Rizzy and Clark were like  brothers, closer really, because how many brothers save your live again and again?  Both had been in Iraq numerous times. Rizzy had been here for four tours and Clark had done an amazing five tours in this hellhole.  After the company sat in the Mess Hall and listened to President Obama tell the nation, and this platoon, they would all be home for Christmas, the two buddies found two bootleg cans of beer and a couple of cigars and sat down in the shade. Two men who taken the Tiger by the Tail, and beat him down. They had won. The world could spin this shit anyway they pleased, but Rizzy and Clark had made it out alive baby, and that's the only spin that counts, in a soldiers world anyway.

 

As they loaded up the last trucks, they flipped a coin to see who would drive. While theirs was not the last vehicle out of that God-forsaken place, it was damn close, and that was good enough for them. They had plans.  Two boys, now men, one from northern California and one a southerner, had defied the odds, became best friends, and were now were moving to LaLa Land, Baby! They were going to try their hand at being stunt men in the movies. Maybe even luck up, and become actors. Neither was  interested in being famous as much as being around people like director, Peter Jackson. They were Hobbit fans, and  wanted to be around a place that could make fantasies, like their favorite movie, "The Lord of the Rings" come true.

 

Rizzy was born near Monterey, CA. in a small town called Seaside. He had been a surfer and water monkey his entire life, and had never been a day of his life without seeing the Pacific Ocean, until the day he left for Basic Training . He was from a middle class family, and while he didn't "have" to join the army, he could have lived with his parents for years, he wanted to see the world and and get a taste of life, and also feel what "War" was like. After watching movies like "Platoon" as a kid, and reading books about war, he wanted to know if he would stand and fight, or run away like a coward when the fighting started. He needn't had worried. He was a warrior.

 

Jesse Clark was an African-American from a small town, also. He lived in a town so small, it didn't even have a stop light. Even so, he lived "across the tracks", in the Black-section of town. This didn't bother him, it was the way it was, and had always been. Why people thought the races were supposed to hang together like a Campbell Soup commercial blew his mind. It wasn't just color that separate races, it religion, food, dress, and a thousand other things that just "is". You hand around people you like, not people who are a certain color. He had to join the army after his Ma-Ma died. His grandmother was the only parent he had ever known, and he loved her more than anything on this earth. When she died, with only some second hand furniture in a rented house, and "enough insurance to bury my ass", as she always said, he was at the recruiting office the next day. Let it be said, here, he was also a warrior and had fought in over one hundred battles.

 

On the last day in Iraq, the Battalion Commander made sure his troops had a last meal they would remember, always. Close to Christmas, he had his cooks prepare a spread fit for the warriors who fought so valiantly, for so long. Turkey, ham, and the works, fit for the holidays.  No person who wanted it, left the mess hall hungry that day, and most were un-tightning their pants, with a grin that only a soldier who has eaten MRI's in the field during battle, could possibly understand. In his speech, his last in Iraq and his last in the military, the Commander thanked his troops for a job well done. He ended with a standard HOORAAA!, and was driven to a waiting plane that left the Middle East for the last time. He hated that fucking place.

 

As the convoy was nearing the Kuwait border, Rizzy was driving  and both were talking a mile a minute, making plans for their discharge from the service, and their trip to Hollywood. They had saved over $10,000 between them, and like brothers, where one went, so did the other. When they heard the first honking from the lead truck in the convoy, they knew they had done it, crossed the border into Kuwait. They had come to a place that in reality, was nothing but a fucking desert, with nothing but black, stinking oil underneath the ground, and had fought  a people who loved it for reasons only they would ever understand, and survived. They had survived this stupid war!

 

As their truck crossed over the Kuwaiti border, the driver in front of Rizzy, with his head out of the driver's side, ran into the back of another truck in front of him. Rizzy had to cut sharply to his right to avoid a collision with the back of a truck that was filled will American soldiers, as was his truck. The truck veered off the hardened road, hit the sand and rolled over. The screams could be heard coming from the back, as the truck landed on its side. Rizzy's first thought, although his own head was a bloody mess, was for his best friend, Clark. He looked over and went white with fear, as he looked at Clark's listless body.

 

There was controlled pandemonium as men who had been in battle for years, took measure of the situation and started saving lives. Medic's were called, a helicopter was there in minutes, and a situation that could have been catastropic, was barely avoided. Rizzy pulled Clark out of the truck with tears in his eyes, his mind knowing that no fair God would allow this warrior, who had saved him more than one time, to die in such a trivial manner. It was then that Clark opened his eyes, and said "What the hell happened? You are the worst driver in the fucking history of the army. You alright buddy, you look a bloody mess? Rizzy looked down, grinned, hugged his Brother-in -Arms, and cried like a baby!

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