The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline(250)

There weren’t as many letters as I’d expected. My two shadows, Ben and Larry, helped me do the sorting, and explained that any parcels from home would be held back until there was room (or spare weight) on the next heli drop.

When they weren’t looking, I casually slipped my letter to Sebastian into the pile. It didn’t take long to finish sorting, and it was easy to tell which of the guys were family men—they had the most letters, some obviously addressed by their kids.

As he’d said, Sebastian didn’t get many letters and that day, mine was the only one addressed to him.

The rest of the unit circled us like sharks, waiting for the moment they heard their name. I saw Sebastian’s surprise when Larry called out ‘Hunter’.

“You got mail, Chief,” and he waved the thin envelope at Sebastian.

Of course, I hadn’t written a return address, so that should have clued him in, but instead he just looked puzzled. I watched him as he scrolled down the first few lines of my scandalous letter. Then his eyes widened in shock, and a wicked grin crept across his face. He glanced up, and I winked at him.

He read through the whole letter, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the mud wall of the compound. Then he closed his eyes and let his head rock back: he was still smiling.

Yeah, think about those positions, Chief.

One of the other men, a young guy named Ross from Minneapolis, scrunched up his letter in disgust and dropped it in the dirt.

“What’s up man?” said Larry.

“Fucking ‘dear John’ letter,” he said bitterly. “She said she didn’t want to spoil my last few days of leave, so she thought she’d wait till I got out here to tell me she was seeing someone else. Bitch.”

He got some sympathetic looks. A lot of the men had been there. It could be hard to hold onto relationships in the military.

The sun had sunk behind the mountains and the air was beginning to cool, when there was a sudden flurry of activity.

“Incoming!” came the yell from the sangar.

Suddenly, men were flying everywhere, running for their body armor and weapons. I sprinted for my room, but tripped over an abandoned jacket, and went sprawling in the dust.

The first RPG exploded about 200 yards outside the compound. The noise was horrendous, and the plume of dirt rocketed 90 feet into the air.

I covered my head with my hands, and pushed my face into the loose dirt on the ground. When the dusty shower had subsided, I crawled on my hands and knees into my room, and pulled on my body armor and helmet in double-quick time. Then I grabbed my camera and nervously pointed it out of the tiny window, taking snap after snap of the Marines as they took their positions. Then the durg-durg of the heavy machine guns started.

Another RPG exploded, closer this time, and I dropped to the floor, counted to ten, and peered out of my window. After a minute of what seemed like organized chaos, bellows and shouts, silence rippled outwards.

My heart was thundering in my chest, and I realized my hands were shaking. I began to wonder if a nice, safe job in a bank might be a good career move.

Sebastian’s head suddenly appeared around my door, and I nearly yelled out in fright.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me,” I replied, rather breathlessly.

He nodded, and disappeared.

The Taliban had a new tactic: sleep deprivation. Intermittently throughout the night, they’d fire an RPG randomly toward us. None of them came close enough to cause concern, but it was successful at stopping us resting, not that sleeping in body armor was possible anyway—at least not until complete exhaustion had set in.

Sebastian didn’t have another chance to come near me again: I guessed he was in Grant’s office to interpret the insurgents’ radio chatter and thus help the gunners try to work out targets. At dawn, we were all gritty-eyed and pissed off as we stumbled into line to get breakfast.

I don’t know why, but an old Beatles song came into my head, and I started humming the opening bars of ‘I’m So Tired’—the lines that said his mind is on the blink because he hasn’t slept a wink. That was exactly how I felt.

The Marine behind me started singing the tune softy, and I turned around to smile at him and joined in. Then two more started with the harmony. Soon, about 20 burly Marines were singing out of tune and getting their groove on in the breakfast line. It wasn’t much, but it was damn funny—and we really needed to laugh.

Captain Grant appeared from his office, unshaven and with dark rings around his eyes, accompanied by Crawley and Sebastian. When Grant saw the kids from Glee getting funky to the Beatles, his face split with a huge grin. I didn’t even know the man had teeth. He gave me an ironic salute, and disappeared back into his den. Crawley laughed out loud, and Sebastian smiled at me proudly.