There was a company in our battalion that was tasked with patrolling this one road – I think Time Magazine considered it the most heavily IED’d (Improvised Explosive Device) road in Iraq, but I never saw any report about it. It was bad, though. After a couple months, it was almost a guarantee that you’d get hit driving down there – unless you went out at night – we didn’t get hit at night there, but other guys did. They always drove with their lights on – and paid for it.
Anyway, the company that patrolled that road got hit all the time. One of the first was when they first showed up over there. They were in tracs (AAVs – Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicles), and just as soon as they got across the bridge (Euphrates river), they got rocked with a huge IED.
That was bad enough, but then another IED hit them right after the first one sent the trac airborne a couple feet. It cracked the whole thing in half like an egg. Amazingly, nobody got hit with shrapnel, but at least one guy was knocked sideways by the blast and messed up his back. I think they sent him home it was so bad. And one or two guys got knocked out, too. That one was just the first.
Before long, the engineers were sent to set up a base at the start of that road – just so the company could have a constant presence down there – and even see down the road for a couple of kilometers – overwatch or something.
Well, as the engineers were out there bulldozing the base, some stupid carbomber drove up and blew up the car right in front of them. Nobody was seriously injured, but a lot of guys got little bits of shrapnel in their arms. We got called out to reinforce them – and we passed their humvee full of injured guys riding back to base. It seemed like everybody had their arms bandaged.
We got out there and set up a secure cordon, and there’s bits of the bomber all over the place. His ear was on the ground near me, and also a piece of jaw. One of the other guys radioed that they found his eyes. Somehow they landed next to each other. Then my buddy found his spine. And one guy found his balls. I don’t know how or why, but everything landed in pairs – in like a 100 foot radius around where he blew himself up. Our lieutenant told us to just kick the shit to the side of the road. It was like soccer with body parts.
Eventually they got the base built and started patrolling the road regularly – and still got blown up all the time. Some sections of that road were directly across the river from where we stayed on base, so every time an IED would go off close, the blast would push our doors open. We’d just get our gear and just go wait in the trucks. We knew they’d be calling us out soon. And they did.
Those poor bastards. They had a horrible time. Their base, if you can even call it that, was just a shitty compound surrounded by Hesco barriers (earth-filled wire baskets virtually impervious to shrapnel and bullets). They lived in an old iso-can (a removable tractor trailer compartment – like those seen on the highway towed behind semis), but it didn’t even have sandbags around it. They didn’t have AC or anything, so they cooked in the summer, and froze in the winter. And they got mortared all the time and they weren’t allowed to fire back. They might hit somebody, the command said. I heard a rumor that their lieutenant overruled them a couple times and they fired anyway, but I don’t think it happened very often.
They’d patrol that road night and day, and they always got blown up. Their company had a Marine that held the military record for number of times IED’d without injury. I think it was twelve. He’s lucky to be alive – or have any hearing left.
For some stupid reason, the command got tired of them blowing up humvees down that road, so they told the guys to patrol on foot instead – which seemed like the stupidest idea in the world. The humvees offered at least SOME protection. On foot, you were dead. The kill radius for a 155mm artillery round is 300 meters anyway. They didn’t have a prayer on foot – but somehow the command thought it’d help. I’m still pissed at them for doing that to those guys.
It didn’t take long for them to start getting hit on foot. They weren’t even patrolling the areas OFF the road – but the shoulders. They’d just walk along and peer into the craters from past IED’s, and pray to God that they didn’t bite it. The bastards would re-use the holes over and over. A couple of times, a guy was looking down in a hole and an IED would go off. And somehow, they just got knocked back and that was it. If that’d happened to me, I’d just quit. I’d used up all my luck.
One of their sergeants was looking into a crater once, and then it blew up on him. The company first sergeant ended up out there picking up whatever pieces of him they could find – and putting them in a trash bag. He was the first to die on that road, I think.
But they still made them patrol on foot. And they still got hit all the time. Sometimes they’d spot them before they went off and call out EOD (explosive ordinance disposal), and we’d escort them out. Once, our other section took EOD out, which was fine, but then they got hit as they were getting ready to head back to base. They mopped up that mess – which just popped a couple of tires, and started up again. And then a carbomb hit one of their trucks. Somehow everybody was okay, except that they all got their bells rung and couldn’t hear for awhile.
We had that happen once to us, too. We were escorting EOD back to base, and then THEIR truck got hit. But one of the guys had the door cracked, and the force of the explosion slammed the door into his leg. He was okay, but bruised up pretty badly. He limped for weeks – and looked pissed and miserable the entire time.
It got so bad that driving that road at night was really hard with NVGs (night vision goggles). Even if we didn’t get hit, we’d still have to zig-zag from one side of the road to another to avoid the craters. Some of them would swallow a humvee. The truck in front of me missed a big one once, but was going so fast that they sort of launched over it. They got shaken pretty badly, but the .50 cal fell out of the mount. The gunner ended up barely grabbing it with one hand while it hung over the side of the truck. After we got that fixed up, we started heading back to base again, and we passed another unit riding up the road with their blackouts on. We radioed over to them to be careful for the holes – it was treacherous up there. ‘Yeah, yeah. They got it.’ Five minutes later they were radioing back to us for help. They’d dumped THREE trucks in just one hole, and their own corpsman (Navy medic) was injured. They wanted to borrow ours. That unit was so stupid that they only did patrols on that road for about a week. Then the command sent them to do other things. They had no idea how to navigate, drive, or respond when they got hit or attacked. They gave all their missions to MY platoon – assholes.
One of my buddies was out there one day doing a foot patrol along the road, and all of the sudden they heard a cellphone going off in the ditch. It was the detonator and they were right on top of the IED. Lucky for them, it didn’t go off, but they were convinced they were going to die. I talked to him a few months ago, and he’s completely disabled from PTSD – I imagine it’s at least partially because of that one incident. I didn’t ask him
Another time, EOD was poking around doing a post blast (post blast analysis), and suddenly we saw him bend down and start ripping at wires frantically. Yanking and yanking. Then he suddenly just stopped and knelt down with his head in his hands. Apparently he had stumbled on top of an IED, and since running was just a waste of his time, he just started ripping up the detonation wires and hoped he disconnected the detonator before it went off. I guess it worked. So after he slumped there for a second, he stood back up and started stacking artillery rounds up on the road. It would have been a big one. I’m glad he made it.
Not long before we were slotted to leave and head back to the states, some guys from the original company were doing a patrol one night where they’d drive part of the way, but then get out for some reason and keep going on foot. It was their stupid mission tasking.
Well, the humvee had parked on top of an IED, which went off just as the guys were starting to dismount from the back. It went off right under the engine, and flipped the truck over – right on top of the dismounts out back. Two were badly crushed underneath it and they couldn’t roll it off of them. The doc crawled back to them and gave them both morphine, but it was all he could do right then. He couldn’t even work on them. They called a wrecker to lift the truck off them, but they were both dead before it even got there.
When they told one of those guys’ dad, he was so overcome with grief, he shot himself. We heard about it almost right after it happened. I keep wondering what would have happened if they told MY family. I wonder if it would have been that bad. We lost a lot of guys on that road – but we actually lost even more on another road – including my squad leader. They rigged everything into IEDs in our AO (area of operations). Donkey carts, palm trees, waterlines, guard rails, cars, trucks, even bicycles. Everything blew up. In seven months, I think our battalion alone went through about 1,100 tires. That’s insane, considering there’s only about 40 trucks – if that. We had a couple that still had shrapnel holes in them. Mine had a bullet hole in the radio mount right next to my knee, but I still have no idea where it came from. One truck had bits of my buddy’s elbow all over it. It never rained enough to completely wash it off, and we really didn’t want to touch it. That entire area was hostile to the US. Hell, they probably still are.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Jeff's Closure
We were coming back to base one day after some mission. Eight vehicles in our convoy. I think I was in the 6th that time, driving.
Less than a click (kilometer) from base, the humvee two in front of me suddenly disappears in a fireball. The first thing I’m thinking is, ‘is anybody alive? Who was in the gun this time?’ You get a real tight feeling in your gut when this happens – and this wasn’t the first time.
We all rolled to a stop, and as the flames died away we could see the truck still sitting there, no movement. God, they’re all dead, I’m thinking. I saw our corpsman (Navy medic) running back from truck two. It was in slow motion. By the time he got there, we had all dismounted and started looking for a triggerman, but I didn’t see anybody anywhere. It was freakin’ silent. Nothing. We’re just driving along and the car on the side of the road blows up. We should have noticed it, too. They’d set it up to look broken down, but they’d been too obvious. The back end was jacked up and a tire was off, but the hood was open, too. We didn’t catch it, but we should have.
By the time I looked back at the humvee that got hit, Doc had three guys lined up on the ground – they looked like they were napping or something. Or dead. I couldn’t tell. Then the first two trucks in our convoy took off onto a side road. I think they saw some strange movement across the field – maybe the triggerman. The lieutenant probably wouldn’t have let them go with just two trucks, but he was lying on the ground next to the vehicle that got hit.
The guys sat up next to the humvee, so I guess they were okay. I found out later that one got hit in the back of his head with a pea-sized piece of shrapnel – he still said it felt like somebody pitched a softball at his head. It went in right under his helmet. The rest of the turret armor was peppered with hits. He was lucky. The driver got a small piece in his cheek, and I think the doctors ended up just leaving it there for some reason. Maybe it would have made a larger scar to dig out of his face. He was okay though, too. Lieutenant wasn’t hit, and neither was the radio guy, which was good. I think the Lt was back on the radio getting EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) to come out and do a post-blast analysis. They’d also need a wrecker to tow that truck back, since both of the left tires were shredded. I’m not sure if it ran anymore either.
I heard an explosion somewhere off to the front and right – like a few kilometers away. Either another unit just got hit, or some IED-maker just blew up his basement. Probably us getting hit though. They only seemed to blow themselves up at night in our area.
Meanwhile the sergeant in my truck is trying to radio ahead to the front two trucks and see if they found anything – he tried repeatedly, but got nothing on the radio, which was strange.
Our sister unit finally brought out EOD and hung around for added security. Good thing we’d had them come out, since there was another IED buried in the dirt a little further in front of the fourth truck. I don’t know if it didn’t go off when it was supposed to, or maybe the triggerman was waiting for us to all climb out and see what’s going on – and then hit more of us. Either way, EOD found it and backed everybody up to do a controlled detonation.
Suddenly, I see a single TOW truck (TOW missile humvee) come flying up from the same side road that the first two vehicles had left to go down earlier. The gun is empty. I have no idea where the driver is. The front windshield is shattered on the driver’s side. They disappear onto base and that’s all we saw of them. A few moments later our sister unit peels off from our cordon and heads out in the direction that truck had come from. We didn’t see them for a long time.
After what seemed like forever, EOD detonated the IED that was still buried on the roadside, and the rest of us limped the 500 meters back to base – we were still missing the first two trucks, but I figured they’d already gotten back and parked – or maybe they had a detainee they were dropping off.
The Lt radioed to all of us to stage our vehicles right inside the gate, so we did, and circled up for whatever debriefing he wanted to do. There were only two people in his truck now – him and the radio guy. I guess somebody had evacuated the two guys with shrapnel already – it’s not like they had far to go anyway.
So, we’re down two personnel from truck four, and trucks one and two are still missing. We walked up to the Lieutenant. He looked miserable.
He told us that the two guys in his truck were going to be just fine, and that the first two humvees had driven off to the west a few kilometers to see if they could find anything. They were hit by a another daisy-chain (multiple IEDs rigged to detonate simultaneously). The first vehicle was completely disabled, the guy in the turret got knocked out, but he was going to be okay. The guy in the front passenger’s seat got some shrapnel in his shoulder, but he was going to be okay, too. He’d already been flown out. Then the Lt’s lip started trembling. The third guy, our squad leader, didn’t make it.
That TOW truck we’d seen tearing back onto base was ours – and they were trying to save our squad leader. But he was hit badly and died instantly – from what we later learned.
We all just walked back to our trucks, drove to the house, and parked. Nobody said anything.
When the IED had gone off, it detonated between the first and second vehicle, sending shrapnel into the front of the second, but through the rear fender of the first. There was no armor there, and it went through like butter. After it killed our squad leader, it kept going and grazed the guy in front of him. Since the first vehicle was completely disabled, the guys in the second left a few Marines with the first truck – which was now starting to burn, and drove the casualties back to base. They worked on my squad leader the whole way, but it hadn’t helped. My buddy told me that he died in his arms. 'He had his eyes open, but he looked really young all the sudden, like a child.'
Two hours later the entire company stood in formation when the brought in the choppers to return his body to the states. We all stood at attention as they took off. We didn’t have anything to do but fix up the trucks, so I went down to the motor pool to get a loaner humvee to replace the first one, and we swapped out a new windshield for the second.
We went out on another mission later that night, juggling people so we had enough to fill each truck.
I don’t even know where they buried my squad leader, actually. I think he was from California, but I’m not sure. I don’t even know where his wife is now, either, or their two kids. We wanted to be there for the funeral, but there was no way they’d let a whole unit go home for it. They allowed one man to go home – his cousin, who was also in the unit. I think we never get closure to these things if we don’t see the funeral, but I’m not sure if it would make it better or worse. At least we’d be able to keep in touch with his family, though. We’d been in-country for only about a month and a half when this happened, and we were already down three guys. One made a full recovery, one could never bend his arm again, and one was dead - all three from IEDs. By the time we left that tour, we only had two guys in some of the trucks. Two. I think we lost about 20 from our battalion that tour. And at least one company was combat ineffective by the time we went home. It was, by far, my hardest tour.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Less than a click (kilometer) from base, the humvee two in front of me suddenly disappears in a fireball. The first thing I’m thinking is, ‘is anybody alive? Who was in the gun this time?’ You get a real tight feeling in your gut when this happens – and this wasn’t the first time.
We all rolled to a stop, and as the flames died away we could see the truck still sitting there, no movement. God, they’re all dead, I’m thinking. I saw our corpsman (Navy medic) running back from truck two. It was in slow motion. By the time he got there, we had all dismounted and started looking for a triggerman, but I didn’t see anybody anywhere. It was freakin’ silent. Nothing. We’re just driving along and the car on the side of the road blows up. We should have noticed it, too. They’d set it up to look broken down, but they’d been too obvious. The back end was jacked up and a tire was off, but the hood was open, too. We didn’t catch it, but we should have.
By the time I looked back at the humvee that got hit, Doc had three guys lined up on the ground – they looked like they were napping or something. Or dead. I couldn’t tell. Then the first two trucks in our convoy took off onto a side road. I think they saw some strange movement across the field – maybe the triggerman. The lieutenant probably wouldn’t have let them go with just two trucks, but he was lying on the ground next to the vehicle that got hit.
The guys sat up next to the humvee, so I guess they were okay. I found out later that one got hit in the back of his head with a pea-sized piece of shrapnel – he still said it felt like somebody pitched a softball at his head. It went in right under his helmet. The rest of the turret armor was peppered with hits. He was lucky. The driver got a small piece in his cheek, and I think the doctors ended up just leaving it there for some reason. Maybe it would have made a larger scar to dig out of his face. He was okay though, too. Lieutenant wasn’t hit, and neither was the radio guy, which was good. I think the Lt was back on the radio getting EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) to come out and do a post-blast analysis. They’d also need a wrecker to tow that truck back, since both of the left tires were shredded. I’m not sure if it ran anymore either.
I heard an explosion somewhere off to the front and right – like a few kilometers away. Either another unit just got hit, or some IED-maker just blew up his basement. Probably us getting hit though. They only seemed to blow themselves up at night in our area.
Meanwhile the sergeant in my truck is trying to radio ahead to the front two trucks and see if they found anything – he tried repeatedly, but got nothing on the radio, which was strange.
Our sister unit finally brought out EOD and hung around for added security. Good thing we’d had them come out, since there was another IED buried in the dirt a little further in front of the fourth truck. I don’t know if it didn’t go off when it was supposed to, or maybe the triggerman was waiting for us to all climb out and see what’s going on – and then hit more of us. Either way, EOD found it and backed everybody up to do a controlled detonation.
Suddenly, I see a single TOW truck (TOW missile humvee) come flying up from the same side road that the first two vehicles had left to go down earlier. The gun is empty. I have no idea where the driver is. The front windshield is shattered on the driver’s side. They disappear onto base and that’s all we saw of them. A few moments later our sister unit peels off from our cordon and heads out in the direction that truck had come from. We didn’t see them for a long time.
After what seemed like forever, EOD detonated the IED that was still buried on the roadside, and the rest of us limped the 500 meters back to base – we were still missing the first two trucks, but I figured they’d already gotten back and parked – or maybe they had a detainee they were dropping off.
The Lt radioed to all of us to stage our vehicles right inside the gate, so we did, and circled up for whatever debriefing he wanted to do. There were only two people in his truck now – him and the radio guy. I guess somebody had evacuated the two guys with shrapnel already – it’s not like they had far to go anyway.
So, we’re down two personnel from truck four, and trucks one and two are still missing. We walked up to the Lieutenant. He looked miserable.
He told us that the two guys in his truck were going to be just fine, and that the first two humvees had driven off to the west a few kilometers to see if they could find anything. They were hit by a another daisy-chain (multiple IEDs rigged to detonate simultaneously). The first vehicle was completely disabled, the guy in the turret got knocked out, but he was going to be okay. The guy in the front passenger’s seat got some shrapnel in his shoulder, but he was going to be okay, too. He’d already been flown out. Then the Lt’s lip started trembling. The third guy, our squad leader, didn’t make it.
That TOW truck we’d seen tearing back onto base was ours – and they were trying to save our squad leader. But he was hit badly and died instantly – from what we later learned.
We all just walked back to our trucks, drove to the house, and parked. Nobody said anything.
When the IED had gone off, it detonated between the first and second vehicle, sending shrapnel into the front of the second, but through the rear fender of the first. There was no armor there, and it went through like butter. After it killed our squad leader, it kept going and grazed the guy in front of him. Since the first vehicle was completely disabled, the guys in the second left a few Marines with the first truck – which was now starting to burn, and drove the casualties back to base. They worked on my squad leader the whole way, but it hadn’t helped. My buddy told me that he died in his arms. 'He had his eyes open, but he looked really young all the sudden, like a child.'
Two hours later the entire company stood in formation when the brought in the choppers to return his body to the states. We all stood at attention as they took off. We didn’t have anything to do but fix up the trucks, so I went down to the motor pool to get a loaner humvee to replace the first one, and we swapped out a new windshield for the second.
We went out on another mission later that night, juggling people so we had enough to fill each truck.
I don’t even know where they buried my squad leader, actually. I think he was from California, but I’m not sure. I don’t even know where his wife is now, either, or their two kids. We wanted to be there for the funeral, but there was no way they’d let a whole unit go home for it. They allowed one man to go home – his cousin, who was also in the unit. I think we never get closure to these things if we don’t see the funeral, but I’m not sure if it would make it better or worse. At least we’d be able to keep in touch with his family, though. We’d been in-country for only about a month and a half when this happened, and we were already down three guys. One made a full recovery, one could never bend his arm again, and one was dead - all three from IEDs. By the time we left that tour, we only had two guys in some of the trucks. Two. I think we lost about 20 from our battalion that tour. And at least one company was combat ineffective by the time we went home. It was, by far, my hardest tour.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Monday, January 5, 2009
Bob Conquers Camp Fallujah
While we were getting ready to leave out of Fallujah and head south, they always put us transient troops as far away from everything as they could. It was like a two kilometer walk from our tents – and yes, we had tents while everybody else had nice trailers – so they issued us one of those dinky Nissan buses to operate our own bus service.
It’s freakin’ hard to do with one bus, and like only two guys in the whole battalion who could drive a stick. My section leader was one of them, and I volunteered to drive, too, just because it was better than rotting away on radio watch or getting yelled at for wearing my boots in the rack (bed/cot). That thing was almost dead. I could shift from third to fourth without pushing in the clutch, and I think the shocks were gone. IF it even had shocks. Every time we went over those tank tread speed bumps, everybody’s spine would get depressed and they’d scream at me.
Basically, all we did was drive from our end of base back and forth from mainside and pick up any guy that waved us down. We had a dumpy cardboard sign in the window that had our unit on it, so we knew they knew where they were going.
We had pretty good fun, driving like idiots, driving too fast, ripping through gears and trying to get it airborne when we went over the speed bumps – unless we had like an officer or staff NCO on there, then we’d drive like old people and nobody talked at all. It’s like having your parents chaperone you. No matter what you say, it’s wrong and they yell at you.
We picked up one of my buddies one day and we headed back towards our side of the base. We were driving like jackasses, as usual, but he said, “man, you can’t drive for shit. You drive slow.” It pissed me off so bad, I said, okay. Fine. How’s this; and I took off.
I tore through first and second, and then I hit a straight stretch, so I push it into third and fourth. I was getting ready to shift again, but then I saw a tank tread ahead, so I had to slam on the brakes. I wasn’t slowing down enough, so I sort of went onto the shoulder to try to get around it – maybe hit it with only two wheels.
I started skidding when the wheels hit the dirt, so I ended up going completely off the road and grinding to a stop. But then it started to slide sideways down the hill. It was almost a 45% angle, so we were afraid it would roll over. We all jumped out the windows on the high side and watched it slide down a little farther in the sand. We’re a million miles away from mainside and now we’re stuck on the side of the road with our stupid bongo bus about to roll down a hill sideways.
We walked to our motorpool nearby and told them we needed to get a wrecker to pull us out. They just looked at us like we’re stupid, so we told them to go to hell and we left.
There was another motorpool nearby, but it belonged to some artillery guys we didn’t know. I was wearing my boonie cover (floppy jungle-style hat), so I asked my buddy to give me his 8-point cover. They’re what officers usually wear for some reason, even in Iraq. “What are you doing,” he asked me. I said just don’t worry about it. You guys stay with the bus.
I went to these guys’ tent and ripped back the flap. There were a bunch of guys sliming around looking useless inside and it was dark, which worked out well. They couldn’t see that I was a PFC (Private First Class).
“Hey, somebody get me an NCO up here. Where are your NCOs? Hurry up, Marines.” They all jumped up and started stumbling over each other to get over to me. They still couldn’t see I was a PFC.
“Hey, some Marines got their bus stuck up the road a little way. You need to get a wrecker out to them, understand? You devildogs watch out for each other, got it? Go pull them back onto the road and help them out”
A couple of them stammered, “Yes sir,” and went running out the back while the rest just stood there staring at me. “Thanks, Marines. Oorah.” I walked out. I heard a few “oorahs” behind me as I walked away.
I ran back to the bus and got my boonie back from my buddy and we waited. They didn’t send a wrecker, actually. They sent a 7-ton (heavy combat truck – triple axles) and a humvee. Then they pulled us out, telling me that some officer stopped by their tent and yelled at them to get out there and help us. We said we didn’t know who it was, but thanks. Appreciate the help.
It was great, nobody yelled at us and we didn’t get in trouble. I was like 19 years old and they thought I was an officer. The whole military is like this, man. All you have to do is act like you know what you’re doing and everybody just assumes you do. It’s great. I hated that stupid bus though.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
It’s freakin’ hard to do with one bus, and like only two guys in the whole battalion who could drive a stick. My section leader was one of them, and I volunteered to drive, too, just because it was better than rotting away on radio watch or getting yelled at for wearing my boots in the rack (bed/cot). That thing was almost dead. I could shift from third to fourth without pushing in the clutch, and I think the shocks were gone. IF it even had shocks. Every time we went over those tank tread speed bumps, everybody’s spine would get depressed and they’d scream at me.
Basically, all we did was drive from our end of base back and forth from mainside and pick up any guy that waved us down. We had a dumpy cardboard sign in the window that had our unit on it, so we knew they knew where they were going.
We had pretty good fun, driving like idiots, driving too fast, ripping through gears and trying to get it airborne when we went over the speed bumps – unless we had like an officer or staff NCO on there, then we’d drive like old people and nobody talked at all. It’s like having your parents chaperone you. No matter what you say, it’s wrong and they yell at you.
We picked up one of my buddies one day and we headed back towards our side of the base. We were driving like jackasses, as usual, but he said, “man, you can’t drive for shit. You drive slow.” It pissed me off so bad, I said, okay. Fine. How’s this; and I took off.
I tore through first and second, and then I hit a straight stretch, so I push it into third and fourth. I was getting ready to shift again, but then I saw a tank tread ahead, so I had to slam on the brakes. I wasn’t slowing down enough, so I sort of went onto the shoulder to try to get around it – maybe hit it with only two wheels.
I started skidding when the wheels hit the dirt, so I ended up going completely off the road and grinding to a stop. But then it started to slide sideways down the hill. It was almost a 45% angle, so we were afraid it would roll over. We all jumped out the windows on the high side and watched it slide down a little farther in the sand. We’re a million miles away from mainside and now we’re stuck on the side of the road with our stupid bongo bus about to roll down a hill sideways.
We walked to our motorpool nearby and told them we needed to get a wrecker to pull us out. They just looked at us like we’re stupid, so we told them to go to hell and we left.
There was another motorpool nearby, but it belonged to some artillery guys we didn’t know. I was wearing my boonie cover (floppy jungle-style hat), so I asked my buddy to give me his 8-point cover. They’re what officers usually wear for some reason, even in Iraq. “What are you doing,” he asked me. I said just don’t worry about it. You guys stay with the bus.
I went to these guys’ tent and ripped back the flap. There were a bunch of guys sliming around looking useless inside and it was dark, which worked out well. They couldn’t see that I was a PFC (Private First Class).
“Hey, somebody get me an NCO up here. Where are your NCOs? Hurry up, Marines.” They all jumped up and started stumbling over each other to get over to me. They still couldn’t see I was a PFC.
“Hey, some Marines got their bus stuck up the road a little way. You need to get a wrecker out to them, understand? You devildogs watch out for each other, got it? Go pull them back onto the road and help them out”
A couple of them stammered, “Yes sir,” and went running out the back while the rest just stood there staring at me. “Thanks, Marines. Oorah.” I walked out. I heard a few “oorahs” behind me as I walked away.
I ran back to the bus and got my boonie back from my buddy and we waited. They didn’t send a wrecker, actually. They sent a 7-ton (heavy combat truck – triple axles) and a humvee. Then they pulled us out, telling me that some officer stopped by their tent and yelled at them to get out there and help us. We said we didn’t know who it was, but thanks. Appreciate the help.
It was great, nobody yelled at us and we didn’t get in trouble. I was like 19 years old and they thought I was an officer. The whole military is like this, man. All you have to do is act like you know what you’re doing and everybody just assumes you do. It’s great. I hated that stupid bus though.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Tate's War
We were on standby one day on base, acting as QRF (Quick Reaction Force) – which basically meant we sat around dressed and ready to roll out in under two minutes if we got a call. They were usually something silly, but every now and then we’d be sent out to get a pinned unit or evacuate casualties. That kept most of us motivated to move with a sense of purpose.
We got called one time to bail out a recon unit (Marine Reconnaissance) that was just decisively attacked and wasted most of their ammo on a counterattack. We were sent out to relieve their position, help them with detainees and secure the area while they egressed to base.
By the time we got out there, there wasn’t really much going on. One humvee was being stacked with bodies that were lying around all over the place – none of them ours. They were either insurgents, or had gotten mowed down in the crossfire. I assumed it was the enemy crossfire, but I wasn’t sure. A few destroyed cars were still in the middle of the street, windows broken and lights still on. They had found weapons in the trunk of another.
We took up positions all over the place, and my truck and another were assigned to the north end, next to a couple Iraqi Army roadblocks.
While we took over the position, some recon guys discovered that there was a car behind one building LOADED with artillery rounds – presumably to be used as carbomb during the attack. For some reason they hadn’t used it.
While everybody was standing around, two guys, believe it or not, tried to walk up to the car and drive it away. I guess they didn’t realize we knew it was full of ordinance. We captured them immediately, put them on their knees, and started screaming at them and questioning them. They were convinced we were going to execute them. Both of them pissed themselves, and my friend told me that one of them actually crapped on himself – so badly that nobody wanted to handle him to detain him. Somebody did in the end, I guess.
We started helping the recon guys round up all the detainees and doing a more thorough search of the buildings. I think most of the detainees were actually just shop owners and customers who just happened to be in the area. They’d all be questioned, well-fed, and probably released. That wasn’t my problem.
Somebody called out Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) so they could safely detonate the carbomb, though because it was in a courtyard, they couldn’t drive their robot up to it to lay any charges. Somebody – probably an EOD pyromaniac, proposed that it’d be a good idea to use a SMAW on it. (shoulder mounted anti-tank weapon – the loudest weapon in the infantry arsenal), and blow it up from a safe distance. We’re all pyros, too, so it sounded like a good idea.
The idiot gunner hadn’t sighted in though, so he missed his first short – from like less than 100 feet. I’m sure he got yelled at later for it. He fired a second round (these things are deafening), and it went in one window and out the other. What a waste. His third round hit, however, and the whole thing went up in a fireball. I was about 200 meters away, but the entire rear brake assembly crashed into the road next to our truck. My gunner cussed and ducked. I just watched. It was pretty neat.
I’m not sure why it happened then, but the insurgents must have used this explosion as a signal to attack us again. They started firing from somewhere in the buildings and first squad in front of me started rocking every weapon they had (except the TOW missiles, unfortunately). The insurgents started to move, so they followed them into some alleys, shooting them as they ran.
Some dude down there was crossing the street in a wheelchair when the humvees rounded the corner. I don’t know if he had a gun, but was immediately targeted by two 50 cals (heavy machine guns) and a few SAWs (light machine guns). My buddy told me later that he started using like evasive tactics on us. Wheeling one way, suddenly changing directions, and then amazingly got away. My buddy said, “an entire anti-armor squad opened up on him and he somehow escaped. I don’t get it.” I’m embarrassed, too. We were the most heavily-armed Marine infantry unit in Iraq and couldn’t hit a guy in a wheelchair.
While first squad continued pursuing the insurgents, things got a little quieter where were. The Iraqi soldiers grew some balls because we were there, so they started turning away cars from the checkpoints by just shooting at them. None of us spoke any Arabic, so we just left them alone. This was their country anyway.
Some of the EOD guys got caught behind a wall during all of the firing and some idiot shot most of it down with a 50 before deciding it was a waste of ammo to shoot a wall. I don’t know who it was, but it was probably one of our guys.
Occasionally we had a bullet or two wiz by us, but we couldn’t tell where they were from, so we just held our position and joked about it. None of them ever hit very near is, I think. Somewhere off in the distance somebody fired an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) at our guys, and for some reason, we didn’t do anything. I still don’t know why.
After the firefight ended and EOD carefully came out from behind their crumbled wall to yell at somebody, we ended up packing things up. I borrowed some cigarettes from an abandoned stand next to the intersection. They made me tow back the captured vehicle in the middle of the street, which was stupid. Because it wasn’t armored, they wouldn’t let anybody ride in it and steer or brake, so every time I drove forward, it started pulling sideways, and when I braked, it would crash into my bumper. I told them I wasn’t taking any responsibility for the damage to my humvee.
Eventually we all made it back safely with no casualties (either to us, recon, or EOD), and we later learned that we’d been fighting Zarqawi’s troops that day. While everything was going down in Fallujah, he went to our area and started causing problems. That was the only time we engaged anybody that actually reassembled and counterattacked. Usually they just shot at us and ran.
I’m glad they finally nailed that guy. His boys were dangerous.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
We got called one time to bail out a recon unit (Marine Reconnaissance) that was just decisively attacked and wasted most of their ammo on a counterattack. We were sent out to relieve their position, help them with detainees and secure the area while they egressed to base.
By the time we got out there, there wasn’t really much going on. One humvee was being stacked with bodies that were lying around all over the place – none of them ours. They were either insurgents, or had gotten mowed down in the crossfire. I assumed it was the enemy crossfire, but I wasn’t sure. A few destroyed cars were still in the middle of the street, windows broken and lights still on. They had found weapons in the trunk of another.
We took up positions all over the place, and my truck and another were assigned to the north end, next to a couple Iraqi Army roadblocks.
While we took over the position, some recon guys discovered that there was a car behind one building LOADED with artillery rounds – presumably to be used as carbomb during the attack. For some reason they hadn’t used it.
While everybody was standing around, two guys, believe it or not, tried to walk up to the car and drive it away. I guess they didn’t realize we knew it was full of ordinance. We captured them immediately, put them on their knees, and started screaming at them and questioning them. They were convinced we were going to execute them. Both of them pissed themselves, and my friend told me that one of them actually crapped on himself – so badly that nobody wanted to handle him to detain him. Somebody did in the end, I guess.
We started helping the recon guys round up all the detainees and doing a more thorough search of the buildings. I think most of the detainees were actually just shop owners and customers who just happened to be in the area. They’d all be questioned, well-fed, and probably released. That wasn’t my problem.
Somebody called out Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) so they could safely detonate the carbomb, though because it was in a courtyard, they couldn’t drive their robot up to it to lay any charges. Somebody – probably an EOD pyromaniac, proposed that it’d be a good idea to use a SMAW on it. (shoulder mounted anti-tank weapon – the loudest weapon in the infantry arsenal), and blow it up from a safe distance. We’re all pyros, too, so it sounded like a good idea.
The idiot gunner hadn’t sighted in though, so he missed his first short – from like less than 100 feet. I’m sure he got yelled at later for it. He fired a second round (these things are deafening), and it went in one window and out the other. What a waste. His third round hit, however, and the whole thing went up in a fireball. I was about 200 meters away, but the entire rear brake assembly crashed into the road next to our truck. My gunner cussed and ducked. I just watched. It was pretty neat.
I’m not sure why it happened then, but the insurgents must have used this explosion as a signal to attack us again. They started firing from somewhere in the buildings and first squad in front of me started rocking every weapon they had (except the TOW missiles, unfortunately). The insurgents started to move, so they followed them into some alleys, shooting them as they ran.
Some dude down there was crossing the street in a wheelchair when the humvees rounded the corner. I don’t know if he had a gun, but was immediately targeted by two 50 cals (heavy machine guns) and a few SAWs (light machine guns). My buddy told me later that he started using like evasive tactics on us. Wheeling one way, suddenly changing directions, and then amazingly got away. My buddy said, “an entire anti-armor squad opened up on him and he somehow escaped. I don’t get it.” I’m embarrassed, too. We were the most heavily-armed Marine infantry unit in Iraq and couldn’t hit a guy in a wheelchair.
While first squad continued pursuing the insurgents, things got a little quieter where were. The Iraqi soldiers grew some balls because we were there, so they started turning away cars from the checkpoints by just shooting at them. None of us spoke any Arabic, so we just left them alone. This was their country anyway.
Some of the EOD guys got caught behind a wall during all of the firing and some idiot shot most of it down with a 50 before deciding it was a waste of ammo to shoot a wall. I don’t know who it was, but it was probably one of our guys.
Occasionally we had a bullet or two wiz by us, but we couldn’t tell where they were from, so we just held our position and joked about it. None of them ever hit very near is, I think. Somewhere off in the distance somebody fired an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) at our guys, and for some reason, we didn’t do anything. I still don’t know why.
After the firefight ended and EOD carefully came out from behind their crumbled wall to yell at somebody, we ended up packing things up. I borrowed some cigarettes from an abandoned stand next to the intersection. They made me tow back the captured vehicle in the middle of the street, which was stupid. Because it wasn’t armored, they wouldn’t let anybody ride in it and steer or brake, so every time I drove forward, it started pulling sideways, and when I braked, it would crash into my bumper. I told them I wasn’t taking any responsibility for the damage to my humvee.
Eventually we all made it back safely with no casualties (either to us, recon, or EOD), and we later learned that we’d been fighting Zarqawi’s troops that day. While everything was going down in Fallujah, he went to our area and started causing problems. That was the only time we engaged anybody that actually reassembled and counterattacked. Usually they just shot at us and ran.
I’m glad they finally nailed that guy. His boys were dangerous.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Niko's Fallujah
Niko’s memories from Fallujah:
We were in Fallujah that time. I think we’d been there about a week. The stupid supply train idiots couldn’t get us any water for some reason, so they got us sodas and some orange drink crap with chunks in it. We couldn’t even get ammo. We had to go to another battalion to get it. From another DIVISION. I hated those stupid supply weeners. It was at least 110 degrees every day. We were miserable.
One of our platoons goes out on patrol and gets absolutely annihilated. They walked into a perfect L-shaped ambush complete with bunkers and ended up with something like seven wounded, but amazingly, no dead. They called us up to go help them, which was a welcome relief from the stupid crap they had me doing. Fallujah was behind me. That’s where all the action was, but they had me watching the freakin’ Euphrates river. I was sitting there watching the river flow by and reading magazines through night vision goggles as the sun set.
So they called us up to go help them evacuate their wounded. I was in the turret on the 240 (medium machine gun). We grabbed their worst wounded and transported him back to the base – under sporadic fire the whole time. I lit up the whole cityscape from about 700 meters away as we egressed. I thought it was the right thing to do. Provide suppressive fire towards the source as we evaced the wounded guy. But of course, I got yelled at for it. Of course.
After we dropped him off we picked up a whole platoon of elevens (infantry foot troops) and headed back out to the scene to drop them off. They told everybody to get out and I figured we were going to go back to base.
“Movement to contact,” somebody hollered.
What the hell does that mean? I’d never heard it before, so I asked one of the elevens.
“It means we walk until we get shot at.”
Are you kidding?? I’d just given away my last canteen of water and crappy Gatorade mix. I’m already thirsty.
So we have to support this thing. I take the 240, load myself down with ammo, and we start walking.
We started getting sporadic shots and we didn’t do much, but then it got closer and we started seeing tracers, so everybody starts running for cover and taking positions behind shit that might stop bullets. My squad leader tells me and my team leader to get behind that berm over there. I was like, WHERE? I don’t SEE any berm (dirt mound).
The stupid thing was like 300 meters away, with no cover between me or it. We (me and my team leader) start trucking across the dirt and of course, the shots start focusing in on our dumb asses as we sprint for this stupid field.
We keep running as all the fire focuses in on us. I’m tired, thirsty, already dehydrated as hell and hot. My stupid pistol belt starts slowly riding down my waist, so I slow down. I didn’t want to drop my freakin’ pistol in the middle of the field. My team leader keeps yelling at me to speed up, but I tell him, screw you. I’m hot, tired, and my pants are falling down. I want to go home. Shut up you asshole.
These bullets were getting closer, and I can even feel the heat from some of the tracers pushing past my face. The team leader is still screaming at me to hurry up, but my pants are about to fall off so I just stop, throw down my gun, cinch my gun belt as tight as it would go, and then pick up my machine gun and keep running. Bullets are still landing all around me. This was like Medal of Honor shit, so I didn’t even care. I was thirsty. Screw it. I don’t care if I die. This is stupid. If you want to live, run past me. I don’t care.
So he’s still screaming at me to hurry up, but I told him to shut up. We’re NOT going to die. Shut up. I just shuffled the last hundred meters to the “berm,” which was actually just a stupid pile of goat feed up against a house – we couldn’t see clearly because it was dark and too far away.
We ended up getting in a firefight for like an hour, running from the rear of the line all the way to the front and taking position behind freakin’ goat feed. I found out later that one bullet had gone through my pants leg and somehow not hit me. There were a LOT of bullets landing around us. I know I took out at least one sniper, but most everything else was suppressive fire. After we slugged it out with the city of Fallujah for an hour or so, we got ready to leave and I managed to fuse my hand to the gun barrel when I accidentally touched it. The burn was bad. Turns out we held everything off while the entire company retreated. And then they left us. We had to run about 500 meters to get back to their positions. Idiots.
People told me later that they saw us sprinting at first, then just shuffling, then just two dumbasses strolling to their position. They don’t have any idea how we lived. Frankly, neither do I.
The funny thing is that the berm we were supposed to actually man was about ten feet from where were originally stood. We ran all that away for nothing. It was stupid.
Combat usually is. Good times. Where’s my stupid medal? No really…
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
We were in Fallujah that time. I think we’d been there about a week. The stupid supply train idiots couldn’t get us any water for some reason, so they got us sodas and some orange drink crap with chunks in it. We couldn’t even get ammo. We had to go to another battalion to get it. From another DIVISION. I hated those stupid supply weeners. It was at least 110 degrees every day. We were miserable.
One of our platoons goes out on patrol and gets absolutely annihilated. They walked into a perfect L-shaped ambush complete with bunkers and ended up with something like seven wounded, but amazingly, no dead. They called us up to go help them, which was a welcome relief from the stupid crap they had me doing. Fallujah was behind me. That’s where all the action was, but they had me watching the freakin’ Euphrates river. I was sitting there watching the river flow by and reading magazines through night vision goggles as the sun set.
So they called us up to go help them evacuate their wounded. I was in the turret on the 240 (medium machine gun). We grabbed their worst wounded and transported him back to the base – under sporadic fire the whole time. I lit up the whole cityscape from about 700 meters away as we egressed. I thought it was the right thing to do. Provide suppressive fire towards the source as we evaced the wounded guy. But of course, I got yelled at for it. Of course.
After we dropped him off we picked up a whole platoon of elevens (infantry foot troops) and headed back out to the scene to drop them off. They told everybody to get out and I figured we were going to go back to base.
“Movement to contact,” somebody hollered.
What the hell does that mean? I’d never heard it before, so I asked one of the elevens.
“It means we walk until we get shot at.”
Are you kidding?? I’d just given away my last canteen of water and crappy Gatorade mix. I’m already thirsty.
So we have to support this thing. I take the 240, load myself down with ammo, and we start walking.
We started getting sporadic shots and we didn’t do much, but then it got closer and we started seeing tracers, so everybody starts running for cover and taking positions behind shit that might stop bullets. My squad leader tells me and my team leader to get behind that berm over there. I was like, WHERE? I don’t SEE any berm (dirt mound).
The stupid thing was like 300 meters away, with no cover between me or it. We (me and my team leader) start trucking across the dirt and of course, the shots start focusing in on our dumb asses as we sprint for this stupid field.
We keep running as all the fire focuses in on us. I’m tired, thirsty, already dehydrated as hell and hot. My stupid pistol belt starts slowly riding down my waist, so I slow down. I didn’t want to drop my freakin’ pistol in the middle of the field. My team leader keeps yelling at me to speed up, but I tell him, screw you. I’m hot, tired, and my pants are falling down. I want to go home. Shut up you asshole.
These bullets were getting closer, and I can even feel the heat from some of the tracers pushing past my face. The team leader is still screaming at me to hurry up, but my pants are about to fall off so I just stop, throw down my gun, cinch my gun belt as tight as it would go, and then pick up my machine gun and keep running. Bullets are still landing all around me. This was like Medal of Honor shit, so I didn’t even care. I was thirsty. Screw it. I don’t care if I die. This is stupid. If you want to live, run past me. I don’t care.
So he’s still screaming at me to hurry up, but I told him to shut up. We’re NOT going to die. Shut up. I just shuffled the last hundred meters to the “berm,” which was actually just a stupid pile of goat feed up against a house – we couldn’t see clearly because it was dark and too far away.
We ended up getting in a firefight for like an hour, running from the rear of the line all the way to the front and taking position behind freakin’ goat feed. I found out later that one bullet had gone through my pants leg and somehow not hit me. There were a LOT of bullets landing around us. I know I took out at least one sniper, but most everything else was suppressive fire. After we slugged it out with the city of Fallujah for an hour or so, we got ready to leave and I managed to fuse my hand to the gun barrel when I accidentally touched it. The burn was bad. Turns out we held everything off while the entire company retreated. And then they left us. We had to run about 500 meters to get back to their positions. Idiots.
People told me later that they saw us sprinting at first, then just shuffling, then just two dumbasses strolling to their position. They don’t have any idea how we lived. Frankly, neither do I.
The funny thing is that the berm we were supposed to actually man was about ten feet from where were originally stood. We ran all that away for nothing. It was stupid.
Combat usually is. Good times. Where’s my stupid medal? No really…
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Friday, January 2, 2009
Stupid Ramblings
The above title is an attempt to annoy my little sister, who finds the word “rambling” to be perhaps the most odious in the English language. I don’t exactly love it, but I suppose I see its occasional appropriate use (on useless blog postings). My favorite word is stupid. Just ask my family. If I don’t like it, it’s stupid. This title is therefore intended to annoy others and humor/satiate me.
I am discovering, much to my great dismay, that having a weblog (blog) these days is apparently the “emo” thing to do. If you are a teenager, think you’re spectacular, believe that you have something very important to say but nobody is listening, wear eyeliner and pants that are a size or two too small, you start a blog. And a few of your most dedicated friends – when they find themselves hopelessly bored in the middle of the night, will log on and read whatever garbage you write. Or they’ll simply hit the “refresh” button repeatedly to run up the counter and give you the impression that people actually give a crap what you say. The one potential disadvantage of running up the counter, however, is that your friends will have to sit and instead listen to you rave about how many readers/fans you have. Nobody cares. Not even them. You write because you aren’t sure of yourself, because you don’t like feeling small and insignificant, and simply because you can. You’re narcissistic. This, I am learning, is why most young people have blogs.
This whole realization wasn’t sparked by any great conversation, but by a brief visit to the website www.despair.com, which specializes in demotivating slogans, posters, and calendars – and more recently, “despairwear.” One shirt simply states, “More people have read this shirt than your blog.” I was unaware that blogging was such an emo thing to do – and I’m embarrassed.
The first thing that comes to mind having made this realization is the number of people I have confidently, boldly, and perhaps even proudly told that I have a blog. Most of them have been polite upon hearing this, but now I have to wonder how many were such because they assumed me just another troubled emo kid that’s desperately struggling to afford meaning to my dull, post-highschool existence. Maybe that’s why they were so overly encouraging… They were concerned that the slightest bit of negativity or naysaying would send me rushing back to the typewriter to compose angry, unsent hate letters to everybody who “just doesn’t understand or appreciate me.” Or they were concerned that I’d find a gun, or use it, or give poisoned Kool-Aid to a playground full of children. “Just don’t insult him. He’s a blogger, self-indulged, and unstable.”
Thanks guys. Had I known that blogging brought with it so many negative connotations, I would have been less excited to tell people about it. Maybe I would have simply told them I’m a writer on sabbatical (unemployed). Better that than a teenie bobber with inferiority issues.
At any rate, the purpose of this post is not to defend my blogging/writing. What I write either stands on its own merit, or it does not. The only part of it that concerns me is the challenge to write daily, and hopefully write well. Some days, I am fully aware, I do not write well at all.
I have never been a big fan of new years resolutions. Many are simply reignited guilt for things NOT done the year prior. By the end of October, people are starting to reflect on the year and all the things they either failed abysmally at, didn’t even start, or situations that have simply grown more dire. Out of self-flagellation and regret, they will think about changing. But not just yet, since the holidays are a busy time and there’s a lot of fatty food to eat first, bills to pay, and debt to incur and spend the next year trying to pay off. I’ll start it after the holidays. New Years. The convenient time to schedule all life-changes, before reneging on them for a couple of months, wherein we grow numb to the fact we’ve already totally failed to realize our ambitions and forget about them. We’ll think of them again next October, when we start to once again reflect on what we didn’t do before. New Years resolutions don’t change – they just get recycled.
This now said, I have made no resolutions, but I have made some decisions, which coincidentally fall at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. They are not entirely new to most. Quite simply, it is time to approach this blog with renewed, and reoriented vigor.
The seventeen week vacation has ended – almost three weeks ago. It would be wrong of me to attempt to prolong it unnaturally – such as venturing out again aimlessly. Thus, this will not be happening. I will limit travel to something more purposeful.
I wish to continue writing daily, since much of what happens on a daily basis is fairly often worth mentioning. Regardless of where I go or who I meet, I tend to have an interesting conversation with somebody. People are neat. Writing will continue on a daily or near-daily basis. This I need to do, not only for practice, but also because I enjoy it. Amazingly, a few others do too.
As for purposeful travel, however, this is directly tied to purposeful writing. When I go somewhere, it will be for the purpose of pursuing a specific writing subject. For example, I leave for Maryland tomorrow to begin serious efforts at writing a novel with an old Marine buddy. We’ve collaborated in the past quite successfully, so we’re confident we can do it again. Fiction, however, is a different avenue for me, so brings its own set of challenges. Nevertheless, I look forward to the experience, and remain optimistic that something will come of it. It is a project, and undertaken with the intent of a finished piece of writing that may be interesting for others to read, and undoubtedly interesting to write. Work, but fun work.
Following this project (which has no specific timeline), I am considering other writing projects (which as of today are not developed into anything worth mentioning). The time for simply traveling around and writing has ended – as fun as it may have been.
My underlying purpose is this: Having been blessed with a tremendous amount of relatively free time and marginal financial independence, I wish to use my time wisely and productively. WHEN this time ends (and I am certain that it will), I want to be able to look back, content that I did well with the time I was given – and perhaps produced a publishable piece of writing. Just what to publish with who remains a mystery to me, but I will keep working on this and see what comes out of it.
Another way to consider this is that I am seeking to “redeem” my free time, rather than grow inappropriately comfortable with not working a regular job and pursuing a career. Thus, writing will necessarily become my “work,” and hopefully produce something that may someday amount to an income. I am not writing, however, because I want money, but because I enjoy writing. “I’ve just got to play music because I love it.” That quote still sticks with me. I just need to keep writing because I love it. Something MAY come of it, or not. That remains to be seen. But I won’t know until I make a reasonable attempt at trying.
Obviously, I have to consider the purpose of my writing aside from simply enjoying it. That is insufficient, undirected, and there is a strong temptation to never pursue it beyond a daily sounding board for my unclear thoughts and a few social encounters. This will become my work.
Why write? Because I like to tell a story. Just as much as this, I like to stir others’ hearts as mine is stirred. Clearly, stories can be found anywhere, so I am left making a decision of WHAT stories I wish to pour my efforts into. So far, I am undecided.
I have been blessed with having many avenues on which I may approach this decision, seeing as a rather diverse background has enabled me to “connect” with a number of different interests. There are the southerners because I claim to be one. The veterans because I AM one, the conservatives because I sometimes think like they do, and the weirdos because I, too am not exactly normal. Not only are there a number of ways to skin a cat, but I in my case several cats. All I have to decide is which has the tastiest meat. *Does anybody know the origin of the “skin a cat” expression? I’d love to hear it…
One project idea which continues to interest me is the notion of touring all the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) posts in Virginia and simply getting to know a very eclectic and interesting group of men and women. I would love to tell their stories. They have endured amazing and trying situations, lived to tell about it, and are forever changed from their experiences. In most cases, it is also good to talk about these things, even though it can be simultaneously difficult to do so. But harboring demons is even worse.
A further purpose of such an undertaking would simply be to familiarize an audience with a group of people poorly understood at best, often forgotten, and at worst ignored. I would be seeking to introduce them to America, to allow (not make) people more fond of them, and in so doing, bridge the rather large gap between civilian and servicemember that has seen combat on foreign soil at his or her nation’s calling. Millions have served thus, but many millions more don’t understand them so well. Maybe I could help to change this in a small way. I will have to put more thought and prayer into this decision, but so far it seems quite interesting. This is but one idea for more purposeful writing. None of these ideas are particularly prodigious, but, at least to me, they’re endearing.
Regardless, the days of simple blogging are now over. What I have to say is often uninteresting, but what others have to say is not. It’s time to tell their stories, not struggle to make up my own. I don’t want to be emo. Or wear too tight pants and a scarf – in summer. Or eyeliner. Or spike my hair straight up. Or worse yet, struggle for recognition and identity in a sea of useless, shameless, unedited writing. I already know who I am, as to my family, my friends, and God. WHAT I am is a God-chaser. What I DO, at least for the moment, is write. No longer aimlessly, but with direction.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
I am discovering, much to my great dismay, that having a weblog (blog) these days is apparently the “emo” thing to do. If you are a teenager, think you’re spectacular, believe that you have something very important to say but nobody is listening, wear eyeliner and pants that are a size or two too small, you start a blog. And a few of your most dedicated friends – when they find themselves hopelessly bored in the middle of the night, will log on and read whatever garbage you write. Or they’ll simply hit the “refresh” button repeatedly to run up the counter and give you the impression that people actually give a crap what you say. The one potential disadvantage of running up the counter, however, is that your friends will have to sit and instead listen to you rave about how many readers/fans you have. Nobody cares. Not even them. You write because you aren’t sure of yourself, because you don’t like feeling small and insignificant, and simply because you can. You’re narcissistic. This, I am learning, is why most young people have blogs.
This whole realization wasn’t sparked by any great conversation, but by a brief visit to the website www.despair.com, which specializes in demotivating slogans, posters, and calendars – and more recently, “despairwear.” One shirt simply states, “More people have read this shirt than your blog.” I was unaware that blogging was such an emo thing to do – and I’m embarrassed.
The first thing that comes to mind having made this realization is the number of people I have confidently, boldly, and perhaps even proudly told that I have a blog. Most of them have been polite upon hearing this, but now I have to wonder how many were such because they assumed me just another troubled emo kid that’s desperately struggling to afford meaning to my dull, post-highschool existence. Maybe that’s why they were so overly encouraging… They were concerned that the slightest bit of negativity or naysaying would send me rushing back to the typewriter to compose angry, unsent hate letters to everybody who “just doesn’t understand or appreciate me.” Or they were concerned that I’d find a gun, or use it, or give poisoned Kool-Aid to a playground full of children. “Just don’t insult him. He’s a blogger, self-indulged, and unstable.”
Thanks guys. Had I known that blogging brought with it so many negative connotations, I would have been less excited to tell people about it. Maybe I would have simply told them I’m a writer on sabbatical (unemployed). Better that than a teenie bobber with inferiority issues.
At any rate, the purpose of this post is not to defend my blogging/writing. What I write either stands on its own merit, or it does not. The only part of it that concerns me is the challenge to write daily, and hopefully write well. Some days, I am fully aware, I do not write well at all.
I have never been a big fan of new years resolutions. Many are simply reignited guilt for things NOT done the year prior. By the end of October, people are starting to reflect on the year and all the things they either failed abysmally at, didn’t even start, or situations that have simply grown more dire. Out of self-flagellation and regret, they will think about changing. But not just yet, since the holidays are a busy time and there’s a lot of fatty food to eat first, bills to pay, and debt to incur and spend the next year trying to pay off. I’ll start it after the holidays. New Years. The convenient time to schedule all life-changes, before reneging on them for a couple of months, wherein we grow numb to the fact we’ve already totally failed to realize our ambitions and forget about them. We’ll think of them again next October, when we start to once again reflect on what we didn’t do before. New Years resolutions don’t change – they just get recycled.
This now said, I have made no resolutions, but I have made some decisions, which coincidentally fall at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. They are not entirely new to most. Quite simply, it is time to approach this blog with renewed, and reoriented vigor.
The seventeen week vacation has ended – almost three weeks ago. It would be wrong of me to attempt to prolong it unnaturally – such as venturing out again aimlessly. Thus, this will not be happening. I will limit travel to something more purposeful.
I wish to continue writing daily, since much of what happens on a daily basis is fairly often worth mentioning. Regardless of where I go or who I meet, I tend to have an interesting conversation with somebody. People are neat. Writing will continue on a daily or near-daily basis. This I need to do, not only for practice, but also because I enjoy it. Amazingly, a few others do too.
As for purposeful travel, however, this is directly tied to purposeful writing. When I go somewhere, it will be for the purpose of pursuing a specific writing subject. For example, I leave for Maryland tomorrow to begin serious efforts at writing a novel with an old Marine buddy. We’ve collaborated in the past quite successfully, so we’re confident we can do it again. Fiction, however, is a different avenue for me, so brings its own set of challenges. Nevertheless, I look forward to the experience, and remain optimistic that something will come of it. It is a project, and undertaken with the intent of a finished piece of writing that may be interesting for others to read, and undoubtedly interesting to write. Work, but fun work.
Following this project (which has no specific timeline), I am considering other writing projects (which as of today are not developed into anything worth mentioning). The time for simply traveling around and writing has ended – as fun as it may have been.
My underlying purpose is this: Having been blessed with a tremendous amount of relatively free time and marginal financial independence, I wish to use my time wisely and productively. WHEN this time ends (and I am certain that it will), I want to be able to look back, content that I did well with the time I was given – and perhaps produced a publishable piece of writing. Just what to publish with who remains a mystery to me, but I will keep working on this and see what comes out of it.
Another way to consider this is that I am seeking to “redeem” my free time, rather than grow inappropriately comfortable with not working a regular job and pursuing a career. Thus, writing will necessarily become my “work,” and hopefully produce something that may someday amount to an income. I am not writing, however, because I want money, but because I enjoy writing. “I’ve just got to play music because I love it.” That quote still sticks with me. I just need to keep writing because I love it. Something MAY come of it, or not. That remains to be seen. But I won’t know until I make a reasonable attempt at trying.
Obviously, I have to consider the purpose of my writing aside from simply enjoying it. That is insufficient, undirected, and there is a strong temptation to never pursue it beyond a daily sounding board for my unclear thoughts and a few social encounters. This will become my work.
Why write? Because I like to tell a story. Just as much as this, I like to stir others’ hearts as mine is stirred. Clearly, stories can be found anywhere, so I am left making a decision of WHAT stories I wish to pour my efforts into. So far, I am undecided.
I have been blessed with having many avenues on which I may approach this decision, seeing as a rather diverse background has enabled me to “connect” with a number of different interests. There are the southerners because I claim to be one. The veterans because I AM one, the conservatives because I sometimes think like they do, and the weirdos because I, too am not exactly normal. Not only are there a number of ways to skin a cat, but I in my case several cats. All I have to decide is which has the tastiest meat. *Does anybody know the origin of the “skin a cat” expression? I’d love to hear it…
One project idea which continues to interest me is the notion of touring all the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) posts in Virginia and simply getting to know a very eclectic and interesting group of men and women. I would love to tell their stories. They have endured amazing and trying situations, lived to tell about it, and are forever changed from their experiences. In most cases, it is also good to talk about these things, even though it can be simultaneously difficult to do so. But harboring demons is even worse.
A further purpose of such an undertaking would simply be to familiarize an audience with a group of people poorly understood at best, often forgotten, and at worst ignored. I would be seeking to introduce them to America, to allow (not make) people more fond of them, and in so doing, bridge the rather large gap between civilian and servicemember that has seen combat on foreign soil at his or her nation’s calling. Millions have served thus, but many millions more don’t understand them so well. Maybe I could help to change this in a small way. I will have to put more thought and prayer into this decision, but so far it seems quite interesting. This is but one idea for more purposeful writing. None of these ideas are particularly prodigious, but, at least to me, they’re endearing.
Regardless, the days of simple blogging are now over. What I have to say is often uninteresting, but what others have to say is not. It’s time to tell their stories, not struggle to make up my own. I don’t want to be emo. Or wear too tight pants and a scarf – in summer. Or eyeliner. Or spike my hair straight up. Or worse yet, struggle for recognition and identity in a sea of useless, shameless, unedited writing. I already know who I am, as to my family, my friends, and God. WHAT I am is a God-chaser. What I DO, at least for the moment, is write. No longer aimlessly, but with direction.
Copyright © 2009, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Science Made Me Skinny
Having biologists for parents has its ups and downs. One advantage is that at a young age you are instilled with an inherent curiosity about the environment in which you life. One disadvantage is that you are often dealing with some vile substance under sickening circumstances. My parents were attentive students in college, and the class from which they learned the most was probably parasitology.
Tapeworms, leeches and other parasites are fascinating little creatures, and from a very young age we were taught what sort of organisms dwell in undercooked meats. My father, while happily downing a steak, explained how a little cyst hiding in the meat would soon take up residence in my muscles and expand from there. Their knowledge rubbed off quickly on us, so the local Toastmasters Junior club had to be the only group to have been subjected to a rather informative and graphic speech about the reproductive habits and lifecycle of the guinea worm. My audience was particularly enthralled when I explained that the best way to remove the often 3 foot worms from one’s limbs was to slowly roll the worm up on a pencil. The rousing applause to this fascinating presentation was so moving that my next speech was about the joy of playing chess.
When I was four I was already collecting frog, salamander and toad eggs. It became a daily summer ritual to run about the streams every afternoon before Bernie (our St. Bernard) would slop about the pools, eating some of the eggs and disturbing most of the others. The poor dog never quite recognized that the goo in her mouth was not her own drool. That summer I also came across a large clutch of snapping turtle eggs. With out care, nearly all of them hatched and I kindly released them into my neighbor’s pond. Several years later I recall overhearing him complain that his ducklings kept getting eaten due the overpopulation of “those darned snappers” in is crowded little ponds. I kept my mouth shut.
We first acquired honeybees when I was about six. They were remarkable creatures, not only with a highly organized hierarchy of workers, drones, and a queen, but also constructing their hives and combs with geometrical perfection. These bees were splendid insects, flourishing the first year in their hives and consistently dying out the next. For reasons unexplained at the time, we could not keep any hive alive for longer than a year. Between my mother backing our old station wagon over one hive, bee parasites, and harsh winders, they never had a chance. Only once did we harvest honey from a hive, and the stupid bees protested the theft of the fruits of their labor by proceeding to die out soon thereafter.
When my sister and I were of school age, my parents did their best to instill us with a solid understanding of scientific theory. Through work on a science project for school, I learned at ten that the spores from Lycopodium are extremely flammable; so flammable in fact that the Chinese used them for centuries to propel their fireworks. Having ready access to a substance essentially equivalent to gunpowder provided hours of cheap entertainment, behind my mother’s back. Perhaps she knew all along though, because years later after hearing a sonic boom, however, she assumed automatically that I had blown something up. My fascination with Lycopodia soon ended, however, as the difficulty of harvesting the spores from thousands of plants met up with my discovery that I was allergic to them as well.
My parents’ further attempts to familiarize us with the process of forming and then testing hypotheses comprised some of the most unpleasant times of my life. One such project was testing what animal’s manure functioned best as a plant fertilizer. The task of obtaining these fecal samples was eased somewhat by our ownership of Noah’s Ark and nearly all its occupants. Collecting the samples, however, was not a treat, and at times quite difficult. IT was important to gather a fresh sample from our subjects: a goat, out pig, the pony, some chickens, the dog, and even the cat. The goats and pigs were sometimes easy, yet other times we had to wait long stretches watching the stupid animal’s backside wishing for a bowel movement. It was probably just as well that nobody could see our house from the state road, since watching a child chase after a got with a specimen jar in his hands had to be a most disturbing site. The chickens were the easiest study, since the appeared to defecate on demand. The cat was an entirely different matter. As anyone with a feline understands, cats to not like people – especially impatient children – following them around while they attempt to do their business. I wasted many an hour observing my cat glaring at me in disgust as the tried in vain to lose me in the bushes.
What was the outcome of this venture? I learned that chicken manure kills plants. I cannot for the life of me remember what actually helped the plants grow, since my memory is so heavily fogged with the images of collecting fresh dung. I preformed this project when I was 11 years old, and as a result of my research my appetite dropped sharply. It was at this time that I also began to lose my baby fat; I often wonder if there was a relationship between the two events.
When I was a teenager I performed a test to see what brand of ZipLock Baggies best held in odors. Scientists have known for years that humans have an underdeveloped sense of smell compared to most members of the animal kingdom. So with this knowledge in mind, I filled bags with samples of fox urine (which I, thankfully, did not have to collect) and sought the assistance of a neighbor’s scrawny hunting dogs. The idea was that the dogs would use their keen olfactory skills to lead me to the baggie that held odors the least efficiently. I’m not sure which was more rancid: the fox urine or the dogs themselves. As was the case with the dung project, the findings of my research were seared out of my synapses; this time by choking wafts of fox urine.
It has to be my parents’ fault that when I first came to college I spent days marveling over the startling realization that male birds to not have penises. My quest for more information regarding their mating behaviors was quickly stifled, however, by my roommate’s suggestion that bird genitalia was not a topic of general interest and should be therefore omitted from further conversations.
It is also to my mother and father’s credit that my siblings and me can walk through the woods and eat vegetation without fear of sickness, often to the chagrin of our friends. There was many a weekend that we obediently trooped after my father, whose only tool was a pair of clippers hooked to his belt. The belt, I might add, was often worn over top of the bib overalls. With his aid the four of us quickly learned what plants are edible, at what stage they may be eaten, and what kind of nutritional content they offered. This knowledge may be extremely valuable at some point in my life, and I am quite thankful for my parent’s loving instruction. I still must be careful, however, as my father admonished on many an occasion, the hardest part of eating wild vegetation is finding the plants that our animals had not defecated on.
Apart from a wide array of unusual edible plants in our area, we had also several acres of wild blueberries, strawberries, huckleberries, black and red raspberries, and even an odd peach and apple tree. Once our clever dog learned that these fruits were edible, we were often left fighting with her for the blueberries. She would flow down in a spot and proceed to munch every ripe and underripe berry around her. Her gaping maw was of such great size that more leaves and flowers entered than berries, but she apparently still tasted them nonetheless. For years she never pulled apples or peaches off the trees, but one summer she inevitably discovered that those still attached to the trees were far tastier than those on the ground. Our yield diminished from that day forth. Bernie also haunted our garden, and between her snatching gourds and pumpkins and groundhogs devouring our corn, we never got out of it much more than peas (which she didn’t even bother to trample).
My ambitious concluded one year that it would be a marvelous idea were we to begin to grow all sorts of fruit trees. He felt it necessary to plant domestic apples, peaches, and even a large grape arbor. We did this over the course of a couple years, but met with little success. I often thought our pet animals to be of little value; eating our food and messing in our house, and these wretched plants turned out to be of essentially no greater function. Despite the loving care of two plant biologists, all our apple trees we so very ignorant that 90% never yielded a single fruit. They became little more than pets. The grapes were no better, most of them producing lovely foliage but no grapes. The peaches undoubtedly communicated with the honeybees, and protesting our attempts to make them do anything, they died. It wasn’t that we were poor botanists or horticulturists, but rather that our stupid plants were in some way retarded. So, like our intellectually challenged animals, they were pets. And what became of those 10% of the apple trees that DID produce fruit? Well, our fine dog ate the lower apples and we fought with yellow jackets for the higher specimens, which were often small, stunted, or severely disfigured.
The only disagreement that I ever found between my parents regarding our scientific education was the handling of spiders. My mother was quite fond of them and permitted them to dwell in the house; and some days I even caught her conversing with these visitors on our ceiling. She required them, however, to be under one inch in diameter and nonpoisonous. All violators were squashed or evicted. This irritated my father no end. I’m unsure where he acquired the dislike, but he very much resented sharing his residence with spiders. He killed all the found, so my mother and I took to making sure our charges were out of his view. Some children sneak around their father’s back to avoid doing chores. I, on the other hand, sneaked around to shelter spiders. Years later in college I still took the time to feed and converse with the spiders inhabiting my bathroom. I don’t know where they came from, but they sure did enjoy the ants that also infested the apartment.
I’m still trying to decide if my rather unusual scientific background has helped me or not. I very much enjoy knowing how nature works, but I’m continuously learning how little people want to know about it. They are happy to see how pretty things are, uninterested in the daily range of a honeybee, uncaring how some animal’s feces actually strategically located the vegetation they now admire. Some day they’ll need me, I maintain, when I’m the only person around who knows how to remove the worms from their legs.
Copyright © 2001, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
Tapeworms, leeches and other parasites are fascinating little creatures, and from a very young age we were taught what sort of organisms dwell in undercooked meats. My father, while happily downing a steak, explained how a little cyst hiding in the meat would soon take up residence in my muscles and expand from there. Their knowledge rubbed off quickly on us, so the local Toastmasters Junior club had to be the only group to have been subjected to a rather informative and graphic speech about the reproductive habits and lifecycle of the guinea worm. My audience was particularly enthralled when I explained that the best way to remove the often 3 foot worms from one’s limbs was to slowly roll the worm up on a pencil. The rousing applause to this fascinating presentation was so moving that my next speech was about the joy of playing chess.
When I was four I was already collecting frog, salamander and toad eggs. It became a daily summer ritual to run about the streams every afternoon before Bernie (our St. Bernard) would slop about the pools, eating some of the eggs and disturbing most of the others. The poor dog never quite recognized that the goo in her mouth was not her own drool. That summer I also came across a large clutch of snapping turtle eggs. With out care, nearly all of them hatched and I kindly released them into my neighbor’s pond. Several years later I recall overhearing him complain that his ducklings kept getting eaten due the overpopulation of “those darned snappers” in is crowded little ponds. I kept my mouth shut.
We first acquired honeybees when I was about six. They were remarkable creatures, not only with a highly organized hierarchy of workers, drones, and a queen, but also constructing their hives and combs with geometrical perfection. These bees were splendid insects, flourishing the first year in their hives and consistently dying out the next. For reasons unexplained at the time, we could not keep any hive alive for longer than a year. Between my mother backing our old station wagon over one hive, bee parasites, and harsh winders, they never had a chance. Only once did we harvest honey from a hive, and the stupid bees protested the theft of the fruits of their labor by proceeding to die out soon thereafter.
When my sister and I were of school age, my parents did their best to instill us with a solid understanding of scientific theory. Through work on a science project for school, I learned at ten that the spores from Lycopodium are extremely flammable; so flammable in fact that the Chinese used them for centuries to propel their fireworks. Having ready access to a substance essentially equivalent to gunpowder provided hours of cheap entertainment, behind my mother’s back. Perhaps she knew all along though, because years later after hearing a sonic boom, however, she assumed automatically that I had blown something up. My fascination with Lycopodia soon ended, however, as the difficulty of harvesting the spores from thousands of plants met up with my discovery that I was allergic to them as well.
My parents’ further attempts to familiarize us with the process of forming and then testing hypotheses comprised some of the most unpleasant times of my life. One such project was testing what animal’s manure functioned best as a plant fertilizer. The task of obtaining these fecal samples was eased somewhat by our ownership of Noah’s Ark and nearly all its occupants. Collecting the samples, however, was not a treat, and at times quite difficult. IT was important to gather a fresh sample from our subjects: a goat, out pig, the pony, some chickens, the dog, and even the cat. The goats and pigs were sometimes easy, yet other times we had to wait long stretches watching the stupid animal’s backside wishing for a bowel movement. It was probably just as well that nobody could see our house from the state road, since watching a child chase after a got with a specimen jar in his hands had to be a most disturbing site. The chickens were the easiest study, since the appeared to defecate on demand. The cat was an entirely different matter. As anyone with a feline understands, cats to not like people – especially impatient children – following them around while they attempt to do their business. I wasted many an hour observing my cat glaring at me in disgust as the tried in vain to lose me in the bushes.
What was the outcome of this venture? I learned that chicken manure kills plants. I cannot for the life of me remember what actually helped the plants grow, since my memory is so heavily fogged with the images of collecting fresh dung. I preformed this project when I was 11 years old, and as a result of my research my appetite dropped sharply. It was at this time that I also began to lose my baby fat; I often wonder if there was a relationship between the two events.
When I was a teenager I performed a test to see what brand of ZipLock Baggies best held in odors. Scientists have known for years that humans have an underdeveloped sense of smell compared to most members of the animal kingdom. So with this knowledge in mind, I filled bags with samples of fox urine (which I, thankfully, did not have to collect) and sought the assistance of a neighbor’s scrawny hunting dogs. The idea was that the dogs would use their keen olfactory skills to lead me to the baggie that held odors the least efficiently. I’m not sure which was more rancid: the fox urine or the dogs themselves. As was the case with the dung project, the findings of my research were seared out of my synapses; this time by choking wafts of fox urine.
It has to be my parents’ fault that when I first came to college I spent days marveling over the startling realization that male birds to not have penises. My quest for more information regarding their mating behaviors was quickly stifled, however, by my roommate’s suggestion that bird genitalia was not a topic of general interest and should be therefore omitted from further conversations.
It is also to my mother and father’s credit that my siblings and me can walk through the woods and eat vegetation without fear of sickness, often to the chagrin of our friends. There was many a weekend that we obediently trooped after my father, whose only tool was a pair of clippers hooked to his belt. The belt, I might add, was often worn over top of the bib overalls. With his aid the four of us quickly learned what plants are edible, at what stage they may be eaten, and what kind of nutritional content they offered. This knowledge may be extremely valuable at some point in my life, and I am quite thankful for my parent’s loving instruction. I still must be careful, however, as my father admonished on many an occasion, the hardest part of eating wild vegetation is finding the plants that our animals had not defecated on.
Apart from a wide array of unusual edible plants in our area, we had also several acres of wild blueberries, strawberries, huckleberries, black and red raspberries, and even an odd peach and apple tree. Once our clever dog learned that these fruits were edible, we were often left fighting with her for the blueberries. She would flow down in a spot and proceed to munch every ripe and underripe berry around her. Her gaping maw was of such great size that more leaves and flowers entered than berries, but she apparently still tasted them nonetheless. For years she never pulled apples or peaches off the trees, but one summer she inevitably discovered that those still attached to the trees were far tastier than those on the ground. Our yield diminished from that day forth. Bernie also haunted our garden, and between her snatching gourds and pumpkins and groundhogs devouring our corn, we never got out of it much more than peas (which she didn’t even bother to trample).
My ambitious concluded one year that it would be a marvelous idea were we to begin to grow all sorts of fruit trees. He felt it necessary to plant domestic apples, peaches, and even a large grape arbor. We did this over the course of a couple years, but met with little success. I often thought our pet animals to be of little value; eating our food and messing in our house, and these wretched plants turned out to be of essentially no greater function. Despite the loving care of two plant biologists, all our apple trees we so very ignorant that 90% never yielded a single fruit. They became little more than pets. The grapes were no better, most of them producing lovely foliage but no grapes. The peaches undoubtedly communicated with the honeybees, and protesting our attempts to make them do anything, they died. It wasn’t that we were poor botanists or horticulturists, but rather that our stupid plants were in some way retarded. So, like our intellectually challenged animals, they were pets. And what became of those 10% of the apple trees that DID produce fruit? Well, our fine dog ate the lower apples and we fought with yellow jackets for the higher specimens, which were often small, stunted, or severely disfigured.
The only disagreement that I ever found between my parents regarding our scientific education was the handling of spiders. My mother was quite fond of them and permitted them to dwell in the house; and some days I even caught her conversing with these visitors on our ceiling. She required them, however, to be under one inch in diameter and nonpoisonous. All violators were squashed or evicted. This irritated my father no end. I’m unsure where he acquired the dislike, but he very much resented sharing his residence with spiders. He killed all the found, so my mother and I took to making sure our charges were out of his view. Some children sneak around their father’s back to avoid doing chores. I, on the other hand, sneaked around to shelter spiders. Years later in college I still took the time to feed and converse with the spiders inhabiting my bathroom. I don’t know where they came from, but they sure did enjoy the ants that also infested the apartment.
I’m still trying to decide if my rather unusual scientific background has helped me or not. I very much enjoy knowing how nature works, but I’m continuously learning how little people want to know about it. They are happy to see how pretty things are, uninterested in the daily range of a honeybee, uncaring how some animal’s feces actually strategically located the vegetation they now admire. Some day they’ll need me, I maintain, when I’m the only person around who knows how to remove the worms from their legs.
Copyright © 2001, Ben Shaw
All Rights Reserved
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