Sitting

During my last week in Marjah I decide I want to go south, far, far, south into an area without Marine presence. The mission was to search this area. "It's either going to be like the apocalypse or really boring," said one Marine. So at 7 p.m. I boarded a vehicle and went off into the desert. Nineteen hours later the desert looked the same, flat and vacant. No gunshots, no IEDs, just silence and some camels wondering across the land. So what did we do? We sat, we joked, we played cards and I tried desperately to stay awake the whole time. It's all about solidarity out here. But as fate would have it I managed to find a comfortable position, with vest and helmet, and I passed out for a good two hours. Or as the Marines put it, I was drooling, hardcore. So as the young Marines stared out into the desert I snored, but what can I say I am a freakin' civilian.
The low point of the whole journey was at about 10 am, when I first had to go to the bathroom. Luckily we were headed back to the base, but of course the convoy stopped midway for another hour. One of the lead vehicles found an IED and so of course that became the priority and I debated over whether I wanted to pee in a bag. Turns out I can hold it for a long time.
So there I was, in a vehicle, in the desert and am I sorry? No. You don't know what a mission like this feels like, until you actually go out and sit there with the Marines. And so I lived and learned and it was good.