Redeployment

by Phil Klay

Somebody said combat is 99 percent sheer boredom and 1 percent pure terror.

“It was madness,” he said. Zima wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t looking at anything. “Things are getting better. What you’re dealing with, it isn’t madness.”

When I got to my computer, I sat and stared at it, unsettled. It felt as though Zima’s mask had slipped and given me a glimpse of some incomprehensible sadness, the sadness you saw all around you every time you left the FOB. This country had a history that didn’t reset when a new unit rotated in. This time, these problems, they were an improvement.

“There was hope at the beginning,” he said. His face softened a bit. “Even without hope, you must try.”

The Professor nodded. “There you are,” he said. “Success.”

There’s a perversity in me that, when I talk to conservatives, makes me want to bash the war and, when I talk to liberals, defend it.