BAGHDAD - Maybe fear has a distinct smell. This column was supposed to be about the many man-made and natural smells of Baghdad.
But I learned that describing a smell isn't easy. At first glance, the smells of the mountain ranges of garbage piles in this city are memorable; but trying to do justice with words about that smell isn't quite as simple.
No, this is about fear.
Since two months ago, I have seen events - car-bombed churches, shot-up children and blown-apart men - of events that will stay with me for the rest of my life, even after I cover war after war as a journalist. I did notice one smell at those events: fear.
I first smelled it at a church bombing. On Sept. 1 Islamic extremists blew up five churches in Iraq: four in Baghdad and one in Mosul. One of the churches is in my area of this city. I was there at night, stumbling over destroyed cars and trying my best not to step on human remains.
Later that evening a stupid, reckless and apparently drunk father tried to run a security checkpoint. His car was shot up and his 12-year-old son hit in the head (no one saw him lying down to avoid the machine-gun fire.) The boy lay in a coma a few weeks, then died.
Just a few days ago, in the fading light of sunset, I saw the remains of two insurgents lying grotesquely and mannequin-like in a city street. Three of them were setting up a small mortar to fire at my camp. One guy held the tube while his buddy dropped the first and last round. It cooked off in the tube and killed them both. Their buddy didn't make it far, either. A crowd chased him down and gave him a thorough arse-kicking. He's now in prison.
A friend of mine said he hoped the two would-be mortarmen died slowly. My camp is shelled on an almost daily basis, and we fear those random shells falling from the sky.
What I really fear, though, with the exception of a roadside bomb or a random mortar shell killing me, isn't seeing any of that. Death happens, and we go when our number is up.
No, what I really fear is my number coming up here. Every day we hear about some other Joe or Jane dying here, and almost always another Joe or Jane is wounded with them.
Every time I hear those reports, I'm not really sure what I fear more: being killed or being wounded. Conversely, what's worse: simply being shot, or being maimed? In my mind there is a lesser of two evils. I'd rather lose a limb than have to regress 30 years and have my mother feed me by spoon.
More than a few of my friends here express they'd rather die than be a vegetable. It comes up a lot here, in small, quiet conversations in offices or barracks rooms. It's a fact of life.
"I'd rather die than live after being wounded like that," a friend of mine said today. My buddy, also a reservist, is leaving in a few days, and we were talking in his team office about the way other folks have died. The one we were discussing died from a brain hemorrhage after shrapnel from a roadside bomb hit him in the head.
The conversation quietly died just after that. They always do. But those little details about how a person died or got maimed seem to hang in the air around us, hover over us, circle us and menace our daily lives.
I've had my fair share of close calls over the last seven months. You never know when they'll come, but are thankful they happen.
One of the most recent happened a couple of weeks ago. I was leaving my office to go to an appointment and ran into a friend. John convinced me to go to lunch instead. Mortars rained down as we reached the mess hall.
I took in the sight of the smoke, dust and heat and listened to the shells scream in. I would've walked through that kill zone if my friend hadn't convinced me to have lunch. Hell, I wasn't even hungry.
It's been my goal to see war. War is, as I've learned after smelling blood and fear, organized murder. But I also know it's in our nature as humans to fight wars. Someone or some group, somewhere, will always have a beef about something.
Now I'm seeing how a beef - an illogical and inane one - is carried through. I can't say I really like it. But I also feel it's important to see it and experience it for the rest of us even if the smell of fear permeates around me.
National guardsman Bill Putnam, now serving a tour of duty in Iraq, is a former writer and employee at Pacific Publishing newspapers.[[In-content Ad]]
