In June, my friend and fellow squad member Dave received in the mail, from his sister, a package. In this package there was an envelope. This envelope contained a smaller envelope that was labeled wildflower seeds. Dave didn’t waste time. He planted the seeds that day behind the hut where we lived.
Dave, and I and the rest of our squad are mortar-men. This means that our job is to fire mortar rounds at human beings. A mortar round kind of looks like a football, except with rocket fins.

Mortar rounds are loud when they are fired and louder when they land. We have white phosphorous mortar rounds, too. Their created purpose is to burn people alive.

We had countless mortar missions in the time that we waited for Dave’s wildflowers to bloom.

Most of the people on our base doubted anything would come of Dave’s attempt to grow flowers in the accursed, dry Afghani dirt where nothing grew but small briar patches.

But Dave didn’t listen to those people. He watered his seeds daily.

I was his companion during this time. I didn’t help him water his seeds (I, too, was a little skeptical.), but I did provide him with some much needed encouragement. I helped Dave maintain his optimism. I told him not to worry, that his flowers would grow and that when they did grow everyone who hadn’t believed in him would want to come by to look at them, and sit near them, and talk, and smoke their cigarettes.

I was his companion on our missions during this time also. During one mission in particular I was the sole mortar-man on our mortar. It was late at night. I was on the side of the road, set up, but separated by a considerable distance from everyone else. It was unbelievably dark. I couldn’t see three feet in front of me without my night vision goggles.

Happiness is not a warm gun. Happiness is when a friend arrives from the darkness to provide company and help. Through the dim greenness of the lenses of my night vision goggles, I saw Dave arrive. We sat there, and I was so happy to be relieved of my awful, dark loneliness that I felt, at that moment, as if I could will those stubborn wildflower seeds to grow.

So they grew. Was it because I willed them to grow, or not? Who knows? But they grew, and grew, and grew.

But they did not bloom.

During this time, we had daily tower guard shifts also. On one night shift, when Dave and I were on guard, an absent-minded sergeant fired a flare directly at our tower. (Flares are used for signaling and are generally harmless.) We both hit the ground of the tower, because we thought it was a Taliban rocket, and we thought we were going to die.

I actually considered jumping out of the tower but didn’t. When we found out that it was, in fact, a flare, we both laughed. We laughed, and laughed, and laughed, like two soldier sociopaths in a war zone.

We laughed, and in the morning, when our shift was over, behind our hut, we noticed the first flower bloom of the wildflowers. It was yellow.

Everyone who hadn’t believed in Dave gathered around this single yellow flower. It was, I believe, the only flower, other than some plastic ones, on the entire base. It was beautiful, and we sat with it, and talked, and smoked our cigarettes alongside it.

This single yellow flower gave us something. It made us happy in a way that nothing else in the world could have during that time. We were happy, until someone clipped and took our yellow wildflower.

On our next mission, Dave and I had to set up the mortar in an area covered in manure. This seemed fitting. We laughed again like sociopaths. We weren’t laughing at just the poop we were sitting in but at the whole deployment. We laughed at the darkness we endured, death in general, and at our despondency. We even laughed about the yellow flower someone had taken. We laughed about how we’d thought of killing the person who had cut it – if we ever found out who it was.

We never did.

And that was fine. In the course of some weeks, the wildflowers grew to yield 20 blossoms, and the plants rose to about three feet high.

What did they represent, these flowers? Did they represent something beautiful growing in the midst miles of the unbeautiful? Did they represent the great happiness that something as small as a seed is able to provide? Did they represent a little bit of hope, help and light, in the midst of endless fields of pain, despondency and darkness?

None of the above. These ideas are all hackneyed.

Dave’s wildflowers didn’t represent anything.

It was just startling, however, that these flowers could grow out of the Afghani dirt.

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In an 1830 painting by French painter Eugene Delacroix, Lady Liberty, bosom exposed, stands atop a pile of rubble and fallen men. She stands with the French flag in her right hand held high. In her left hand is a musket, bayonet attached. She stands with her head turned to the right, apparently summoning the horde of musket- and sword-wielding men who are following behind her.

The painting is appropriately titled: “Lady Liberty Guiding the People.”

Where is she guiding them?

Perhaps they are marching in revolt in the streets of Paris, or perhaps they are on their way to Baghdad, or Kabul. Regardless of where they are going, there is a possibility of them dying. Nonetheless, the men still follow Lady Liberty. 

Dying men do not have the privilege of being able to take liberty and glory, nor women, with them into the afterlife.

They don’t?

But isn’t war, and armed conflict, and fighting in general, about liberty and glory, and women? Isn’t war, and armed conflict, and fighting all about romance?
Ahhhhhh…romance. This past summer I was having a conversation, through an interpreter, with a member of the (ASF) Afghani security forces, which help provide security for some of the bases here in Afghanistan. After a few minutes of talking, he looked me in the eye and said, “We love and want democracy here.”

I said, “Really? How come?”

He replied, “When we have democracy, then we can have girlfriends.”

I answered, “Girlfriends?”

“Yes, girlfriends. When we have democracy, we can go on dates.”

I took a few moments after our conversation to reflect. Most of the unmarried Afghani men who I have met, rarely, if ever, are able to speak to women who are not their relatives. Strict religious and societal rules prohibit them. The gentleman from the ASF made it perfectly clear to me that he loves democracy. He loves it so much that he is willing to put on a uniform and pick up a rifle for it. He loves it so much that he is willing to die for it. He loves it because he wants to get a girlfriend.

What an absurd idea that is – to risk dying in order to have a girlfriend.

Dead guys can’t have girlfriends.

In Delacroix’s painting, Lady Liberty is leading those French men into cannon and musket fire. She’s leading them to death, and death is the end. But it’s so romantic.

Flash forward to the present day: a bunch of young, buff guys are applying camouflage paint to their faces, while glancing over at pictures of their girlfriends, on the eve of battle, with heavy metal music playing in the background.

It’s so romantic: a convoy of military vehicles – each with heavy metal music playing inside, where the soldiers have their weapons ready.

And it is romantic, until one, or two, or three of the vehicles explode when roadside bombs go off. 

Heaven help me, because I still think that war is romantic. I’m not here in uniform with a rifle because I give a hoot about the spread of democracy, or humanitarianism, or killing Islamic extremists. I’m here because I, too, followed Lady Liberty.

My Army career started when I was 18, when I was on my way out of a college fair that I found totally uninteresting. Before I knew what had happened, I was on my way back into this college fair, because I found an attractive young woman who was on her way in. To impress her, I picked up some pamphlets at an Army recruiter’s booth and … well, here I am today in Afghanistan.

The nights here in Afghanistan are generally pitch black. If not for our night-vision goggles, it would often be impossible to see two feet in front of ourselves after 8 p.m.

Except for one another, we are totally alone – no parents, no drinking buddies, no basketball teammates, no aunts and uncles, no cab drivers – no one.
Lady Liberty is here, though. She is somewhere in the back of all of our minds.

When it is so dark and when we’re scared, lonely and homesick, Lady Liberty is here. She’s with us in some form: potential girlfriend, girlfriend, wife, friend’s wife, movie star. She’s here, and she guides us, and we do her bidding.
When democracy is in place in Afghanistan, and the American forces leave for good, the Afghani men here – despite the chances of their dying but with their new girlfriends – will continue to do her bidding.

And what is her bidding? Today, it’s to spread democracy, to provide humanitarian aid, and to kill Islamic extremists.

Ahhhhh… romance.