War Poet.ca - A CFAP Project by Suzanne Steele

fear

Feb 8, 2010  ·  No comments

fear greenman fear
spidey senses too near
the surface, 24/7,
one plus one plus one
tour too many,
left right left your number
on the lottery ticket you bought—
cholera, tuberculosis, asp,
wire, metal, plastics, gun.

— smsteele

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medics

Feb 6, 2010  ·  No comments

strong, healthy. yet somehow I always made a trip to the medics whenever out on Ex. I think it was the stress of being in a foreign environment of diesel and dust and long hours and constant go, go, go, but something always gave. though luckily never anything serious.

eyes raw from dust and contact lens (big mistake to wear them in the field). a cough. the dreaded GI of Suffield when I was put in 48 hr quarantine after being pulled off the live-fire level 6 and hauled away in a Bison (that was quite the ride). and even one night in KAF I slipped into the dark to find the Role 1, have a quick consult with the medic on night duty. she did her job. then told me about her 2 and 4 year olds back home. and how her husband, himself just back from A’stan, was finding running a house tougher than fighting a war (and I said, “no kidding”)

I remember a pair of young medics at Shilo. so bright and ready. one of them said he was sitting in his mother’s basement spinning his wheels. going nowhere fast. so he signed up. became a medic. and the kid was stoked (to use the vernacular). had a career all mapped out. couldn’t wait to get overseas.

a year later in Afghanistan, at the COB I visited outside the wire, I spent time on sentry with a medic. visited the tiny clinic they set up. from early morning until mid-day, a steady stream of villagers with aches and illness. the medics cleaning wounds, handing out tylenol, sorry they couldn’t do more. their limited stores chalked.

standing atop the OP I looked down at the medics. counting bandages. dressings. getting huge containers of the tools of their trade ready. it all looked so rolled and packaged and clean. the medics looked so clean. they were laughing and joking a bit. but mostly stuck to the task.

that night as the COB went to bed there was hush. no murmur of laugh and b.s. like the night before. I visited the green rocket (accompanied by a soldier carrying his pistol) one last time. past rows of helmets. boots. rifles. all of us ready for anything the night might throw at us. rocket, RPG, mortar attack, breech.

the Afghan moon, an onion ready to be peeled. the CP simmered like stew. the wired guys in that out-of-bounds place scraped the plate of sky for whispers.

next morning I watched the CO. the HQ cars. HLVs. coyotes. the medics in their Bisons. the whole damn parade of metal and gun leave the front gate. they waved at me as they headed out. wrapping their scarves around their mouths, adjusting their ballistics, their radios. the OC smiled. “see you soon”. and I recalled Shakespeare’s Henry V, St. Dunstan’s Day. a cloud of dust. off they went. just as our chopper landed. we ran through our own dust storm headed back to KAF.

I had a call the other night from someone I know on HLTA. he was there when the mass cas. occurred. helped out. he spared me most details. but the whisky of his voice told me in its own way.

and strange as it seems. my mind didn’t go first to the wounded or dead, it went to the medics. and I wondered if any of the young ones I met were there. and how they did. because Ex. is one thing, but A’stan is no duff.

and I’ve met the mother of a medic who was killed. they, protected protectors. I touched his name in bronze on the memorial places at KAF and mystery camp, the staging base. wanted to put the message into my fingertips so that next time I see her I can say, “yes, he is remembered over there” and I’ll hold out that hand.

and the medics are gods to soldiers.

at the dinner in the Officers’ mess last year, a toast was raised to the medics. “we know if we make it back to Role 3, we’re going to make it home. thanks guys” the room stood up.
we raised our glasses.

— smsteele

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my father's war

Feb 6, 2010  ·  1 comment

my father was too young for war. signed up in ’44. just in time to be shipped out to Haida Gwaii. spent his Air Force years driving ambulances on the wet, wind-coast.

he drank rye.

every Nov. 11 we stood under grey skies, under umbrellas, at the cenotaph. him in a Legion blue blazer, grey slacks. never once pinning a medal or insignia to his chest. and every Nov. 11 he’d cry. then make his way up to the Legion to dance and drink and b.s.

he felt a phony, a fake, never having made it to theatre in Europe or the Pacific. wasn’t proud of his time in. the only war time stories he ever told were of chasing my mother, the teenage CN telegraph operator, and how he used a pseudonym when he hooked up with women at the dances so they couldn’t trace him back to the base.

and really, come to think of it, I believe it was my mom who told war stories. about dating officers then dumping them for the enlisted man because the man who would become my father many, many years later had eyes that matched his Air Force uniform (what is it about women and uniforms anyway??) and he was a good jitterbug dancer and he made her laugh.

he died an old man. left little behind of tangible things, but a big, close-knit family. I kind of admired that efficiency. come in with nothing. leave with nothing. his legacy to all of us children and grandchildren being his sociability.

and the night I packed to go to Afghanistan, I opened my dresser drawer and saw his Air Force insignia, a little blue and gold heart. pinned it to my undershirt. never took it off by night or day the whole time I was away. showed it to many, said, “this was my dad’s”.

and I often wonder what he would have made of me and this crazy thing I’ve done, am doing. proud or mystified (I was always the different bird in the nest). I like to think that he’d shake his head and laugh. and somehow part of me is convinced it might have made him glad to know he’d made it, gone to war, done his part. at last.

— smsteele

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Feb 5, 2010  ·  1 comment

for them

If sorrow flared like fire its smoke would rise
Darkening forever all the earth and skies

Shahid, 10th c. Afghan poet

Ours is a cold death, no pyres past fortnight,
white lavender, lilies brown on the high tide

we cried for you over and over
your signature to be different than the rest;

what is this test you measure against,
when was it born in such an easy life.

You slept on and off, wild,
under Afghan night shifting like sand,

I swear I could hear the crunch
of your footsteps on patrol

though I unslept
12,000 kilometers from you.

A hundred thousand moths of breath,
the ring-around-the-rosy-road circling my head,

a fingertip over Panjawaii, Dand,
parsing who, what, where you are.

You said you dreamed a quiet life,
sip tea, smoke your cigarettes.

I know otherwise. Yours is village,
the old men or mortar-fire, Karl G,

the flight through grape fields
the singing of cordite, the long stroll.

Our death is frigid, no fire
but long, long, the coldest winter yet.

— smsteele

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war poet

Feb 4, 2010  ·  1 comment

last week with 2VP the CO asked me how I prepared for being a war poet. I thought about it for a day and replied, “I’m not a war poet, I’m a poet who believes there are only two great subjects. war and peace. and right now I’m writing about war.”

and I didn’t mean this in a smartass way.

sometimes we look for the vein. sometimes it finds us. this found me. who knows why. all I know is that it astonishes me where my words have taken me over the past few years and the people I’ve met.

I am often thanked by soldiers for listening to them. the truth is, until I began all of this I had never met a soldier in my life. I had a cookie-cutter image of what they were, what they did. thousands of hours in their company has dispelled that pre-conceived idea.

one thing I hope that I’ve been able to do as well is to dispel soldiers’ preconceived ideas of what it means to be an artist. who knows? 99.9% of the time I can laugh at the stereotype some soldiers make of artists, but one night in KAF I sat next to a bitter soldier, a clerk, and when she began putting me down as an artist and from the west coast, I laid into her. told her to back down and stop assuming things about me. I should have considered the source and let it go, but being in a war zone edges one up somehow.

and sometimes I feel a stony silence from my fellow artists (with the exception of my fellow war artists and a few loyal readers). this mystifies me. is it because to write about soldiers/war in anything but a negative light is to be considered a propagandist? some day I hope to figure this out.

and thank you again for reading this. I’m getting close to the 45,000 hit mark.

best,

— smsteele

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message from greenman (2)

Feb 2, 2010  ·  No comments

for AK in the desert

Village to village they speak of greenman
long before you arc alleys, mud wall screen,
blind of AKs or grapes, almond trees,
fists of rugosas or kill, RPGs.
“My Pashto is good. I hang with Afghans,
tea, cigarettes. Me and the old men.”
War stories from fingertips caked with youth
through a dusty laptop. A desert suited
brilliant to its death. Lapis, dun, blood-red.

A sheep’s throat slit for shura, hot naan bread.
Open fires. Camp mutts on soldiers’ laps.
Camp cats covering arcs for cobras, scorpions, asps.
Your Pashto is ghee on lips and tongue,
endless cups of tea. Out of a hot Afghan sun.

— smsteele

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message from greenman

Feb 1, 2010  ·  2 comments

he writes. greenman. deep deep in country. village to village. they know of him. long before he foots carefully. down alleys. mud walls 12 feet high. through dusty lanes. patrols.

“my Pashto is good. I speak it all the time. yesterday tea with X, the district king. he offers me cigarettes. booze. I just laugh. tell jokes about my friends in Pashto. now I don’t want to leave.”

my relief for greenman. that this which he dreaded, 3rd tour, is better, much better, the best. my relief he’s whole. keeps his humour.

he’ll be on HLTA. away from it soon. promises he’ll call. I want him to speak his 2nd language to me again. Pashto, like butter on the tongue. a language willing to sit, drink endless cups of tea in the shade. out of the hot Afghan sun.

— smsteele

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sms' good go

Jan 30, 2010  ·  No comments

sms’ good go with 2VP/Whistler/2010

full circle. the ring road from Shilo, a year and a half ago, to Whistler. the long drive across the prairie. farmers’ fences ribboned yellow. Welcome Home signs flapping in late October. the razor wire of winter just being felt in the wind. I rolled my rented car into the ghost-town, CFB Shilo. 2 PPCLI just home from A’stan. everybody on leave. restoration. regroup. rethink. the whole thing.

how could I know then, the wind would blow so much to me. change. unsettling. a door closing. another opening. pain. love. friendship. great loss. great gain.

at Shilo they gave me officer’s quarters. I cooked toast on my iron, made coffee. had my own bathroom, bed, suite. I was alone. until I begged to sleep in the field. squeezed first into Admin. then a rifle company.

the year rolled into WWx, garrison, Suffield, Maple Guardian, war. I thought it was done. then invitation to Whistler with the Col. of the Regiment. a chance to see life after war. a chance to spend time with the eminence grise (says the CO).

and they put me up in officers’ quarters. my own bed, bathroom. comfortable, warm. alone. a long way from biv’ing in pup tents with fresh-minted soldiers, beneath October’s red harvest moon, or snoozing in LAVs, or puking in live-fire at 0400 hrs or shutting eyes in the abandoned Russian school house somewhere out in the middle of A’stan.

two days with the COR. his stories, history books. an image I’ll never forget. us in the mess. the COR sitting between the CO and a young pup. the young pup leaning in listening. hanging onto the words of the “old strap hanger”.

and a soldier I’ll never forget. one of those open faces you see. born in Russia, brought to Canada so he wouldn’t have to serve in the Russian army in A’stan. this poor soldier’s mother, she saw her son join up over here, live through two tours (the irony, the irony of it). young soldier bright, bright. he’ll go a long way.

snow and ice, food (I always get fat when I spend time with them), visits with the boys on the top of the mountain. watching watching still. ready for anything. A’stan taught them well.

Capt. drove us down to the coast. bid us farewell. the COR and I talked all the way back home. from the good go.

— smsteele