| 19 March 2006 High Power I am not in synch with time in the Middle East. Events there come at me fully blown and contextualized by others. Being human, and thoroughly relative, my default values are set for the horizon around me. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still tend to think of the here-and-now as being where I am. Which is absurd. I have been around the world all my working life. My watch displays two time zones to help me recall that everything is sequential, East to West, marching in twenty-four spinning segments. But with the dawn arriving, and the air crisp and chill, I tend to think that all the other beings on this lovely earth are brewing coffee, and all their days are filled with possibility. Not so, of course. London is now informing me of the events as of lunchtime, and in Iraq the shadows are lengthening. That explains the news cycle, and why something horrible is most useful when it is scheduled in the morning, so the horror of the moment may be freshly delivered with Washington's eggs. I was startled the other morning to have an e-mail exchange with Baghdad that took me out of the cycle and dropped me down in real-time. I have some friends who are in harm's way at the moment, as many of us do. One is a reservist who was recalled to active duty and shipped to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. He is living in a Conex box, and performing essential services for the Coalition. Another pal, just a week later, was detailed to the Green Zone in Baghdad to provide support to the Host Nationals. Neither of my friends was going to a combat unit, but in Theater the distinction is a fine one. Everyone is a target, military and contractor alike. Had I not retired from the Service when I did, I would have been there already, either the one place or the other. I feel guilty for not having gone. I also feel uneasy about the serenity that comes with knowing that the phone is not going to ring, and I will not be directed to report to some airfield for the long flight across the time-zones to the east. I was talking to a Marine who retired about the same time I did. He said: “Haiti, Bosnia. Ships at sea. Shit, I did my deployments.” But he agreed with me that we still felt bad about not doing our part to share the current misery and danger. When I rose from the soft quilt this morning, in this time zone, I found that I had a note from the Green Zone. The tone of it was conversational, but it stopped me cold with the reality it contained. I had asked what it was like, trying to keep it light. I asked what sort of weapons he carried, and what the security situation was like. He responded that they get around town in up-armored vehicles, and he carries several guns. There is an adrenalin rush that goes along with a trip to the morning meeting. The personal side-arm is a 9mm, a Beretta, I think. He also has an M-4, a variant of the M-16 with a folding stock and a red-dot scope for travel. The pistol of the same caliber I have had in the closet since I bought the Browning Hi-Power years ago through the Navy Exchange catalog. I kept it under my bed in Korea, convinced that the North Korean commandos where going to float down on Yongsan Garrison one night, and I was not going to keep it locked up in the post armory. I could only imagine standing in line to check it out, or filling out a requisition for ammunition while the assault went on. In later years, I kept the pistol high up in the back of a closet with some other things I did not want to discuss with the kids. It had a trigger lock, and the key was hidden someplace else. There was no ammunition, so the worst the kids could do was throw it at someone. It was more of a talisman than anything else, a sleek lump of metal that whispered you were never really completely helpless. I was visiting a friend, years ago, and opened a drawer looking for something. A dark Colt automatic was nestled there. “Is it loaded?” I asked, not touching it. “What good is an unloaded gun?” he responded. “Or a registered one, for that matter.” I imagine it is an American thing, the passion about guns. Some people like them, and some loath them. But they are all around. Most other places have stiff controls on the things. Canadians had a sort of Wild West similar to ours. They are almost Americans, without the empire, and they restrict firearms severely. We don't. Recently, some of my buddies have recommended more stopping power than the 9mm, and that was one of the reasons I asked my friend what he was carrying. I was curious to know what he thought about the controversy. Some people have traded in the modern Beretta for the sturdy old Colt M1911 .45, designed for a jungle war a century ago. It is an emotional thing. I had a chance to chat with the man who will be the next Commandant of the Coast Guard, a few months ago. He was exited about the selection of the new Homeland Security Department joint pistol. The best of breed was determined to be the Sig Sauer P229 .40 cal. It will replace the hodge-podge of weapons that the Department inherited from it's predecessor organizations. It will also standardize the ammunition, which is a blessing. It is a real pain to have to maintain an inventory of various calibers at home, betweeen long guns and short ones, so you can imagine the inconvenience for DHS. Since they have grown, and I no longer have to keep the pistol at the back of closet, I have been shooting several times with my sons. It is safe enough, and I am no marksman, or I would not own a 14-shot automatic. I think the kids need to know how these things work, how to handle them safely, and be able to operate them in a generally effective manner should circumstance require it. We go to one of the local ranges, tucked into a bunker in an industrial park. We blast away, feeding a clip at a time through the Browning. It is a guilty pleasure, and one that frankly makes me feel a little queasy, since anything involving a weapon outside the shooting range is going to require a lawyer, too. So the idea that my friend may have to use the pistol or his folding-stock M-16 to get across town made me sit up straight. There is almost a year of this to go for him, and so much of the story has yet to unfold. I worry, and I wish there was something I could do. A guy who does work for our company was in my office the other day. He had spent some time in The Green Zone, and three weeks living out in town, outside the security barriers. I asked him about security, since he did not have a military escort or a convoy to join. He said he took out a $700 insurance policy. I looked at him quizzically. He laughed and said he had purchased a black-market Kalishnakov AKS 7.62 with a folding stock. He had two thirty-round banana clips of ammunition taped together, slightly offset, one feeding the breech and the other ready to go, just by turning it around. He carried it everywhere, even though company policy requires employees to be are to be unarmed. He said sixty rounds was probably enough for most business contingencies, and it was the best money he ever spent. After he left, I was happy I did not have to spend it. Then I felt guilty that I didn't. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |