Because the 101st keyboarder deserve a tribute for all they've been through. I think this is much more important than Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" because this is about Americans who really love America. They might not have been willing to die for America but they were willing to have indigestion when things didn't go so well.
I remember when we first go together. It was good times and camp National Review. It was that long after 9/11 and our general Bush still wore his glow. We were all going to war, we were all going to Iraq. America had its glow again. Sure 9/11 was tough for the three thousand or so that didn't make. That's what happens in war. Sometimes you don't make it. We all have to accept that - at least for other people.
We of the 101st keyboarders we knew, even in those halcyon days that we were all going to make it. There might be a war on terrorism, we might be marching in to Iraq without a clue, we might not understand what general Bush was doing from one day to the next. But there was a sense of invincibility about us in those early days. We were scared shitless and jumped at anything that moved, and were ready to bludgeon anybody or anything that seemed remotely suspicious or not like us in some way - that's what our gang at National Review had working for us. We were laughing at the world, having a great time. Little did we understand what was coming down the road. Even as 9/11 turned the world in our favor, was making us kings of the universe, there was those lurking in the bushes who would soon be turning on 9/11.
It was when we were out in the field when I first sense there was more danger to the National Review guys than I could have imagined in those early days. Podhertx took out his calculator at the Palm restaurant to make sure we split our lunch bill right. Pod - that's what we called him, we didn't want to call each other by our real names because we had developed our own little world out there in the field, save America as they say - well anyway Pod never went anywhere without that calculator. You wanted to pay the correct amount at lunch you could always count on Pod and his calculator. He says, "things ain't going so well as some thing." Pod had this way of scaring young children and stray cats just by the way he looked. Goldberg immediately starts to cry, "what do you mean?" he says. We call Goldberg Mamma's Boy on account of he really didn't belong but his momma got him the job. He calls big momma five times a day asking what he should write. I don't begrudge Momma's boy nothing though. He was one of us, with us, so he was a-okay, so was his mother.
I don't begrudge Momma's Boy crying either. You don't know how tough it is to be told in the middle of the Palm that things may not be going as great as you think - especially by Pod. We were all there at the Palm, we knew how it felt, we all remember the sensation of our steak sandwiches repeating on us with Pepto Bismol nowhere in sight. No I didn't begrudge Momma's Boy his crying, not one bit. Byron York, he was tough but tender underneath, we called him Modified Hair, on account of his hair made him look like one of them, but he was really one of us. Modified Hair nodded sagely. Then he took his comb out of his pocket and we all watched him pull it through his locks. He loved that comb. And we loved watching him use it. You knew modified hair by his comb. "Yeah things are going badly in Iraq. This is giving the Angry Left a way in. There's gonna be an offensive soon I think."
"No, no," Momma's Boy cried. He took out that old handkerchief his momma gave him and blew his nose. You could tell which one it was because he never washed it, it was yellow. Just like we all were yellow. "The Iraq war was a good war. We did it on the cheap. It was to show America power."
"You owe $8.95," Pod said to me, still punching numbers in to his calculator. But we all knew what he meant. He was a veteran. His father had been in the service, he had lived through the hard times, Kennedy, then Johnson and the War on Poverty, the one that almost ended it all for us before it began. We trusted Pod on this. And attack was coming. Maybe in the night. From the Angry Left. The blogs had no fear of running over a trip wire or two. Our best ammunition against them, saying they hate America, calling them fifth columnists, it was getting old - they knew it and we knew it.
We head back from the Palm restaurant to our offices at National Review. When we got back Lopez was waiting for us. She was sort of our mascot. We called her loopy cause we could never understand what she was writing. And because we were convinced she wore the same underwear everyday. Things had been lucky for us since 9/11. She didn't want to change. I tried changing here nickname to little miss crusty underpants but she didn't like that. Times were getting tougher, she had a right to keep her own nickname, she had a right to be called Loopy is she wanted. She tells us it's going to be a rough night. The angry left is coming. They're coming for us. None of us is ever gonna be safe the way we were. Momma's Boy was shaking. I don't begrudge him that. You don't know what it is to get a mean e-mail till one is dangling in your inbox. Anybody who hasn't been told that they can't write, or they get their facts wrong by some blogger in his basement in San Francisco, well they just don't know.
Loopy tells me to get on the honker and make sure our frontlines are secure. I call up Hiatt on the box. We call him Almost because he's almost one of us. We let him hang out with us at cocktail parties and such and he's there to protect the front lines for us. Almost says he's dug in good. It doesn't matter what they throw at him, he'll just make things up if he has to. I thank God that Almost wants to be one of us so much. Modified Hair comes over and offers me a cigarette. Neither of us smoke but we like the way it looks. I tell him about Hiatt and he smiles. He says he's talked to short stuff, he's the guy who pretends to be one of them but is actually one of us because we pay higher speaker fees. Short stuff is a mercenary, but he `s worth his weight in gold, if he was a little bigger. Modified Hair tells me short stuff is working the lines, telling everybody who will listen that this Angry Left, they hate America. Will it work this time? It seems so dark. Loopy looks worried. We can do nothing but wait.