I bet you thought I forgot about you, didn’t you? But no, there’s no way I would forget the metal box I called home for a year of my life. You were safe. You shielded me from the ugliness of war and hatred and destruction. You also saw me getting destroyed. Personal demons that grew inside my mind, a longing to be home, a desire for a war to yield, and a mental struggle that, at the time I had no idea, but would remain with me for the rest of my life.
I remember when we found you, Specialist Herela and me, a 50-foot-long by 16-foot-wide metal container, two blown out windows in the front and an opening where a door must have once belonged. Trashed, littered, you looked like the purpose you served had ended and you were nothing more than a throw away. Yet, we found you. And we wanted you to be our temporary home. You would then be the home of three other soldiers. With some help, we loaded you on a flatbed truck and brought you over to our camp. Forever you are etched into the history books, the memory reels of some insignificant pawns of the American-Iraqi conflict.
We were just boys with barely any life experience. I had the camaraderie of the other soldiers around me, many of which are still some of my closest friends, twenty years later. We somehow managed to get our hands on bootleg liquor to assist at the end of long days full of guard duty, convoys, special details and the heavier stuff like mortar attacks or gunfire. I had a girlfriend back home, unfortunately she’d stop writing, but still. And I knew my mom was waiting every day to hear my voice and a message that I would be coming home. Yet, despite all this, I still felt lonely.
You saw it, you knew. If those four metal walls could talk, I’m sure you would have so much to say. I can talk, yet, I didn’t say enough. I didn’t say thank you for shielding us. For containing all our secrets and our future hopes. For bonding boys from different walks of life to become lifelong friends. We are brothers and I’ve been to every wedding and watched their children grow up, as they have watched mine. Thank you for babysitting me during my therapeutic sessions with alcohol. As I’m writing this letter, I’m not ten years-six months sober. Thank you for enlightening me, that I deserve better than a desertion girlfriend, and I want to tell you that I did do better and she’s raising my beautiful kids. Most importantly, I want to say thank you for choosing me.
You could have waited for a Captain or a Lieutenant to claim you to be their home or workstation, yet you chose me, a lowly Sergeant. You housed the mere foot soldiers, you protected us from sandstorms, locusts, and foreign rodents and pests. We experienced it all and you watched us. Then after every draining day, you welcomed us and let us have a slice of comfort. I know I’ll never see you again. I know I’ll never step on that wooded floor we built in or see the shrapnel holes on the right-side wall we covered up with pieces of duct tape to keep the mosquitos out.
Sometimes in my dreams, I visit Iraq, I visit often, they call it post-traumatic stress. The dreams are filled fear and chaos. Yet somehow, even in a dream I search for the shack, the 50-foot-long by 16-foot-wide metal container that I once called home. Because it was safe, it was refuge. Even in dreams I search for you, longing to say, thank you.