Page 8 of Protecting the Flame

Chapter 3

She had beento worse places than tiny little nothing towns in the middle of nowhere Montana. Like, you know, tiny little nothing towns in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan.

Though never officially at the front lines, she had come close. At his retirement party, a senior editor once said Afghanistan was like Vietnam. That war had been unlike any the U.S. had fought before. In World War II, there were front lines. You knew where the enemy was because all the armies were organized around the same, well-disciplined principles of front lines, fields of engagement, rear detachments. Other than resistance fighters, Churchill’s SOE, and the American’s own OSS, the war was conventional.

Vietnam changed all that. Everything remotely conventional was irrelevant in a country where the enemy operated as guerilla units, was everywhere and all around, and could be anyone. American soldiers fought for hills they conquered only to leave because the action had suddenly shifted someplace else, leaving the way open for the VC to return. Some hills changed hands a dozen times because the front lines were that fluid.

Her former editor also said those were the glory days for journalists, a time when a press card could get you a chopper ride to anywhere in-country. Men and women stringers could go out with the Marines at dawn, photograph them clearing a village or taking a hill, and still be back in Saigon or Da Nang for the Five O’Clock Follies, which was what the press called military briefings, and then head out for cocktails and a nice dinner. After Vietnam, the military clamped down on the press, mostly because the press reported on all the things the military didn’t want civilians to see. Now, they got embeds, her editor had remarked, sourly. They are gonna make sure you see only what they want you to see.

Combat in Iraq was a lot like Vietnam, and Afghanistan even more so. The enemy was everywhere and everyone. Journalists still made it to the putative front lines but only as embeds, which meant two things: being attached to a particular news organization (no more freelancers) and to one unit, period. No more chopper-hopping.

There weren’t as many women either. Fembeds, they were called, though she wasn’t that either because she was regular military, a 3N0X5, the MOS for an Air Force photojournalist. Her job was to build up the Air Force’s image, which meant that the time she did a story on women at Bagram and turned in a really nice spread, everyone zeroed in on one picture of a sign over the female head at Bagram Air Base: DO NOT GO TO THE BATHROOM ALONE.

My God, she’d near about been booted out for that one. A full bird shouted at her for a good fifteen minutes, most of it variations on, What the hell are you trying to imply? Who do you think you are? Are you trying to give the Air Force a black eye, Corporal? She bit back what she wanted to say: Gee, no, sir, only pointing out that combat may not be the most dangerous thing about being a woman in Afghanistan, sir.

They finally published her spread after gutting…uhm, editing out certain portions. All the interviews with women who described how weird being on a base where no woman went anywhere without a buddy got axed. Of course, that particular photograph of that particular head went into the circular file, too, in favor of nice, safe feel-goods: pics of our guys and gals in blue on 5K “fun” runs (look at us, all grins and giggles, because we LOVE running at five a.m. because otherwise we’ll MELT). Surf ’n turf on Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday movie nights. They published her pictures of the Green Beans Coffee place and the KFC because, gosh, if a soldier had to look at one more lobster tail or fried shrimp or juicy steak, he or she might be forced to do violence.

If she hadn’t still had time left on her enlistment and a desire to go to college, she’d have tried to get her ass medically boarded out. Seen a military shrink and said she was gay or something because this was back in 2009 and everyone knew that one way to a quick discharge—do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars—was to pull a Corporal Klinger on a shrink whose primary mission was to support the Air Force first and the patient second. (Confidentiality, my ass; a whiff of anything queer and you were gone.) The problem was the reason she’d joined up in the first place was for the GI Bill. She’d never be able to afford college for a journalism degree on her own.

So, yeah. She was stuck. Which sucked.

After Bagram, the Air Force pulled her stateside and put her on a short leash. She did nice, safe fluff pieces and was sent places where a photojournalist with a bee in her bonnet and burr up her ass could do little harm. Back then, when she hadn’t yet been a threat, they’d only tried boring her to death and sent her places where nothing remotely controversial was going on.

One of those was Thule.

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