy fire that poured from it only moments before has ceased, and basic infantry math tells me that the overpressure generated by the blast was somewhere between overwhelming and lethal.

The dust settles and there is nothing left to find. The remnants of those shooters are now gluing that rubble together. Good effects on target. Job well done.

I don’t generally have a response for what is meaningful beyond some flippant retort meant to frustrate whoever is asking me the question. I see the pointless endeavors people pour their lives into. Empty materialism, and the pursuit of some lifestyle they’ve been sold on by . . . who? Does anyone even know, anymore?

I sympathize with the zen of changing my oil or cleaning my guns. Not because I care about what it says about me as a person, or what your God thinks about it, but because it’s convenient and when I’m done I feel as though I have an honest return on the investment of my time.

There’re no answers to eternal questions hidden in there.

I don’t know where you’ll find the top of your mountain. I know mine isn’t sitting in a church pew, or an office. There are no answers for me in a Bronze-Age How To.  Meaning and Purpose for Dummies.

I’d rather take a long walk down an Afghan dirt road.

“May you live long,” the man said.

I looked over my shoulder. Some old timer had followed me up the stairs. I wasn’t sure if he belonged in the building, or if he had just walked in off the street.

“I think you’re the last man in America doin’ work like that.”

“I might be.”

Every Saturday for the last 9 months it’s been my job to deliver a palette of grain to a downtown brewery. I counted the bags yesterday. 44 bags of grain, 50 pounds each.  It varies from week to week, but that’s a standard load. The brewery is on the mezzanine, up 2 flights of about 10 stairs. There is an elevator.

All of the drivers bitch about doing the grain. It’s some sweetheart deal my company has worked out. We charge ‘em 50 bucks. I make 12 an hour. I’m off Sundays and Mondays, so it’s the last thing I have to do before my weekend starts.

The standard technique is to put the truck’s ramp down and load up 4-5 bags onto a board, then pick up the stack with one of our piece-of-shit handtrucks and wheel it down the ramp and into the building. Downstack. Repeat. Takes about an hour—that’s 12 bucks, before taxes—and it’s a pain in the ass no matter what. Bags of grain don’t like to stay on handtrucks. If you don’t stack ‘em just right, or if you hit a crack in the sidewalk, the stack falls down and you have to pick the bags up off the ground. If I felt like it, I would buy a better handtruck or build a better board. It could be easier. I could probably do all of the grain stops for the whole company in one day if I rigged it right, but it’s an old company and they aren’t into reinventing the wheel. They’ve been doing it this way for at least a decade. I’ve had over 45 jobs, and some companies are less amenable to innovation than others. You get a feel for which ones are which.

I actually like hard work. I prefer it over lying. I’m broken like that.

When it started to rain this year, I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it down the ramp with an 8-stack without a high risk of slipping.  Then it struck me.

I wondered if I could carry the whole load upstairs on my shoulder, 2 bags at a time. I was pretty sure I could. I decided to give it a try and see if it was time effective. I figured it would be a pretty good workout and save me a trip to the gym on my Friday night.

I downstacked a row of bags onto the tail, bear-hugged two bags, and then popped them  onto my shoulder with a hip thrust. Solid enough. Guy at the front desk looked confused when I went for the stairs.

22 trips. 2 flights of stairs. 100 pounds on my shoulder. Plus downstacking. Sometimes in the heat. Sometimes in the rain. Sometimes I have to park up the block. That’s when it really hurts.

The first time I did it, I felt superhuman. It was like a Herculean labor.

Truth is, it’s not superhuman.

Any healthy guy my size should be able to do this. I’m not special. A few generations ago, the smaller, harder men who built this country probably broke their backs doing shit like this every day. This is the kind of hard work that built castles and bridges and railroads.

Today, many men my size couldn’t, and most who could — wouldn’t.

They think they’re too good for it, too smart for it. The embalmed “health experts” on TV tell them they might hurt their precious backs. God forbid.

Some of the guys who see me doing it probably think I’m crazy. Most probably think I’m stupid, like I didn’t realize it could be done with a handtruck or a cart or something that would make it easier. But every so often one of them, like the old guy, appreciates the fact that I am doing work.

When I’m working, I think of all the people in the gym paying personal trainers 60 bucks an hour to make them do squats with a 12 pound Nike medicine ball. I think of all the people on Stairmasters carrying nothing. I think of the fitness gurus selling sandbags for 120 dollars (plus shipping and handling). I think of all the schmucks doing lateral raises on Bosu balls to “activate” their “cores.”

“Working out” is a substitute for work. It’s forcing your body to do what it wants to do, what it’s made to do. Modern life provides fewer and fewer opportunities to do real work. Hard work.

Here’s some fitness advice for you.

The next time you have the opportunity to do real work, take it. Take the physical challenge. Do the work. Don’t try to make it easier so you can work smarter. Try working harder.

It’s amazing how much carrying heavy shit up stairs “activates” your “core.”

Think about that for me the next time you take the elevator to the Stairmaster.

[From Max]

We stepped off as everyone else was coming on duty for the morning. I worked all night, ate breakfast, and kitted up. The trucks were lined up in the motorpool along a row of T-walls. I walked up to a group of Joes standing in the shade and nodded. Their team leader came walking around the truck.

“Hey, sir.”

“I’m tagging along. Where do you need me?”

“We could use you up in the hatch . . . “

I added myself to the trip ticket the night before. They were short on bodies. I was just another rifle. The vehicle’s driver, a young specialist, handed me the gunner harness. The straps look like a five point racing harness. I pulled the contraption over my shoulders and fastened myself in.

The sun beat down on my face. The air was muggy, and filled with diesel exhaust fumes. I popped open the feed tray cover, verified that the weapon had been properly cleaned and lubricated, and fed in linked 7.62.

My headset crackled.

“Hey, LT . . . you read me?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I was in the last truck, facing to the rear. I heard the patrol leader over the radio. We started to roll. We wound our way through the concrete maze to the entry control point. Unlicensed Afghans wove their way back and forth on the highway. We lurched out into traffic.

I reached for the charging handle, cocked the bolt to the rear, and shoved the handle forward.  I put the weapon on safe.

Drivers barreled at us from the rear. Compact wagons and hatch backs. White vans covered in circus paint. Little Toyotas with “ALLAH” decals. Small-displacement bikes and scooters swarmed all around us. They wedged themselves into our convoy, swerving in and out of traffic, trying to pass.  An errant driver clipped our truck and kept on driving.

At one point the congestion was bad enough to stop us in our tracks.  Motorcycle carts full of children and old men weaved dangerously around us.

“Two on the left,” I called as a pair of motorcycles buzzed by.

On the shoulder of the road a small boy towed an elderly Afghan man on a wheelchair. A rope was tied around the foot-rest and the boy dragged the man along. Another boy looked up at me from the opposite side of the road.

The boy couldn’t have been more than five or six.  He waved a sling-shot menacingly and aimed it at me, drawing back the band. I reached up and rubbed the barrel of the 240, my face expressionless. He lowered the sling shot. He scowled at me as he walked out into traffic behind the truck, motioning toward his mouth in a dick-sucking motion.

Fucking seriously!? I thought.

We turned off onto a dirt road. Bits of concertina wire were tangled up in bundles on the roadsides. More laid at the mouths of culverts, half in and half out of the water overflowing from them. Water spilled over at every wadi crossing, pouring out onto the dirt and gravel beneath our wheels.

Children were everywhere. Most were between the ages of four and six. They all waved at the trucks as we passed. They motioned with their hands, gesturing toward their mouths in a “feed me” motion. I leaned on the gun, scanning my sector. After the trucks had passed, the childrens’ waving hands often turned into little middle fingers.

More children bathed in the muddy overflow that pooled on the roadsides. Afghan men gargoyled on the roadsides, smoking cigarettes and watching us pass.  Afghan National Army soldiers posted up at checkpoints. One of them, hardly more than a boy, crouched behind a berm with an M24, staring calmly out over the poppy fields.

I looked left and right as we passed compounds and fields. My eyes ranged out from the roadsides over the acres of blooming flowers, pink and white, on either side of the road. Sheep wandered on the roadsides, drinking out of the ditches, or clustered in compounds, unattended.

In the distance, the mountains stabbed upward at impossibly steep angles. Ghar is Pashtun for mountain. It reflects in the names of their villages. Everything is named “Hajji” something, or something “ghar”.

Every man here is named Mohammed.

We reached our dismount point, a combat outpost on the other end of our AO. I’d never been there, but I knew the ground well. I’d been staring at it from imagery and surveillance assets for weeks. Everything is supposed to look different “on the ground”, but it didn’t.

It looked exactly how I’d imagined it.

We fastened our “kevlar underwear” between our legs and marched toward the ECP. I chambered a round as we strode out of the wire. We were near the wadi. The air grew thicker. Afghan soldiers were posted, at random intervals, on road-sides and in the corners of fields. They crouched behind their weapons, looking up at us as we passed.

I could feel my kevlar cock-blocker rubbing between my thighs. We strolled along as if we’d just dismounted from horses, legs bowed out, weapons at the low ready. I scanned from right to left, my eyes fixing on berms and doorways. We walked in file along a baked mud wall, on the slippery edge of a poppy field.

Ninety percent of the world’s opium and heroin come from Afghanistan. I plucked an open blossom. The stem was too fat to fit down the barrel of my weapon. I balled it up and discarded it.

The air smelled of piss and mud and rain. The farm smell of animals. I could have closed my eyes and been in any town in rural, upstate New York. Lone Afghans walked through the fields, off in the distance.

Our objective was a Key Leader Engagement, of sorts. A platoon out in the field had traded out its “shonas” for a different group of Afghans. The two platoons were not working well together. When we arrived at the compound, the reasons were obvious.

I spotted the American platoon leader from across the compound and walked over to him. I furrowed my brow at him. He did the same. A look of mutual recognition shot between us. He was from another unit, attached to us as a temporary augment. I hadn’t seen him in a year. We shook hands.

His boys were posted up on the walls of a compound they were renting from a local mullah. Their snipers owned a commanding field of view out over the river. Sappers had emplaced claymores outside the walls of the compound. I stepped gingerly over the wires on my way in.

The American side of the compound was orderly and neat. MRE boxes and cases of bottled water were stacked in the middle of the compound. The boys had dug a little trench to produce run-off and stop the flooding inside the compound that the mullah had been living with.

The PL took me and a few others over to the Afghan side of the compound. The difference was obvious. Trash was strewn everywhere. The air was heavy with the acrid smell of burning plastic. Ash flaked out of the make-shift burn pit.

The Afghan platoon leader came out and introduced himself to our party. He began complaining in earnest. I was already familiar with some of the logistical issues the two partnered units had been dealing with. As I watched the Afghan PL communicating through the ‘terp, I got the impression that he was full of shit.

Some of his men walked around in the background, half in uniform. The rest were laid up inside a building. The ‘terp relayed everything the Afghan PL was saying, but the ‘terp’s body language communicated more than his words. The Afghan PL was full of shit.

The Afghan platoon sergeant attempted to relay information to us about food, water, and ammunition. He was asked several times for round-counts for each of his platoon’s weapon systems. The counts changed each time, sometimes more, sometimes less.

We lingered at the compound. The patrol’s medic was posted up on a berm, watching the compound. I sat down next to him.

“You smoke?” I asked him.

“No, sir. Thanks, though.”

I reached into my lower leg pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Lucky Strikes?” he asked, surprised.

“’Merica,” I replied.

I carry them as social currency. They go stale much faster than I can even give them away. The smell of the Afghan side of the compound was overwhelming. I trimmed the filter off, put the packed end between my lips, and sparked my Zippo. I took a long drag and exhaled through my nose. I repeated the process. After a moment I could breathe freely, my sense of smell muted.

I flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the fire pit.

It was a hot walk back to the trucks. Some of the children we saw on our walk out to the compound had retreated inside the curtains that functioned as doors on their mud huts. There was less traffic on the way back to base. The poppy fields retreated behind me, spreading out vast and colorful into the tree lines.

The driver hammered it on the highway, slowing only as we approached the bazaar. A jingle truck came on fast, swerving into the left lane.

“One on the left,” I called. “Coming up fast.”

The Afghan couldn’t maintain his lane. He caught the side of our vehicle. The side of his truck scraped down the side of ours, setting my teeth on edge. Our patrol came to a halt. The driver stopped in front of us and clambered down out of his truck. One of our sergeants got out as well. The man saw him and immediately turned around. He jumped back into his truck and took off.

As we sat there, I spotted a group of little kids on the side of the road in the bazaar. All of them were between four and six. They all waved at me, faces bright and smiling. I broke down and waved back.

One of them cocked back his arm and hurled a rock at me. It bounced harmlessly off the truck’s armor. A second came sailing right behind it, hitting me on the hand. I grabbed the stone off the truck and hurled it back. It bounced harmlessly on the road as they scurried behind a wall.

“Motherfucker!” I shouted into the mouthpiece on my headphones. “Hey, these little bastards just hit me with a rock. That’s hostile intent. . .”

I wasn’t serious, but I leaned on the gun, staring at them. They peeked out from behind a wall. The patrol began to move and they rushed out behind us, waving their middle fingers.

So, you’ve read or heard about someone doing or saying something that you disagreed with.

I understand. Happens to me all the time.

What I don’t understand  is that you’re telling me you’re “shocked.”  That you’re “offended.” That you simply can’t believe that someone could do or say something like that.

How is this possible?

Are you fucking AMISH?

It’s the 21^st century. Hillbillies and church ladies have high speed Internet. If you are reading this right now, you are a few clicks away from a donkey show and a Mexican getting his head cut off with a chainsaw. How can you possibly claim to be shocked by anything?

I know that you know that we live in a world where people kill their babies, huff household chemicals, and blow themselves up in shopping malls. I know that you know that people lie, cheat, steal, and swear to God that they were abducted and anally raped by curious aliens. This stuff is in the news all the time, and I know you are watching the news or reading it on the Internet because that’s how I found out that you were shocked and offended in the first place.

If you are truly so flabbergasted by reality that you manage to work yourself up into a tizzy every second Tuesday about something that’s perfectly mundane to the rest of us — you aren’t ready for the grown-up world. You need to grab your crayons and march right back to the kiddie table, little man.

But, you know what?

I don’t think you’re shocked at all.

I don’t think you’re really shocked by wardrobe malfunctions or dirty words or racist innuendos.

I think you’re a big fucking faker.

I think you’re bored and pretentious, and I think you know that your feigned surprise and righteous indignation are part of a big, cynical, melodramatic game.  You’re not a serious person, and you shouldn’t be taken seriously until you start talking like a serious person.  You’re a sheltered, spoiled brat, and that’s why you’re using the vocabulary of a Victorian virgin.

America has become a nation of pretenders and panty-pissers.

That’s what happens when you don’t have a meaningful narrative, when everything is within reach, when “working” means sitting and typing.  You’re over-civilized. You have more than you need, so you argue over trivial infractions of etiquette.  You vie for the state’s favor like the eunuch courtiers of a failing, degenerate kingdom. It’s effeminate, it’s dishonorable, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

America, it’s time to take off your pee pants and put on your big boy pants. It’s time to start acting like serious people who have everything to lose.  It’s time to start talking like men.

The sun is setting on our world. Stop boo-hooing to nanny and figure out what you’re going to do about it.

[From Max]

Dust 1.  That’s what they call it when a soldier goes missing.

We felt the blast from over 9 kilometers away.  It rocked the whole AO.  The Dust 1 call came down a little while later.  The soldier wasn’t really missing.  They just couldn’t find all his parts.  They called the dogs in.

$500,000.  That’s the cost of a Hero.  That’s the MEDEVAC code for KIA.  Hero.  SGLI – $400,000.  Gratuity, $100,000. 1 American flag, Priceless.

We clear the roads every day.  We blast them with APOBS and MCLCs.  We roll in with mine-resistant gun trucks that cost just shy of a million dollars apiece.  We have shuras with the locals.  We drive away.

Kids come running up, asking for pens.  Mista, mista!  Pen!  Mista! Pen!  The Taliban packs the pen with explosives and seals it with a melted tire, turns it into a blasting cap.  Two days later, that road is impassable.  Bombs every hundred meters.

Dust 1.

He isn’t missing.  He’s aerosol.  Dear Mrs. _______.  We regret to inform you that your husband or son is now fertilizing a poppy field. Please take this money. Now the dogs and his friends and anyone within driving distance is suddenly combing the area, looking for meat.  That’s our creed.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

We give them money.  We give them fuel.  They beg us for food and water and anything else we’ll give them.  The ANSF can’t supply themselves.  They beg us for everything.  We tell them no.  We tell them that they need to develop their own logistics.

Then we’re tasked to go on a mission.  This is all shona ba shona. Shoulder to shoulder.  We’re supposed to roll out with ANSF forces for everything, but the mission is a wash if the ANSF don’t have fuel.  So we give them fuel.  We give them food.  We give them water.

We’re supposed to roll out with them, but they’re stoned on hash all the time.  So stoned they shoot each other.  They shoot at us.  They shoot flares at night to watch the pretty colors.

Mista, mista.  Shona ba shona.  Death to America.

[From Max]

The Way of Men is not a manifesto.  It’s not a How-To.  It doesn’t waste a word on how to pick up women, or how to travel the world on $10 dollars a day.  It’s not a self-help handbook.

It is a precursor to first principles.  It isn’t about what manliness should be, it’s about what manliness is.  It’s about the conflict in your emotions when you are chastised for punching a bully, when you know he damned well deserved it.  It’s about why you root for the bad guy.

Think of it as A Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Manliness.

The Way of Men is where the conversation starts again.

It’s not a new discussion.  Men used to have mythos.  That was the running dialogue of what it meant to be a man.  How do you behave in the face of danger?  How do you treat your soldiers?  How do you treat your women?  How do these things make or break you as a man, these practical and personal concerns?  What makes you manly?  And what makes you a good man?

What’s the difference?

They all start with a basic understanding of manliness as, first and foremost, an amoral thing.  All the things that earn you trophies?  That’s manliness.  Being a good man?  Well, that’s a whole other game.  That’s the stuff that earns you medals . . .

That’s the point.  How many guys do you know that have read The Aeneid?  Or Leviathan?  Who carried Beowulf from the dragon’s lair?  When was the last time you sat elbows-on-a-bar talking about any of this?

What are you talking about at the bar?  Anderson Silva and Benson Henderson.  You’re probably still talking about Brock Lesnar.

You’re talking about athletes you don’t know, in a sport you don’t practice, doing things that would otherwise get you arrested.  You’re talking about sanctioned combat because it’s about all American men have left to add to the discussion.

You’re talking about what makes men manly.  Even a guy like Lesnar, who plays the heel because he knows it puts asses in the seats, a guy who inspires hatred in fans of the sport, is a manly bastard.  I doubt you would tell him otherwise to his face.  I certainly wouldn’t, and I’m not one to run from a fight.

The Way of Men restarts this discussion.  It puts the focus back on the distinction between manliness and being a good man.  It gives focus to a dialogue that, right now, starts with “I don’t like that guy, he’s a dick.  He’s fuckin’ huge, though.  I wouldn’t fuck with him.”

The book restarts this dialogue, and it does it in plain language.  Despite the exhaustive research Donovan did – I know it cut heavily into his drinking – it doesn’t read like a primer on tort reform.  In fact, Donovan wrote an academic work and still managed to drop “fag” in as part of the discussion.

Face it, you were going to use the word anyway.  Any discussion of manliness is incomplete until someone outlines the boundary between being a man, and being a fag.  I promise that distinction has nothing to do with their sexuality.

That’s what makes The Way of Men important.  It isn’t a discussion about manliness between unmanly academics stuffed in a conference room.  It’s a conversation between men in a bar, and not just in theory.  I’m thinking of a particular strip club as I write this.  The Way of Men was born out of that – out of conversations about how you can look at a man and simultaneously dislike and admire him.  Why you want to be like him, but not be him.

The important question after reading it is not what you have against the argument, but what you have to add to it.

The Way of Men is currently available through Amazon.com for Kindle, with paperback release scheduled for Late April/May 2012.