A Time of Remembrance. That is Memorial Day, yes?

So let us remember, as I remembered. This morning, behind a truck as my mind drifted.

Manama, Bahrain. 1991.

Diesel. The smell reminds me.

It’s a smell you never get out of your system, I think.

In the early morning hours at a motor pool the smell will fill the air like a lady with too much perfume, the smell fills a room.

Sickly sweet. That’s what diesel always smelled like to me. But with it comes the regular rumble of various instruments of warfare in to a symphony.

The deep rumble of a Bradley Fighting vehicle giving a bass line for the others to follow. The M-88 Hercules giving a deeper throaty sound as they check the tow package. HMMV’s all around are revved by smiling faces, black smoke spewing the scent of diesel throughout the yard. They are the trumpets, the brass, and the high sound for this orchestra. HEMTT’s, deuce-and-a-halfs, and a 5 ton give the french horns and trombones due promise.

Voices.

The voices carry like the smell. You can hear laughter, you can hear curses. Barking of orders. The shout of someone smashing finger or griping. They are the woodwinds.

Amidst this walk a few stern faces. They motivate. They chide. They push. They encourage. They are the first chairs, the band leaders. They are the NCO’s. I was one of these.

“No one is more professional than I.” That is the start of our creed. Competence is our watchword.

With a word we turn smiling faces in to one of chagrin. Terror. Or explosive laughter. But we are not the only ones in this orchestration.

In the center of it all stand 4. A unit's Father, Son, Holy ghost and a disciple as it were, albeit they do not walk on water, but one could explain how to do it, another would order you to do it and the last would make you think you can do it. The First Sergeant, Warrant Officer, Executive Officer, and Unit Commander.

They are the conductors. In the center of this organized chaos and mass of movement stand these men. They will walk, talk, and speak as if they are one of you but they are not. From them come the decisions, the orders, that omnipotent string of words that will spring a group of men in to action like no other. They bring the gospel, and we NCO’s will deliver it.

But beneath the façade, under the brim of their hats, in your eyes you can see it, as thick as the revving HMMV.

Diesel.

They smell it too.

Green fatigues are brown.

The rest is in the Flash Traffic/Extended Entry.

The M4 Carbine is a gas-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed, selective fire, shoulder-fired weapon with a telescoping stock. We didn’t have SPOMOD yet, but when we got it at the end of our deployment, it turned an already viciously sleek weapon in to a work of combat art.
The sound is my boys. My Men. My comrades. My friends. Charging Handle back. Release.

Charging Handle back. Release.

It distributes life and death. No, not that it spares those it does not kill.

It spares the wielder. It spares the families at home from receiving a chaplain at the door. It spares the children from crying, and wives and husbands from sitting up at night quietly looking at old pictures.

But with great power comes greater responsibility and this is no different. So we have trained. And we have fired. And we have executed, and we have repeated our instructions, and we have rolled in the dirt, sand and muck until our M4 has become an appendage, a part of us.

The vehicles are not ours, but they are part of us.

The Bradley is not mine, though in a few hours I may wish it were. The heat blasts across us like a painting, slow, sleek, and with the sand and dust you can watch it scrape across the humid land like a giant hand.

The General did not want us here. But we were here. To do our duty, no mater what that duty may be. For, as has been said before, we were soldiers. And young.

We are to be what will later be called a Force Multiplier. Eyes and Ears. We are to be Ceaser, or rather CSAR, Combat Search and Rescue. FID. Foreign Internal Defense.

But this is not a story of action. It is one of memories, like my own personal yellow brick road with which I will skip down with my heart, my courage, my mind all hand in hand to that place where I was young, and bigger than I am.

“Are you bigger than yourself?”

I was challenged that by my instructor at John Kennedy’s school of higher learning.
“Are you bigger than yourself?”

We asked that now of ourselves, of each other. 12 men side by side awaiting our personal green lights.

The unit we are to move out with continues scrambling to their vehicles.

We too have a Captain. An Executive officer. But ours stand quietly beside us. Not even a hint of a smile beneath camouflaged faces, painted like some deranged child hood clown gone horribly wrong to create a dark persona, who hours ago held his children close as he boarded the plane.

Later our 12 men would become 3, as we break off in to smaller battles. Smaller wars. ODA teams. Recon. Then we would be whole again. A living organism with 12 minds, 24 hands , 24 hours, and 12 beating hearts pounding a rhythm to the beat of the Bradley tank in acts of peace and aggression.

My captain loved to say before an operation. “We were the Devils Brigade. Now we are the Devil.”

We have no horns. No pitchfork. We wear brown, or green not red. But we are fluid and singular in our action. We are a wave. We are the wind dust covered wind. We move not for ourselves. Not for glory or honor, or love or any other grandiose reason placed down in so many books.
But to free the oppressed. De Opresso Liber.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. We recite this as our motto within our team. It is our prayer. Our release.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. It is a mantra. A beat of its own. We chant it quietly, out loud. The regular Army soldiers look at us oddly. Like we are madmen. But we know it is we, who are sane.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. The beat increases. We say it louder. We match the thrum of vehicles. Yea though I walk through the valley of shadow of death I will fear no evil because I am the baddest sunuvabitch in the valley.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Almost shouting now. We gather around as one. Slapping our magazines with steady rhythm. We crouch, like a football team huddle, practically screaming at each others faces. In to the valley of death rode the 600. 12 will come back. 12 always come back.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Other soldiers stop and clap with us. The chant is louder. We are going to war. We are going where many men have gone before, and we will return. For we are brothers. In arms. In Blood. In peace. In war. We are Spartans. We are warriors. We are our country. We are soldiers.

SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM.

If you want peace, Prepare for war.

Diesel.

The smell reminds me.

Always.