Being An American Soldier In A Faraway Land Ravaged By War
I sling my rifle over my shoulder and head out into the street. I know darn tootin’ I ain’t in Illinois no more, but goddamn how I wish I was. The American military has outposts in some hellholes but nothing quite like this. The locals are completely uneducated savages. The language they speak is some intolerable gibberish that makes whatever language the Iraqis speak seem Shakespearean. It’s no wonder these locals needed liberation and democracy from old Uncle Sam, they paid a heavy price for that though. When I arrived here it was already a destroyed warzone with the natives practically living in mud. Nation-building is a tough thing to do and it takes time but one day the indigenous people here will thank us, in English I hope. But for now all they can do is moan and bray whenever I walk past. They approach me in the slums screaming holding their hands out for food and when I proffer a good old fashioned American apple pie they whine and crudely gesture that they want a sausage. I tell you, Berlin in 1948 must be the worst possible deployment in the world. These Germans need civilising.
“Hey! Watch it, kemosabe!” I yell. A little boy tried to grab my gun, having never seen anything quite as sophisticated he got a bit overexcited.
“I take! I make play with loud toy!” He giggled in an almost indecipherable accent.
“You’ll get ma foot in yer ass if you try that again!” I replied. The little boy seemed not to understand English all too well but when I kicked out at him he sure understood that and ran back to his momma, tail between his legs. I don’t know what it is about this godless people but they sure do breed like crazy and all the young uns that come out seem to be even worse than the parents.
A little girl came up to me with a delicacy that her mother had cooked and said something incomprehensible.
“Speak English, you goddamn kid!” I spat back at her, one hand on my holster. But she just said the same thing again and pushed the local delicacy into my hands before scarpering off. This must be a gift for our good work liberating and civilising them. Smells delicious, a bit like apple pie now I come to think about it, looks like they have learned something from us after all! I take a bite and the appley sauce seeps from it like ambrosia, but there’s something else. Urgh, it’s disgusting, it’s like ash! I spit it out and look down at the treat, it’s not like apple pie at all (except the apple part), the pastry that’s supposed to be solid and chewy is flaky instead and melts in your mouth.
“What the hell is this?!” I yell at the girl’s mother.
“Stroo-dell! Stroo-dell!” She pleads. Some phrase I can only imagine is a provocative insult. It sure provoked me as I marched right up to her and smacked her upside the head. These local women can’t cook for shit.
I know this very well from first hand experience and I’ll tell you why. This last summer I took one of the locals as my wife, doesn’t speak a lick of English god bless her but she looks at me with those big hungry eyes, I guess these people just can’t resist the appeal of a real American soldier. Sure, maybe I’m exploiting her lack of intelligence, the first time she came into the barracks she damn near cried with joy when she saw my toaster, poor thing. But as long as it impresses her and I have a companion in this savage, inhospitable country then I say it’s a match made in heaven.
Our interactions aren’t the most sophisticated (she’s trying to learn English but keeps getting tripped up when she pronounces Ws) but we speak the language of romance. She taught me the ways of her people, and I taught her to love. Unfortunately I didn’t really take in any of what she taught me but luckily she didn’t either. The main thing that I’ve learned about their culture that I’ll take back with me is the way that these people have such a respect for the earth. Me and my buddies rolled out in the jeep one afternoon for a hunt, we bagged some prize game, I tell you. But we got back and laid it all on Broonhilder’s kitchen table (that’s my darling wife’s name) and hell if she didn’t get down on her knees and weep at what we had done to mother nature. To me these were just animals, but to her, they were a valuable as part of the ecosystem that her people have thrived off for years. And I swear, after that, I will never kill a “hund” again. I know now how wrong I was to harm such majestic creatures.
I’m about thinking that my time posted out here is coming to an end soon. I’ve learned so much and I wish I could stay here forever teaching these folks how to play baseball and other nation-building things, but sweet Naperville is calling my name and I’ve missed the smell of hamburgers and beer. I can only pray that these people will one day experience that joy. I can’t take Broonhilder, it’d be too hard on her to leave the land that she loves so, but she knows I’ll be with her in her heart. And when I sneak out of our marital bed tonight, I’ll be full of regrets and misgivings aplenty.
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