The stench of a capital city with no sewer system hit me full on as I let my Humvee idle through the gate of the UN forces' military compound on the former campus of Somali National University. While the compound itself benefitted from contractor-installed latrines, shower units, and window screens, the vast urban expanse outside was a cautionary tale of failed government, clan warfare, unchecked cruelty, and deprivation. I stomped on the accelerator, and the wind coming through the zipped down windows stirred the stench and kept the sweat beads on my forearms from joining up to form rivulets. There were no street signs; every bit of metal, to include plumbing and electrical wiring, had been scrapped long ago. Nor were there traffic police to enforce whatever rules the signs once announced. My driving decisions were reviewable only by whatever neglectful divine power had jurisdiction over this picked over patch of earth. Fortunately for the upright and four-legged creatures wandering among the broken pavement, I was a responsible twenty-five year-old United States Army lieutenant and I arrived at the main gate of the port facility without having added to the ambient suffering.
After checking in with the Air Force guards, I let the Humvee crawl along the vast expanse of concrete poured by Soviets a generation earlier, skirting the airport, slowly crossing the seaport, and then enjoying the Indian Ocean breeze as I climbed the rocky roadway to one of my company's commo sites. A signal unit, we got to occupy the high ground, maximizing our line-of-sight range, and that meant this spot, like the one we'd occupied at the Kismayo port months earlier, was the absolute best place to be, with constant breezes, an easy downhill walk to a beach, and indirect access to some of the harder to come by items that would arrive tucked in the cargo planes. I parked, dismounted, and walked toward the leftmost green canvass tent, neither hurried nor dawdling. I had an appointment, but, since I was the ranking attendee, it wouldn't begin until I arrived.
The tent's three residents were women, so I paused at the screen door flap and announced myself. "C'mon in, LT," replied the familiar, raspy, mid-west accented voice of the commo team's sergeant. I ducked and stepped through onto the plywood floor, going just far enough in for the sloping roof to clear my 6' head. As my eyes adjusted to the lower light, I took off the maroon beret we wore as Airborne soldiers and folded it into the cargo pocket of my desert BDU pants, hung my sunglasses into a chest pocket, and surveyed the women's living quarters. It was unavoidably spartan but with signature feminine decorative touches, powders, lotions, and pieces of lounge wear. It smelled intoxicatingly girly. The sergeant removed a swimsuit hanging on one of the cords running at shoulder level along the walls, folded it neatly, and put it on a stack of MRE ration boxes that served as a night stand beside her cot. I admired her form. She wasn't really my type, as I've always had a superficial preference for petite, Rubenesque brunettes. However, we'd all gotten tanned and lean over the months of our deployment, and her lithe, well-endowed figure, accentuated by the snug, brown t-shirt and cinched BDU pants, was worth a quick scan as she bent, straightened, and turned to me.
With the three cots arranged along the walls, the six-person tent had enough room in the center for the two of us and a chair. The sergeant ran her fingers through short-cropped dirty blond hair in her habitual expression of frustration. "She went down to the beach before her shift, but I told her to be back by now," she said, referring to the specialist I'd come to see. Then she added unnecessarily, "She knew to be here."
I felt sweat begin to roll down my spine in the still tent air. I was wearing the extra layer of my BDU blouse with a purpose. Its display of rank, skill badges, and a combat patch from my previous deployment conveyed the distinct but related messages that I was experienced, in charge, and there on business; I'd tolerate the discomfort to keep that front of everyone's mind. I took the one chair, leaving the sergeant to stand or sit on her cot. She stood. That was good.
She was a couple of years older than me but we were each familiar with and comfortable in our respective roles. We'd served in the same battalion for the past three years and had a history. In fact, she'd once filed a discrimination complaint against me for denying her last-minute leave request conflicting with a training exercise. The complaint was investigated and declared unfounded, and I never mentioned it. Afterwards, I felt the supplemental, unofficial power in our professional relationship as she obediently accepted my decisions, and came to me with respectfully-framed requests. Like the tearful one to reassign the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks PFC who'd jumped out of the driver's seat of a Humvee while it was in gear and she still in the passenger seat. The same kid who'd later used his M-16 to butt stroke one of his teammates over a mean quip about his IQ. After she'd endured the problem soldier for several months, I found another spot for him, and she remained grateful.
I cleared the road dust from my throat and spoke evenly. "So, tell me, Sergeant. Whose responsibility is to get her here?" Her eyes revealed an involuntary stress response before she looked down to one side. Also good. Before she could compose an answer, I asked, "And while we're at it, whose responsibility is it to make sure someone's awake and in that commo van 24/7?"
She suddenly seemed to not know where her hands should be, putting them first on her hips, then down at her sides, folding her arms across her chest, and finally layering them behind her in a relaxed parade-rest posture. She inhaled through her nose and replied quietly, "Mine, Sir."
"Yours," I confirmed, holding her renewed gaze until she dropped her eyes again. I let the pause extend.
In the awkward quiet, we heard soft footsteps on the rocks outside the tent. A tentative, "Sarge,... LT?" announced the arrival of our third, the wayward and tardy specialist. She pulled the screen door open and peeked in. Her strawberry blond hair was salt-curled and messily piled on top of her head, and her freckled young face, slightly sunburned, expressed an anxious curiosity.
"Get in here," ordered the sergeant, taking hold of the screen door flap with one hand and the specialist's bare upper arm with the other, gently but firmly guiding her inside. The specialist stood where the sergeant put her in the small middle area of the now full tent. She was wearing mesh water shoes, a long thick towel around her waist, held in place by her freckled fist, a dark one-piece swim suit, and sunglasses that she tucked into the neck of her suit. The air in the tent became even more still as the sergeant lowered the canvass flap over the screen door.
Like the rest of us, the specialist, a diminutive, plump girl back in garrison, had slimmed down and tanned during our deployment. She'd always been on the wrong side of the Army's height/weight chart during quarterly APFT testing, requiring her to join the short line of soldiers being subjected to the embarrassment of having their BMI measured by calipers. That wasn't an issue now, though, thanks to Uncle Sam's seaside spa. I may be partial to curvy women, but I wasn't hating the view.
"We had a shot go out last night," I said, refocusing on the task at hand. "I was up troubleshooting from OPS, and nobody answered in your team's rig." I let the building indictment hang in the hot, still air. "Sergeant tells me you were supposed to be on shift." The specialist's blue eyes darted between mine and a neutral spot on the floor. "It took us an extra hour-and-a-half to get that shot back in because we had to get word to your sergeant and wait for her to wake you up to do your job." I noticed with approval the quickening of the specialist's breaths, the white knuckles as she squeezed the towel at her waist, and the water forming in her eyes. "What's your excuse?"
"I -" she paused, momentarily trying to look over her shoulder at her sergeant, who, still standing behind her, was out of her range. She started again, "Sir, I..." She put her free arm behind her in an approximation of a military stance. "No excuse, Sir."
Very good. Excuses are pointless wastes of time. I was glad we were agreeing at the outset to forego them.
I continued the lecture, building, "We're in a combat zone, specialist. Maybe you forget that with all the time you spend down at the beach, but there are real soldiers out there in the shit depending on our coms to get their food, fuel, and bullets." She nodded, blinking back tears. "Because we're in a combat zone, this is a court-martial offense under the UCMJ." That got her attention and, I noticed, the sergeant's. I dialed it back a half-step. "Nobody's going to court martial you, specialist, but an Article 15 is absolutely appropriate for someone not reporting for duty."
