Drop Your Helmet and Howl (Part 4 of 6)

A night spent drinking with young veterans suffering from PTSD

“Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, ‘ Use it well, use it wisely.’ We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.”

-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Tulsa is still a segregated city. The poorer neighborhoods to the north of downtown and the art districts are, after having been shaped first by mandates and later by custom, predominantly African-American areas. North Tulsa was once the home of an area known nationally as “Black Wall Street” during the oil boom, until a gang of white men came with rifles and bayonets and fire to slaughter and burn and bury those they believed didn’t deserve the success they had found. Where the tragedy once occurred, now there is delicious barbeque, underground concerts and one of the city’s top football schools, Booker T. Washington, which was used as a relief center by the Red Cross after the riots. As you move into downtown, there is a bit of culture blending, most of the residents being recent college graduates or people new to the area as recent hires at any of the companies who have recently helped to revitalize the area. Driving south along Peoria Avenue, you pass through Cherry, Utica and Brookside, the Midtown neighborhoods. These have been, in every sense of the word, whitewashed. Until the late 20th century, real estate agents wouldn’t show you a house unless, as one resident said to me, “they could hold a color palette up and you didn’t match with anything darker than eggshell.”

On the southern edge of this bloc is Kyle’s childhood home. His father James, a Democratic State Senator in a heavily Republican state, wanted nothing to do with the old-money mindset of mid-town but his wife Beth had grown up wanting a house in Utica like her sister. They compromised and settled down on the edge of midtown, in a beautiful house James designed himself, and secluded away enough to ease his conscience.

Past this, Tulsa is best described as no man’s land. It is as though zoning ceases to be a factor and developers were given the freedom to build what they wished where they wished. There are factories next to condominiums, a university designed to look like a futuristic space station, bars next to schools, and parks that are slowly changing to landfills. It is here, in this neutral zone, that Kyle’s favorite bar The Twisted Lizard sits. Inside can be found the same set of regulars night after night, a few Cherokee card dealers from the nearby casino, a marine who keeps telling his fiancée he won’t re-enlist though it’s the only thing he can think about, and all manner of factory workers shrugging in after a long shift. Kyle and Fielding fit right in.

“Sure the people here are fuckups, but they’re family,”

And they are. As we walk in, Kyle is greeted by everyone seated at the bar, a few get up to give him and Fielding hugs. The bartender, Katie, rolls her eyes but pours out two whiskey cokes and sets them down at two empty seats. She looks surprised when I walk up with them and Kyle introduces me. For a moment Katie looks at me, her mouth twisting up to the side. Then she reaches behind her and grabs a bottle and makes a gin and tonic, setting it next to the other drinks before smiling and moving off to talk to one of the other regulars. One of the others who has no place where they feel at home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Kyle’s never fit in well, at least not in the traditional sense. He’s always seemed to have some force around him that pushed away those he needed while drawing in those who needed him. It was no different in the military. His company in the National Guard was broken into three platoons. When the superior officers were allowed to create an elite group from those in the company, Kyle was not among them.

“They were all handpicked in first and second,” he told me one Thanksgiving, “so third platoon was all the shit that nobody wanted. We were just a bunch of fuck ups, you know?”

In Afghanistan they were known as “the Misfits,” a platoon of soldiers who excelled at nothing in particular, stood out to no one. They were stuck on the bottom rung of the ladder. And because of this, they were considered expendable. Kyle can remember the exact moment his platoon realized this.

“They gave us all these cards and on them it had your name, rank, social security number, next of kin and how to contact your family. And then there was a little space for final words.”

The superior officers passed these out to everybody, telling them to sign their card and put it in their right breast pocket.

Fielding chimes in, “They said it’s so when you get shot your buddy can grab yours and put it in his pocket and when he gets shot, his buddy can do the same until there is some poor guy at the end left with a fuckin bible of dead buddies’ cards.”

It’s a practice that is only done in instances where the army is expecting mass casualties and the realization sunk in quickly that the Misfits had been selected as the sacrifice.

“We surprised them though,” Kyle says. “We were badasses. Come on I need a smoke.”

He grabs his jacket and heads to the back of the bar and out a door. Fielding slides off his stool and follows. Katie comes and refills their drinks and looks at mine, still mostly full. She mentions I have some catching up to do and I laugh, grabbing the drinks and following my cousin and his friend out into the cold.

The mission they were sent on was to the heart of the Saygal Valley, described as the “Taliban’s Lair” due to the loyalty of the region’s inhabitants to the insurgent group. They had been sent in to capture two “high value targets,” but in the end just found a few warehouses full of poppy. As they were preparing to exit the valley and get to a place where helicopters could retrieve them, they found themselves taking fire from all sides.

“At first there were just a few gunshots,” Kyle says, “and then out of nowhere it turns into goddamn World War III. We have no cover, no concealment, we’re just sitting fuckin’ ducks.”

The Taliban began strafing their company with machine guns, one bullet getting close enough to knock a beanie off their lieutenant’s head. The soldiers were able to find cover, however, and did their best to return fire. Soon, however, intel came over the radio that a large enemy force was en route to their location, and the platoon prepared to be overwhelmed, many saying what they thought would be their final prayers.

“We set up an Alamo defense,” Fielding chimes in. “We were pretty much told to go until we weren’t goin’ anymore.”

They held the Taliban for another ten minutes, trading bullets, tracers speeding through the falling night. Kyle took aim at a group on the adjacent mountain top, but as he prepared to launch a grenade, he saw what at first looked like a roman candle launch into the sky.

“What the fuck is that?” He yelled at his platoon-mate Robert Cooley.

“Shitshitshitshit,” Cooley yelled and began low-crawling as fast as he could away from their location. Kyle followed him, doing his best to keep his head down. They had made it about forty feet when an RPG rocketed into the ground they had been laying on moments before. There was a pause as the American troops realized they might be outgunned.

“Turn and burn,” their lieutenant yelled into their comm systems. It meant the time had come to go out in a blaze of glory. The platoon began moving their position, heading for a pass between the mountains and launching everything they had at enemy positions. Just as they were about to move out of their protective cover, however, A-10 jets screamed overhead, and the mountain shone with a brilliant light. When the explosions faded, all that was left of the Taliban positions was dust and fire.

In the back of the Twisted Lizard, Kyle and Fielding sit smoking cigarettes. My breath is visible in the cold air, matching the exhalations of the two soldiers. They are silent as they smoke, all of us thinking our own thoughts. Then Fielding rises, finishes his drink and weighs the glass in his hand. Then with a grunt he launches it out into the parking lot. It soars through the air before its flight is arrested by the blacktop pavement, and it shatters.