Chance Encounter in the Air

Visiting family in Florida at the moment. On the first leg of my flight out here, I had an interesting conversation with a young man in the adjoining seat. He’s a Marine, home from his third tour of Iraq. A very sociable kind of guy. At first we were just talking about all of the things that interested him, snowboarding and skiing and -- his favorite thing of all -- jumping out of airplanes. It was obvious that he loved the Marines -- especially all of the physical challenges of learning survival skills and parachuting and rock climbing.

Gradually we started talking about what things were like in Iraq and his mood got a bit more sober, although certainly not negative. He’d seen a fair amount of combat. He once was in a convoy and saw an Iraqi by the side of the road pop up to fire an RPG and accidentally blow himself up. Apparently the country is not only full of millions of those weapons, but a lot of them are so old they will either misfire or not fire at all. He said the Marines just watched this happen -- so quickly they could not have reacted anyway -- and quietly said “See you later…” as they rolled past. He said that streets that are crowded with women and children are generally safe. Streets that are empty are best avoided entirely -- the absence of people going about their daily lives almost certainly means an IED.

The most surprising thing about our conversation was the casual way that he mentioned that he himself had been shot. He’d been sitting in the gun turret of a vehicle when he was shot right in the chest. The force of the impact knocked him backwards three feet into the back of the vehicle, threw his feet over his head, and left a bruise on his chest the size of a dinner plate. If it had not been for the ceramic armor he was wearing he would have been shot through the heart. He said he’d never been so scared. No doubt.

From this topic we veered to his father’s farm in Illinois. His pop grows feed corn and soybeans, and supplements his income by repairing machinery for other farmers. The young man I was talking with does similar mechanic’s work for the Corps. Dad sprays everything with Roundup to kill all the plants except the genetically engineered corn that he grows. It’s how things are done these days.

Two other things struck me: The first is that this kid, who has seen so much more of the worst the world has to offer than I ever have or hope to, and who in all earnestness in the conversation one time offered “Like President Bush said…” by way of making a point, is certain that when the Americans leave Iraq there will be a civil war. Absolutely certain, from what he has seen.

The other thing was that this Marine doesn’t read. Even most magazine articles are too long for him. He told me that if he was sitting in a doctor’s office and bored, he probably would tough it out rather than pick up a magazine. Maybe in this respect he is not representative of most military people, or most young adults, but of everything he said it was what worried me the most…