In the new year, I’ll join millions of Americans pledging to lose weight. And that’s when I might finally get nostalgic for the time when I couldn’t prevent withering to a skeletal stature.
Ah, Afghanistan.
“Hungry, Cpl. Reedy?” Our cook, Sgt. Nicks, asked.
Was he joking? The safe house, a walled-in, mudbrick Afghan residential compound we rented while our real base was being built, had no refrigerators. We ate field rations.
Only field rations.
So, yes, I was hungry. Hungry was a permanent state. And the heat was sucking the life out of us — it was only 8 a.m. and already nearly 90 degrees. We’d fry at 120 by noon.
“Cheer up! Truck’s here with real steaks!” said Cookmaster. “We’re gonna eat like kings!”
I’d just finished overnight guard duty and desperately needed sleep. I also needed a shower. The well had gone dry on my squad’s last three turns. I was filthy.
But steak instead of imitation-meat lasagna? Worth it.
After we searched the truck for bombs, it rolled inside the gates. We hovered like vultures. Cookmaster smiled as he broke the seal and opened the door. “Break out the steak sau —”
He gagged.
The Afghan trucker hadn’t activated his refrigerator on the hot drive from Kandahar. Rotting flesh in a combat zone.
My M16 hung heavy from my shoulder. Of course, we’d have no steak. No joy. No humanity.
“Wait,” said Cookmaster. “Mail’s here!”
We hadn’t had mail for a month.
I’d been thinking about writing books for young people, so my wife had shipped me a copy of Bridge to Terabithia, the 1978 Newbery Award-winning novel by Katherine Paterson. In the crushing heat, rifle at my side, I began to read.
It was as revitalizing as I’d hoped the steak would be. As I read, life was more than a struggle for food and water, a burden to always be watching for those trying to kill me. I relaxed, less conscious of the sticky itchiness of my skin and the nauseating emptiness in my stomach, of my always-present rifle beside me on my dusty, thin foam mattress.
I felt young, safe — home.
The book is about a beautiful friendship between a young boy and girl. Its language is profound but simple. “He felt … that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so.” My chest ached, and my eyes stung. I turned to hide my emotions from the guys. Maybe this war wasn’t my end but a new beginning. The book was, for me, a reminder that there is still hope, even in difficult times. That as long as kids could still find friendship back home, I could endure Afghanistan.
I read the whole book that day. It was something real, beautiful, and human. The Taliban had tried hard to remove all books, music, art, and free thought from Afghanistan. Without these things, I was rotting inside. I needed that book, not like I needed steak or a shower, but for the sake of my soul and sanity, I truly needed it.
That night, my squad patrolled in a Humvee. With no gun turret, we pointed rifles out the windows. I watched my sector, smiling for the first time in so long, thinking about the wonder of that book.
The unsafe house was a miserable place — hot and smelly. Full of fear. Our steaks were spoiled. But man does not live by meat alone. This new year, like every year, this soldier will salute Bridge to Terabithia and Katherine Paterson.
