Johnson looked at his weapon and said, “ I thank God, I never had to take a life.”
He has already left the country in his head. He has 90 days to go and is working on his resume. But, he was working on his resume when I got here four months ago. Like the rest of us he is a work in progress.
Today, he hates the Army and Afghanistan. He tells us, “the country is a piece of shit and worthless.” The other soldiers are silent and uncomfortable it’s a conversation they’ve already had and it is pointless. They are here to execute policy not debate it. Early in the day Johnson was trying to explain the Hegelian Dialectic to his Sergeant. The Sergeant wrote off Johnson months ago. Today he told him to get some medication so he could sleep.
Johnson is homeless in his unit and is drifting. He used to get some of the Afghans he worked with boots. Command fears that if you give them boots they will start to piece together uniforms and infiltrate the base. Or they wear the boots and are marked as collaborators when they are on the other side of the wire. A no win unless you need the boots.
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