The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper

Author:Will Bardenwerper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2017-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Baghdad, Iraq—2006

If you play that damn song one more time, I’m going to kick your ass, Private Paul Sphar shouted across the room to Private Tucker Dawson. Dawson had been playing “Fireman” by Lil Wayne just about every morning in the cramped room they shared, and it had begun to drive Sphar crazy. Minor aggravations and annoyances were magnified by the forced proximity of deployment—and further compounded by unrelenting heat, grinding stress, and testosterone. Friction was inevitable and eruptions bound to take place.

When they did, the Super Twelve often resolved them in a somewhat brutal though surprisingly effective manner. Specialist Rogerson later recalled that “if we got sick of each other, we’d take each other to the Pit and that was it.” “Taking each other to the Pit” meant squaring off in hand-to-hand combat—or what was called in Army training “combatives”—while the rest of the squad circled around and watched, ensuring that things didn’t get too out of hand. Striking with the fists was frowned upon; rather, the men would try to grapple each other into submission. Sometimes mutual exhaustion simply led to a draw, at which point the two soldiers would help each other to their feet as they gasped to catch their breath. These bouts had a familial quality to them. It was “kind of like I can mess with my brother, but you can’t,” Rogerson recalls. “I would beat the shit out of Perkins more times than I can count, but if someone from the outside bothered us we’d have each other’s back.”

In this instance, though, Sphar didn’t have the patience to wait until later to deal with Dawson. The two had always had a rocky relationship, having entered the Army from very different worlds. Sphar was a tattooed “gamer” while Dawson, an avid hunter and fisherman, was more the embodiment of southern preppiness.

As Lil Wayne continued to blast from Dawson’s computer, Sphar couldn’t take it anymore. He charged across the small room and, lowering a shoulder, crashed into the young Carolinian, his considerable girth helping to send both tumbling to the ground. Neither of the young soldiers actually wanted to hurt the other, but the steam had reached a boil and needed release. They crashed about the cluttered space, slamming into plywood walls separating them from soldiers bunking next door. Eventually the stocky Sphar gained the upper hand, pinning Dawson to the floor. That’s when Sergeant Tom Flanagan burst into the room, having heard the commotion from the hallway as he passed by.

Cut that shit out! Flanagan shouted.

The two combatants slowly peeled themselves off each other, secretly relieved to have a face-saving opportunity to call a truce. There was never any doubt that Flanagan’s command would be obeyed. The sergeant was universally admired for being hardworking and a straight shooter. Sheepishly, Sphar and Dawson headed to the showers to clean up and get ready for another day—another twenty-four hours that stood between them and eventually going home.

Life for soldiers consists of an endless succession of countdowns.

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