Neither serving in Afghanistan nor at home today could any of us say how it started. Our group was born from a mixture of boredom, fear, shared misery, and a man’s need for companionship among people with shared ideas and sensibilities.
There was no official member list, no dues, no initiation. No agenda. Just camaraderie and an unspoken agreement about the sorts of topics open to discussion.
There were no regular meeting times or places. Sometimes after evening chow, one of us might quietly say to another, “Pfc. Zinkle is on tower two at 1900. See you about 2000?” Or, “Pelzer’s on seven tonight.”
Anywhere from 5 to 10 of us would gather in a concrete room at the top of a guard tower in one of the corners of our compound. A guard’s job, six-hour shifts staring out the window to make sure the desert remained empty and dead, was boring. Visitors to one’s guard tower, even for a short time, were a real blessing.
I shared boxes of cheap cigars donated by an American company. Sgt. Peterson smoked foreign cigarettes he bought in town. Staff Sgt. Pelzer enjoyed excellent cigars, which he kept in his humidor. Most of us drank coffee from paper cups we filled from giant Army-issued thermoses.
Somehow, during our deployment, this group began to be called the “Gentleman’s Smoking Club.”
“Guess what sergeant numbnuts did today,” Pelzer said, dragging on his cigar so the coal flared orange in the dark room. “His squad was in some village. Kids approached, hoping for toys or candy. What’s he do? Oh, let’s see. Um, he pops smoke. Yeah. Shipshape. Toss a smoke grenade at kids. That’ll win their trust.”
It would launch us into a discussion of what our unit was doing right and, more importantly, what it was doing wrong.
“I’ve said this from the beginning,” Peterson would say, pouring himself more coffee, “Wanna get home alive? Then don’t deliberately piss off Afghans.”
Sgt. Severson would chuckle and shake his head. “For no reason!”
“They can see our weapons,” I’d say. “We have nothing to prove.”
Zinkle might chip in, “I was reading a book about how some soldiers would do that stuff in Vietnam and lose the trust of villagers, make the mission harder.”
From there, the conversation would drift, like the smoke floating in the room, from our mission, to the Afghanistan War, to other wars, to books, and back again. They were some of the funniest and most profound conversations I’ve ever had.
Not everybody fit in with the Gentleman’s Smoking Club. Meetings were quietly arranged to hide from soldiers who might throw things off.
Once in a while, outsiders couldn’t be avoided. One night, one such outsider declared, “First thing, I get home, gonna buy me some 36-inch Super Swamper tires.”
“Whelp, I’m hitting the rack!” Pelzer replied. The meeting abruptly ended.
The members of the Gentleman’s Smoking Club trusted one another with their lives and, more than that, enjoyed an understanding friendship. We shared books, cigars, jokes, and advice about life after our deployment. It’s a friendship that continues. A few years ago, when Pelzer married Severson’s sister, we all got together again, and a big glass urn full of cigars waited next to a sign honoring the Gentleman’s Smoking Club.
My grandfather, who served in the Korean War, once told me I’d never have friends quite like the ones I met in the service. I never understood what he meant until I served in Afghanistan with good soldiers and great men. I felt honored to be among them. Some nights, a lot of nights, even now, 15 years later, I’d give almost anything to be back in that crumbling concrete guard tower with cigar smoke billowing from the door, talking about the war, liquor, politics, cigars, women, books, family, and life, with the greatest friends a man could hope for.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
