Four weeks left in this hell hole, I thought, as I headed to my tent and a sorely needed shower. I had no doubt that these last weeks would feel as long as the 21 weeks that preceded them.
I had been a happy civilian until July 1990 when it was realized that there would be no diplomatic solution to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The letter that was delivered to my home one hot Saturday morning informed me that I was being activated and was ordered to report to Fort Bliss in two weeks to begin retraining. The letter advised me that "my services" would be required for a minimum of 180 days, depending on the "exigencies of the service." If I thought it was hot that morning, I had no idea what HOT was going to be like.
I stayed in the National Guard after being honorably discharged after four a four- year stint, figuring it would be some extra cash and if I stayed in for twenty, I'd get small pension to supplement my retirement plan. At thirty- one I was still in pretty good shape but I wasn't the twenty two year old that had been discharged eight years ago. That is when I had last seen the inside of an armored vehicle. I had gained some rank in the reserves so now I was Staff Sergeant Joseph Malloy.
I have been very happily married to Denise for the past six years and we have a son Billy, who was four years old at the time of my recall. My wife and I wanted to have two children and she had recently gone off the pill in hopes of achieving that goal when Uncle Sam provided - coitus interruptus.
Denise is a year older than me, a fact that I continually tease her about. We had been introduced by a mutual friend and I think it was love at first sight for both of us. She is half German and half Scottish and her reddish blonde hair frames a pretty face with high cheekbones and green eyes. At 5'7" and 120 pounds, she has smallish breasts but long sculptured legs that I consider her best feature.
I was twenty- five and she twenty- six when we married and although neither of us were virgins, she had only two intimate relationships before me and if you count Mary Jane Cashen, who probably wouldn't recognize you on the street if you had fucked her the night before, I had three.
Still, we were pretty well versed on the art of providing sexual satisfaction to one another, at least four times a week.
I'm 5'11", 178 pounds and not unhappy with my reflection in the mirror. I wouldn't audition for a porn film but have never had any complaints about my equipment. I wouldn't call myself a faithful husband because being unfaithful never entered my mind and until recently I thought my wife was on the same page.
As part of Desert Storm there had been a lot of action when I first arrived in Iraq but there was really no contest between Iraqi forces and ours. The war had long since waned and now our biggest enemy was the heat, the sand and the boredom. There was an occasional report of a pocket of resistance but most were proved to be false or the enemy was nowhere in sight when we arrived in our Abrams M1A1.
Almost all of the men in my unit, (there were no women) were reservists and to the man we were pissed off at the fact that we were no longer needed but were forced to remain here for the duration of our recall, away from our families and careers.
The only thing that had kept me from going nuts was the, almost, daily letter I received from Denise. Usually it included a few pictures of her and Billy and some of my mom and dad. Denise was particularly close to both of my parents since hers had retired and moved to Florida and we didn't get to see them often.
Over the past couple of months however, I had noticed that my wife's letters had dropped from four or five a week to two, maybe three. I knew that it had to be tough to come up with new things to say almost every day but I was still disappointed when a letter didn't arrive. But hell, I was in the same boat, trying to think of things to say. By now Denise must have heard about every guy in my unit, their wives and their children. There wasn't much else to write about. I lived in a tent in a desert where every day it was 115 degrees in the shade, it never rained and the most exciting thing that ever happened was the occasional sand storm.
