Signposts
and Junctions
The day is December 31, 2006, and on this morning in Los Angeles, the
last day of the year, I am enjoying a good cup of coffee while reading the
Los Angeles Times. I read the articles on Iraq and Afghanistan with concern
for the military men and women serving there, and for what they all must
experience and endure. One article in particular catches my attention. It
describes in some detail the Ring Road, a road shaped like a circle within
the borders of Afghanistan connecting the major towns and cities. I read the
article with some interest; there was a time when the country of Afghanistan
played a major role in my daily life. I was a young man in uniform then,
many years ago, serving in turbulent times as an unpopular war polarized the
country. However, today is, after all, the day for the remembrance of things
past, so I sit back and relax and let my thoughts drift back in time.
In late 1968, the military draft was an unpleasant reality, and I appeared
to be an imminent target. The Vietnam Tet Offensive was in the
not-to-distant past, and almost every night there was regular TV news
footage of Marine or Army troops engaged in heavy combat. The Navy and Air
Force wanted a four-year enlistment to reach the relative safety of their
duty stations, and this seemed a long commitment to someone who had just
endured four years of high school. The Army offered an alternative to the
draft and to a four-year enlistment: this was a three-year tour of duty
allowing me to choose my military occupational specialty, or MOS. I talked
with veterans about their experiences, and with the Army recruiters, I
discussed the option of becoming an Intelligence Analyst. Aside from Marines
not drafting me into their infantry, there seemed to be three big plusses to
this option: the opportunity for assignment to exotic duty stations, the
chance to make rank faster, and the fact you traditionally worked with some
of the better-educated enlisted personnel. The only caveat to this approach
was this: if you had any disciplinary problems, or other personal issues,
all bets were off; you were in the Army for three years and they could do
with you as they pleased.
In December, the Marines drafted two of my friends from Manchester High
School. A phone call to me from a Marine recruiter soon followed, and I was
borderline frantic. I had seen enough TV footage on the battles at Khe Sanh
and Hue during the Tet offensive to know fighting with the Marines in I
Corps was not where I wanted to be. After weighing my options, I enlisted in
the Army for a three-year commitment. I was what General William
Westmoreland called an induced enlistee, my fear of the draft and of ending
up as a grunt in a combat unit, had induced me to join the Army to avoid the
infantry.
In January 1969, I left my home in Connecticut and reported to Fort Dix in
New Jersey for Basic Training. After completing Basic, the Army remained
good to its part of the deal and in March of 1969, I reported to Fort
Holabird, Maryland, where I would attend an Intelligence Analyst training
course over the next two months. At graduation, I was an official 96B20, a
Military Intelligence Order of Battle Analyst. We waited anxiously for our
orders. Out of a class of 50 soldiers, two or three went to Greenland, 2 to
Alaska, 2 to Belgium, and the rest were destined for the Republic of South
Vietnam.
Less than six months after enlisting at the age of nineteen, I found myself
on the way to Vietnam in June of 1969. The four benefits of enlisting in the
Army mentioned above turned out to be partially true. Although I quickly
found myself stationed in Vietnam, I did not go to a combat unit. I never
received an exotic or coveted duty station, but I did participate in some
interesting intelligence assignments. I received two Army Commendation
Medals, and I rose to the rank of Specialist E-5 quickly. I also met and
served with some great people. I learned the Army was not for me, however,
and early on, I realized I just had to endure my time, keep my nose clean,
and submit myself to the regimen of Army life until the magic day came and I
could get out. And unless you have been there, and know what that daily
grind is like, it is easier said than done.
I spent the majority of my time in Vietnam in a state of trepidation mixed
with personal flux, I was changing and growing and so was the world around
me. The year I spent in a foreign war zone was a year that saw poignant and
memorable events occur back in the States. There was the moon landing which
we all listened to on radio. Three days of peace and music at the Woodstock
Music Festival was followed by the Rolling Stones and the tragic free
concert at Altamont Raceway in December of 1969. In April of 1970 came the
bombing of Cambodia; this was quickly followed by the shootings at Kent
State and the deaths of 4 students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.
Other widespread political demonstrations followed. The shooting was a
polarizing event for the soldiers I served with; some officers and older
NCOs said it was about time the government made a stand, and they seemed
gratified and elated over the shooting. This created a line between the
older and younger troops I never saw crossed. A month later, I was coming
back to the States.
In June of 1970, I left Vietnam and transferred to Fort Bragg, North
Carolina. My duty assignment was the 14th Military Intelligence (MI)
Battalion. For the next year and a half, I served as an Intelligence Analyst
in the Department of Intelligence Production (commonly called the DIP). The
DIP was in a large building, which looked more like a truck distribution
center or warehouse than the main intelligence center for the sprawling
post. This facility was far removed from being a spy center; we kept track
of no cold war enemy states nor practiced counter intelligence. Rather we
studied the armed services of countries around the globe, the personalities
of their leaders, and the infrastructure of the country. My assigned
countries were Afghanistan and India. Afghanistan definitely provided me the
most stimulation and interest. Every workday after morning formation, I
reported to the library within the DIP to read the New York Times, the
Washington papers, and other topical periodicals. When I came across an
article referencing someone or something in my area of responsibility I made
a copy of the text, noted the date and source on the copy, and put the copy
in the day’s action folder. This copy could include news concerning the
promotions or deaths of members of the country’s armed services, political
events, new road construction or bridges, articles on storm damage or
communication networks, harvests or food shortages; in short, it could be
about anything at all.
At the end of the day, the action folder passed over to data processing
personnel who parsed the data and entered it on long preprinted key type
forms; an operator then typed these forms into keypunch cards. A computer
operator then loaded these cards into a hopper. This hopper fed the cards
into a computer where a software program transferred the information form
the keypunch cards into a binary format for storage on databases used by
other analysts in the intelligence community. At times, a diplomat or
attaché would transfer out of one of these countries; when this occurred we
would gather as a group and come up with a list of questions relevant to the
current events we gathered every day. We would record these questions on to
a tape made with a small cassette recorder. This tape was sent by courier's
pouch through military channels to an unknown destination. Five or six weeks
later a return pouch would turn up at the DIP carrying another cassette
tape, this one with replies to the questions we had sent earlier. This was
all very low tech and uninspiring, not the stuff of Ludlum or le Carre. We
transcribed the questions and answers from the tape and deposited them in
the action folder for the data entry personnel to type them into forms and
cards, later they would feed the information into the computer. And so it
went, day after day and week after week, for the remainder of my tour.
The Afghanistan I researched and read about daily was a wild and mystical
place steeped in history. Tigers roamed in the wild north, the strange
mountain region, the Hindu Kush, slipped like a high narrow band of the
unknown up between China and Pakistan. Over the ages, the ancient caravans
of the Silk Road made their way through the country. The great armies of the
Mongol horde laid waste to Afghanistan and ruled the country for several
centuries. In the east, the Khyber Pass connects Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Alexander the Great led a foray into the country and led his troops through
the pass, just as Mongol, Persian, Grecian, and Tartar generals did with
their armies over the years. Islam made its way to India through the Khyber.
The pass is a place of mystical hatred and bloodshed, and over the
centuries, the smugglers and the armies of destruction came through the
Khyber. The British would fight three Afghan Wars traveling through this
pass.
Kipling’s quote about the horror of the place came to mind:
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
and the women come out to cut up what remains,
jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
and go to your gawd like a soldier.”
During this period when I worked at the DIP, I read with great interest the
stories of people who walked and hitchhiked around the world, an adventure
that seemed to take about two years. I yearned for the experience of travel
and the freedom of being out of the Army. I read enviously stories of those
who traveled to London and then made their way to the Continent. A feeling
was in the air that, for the young, the world held no boundaries or
prohibitions. The winds of freedom and change that came out of the 1960s
were still swirling. In Amsterdam, shops sold cannabis openly and the oldest
profession showed its wares in storefront windows right on the street.
Friends of mine who had been to Amsterdam told me the city was hipper than
hip. Young people from diverse backgrounds and countries came together and
traveled the hostel circuit as they backpacked through Europe. The scent of
free love was in the air and every summer seemed the summer of love. Some
wandered through darkened bazaars in North Africa or the Middle East and
wrote about the exotic smells and languages of things distant and unknown. A
land route existed that some called the “Hippy Trail”, the trail traveled up
through Iran and then east through Afghanistan; after traversing the Khyber
Pass the route went on to India and the Pacific Ocean beyond. I saw a
picture of a group of smiling young travelers having magic mushroom omelets
on the beach at dawn in Bali. This seemed to be the epitome of all things
exotic and mystical, the freedom to traverse the world and enjoy the
delights one found along the way.
If I remember correctly, in one long-ago edition of “The Whole Earth
Catalog”, I found a story of how to get to Afghanistan by driving through
Iran. The story included a picture of a signpost seemingly in the middle of
nowhere standing by a remote road; the story said it was very important not
to miss this turnoff if your destination was Afghanistan. For me, that
picture was a signpost to adventure and the unknown. I dreamt about making
such a trip myself, of heading up into Iran in a VW bus and turning east to
come into (at last) Afghanistan. Once in the country I would slowly make my
way across the country. After leaving Kabul, I would exit out the Khyber
Pass and work my way to India, perhaps taking in the Himalaya. After
experiencing first hand the wisdom of the Hindu sages that the Beatles had
earlier encountered and documented, I would head east across the Pacific
Ocean. I would then delight and partake in some of the local and exotic
delicacies, things I read about in other traveler’s stories, from making
love to beautiful women in secluded palm-ringed lagoons to meeting on the
coast in Bali at dawn with the other traveling cognoscenti. Then I would
arrive back in the States as a well-traveled and mind-expanded philosophical
seizer of life like Heinrich Harrer, Paul Bowles, or William Burroughs. I
would then write a book about my experiences and get on with the rest of my
life.
Well, that dream did not come to fruition, but other magical things came into
my life in
their own time. I was discharged out of the Army at Fort Bragg in October of
1971 and I longed for new experiences as a way to shed the years of being a
soldier. The world was open before me. I was a child of the 1960’s, and
though far from being a hippie or a political radical my hair was soon long.
I embraced the counter-culture experience. In hindsight I can see how naïve
I was, how fast the world was changing around me. Hunter S. Thompson wrote
how, with the right kind of eyes, you could actually see where the wave of
the 60’s broke and ran back on the desert walls near Vegas. Unaware of such
a wave, and in search of my own life and identity, I rode my motorcycle
across country to Los Angeles. Four months later, in February of 1972, I
rode my bike back to North Carolina over six long, cold, and lonely days to
live for a while with a friend near Fort Bragg and to reassess what the next
chapter in my life should be.
In May of 1972, I took a leisurely trip to the White Mountains of New
Hampshire with a friend. We traveled up north in his cherry 1955 Chevy Bel
Air, and set up our tent in one of the campgrounds along the eastern side of
Kancamaugus Highway. The next day we climbed the highest peak in the
northeast, Mt Washington. Two days later, we climbed one of the most scenic
peaks in the southern area of the region, Chocorua. I was awe struck by the
area: the great ravines, the great areas above tree line, the smell of the
trail in the rain, the people we met. On that trip I fell in love with the
White Mountains, and I began an eighteen year love affair with them; an
affair I remained faithful to until I moved West in 1990.
Later, during the summer of ’72, I hitchhiked around the West and backpacked
in Colorado, Utah, and Montana. In the autumn, I ended up in college back in
the east. A marriage followed in 1974, and eventually a career began to
unfold. Afghanistan was relegated to a remote place in my mind where distant
memories and dreams were allowed to remain dormant until stirred from the
sediment by some external stimuli. And so, along with everything else
related to the Army years, this dream of visiting Afghanistan and circling
the world began to fade from my mind altogether.
As the years went by, my feelings toward Afghanistan became more negative
and sinister. The damage and horror inflicted by opium from this narco-state
upon the world is inexpressible. In the war between Afghanistan and Russia,
we armed the Mujahadeen and learned of the power of Stinger missiles. What a
benefit that technology was supposed to be for the West. I can remember one
TV news account where a reporter interviewed a group of Mujahadeen fighters.
One bearded warrior in the background seemed to sum up the horror that was
occurring in this war. He carried an old battle-axe used to execute those
Russians captured during the fighting. Sometimes they kept them as prisoners
for days before dispatching them. He had beheaded over 100 of the infidels.
I thought of the terrible last minutes and hours of the Russian youths as
they met their tragic end in such a foreign and inhospitable place, going to
their ‘gawd’ on Kipling’s plains with an axe in lieu of a bullet. I wondered
how their dreams of the life they would lead after leaving the Army compared
with those dreams of mine from the 1970s.
Later, almost in slow motion, came the growth of radical Islam and terror
around the world; not only did our friend become the foe, the axes and
weapons were turned around on us. Then came the rise of the Taliban; with
their rise comes a capacity for mindless hate, terror and atrocity all in
the name of god. Zealots find it easy to kill themselves and innocent
westerners because their religion promises eternal bliss and an unending
supply of virgins as a reward for their martyrdom. Just make sure your
daughters are not allowed to go to school. From the rise of the Taliban
followed September 11. I, along with much of the world, wept. And
Afghanistan, what was once the image of all things wild and free, now became
for me the image of all things ignorant and hateful. When the president
stood with the firefighters in the rubble of the World Trade Center and told
us that the people who did this would be hearing from us soon, I felt my
righteous indignation rise and I was totally behind the president. But a
funny thing happened on the way to retribution, we took a left turn and
ended up in Iraq. And because of the war in Iraq, we have let Afghanistan
languish in this hellish quasi-existence without striking at the true heart
of September 11. The terror of indiscriminate killing and bloodshed directed
at the West in the name of Allah found its way to the shores of Bali as
well. Now, the Taliban is once again on the rise; I fear that because of
Iraq our will and determination to do what is right has been squandered. And
perhaps the signpost showing the way to what is right has been misplaced as
well.
The innocence of a world expanding its consciousness in the 1960s has given
way to the scourge of crack cocaine and methamphetamine. Even as we fight in
Iran and Afghanistan, Europe’s Islamic population surges and one can’t help
but wonder whether Europe will maintain its democratic ideals and connection
with its past. I look to the heartland and feel the same unease over the
situation here in the States as an evermore-militant evangelical movement
attempts to influence the course of American life and politics. All over the
world people seem to be shifting into camps and categories, black and white,
pro and con; lost is the love and appreciation for nuance and shades of
gray, for commonality and consensus. I despaired for the world.
Slowly, as I sit here in Los Angeles alone and pensive, this long reverie
finally ends, and my thoughts return to the present. I continue to read the
article describing the Ring Road in Afghanistan today, and the story goes on
to detail the problems and challenges of the road and the land the route
traverses, how difficult it is to travel the road's entire length. Bandits, damage,
warlords, corrupt officials, terrible events, and religious zealots all play
their part in the story. What year is it in Afghanistan anyway: 705, 1410,
2006? From Alexander the Great, to Mongol hordes, to the present day, the
more things change the more they remain the same.
I worry about the men and women serving today in Afghanistan, and of their
brothers and sisters in Iraq. I think we as a country should be more
reticent of what we send our sons and daughters off to see and do. The
government points with pride to its all-volunteer force, but in these days
of outsourcing and sending high-paying jobs offshore, I know for many young
people the armed services are an opportunity of last resort. I wonder about
their dreams and desires, and what they yearn for out in the life that
awaits them beyond their military years. I look at those eighteen years when
I made New Hampshire and the White Mountains the focal point around which
the rest of my life revolved. Those were wonderful and meaningful years for
me, years of many joys and some sorrows, years I would not change or trade
for anything. Those years did not fill the bank accounts or retirement
coffers, but they filled the chambers of my heart and breadth of my soul
with lasting friendships and experiences, the things that make the human
experience so profound. What truly surprises me about this period of my life
is New Hampshire was completely unknown to me when I left the Army, and what
I would do and experience there was undreamt of. I hope such joy and
discovery await these young men and women when the time comes for them to
step out into this world on their own terms once again.
Here in Los Angeles today, on the last day of the year, I have enjoyed this
look back at some of my own days in the Army, and I remember how I felt when
I was finally discharged and was done with it. Spurred on by this story of a
road in Afghanistan, I revisited a time when I was young and felt the
possibility of all things, and I see those days reflected in the mirror of
how the world is now and how much things have changed. As for myself, I look
back kindly and warmly, with no rancor or regret, on both the simple dreams
of a young man and the small things I decided to make important in my life.
I never made the trip of my dreams through Afghanistan and around the world,
and in hindsight that is fine with me. But I do bemoan the loss of the
freedom and innocence that fostered those dreams, and I bemoan the loss of
the wild and mystical places of the earth, places we can no longer enjoy for
what they were.
Over the years, I have often thought of distant lands and of faraway
signposts adorning remote and deserted crossroads; in my own way I found and
followed some of them. Signposts followed, signposts ignored, signposts
forgotten. I turn the page.
The year is over.