Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar (16 page)

I sensed that I couldn't report what I'd learned about Sharon through his eating—not in the kind of magazine for which I used to write. It was too much about feel. It wasn't attributable to some expert in a quote. It wouldn't be balanced, in the way of Middle Eastern reporting, with another expert saying, “To be sure, there are Arab leaders who eat too much, as well.”

Since the spring of 2006, when his doctors concluded that he wouldn't recover from his coma, Sharon has lain in a private room in Tel Hashomer, a Tel Aviv hospital with a long-term care facility. The macabre joke among Israeli political correspondents is that no one would recognize him because the doctors aren't overfeeding him through the tube with which he takes his nourishment. So he's down to a normal weight. He's reported to be about 110 pounds.

TIM HETHERINGTON

IT WAS COLD AND QUIET UP ON THE ABAS GHAR RIDGE. A FEW CROWS
flew overhead and circled back in their quest for food, clearly spotting the American unit that was spread out along the trail below. The men relaxed and talked in hushed voices. It was October 2007, and the soldiers were on the third day of a combat operation aimed at flushing out insurgents in the Korengal Valley—widely considered one of the most deadly places for American soldiers in Afghanistan. Some lay down against their packs while others gathered in small groups, white ribbons of smoke spiraling upward from their cigarettes. The lieutenant was busy on his radio, and many took it as an opportunity to open up an MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) ration pack. Sergeant Stichter sat beside a large tree and focused intently on spreading the contents of a tube of jelly over a beef patty. Sterling Jones watched the culinary experiment and chuckled to himself, “We eat our boredom.”

For Staff Sergeant Larry Rougle from Utah, an MRE on the side of the Abas Ghar would be his last meal. Half an hour later, he would be dead and two others wounded, shot at close range after insurgents managed to overrun their position. U.S. intercepts had picked up the enemy whispering on the radios but hadn't realized that this was because they were so close to where the men were camped out. Gunfire exploded around the men, the
bullets breaking off branches and tearing up the hillside. Spenser Dunn, in the middle of his meal, lurched forward to find cover behind a pine tree, sending the contents of his ration pack flying. Meanwhile, on an outcrop eighty yards away, Kevin Rice fell back through thick foliage after being shot through the stomach. The ambush was over in an instant, leaving behind it the debris of spilled rations and a trail of blood down the mountainside.

Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach. Likewise today, American soldiers in Afghanistan live and die on MREs. Meals, Ready-to-Eat, otherwise known as Meals Rejected by Everyone, Meals Rarely Edible, Meals Rejected by the Enemy, or Materials Resembling Edibles. While five thousand soldiers in rear bases wear pressed clothing and feast on fresh produce, front-line combat soldiers in their alternative reality hold company with fleas and the thick chocolate plastic packaging of MRE meal packs. Field rations for combat units originated by order of Congress during the American Revolutionary War and have undergone numerous incarnations since—most recently from the heavy-duty canned rations of the Korean War to the “Meal, Combat, Individual” ration (also known as C-rations or Charlie Rats) of the Vietnam War, to the introduction of dehydrated MREs in the early 1980s.

Inevitably soldiers have a complicated relationship with their rations, which they both malign and fetishize. They ascribe all sorts of powers to these hated, beloved meals. Some claim the MREs contain dangerous levels of bromide designed to take away their sex drive (though judging by the amount of porn I saw consumed in the Korengal, this hadn't worked); others that the gum provided in each packet is really a laxative (though I once went through four packets without finding relief from a terrible bout of constipation). It is even commonly held that “Charms”—the hard-boiled candies that come with one of the meals—are, by their very name, harbingers of bad luck. Whenever someone found a packet of Charms in his MRE in the Korengal, it was customary for him to hurl the candies down the mountainside. I imagined how young Korengali children might come
across the American treats lodged between boulders as they tended their goats and cows on the slopes below. Specialist Cortez looked a little sheepish one day when he was caught red-handed eating a whole packet. He immediately confessed to premeditation—claiming he was so bored out of his mind that he had wanted to start a firefight by eating them when no one was looking. It didn't work.

In the upside-down world of the Korengal, eating was a way to beat the boredom that suffocated soldiers between bouts of fighting. Later on during my many weeks with the soldiers there, I'd wonder what it was about food up there—it wasn't that you stopped caring about eating, but it was hard to derive any satisfaction from an MRE. The name of each meal would change, but the contents seemed the same.

Whatever the intentions of the Department of Defense, its rations did not provide any emotional fulfillment—there was rarely a moment of satisfied reverie after eating an MRE during which a soldier's guard might drop. Certainly U.S. MREs did not replicate the European army experience of a carefully crafted
gastronomie
—French ration packs assumed a satisfying meal by the very inclusion of an after-dinner cigarette. Some of the best meals out there had little to do with what was actually being eaten, and more to do with the context and act of eating itself: Specialist Jason Monroe (a.k.a. “Money”) working his way through two pounds of canned tuna that a relative had sent him in a care package, in an act of defiant excess.

While emotional satisfaction may not have been possible, just thinking about those brown packets could nevertheless evoke a Pavlovian response, especially on the final stretch of a patrol. You needed to pay attention during the sprint out of the village of Kalaygal—it would be careless to get shot after getting up so early and doing all the hard work—but once around the cusp of the spur, the final two hundred yards back to Outpost Restrepo were plain sailing. Situated on a high rocky outcrop with commanding views over the Korengal, Restrepo was an important strategic piece in the
battle for the valley. The final moments of the steep climb up to the outpost required little concentration, and my mind often strayed to thoughts of food.

Looking out across the way one morning as I passed through the concertina wire, I could see tall trees dotting the upper reaches of valley walls, their silhouettes standing against the morning light, while down on the valley floor, a blanket of mist thinned to reveal small patchworks of yellow and green terrace. Local people were bent over gathering ripe bundles of wheat, and small flecks were cattle meandering across the rocky crags in search of a morning meal. I found my colleague Sebastian already sitting down on a small rocky outcrop that serves as a kind of bench. He was shaking his head from side to side, and then, tilting his head back, finally took a large gulp.

“I'm just having a coffee,” he said. “I lost the cup, so I'm just putting the coffee mix in my mouth and adding water.” He paused, noticing my expression.

“It's actually not that bad,” he said.

It has been many months since I was last in the Korengal, but I still can't entirely shake the effects of living off processed, indigestible material for months on end. As much as the fighting, the daily ritual of eating became a fundamental part of the experience we all shared. Nowadays I go out to a fancy restaurant in New York and will sit there like some confused old person wondering what to eat, but out in the Korengal I moved fast at mealtimes. I knew I'd have only a split second to get to the scrambled eggs and ham pouch when someone opened up the holy grail of MREs—the luminous white box of winter's rations.

Unlike the brown boxes of regular MREs, the white boxes for winter food contained freeze-dried meals that required the addition of hot water. It was actually like making a meal. Even if you were in the middle of wiping a dry cracker with a healthy dose of jalapeño cheese spread, the sweet music of someone ripping open a new carton of food was the signal to get
off your ass and over there before the rest of the marauding hordes beat you to the best stuff. Bobby Gene had large square paws that could easily beat me to the bottom of the box in search of Beef Ravioli. No point in hesitating—I mean, who wants to end up with the loser's lot of Cheese Macaroni—not even the platoon dog was that stupid.

To pick the right MRE packet, one needed to comprehend in a split second all the ramifications of a particular choice. Each meal packet was its own universe, with its own particular assets and liabilities. For instance, take the packet Chicken Fajitas. In 2007, the
Salt Lake Tribune
asked three gourmet chefs to taste eighteen different MRE meals. All survived the experiment and went on to draw up a ranking table to compare their experiences. On a tasting scale of 1 to 10, the average of all the meals was a miserable 5.7, but the Chicken Fajitas was singled out as being the worst of all, ranking only an average score of 1.3. Framed like this, you'd think every soldier would avoid choosing an MRE Chicken Fajitas—but in fact, there were plenty of reasons why this would be a good choice. Think about all the great things that came in the brown sack of deliciousness along with the fajitas. I remember an orange beverage far superior to the fluorescent pink grapefruit one that came with another main course and stained your teeth. And there were chewy Tootsie Rolls that you could sequester away in your personal food treasury for a later date; syrupy spiced apples; and the pièce de résistance—cherry cobbler that could be warmed up. Each MRE was more than just the main course by which it was known; it was a holistic experience.

Army logisticians determined that soldiers should eat only MREs no longer than twenty-one days in a row, but Outpost Restrepo became some kind of weird laboratory where men were pitted against the laws of nature and evolved new eating habits. One day I came across Sergeant Aron Hijar in the midst of culinary experimentation. In one hand he held an open packet of Meatloaf and Gravy, while in his other he slowly ground a pile of crackers in his palm and added them to the mixture. Next, a tube of peanut
butter spread went in, followed by a sprinkling of M&M's candies rounded off with two mini-bottles of Tabasco sauce. Hijar stirred the potent mixture together with a brown plastic spoon while staring at me intently.

“You're not going to heat that up?” I asked.

“Warm food is for pussies,” he replied emphatically. “This is how we used to eat at Ranger School. They never gave us enough time to eat, and when you did have time, you were so tired that this was the easiest way to eat so you could get to sleep as quickly as possible. Just mash it all up and shovel it down.”

“Looks fucking disgusting,” I said.

“Looks can be deceptive,” he replied.

For a lucky few, there was life beyond the MRE. Those based down with Battle Company's headquarters element at the main outpost on the valley floor had access to the company's two cooks—Bui and Lackley. Both were important fixtures in the life of the company, though it was misleading to use the word
cook
to describe their work. In fact, Bui was so compromised by his obsession with Gameboy that I'm not sure which was worse—having to eat what he served at the main outpost, or resigning oneself to a life of MREs at one of the more remote outposts like Restrepo.

One day, the men up at Restrepo reached what could be called an MRE breaking point. I was not there at the time, but Sergeant Brendan O'Byrne, from Pennsylvania, told me the story later. It began when Sergeant Al and Hoyt had a crazy idea.

“Hey, let's kill a fucking cow!” one of them said.

Some cattle had been grazing close to Outpost Restrepo, and the men had one eye out for the herders who normally accompanied them. Often the enemy would send people toward the outpost to scout for soft spots in the base's defense—and what better pretext than looking for a wandering cow? On this particular day, though—one of those long, quiet days in the valley when the fighting had died down for lack of ammunition rather than
will—no one seemed to be around. The herd clung precipitously to the loose slate ground, the cows whisking their tails and oblivious to the men peering down from the green sand-bagged roof of the armory bunker.

As luck would have it, Lackley happened to be visiting from the main outpost that lay three thousand feet below on the valley floor. He'd come up to Restrepo on the pretense of bringing up supplies, but in reality he wanted to get into a firefight so he could earn his Combat Infantryman's Badge—known simply as a CIB. A posting to the Korengal was considered dangerous enough, but Restrepo—being the outpost closest to enemy territory—was the tip of the spear in the company effort in the valley, and a visit there would guarantee even a cook his CIB. So when Lackley staggered up, sweating and out of breath, everyone in the platoon was happy to see he'd made the long hike up to their flea-infested home—it was, at the very least, a gesture of camaraderie that they welcomed. They ended up taking him on a patrol down to the village of Kalaygal and stayed long enough to ensure they'd get shot at on the way out—so Lackley was able to get himself in a fight and rightfully claim his medal. Content with the outcome—no one was killed and everyone had a good laugh—he stayed up for a couple more days, sunbathing with the rest of them while they waited for the enemy to get an ammunition resupply.

Now, looking down on the cattle, Lackley suggested that if they killed a cow, he'd cook it up on the makeshift grill with some of the onions he'd brought up. It was decided that they couldn't shoot it—a gunshot would raise the alarm down at the main base that Restrepo was under attack—so Hoyt decided to make a spear out of a tent pole and a Rambo knife, attaching it with parachute cord and some gaffer tape. They picked out a fat brown cow that had made the fatal mistake of straying too close to the concertina wire and encircled it on one side, trapping it between them and the wire. O'Byrne told me how Hoyt got close enough to stab it a few times, gouging it in the neck—the poor beast went down without much of a fight, bleeding out on the mountainside. The men rolled the body down the
incline and dragged it quickly inside the perimeter of the outpost, looking around to make sure no one—officer or Afghan—had seen them. Once inside, no one knew exactly what to do next, so they decided to take its head off first with a Christmas tree saw. This didn't work too well, until Murphy started twisting the head around. It snapped off and sent him sliding down the mountainside. Everyone roared with laughter while O'Byrne—who had no butchering experience whatsoever—stood nearby giving authoritative instructions as they sliced it down the belly, taking care to avoid the bladder. They cut themselves the tenderest steaks the cow had to offer. Finally Lackley rubbed his hands and took to the grill. Minutes later the men relished what became known as “same-day cow.”