Soldier Girls by Helen Thorpe

Author:Helen Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

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Sea World

MICHELLE NEVER SAW the empty boots, she was not present for the memorial ceremony. By the time the service took place, she and Ben Sawyer were in Kuwait. They had heard about the explosion while they were still at Bagram. Michelle had caught sight of Desma and Mary’s platoon sergeant, looking harried. Why was he wearing his ballistic vest in the middle of the day when there were no sirens blaring? Four guys just died, he told them curtly. There were two theories: the Taliban or the rain.

Michelle thought about how much rain had fallen, and figured it was likely the deluges could have caused some long-buried land mine to migrate. Still, for weeks afterward, she found herself wondering if the official story was fiction. Truth seemed elusive in a war zone, and both sides had motivation for their theories. Could the US military be using false narratives as well as armor and bullets? She didn’t want to think so, but she had read a lot of left-wing periodicals. Maybe her commanders wanted to blame the weather to make the Taliban seem less powerful. In the years that followed, charts of violent incidents would show that during the months of March, April, May, and June 2005, there was a sudden spike in the use of IEDs across Afghanistan. That year’s fighting season was when the war took a darker turn, in other words. Later—when it would become clear that Afghan insurgents had gotten much better at building bombs that particular spring—it would seem more likely the Taliban might have played a role, but by then the families had already been told the official story about the rain.

Meanwhile, Michelle and Ben had concocted a false story of their own. Both of them were expecting to return to stressful scenarios in Indiana. While they were still in Afghanistan, Michelle had called her father from Ben’s cell phone and he had let her know that he had been arrested for dealing methamphetamine (although he would later plead guilty to a lesser charge, possession of methamphetamine). He and a friend had been busted for running an illegal meth lab on his property, according to Michelle. He had needed money for bail and Michelle had sent him several hundred dollars. She was dreading her return both because she would have to confront the sordid mess her father had gotten into and because she was planning to tell Pete the truth about the affair.

And Ben Sawyer told Michelle that he had been watching his bank account be drained from afar, presumably because his wife was spending the money he had been earning. Because he had been amassing combat pay, he kept depositing significant amounts into the account, and he had been spending hardly anything, yet Michelle got the impression that the money kept melting away. Ben told Michelle that his wife had supplied vague answers when he had asked where the money was going, but his friends had shared their suspicion that in his absence Amanda had grown reliant on OxyContin.

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