Life in the Shit in Iraq | Jason Christopher Hartley | Big Think

Life in the Shit in Iraq

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An Iraq soldier’s gritty life at war, from confrontation to masturbation to defecation.

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Jason Christopher Hartley:

Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jason Christopher Hartley is a member of the New York Army National Guard. After serving at Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks, Hartley was stationed in Iraq, where he maintained the controversial blog Just Another Soldier until he was forced to stop by his commander. He is the creator of "Surrender," a play based on his wartime experiences, as well as the author of the book "Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq."

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How did it feel the first time you fired your weapon?

Jason Christopher Hartley: Well my experience combat-wise while I was in Iraq was mild. I mean we kind of joked about it being like Combat Lite. We had no illusions about where we were. We weren’t in Fallujah. You know, we weren’t part of the invasion of Samara. We weren’t like shooting people every day. You know, I fired my weapon three times at people with, you know, the intent to kill them twice and even for where I was that was like… There was only one other guy in my company I think who fired his weapon four times, but nonetheless -- I mean to be honest, I mean the few times when I had fired my weapon those were the greatest moments of my life. I mean I think I have like reverse PTSD where I think about firing my weapon every single day, but not in the way that like that oh, that was horrible, I can’t stop thinking about it. It was like that was so fucking cool. I wish there was a way that I could relive it every single day.

So I mean it’s -- and yeah, it is very visceral and you feel incredibly focused. It’s… I almost feel guilty like explaining this sometimes. Like it was, for lack of a better word, it was fun. I mean it felt good, but maybe that’s because I was lucky enough to not actually like -- not actually kill anyone, to not have to see the result of the violence. I just got to have kind of all the upside and none of the downside. I got to have a small degree of a fear for my life and I got to respond to it the way in which I was trained and it was exhilarating.

The first time that I fired my weapon was incredibly dissatisfying because it didn’t fire, which was also profoundly disconcerting. It was kind of a stupid situation where we were out doing a patrol near one of the oil pipelines. It was dark. We were kind of in Timbuktu. It was the kind of no-man’s land and there was a farmhouse and the guy who lived here, his family, they had a ton of dogs, so of course the dogs are all kind of freaking out and barking, like the guy knows what that means. He knows that there is somebody poking around that probably shouldn’t be there, so I can… We have night vision, but I can barely… I see a guy come out of his house and I see that he has an AK47 and he… From what I… He fires a warning shot into the air to kind of like let whoever is out there know that hey, I’m here, I have a weapon, you know, don’t fuck with my house.

So I stop and I’m like, OK, well, this is kind of what I’m perceiving, I can’t think of a really reason to return fire, and as I’m going through this thought process one of my saw gunners just opens up. You know, he’s like BRAAP! and started lighting the house up, and then everyone starts shooting and I’m like, well crap, if everyone is shooting I’m not going to not shoot, so I guess I’ll shoot too, so I think well I’ll just like shoot. I’ll suppress this guy. I know he is probably not a threat, but so long as we can keep his head down I’ll just fire over his house, so I was aiming into the roof of the house and so the first time I squeezed the trigger it just kind of went click, which was like not what you want to have happen as an infantryman. It was… It really freaked me out and in retrospect what I think had happened was just I had reloaded the same first round in that magazine so many times that maybe the primer had been dimpled and -- I don’t know. I couldn’t figure it out. It sucked, so I just you know I racked the weapon, charged a new round and I was good to go after that, but yeah, that was the first time I ever fired my weapon.

The second time I fired my weapon, yeah, that was a lot more satisfying because it went the way it was supposed to,....

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