Some Seriously Sick Sh*t (an excerpt)

Throughout Fobbit, I've peppered the narrative with faux blog posts from a profane, illiterate soldier who writes of hardship on the Baghdad streets and troubles with his squad leader, Sergeant Watters.  This morning (after my rigorous 45 minutes on the elliptical and two cups of coffee), I worked on the following "Whose Your Bloghdaddy" blog post.  Though it's swollen with the excess of fiction, it is--believe it or not--partially based on an actual incident which I heard about while I was in Baghdad in 2005.

SOME  SERIOUSLY  SICK  SHIT

Things are fucked up all over, here there and everywhere.  Aint that the truth.

Case in point, here’s what happened to Layfield this week.  In case I havent mentioned Layfield before he’s one of the straightest arrows we got in the company.  Wont even look at a Maxim or Stuff, wont touch the near beer in the chow hall, emails his old lady twice a day, hardly ever swears.  His ass is puckered so tight its practicaly inside out.  But he’s an okay guy I guess. He’s always there when we need him and he’s usually got something nice to say each and every day.  A real Mr. Sunshine and Daysies around here.  And I guess we need someone like him to balance out the rest of us jerkwads.  Hahaha

So anyway, Layfield and me and six other guys was out on mission for four days at the beginning of this week and we were like REE-MOTE, man!  Way the fuck outside the wire.  All the way up to Ramadi and beyond, escorting a beans-and-bullets mission to this bumfuck outpost in a place called Khutaylah that was pissing distance from Syria.  A day and a half out, a day and a half back, and one day to hang around long enough to know we got it good here in Baghdad.  Man, I seen some shit there—

—but I’ll save that for a later time.  The point here is, we was way the fuck out there with practically no commo—no internet, no phones, no nothing.  And so naturaly Layfield is like going apeshit that he cant call his wife and he pretty much spent most of the mission just sitting around moping.

Then we get back to the FOB late last night and first thing Sergeant Watters walks up to Layfield with this shiteating grin on his face and says, “Hey, Layfield, guess what?  Youre dead.”

“How’s that, Sar’nt?”

“You heard me.  Youre dead, dude.  There fixin’ to run your obitchuary in your hometown newspaper and everything.  They just need your body for the funeral.  Hahahaha.”

Layfield just stood there getting all red in the face and telling Sargeant Watters he better explain himself and quick or he was gonna go report him to the CO.

It took Sargeant Watters a couple minutes to stop laughing his ass off—along with about three other guys that was standing around with nothing better to do—but heres what we eventualy got out of him (which is the whole point of this blog post—sorry if I been rambling).

Two days ago, Layfield’s wife back in Hinesville gets a knock on the door and there’s this dude, dressed in a Class A uniform (but not wearing a name tag), and he’s got this sad, sick-to-his-stomach look on his face and right away Layfield’s old lady thinks this is it, the moment she’s been waiting for, and sure enough this dude on her doorstep tells her he’s the unit casualty assistance officer and he’s there with the sad duty of telling her that her husband has been killed in action in Iraq.  Aparently Layfield’s wife is a smart cookie because before she can start getting really choked up, some little warning bell goes off in her head.  Something about this guy just didn’t sit right with her.  First of all, why’s he not wearing a nametag?  And isn’t there supposed to be more than just one person doing this?  And isn’t there supposed to be a chaplain with them?  All these things is going through her head, so she decides to invite this guy in for a cup of coffee or some shit like that, but the guy immediately starts to get all nervous and says he’s got other notifications to make that night but, once again, he is really sorry to have to be the one telling her this news about her husband.  Motherfucker even tries to give her a little hug before he goes.  By this time, Layfield’s wife is really starting to lose it cuz now she doesn’t know what to think.  Is he dead or isn’t he?  So she finds her cell phone and calls the rear-detachment unit to tell them about the visit.  And Rear-D tells her that she’s not the first one to call in with something like this and they’re all over trying to catch this guy.  But just to be sure, Rear-D says there gonna get in touch with our unit over here and make sure that Private First Class Joseph Layfield is indeed alive and well.  Which they do and then right away call back and tell her not to worry, everything’s okay, and is there anything they can do, maybe send the president of the spouse’s club over to comfort and console, etc. etc.

By this time, though, Layfield’s not even listening to Sargeant Watters anymore.  He’s making a beeline for the phone center where he spends the next thirty minutes crying on the phone with his wife, really letting go with these big loud sissy sobs, to the point where everyone else in that trailer is starting to get annoyed with him cuz they can’t hear there own wives bitching at them on the other end of the line.

But hey you can hardly blame Layfield for getting all moist like that.  I mean that is some really sick shit, isn’t it?  Who in there right mind would go around telling soldier’s wives—already weak and vulnerable—that there husbands were KIA.  In my opinion, they can’t catch this sick bastard fast enough and ram the judicial system up his ass.