Alabama!

Damn, I don't really know how this spawned or why I had to bring it here, but the guy just made a huge impression on me.
I don't know his name.
I don't know his age.
I don't even know what he does right now.

I do know that he is a US Army trooper on his way home from a long shift.

But before we get to him, a little background.
It's early saturday morning in Los Angeles. A flight to Atlanta will leave LAX in a few hours and on it there will be a happy/sad, talking in his sleep Swede.
But the wait for the flight is still the same....or is it?
Trouble checking in, taking your shoes off, finding something to drink and eat before you board the plane because there is no way I'm paying 10-15 dollars for some piece of shit airline food.

But this early a day the shops aren't open yet. What to do, what to do.....hey, an open bar.
-One glass of water, please.
I get a top of the line sink water glass of L.A's finest water. Bah, what the hell.
-Hey bartenter, what do you call a glass of water in Spanish?
-Un vaso de agua.
-U huh, cool.

I could go on with how this discussion with the bartender and mostly myself went on, but that would waste your time and keep you from the heart of the story.
Here is a guy with the patternted U.S army back pack at the bar at 6 am drinking shots and beers.
The guy was pretty pissed and from seeing the small glass of light brown liquid in his left hand and the beer in his other it seemed as a fair assesment.
Lo and behold, 2 minutes later, he gets another round of Jack Daniel's straight and another beer even though he's only half way through his other one.

We start talking about military service, well he mostly talks and he asks where I was stationed and I tell him that I did my service back home (Sweden)
The fact that military service is(was) mandatory in Sweden makes Alabama very happy, but it soon turns to something else.
I don't think I can ever describe his eyes when he started to talk about his service in the corps.
He was very, VERY, proud of being an american soldier and one of the first to invade Iraq both the first and the second time.
But the way he looked away at the end, the way he saw something that I could never see and for a second or two, when he was even quiet, told me that there was something else there.
He had performed his duty to a T, but to what cost?
Although very proud of being from Alabama and happy/proud to go back there, he still couldn't sell the "proud soldier returning" to me.
I saw a wounded soul, a person who was caught between two worlds. He was tired. Not in the way you are after a long day...but after a long couple of years.

I don't think that anyone who hasn't been on the frontier of a war, even as "trivial" as the Iraqi invasion, can ever say what it's like there. But I have a pretty good idea.

I think I saw the truth. Man, the guy had been to hell and back. He did however re-up voluntarily by what he said and it really made me sad because by his posture, his way of talking about recent events and the on and off blankness in his eye, I could not but think of a quote by Mickey Rourke said in the wrestler:
It's when you have nothing that you cling on to something.

I think what I want to say is that Alabama made an impression on me as strong as anyone I met in L.A and I only met him for about 20-30 minutes.
I'm not taking anything away from any of the friends I met there, but the way he was so brutaly honest in his way, it really stood out.
I do want to point out that WHY he was there is a whole other matter. Missles my ass, U.S wants oil, Iraq has oil - boom!
Situation in Kongo and Rwanda has been ten times worse, but they don't have any oil.

None the less, he was there, asked by his country to be there.
Even though you bury your dead after war, there are still more casualties.

LIke I said, Alabama made an impression on me but I'm not going to feel sorry for him.
I will however feel sorry for what this world made him do.
If you don't agree, don't understand or think that it isn't that bad, watch the shows "Over there" and the brilliant HBO series "Generation kill" to see a glimpse of what it's like.

Alabama, I salute you.