Warning: Explicit Language

Sweat burns my eyes and drips onto my notepad. The ink blurs in spots and mixes with blood. My wife won’t mind the stains. I keep the language clean for our 8-year-old, but out here in the suck soldiers make an art of profanity.

I daydream about the last time I held my wife and daughter in my arms, breathed their scents, looked into their smiling faces. A bullet grazes my left temple and jars me back to the present. 

“This fucking sniper is really fucking starting to annoy the fuck outta me.”

My battle buddy smirks and pulls the pin on a grenade. “Then don’t sit against the fucking parapet, moron.” He lets the spoon drop and the fuse starts cooking off. We’re too deaf from gunfire to hear the sliver of metal rattle as it hits the cement rooftop we’re trapped on. “I was annoyed when he killed Pryor and Evans,” he says calmly as he assumes a throwing position behind the roof’s parapet, “but now that he’s cutting into my masturbation time” – he lobbed the grenade toward the second-floor window of the building next door – “I’m really getting pissed.” The grenade exploded just as it crossed the window sill. Anyone inside had zero reaction time. “Frag out,” he mumbled after the explosion.

Battlefield humor. It gets you through a deployment. Just long enough for the inevitable suicide waiting for you back home.

This fucking air support needs to fucking get here before I fucking lose my fucking shit. A sentiment that sounded a little too desperate to let myself say out loud.

I turn my attention back to the olive-drab, waterproof notepad and continue writing a letter to Hannah. There’s something special about the psyche of soldiers. We can find peace in the most chaotic of circumstances. It’s called resilience, and I have plenty of it.

For instance, I don’t hate this sniper. I’m going to be happy when that A-10 Warthog spits oblivion on his position, but I’m not mad at him. He’s probably a fine Arab, a good son, and a devout Muslim. We might’ve been friends if these were beers instead of rifles.

Six months ago, I was knee deep in twinkie wrappers and self-loathing. I had just lost my job when the Army recruiter called. She was a Staff Sergeant with a pleasant tone and a steady paycheck. I didn’t join for God, nor Country – and I certainly didn’t join to kill Arab fathers and sons. I joined because I didn’t have money for groceries on a Friday night in September. Six months later, I’m in Afghanistan with an M4 in one hand and shit else in the other. 

“Medic!” I hear someone yell over the din of gunfire. The sniper must’ve changed positions and angled a shot through a hole in the parapet. The spurting from Coleman’s neck says he only has a few moments, so we don’t even radio for a MEDEVAC. We just promise not to let Haji butt fuck his corpse. His last words are a gargled laugh.

Like I said, battlefield humor. It gets you through. Until it doesn’t. 

Aircraft engines roar overhead. I put down my pen and aim my rifle in the direction of the sniper. Don’t want those Air Force bastards to think I’m taking a break. 

Three months later, we finally made it stateside. I kiss my wife and hug my daughter. The warmth and love I feel overwhelm my senses, but a bullet enters my left temple and jars me back to the present.

“This fucking sniper…”

My cheek blisters against the hot cement of the roof. My blood pools around my nose and lips. I stare blankly at the hole in the parapet.