Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever War by Jerad W. Alexander

Author:Jerad W. Alexander [Alexander, Jerad W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, Personal Memoirs, history, United States
ISBN: 9781643752181
Google: gbUdEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2021-11-09T23:35:53.283445+00:00

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I ran through the woods behind my new high school, number three in as many years. It was fall, 1997. Rain had fallen that morning, but now sunlight slanted between wet amber leaves and gray pines. A cool snap in the nostrils. Tree sap and musty decay. The trail was slick, but the black rubber soles of my boots gripped the Georgia earth and the brown pine needles. I was at the front of the column of teenagers with a duffel bag on my back. A sandbag inside pulled the ungainly green mass toward the back of my thighs as I ran, forcing me to pitch forward until I was nearly doubled over. The straps cut into my shoulders and threatened to put my left arm to sleep.

The trail looked unused. I didn’t know it was here before now, but it didn’t really matter. All I had to do was run to a specified point marked with a flag, turn around, and run back. Teammates ran behind me with a stretcher and large plastic water jug. One boy carried another boy over his shoulders as if he were wounded. A retired army master sergeant with dim eyes waited at the trailhead with a stopwatch, recording our time. We were all students and cadets in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps—another American outlet to playact as soldiers: running through the woods, dressing as a facsimile of an American GI, pretending, marking time. But in just a few months, I’d wear the real thing. I’d get my dog tags and helmet, my rifle and flak jacket. Another volunteer for the empire.

I made it to the turnaround point, touching the tree with the flag and running back down the trail. After a few dozen yards, I came across a felled tree that I had crossed earlier. I quickly sat on the log and swung my legs to the other side and kept running.

My hands suddenly felt as if they were being stabbed. Three fat wasps were jabbing their rotten stingers into my skin, two on my left hand and one on my right. I bellowed and frantically swatted my hands clear. I must have stirred up a nest of them somehow, perhaps buried in the dirt or a tree. The trail had seemed long unused.

My hands throbbed. I flicked them as if trying to wick away the poison. I had a mild teenage love for profanity and exercised it when I knew I could get away with it, careful to avoid the ears of southern Christian piety. Now I ran down the trail blathering a stream of unfiltered gibberish into the pines.

A freshman in a camouflage uniform stood just off the trail. He had a big camcorder on his shoulders. Recording the race for posterity. I saw him plainly but continued my litany of teenage vitriol.

I only slowed my cursing once I made it out of the woods. I kept running. My shoulders ached. Sweat poured into my eyes. My hands were on fire.

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