Xmas in Iraq '07

There was about four of us sitting around the fire if I remember correctly. It’s hard enough to recall the exact details of things like this, seeing how some instances occurred well over a year ago now. But it’s even harder to remember this particular night, even though it was Christmas Eve. I had received the best damn gift a young soldier deployed to Iraq could hope for on this particular holiday season. Two bottles of hard liquor were sent to me by a source I shall not reveal. They were concealed in all-white mouth wash containers and the plastic wrapping around the cap was hanging shabbily off after a poor attempt to re-wrap it. We were passing one bottle around; buzzed off our asses’ and only getting more and more hammered while sitting around the fire pit right outside our barracks building. Most of our NCOs were either at the MWR calling home or were already racked out on their cots, snug as bugs dreaming about candied plums and other merry filled Christmas shit. Or they were single like us and didn’t even notice the fact that it was the most celebrated holiday of the year.
It was around the fourth or fifth shot when somebody pointed out the fact that it was Christmas Eve. Up until then, we were all too pre-occupied with the fact that this was our first drink in months which, for a group of young soldiers’ who’d lived in the barracks together back at Hood for the past year and a half, was an enormous stretch of time to go without alcohol. So we sat around the fire and enjoyed the warming sensation the liquor gave us as it coursed through our veins. Damn, Iraq wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just let us drink from time to time, I thought. We sat around and bitched about our NCOs and officers, as privates often do, and remembered the few times we’d come into contact with the enemy. Since we were only about 2 months into our tour and our AO wasn’t all that bad yet (the “troop surge” had yet to push the muj into our area), there weren’t many wowing stories to be heard. Besides, if one of the four of us had a cool story to tell, chances were that the other three of us had been there as well.
But then some asshole had to go and point out the fact that it was Christmas. We all got quiet for a few seconds and let that fact sink in. I did the math in my head and figured out if it was 2300 (11PM) here in Iraq, then it was 1500 (3PM) on the East coast where most of my family was down in Florida, and 1300 (1PM) Mountain Time where the other portion of my family was in Colorado. I wondered what they were up to at that moment and hoped they were thinking about me. The conversation quickly turned to family and friends back in the States and we spent a good deal of time talking about the folks we’d left back home, wondering how they were celebrating their holiday’s and all that what-not. We wondered where exactly we’d be if we’d just done something simple like go to college or find a decent job instead of joining the Army. The conversation was quickly turning very depressing. We passed the bottle around some more, some of us staring with empty expressions into the fire, others gazing thoughtfully at the stars. We were just generally feeling sorry for ourselves and having our own little alcohol induced pity party when three mortar rounds landed not more than 100 meters away from us, just on the other side of the Hesco baskets in the Iraqi Army compound. By this time, we’d grown used to the indirect fire attacks around our Troop AO and none of us even flinched.
My friend just casually turned to me and said “Man… we fucked up.” There wasn’t much else to be said after that. We quickly finished the bottle, put out the fire and scurried off to bed since any minute there’d be an NCO coming to check on us all to make sure the mortars didn’t blow one of us into tiny pieces. I pounded two bottles of water before passing the hell out.
I spent the next day incredibly hung over, hiding in the motor pool lest some NCO notice the shadows around my eyes and pale color of my face or smell the booze leaking out of my pores. I labored away with the rest of the enlisted dudes, changing the worn out track pads of our Bradley fighting vehicles. And that my friends, is how I spent my Christmas in Iraq.