Observations from a guard tower

I wrote these observations following a guard duty shift when my U.S. Army Reserve unit was deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1999.

Very early in the dusky morning, a man and a little boy about three years old slowly walked up and down the rows of the field directly in front of us.

The man and boy arrived not long after I settled in at my guard tower, along with my partner for the day, Specialist Cole. The little boy stopped in front of our tower, standing just on the other side of the razor wire fence that separated our base camp from the rest of the world. He bent down and picked up an empty Pepsi can and showed it to us before gently setting it back down.

He didn’t say anything, just watched us intently to see if we were going to toss him a soft drink. When we didn’t, he ran and caught up with the man and continued walking the field.

Movement to the right caught my eye. I looked over and saw a woman walking toward the others. She was carrying a hoe with a wooden handle and was followed by a child of perhaps five years old. She sat under a tree and watched the kids play, while the man cut limbs with a hatchet.

At about 9 a.m., we heard the melodic, melancholy call to Muslim prayers through the loudspeakers. The morning fog had burned off and we could see houses with orange roofs on a nearby hill. Farther in the distance was a mountain range. The woman had moved from underneath the tree and was hoeing the field.

The man was using a white horse to plow the earth. He was bent over and walking to the left of the plow. He was struggling and awkward, as if unaccustomed to the work. Nearby was a black horse attached to a little brown cart.

It was a twelve-hour guard duty shift. My attention drifted from the scene before me to the little green notebook I carried everywhere. I took notes, these notes, writing down what I saw and heard and thought. I chatted with Cole a bit. I let my mind drift to wherever it wanted to go.

When I refocused on the farmers, a new person was there. She was holding a bowl and walking behind the plowing man, throwing out whitish grains, probably fertilizer. She periodically walked back to the end of the row and refilled her bowl from a big plastic bag.

This was my second time to pull guard duty. The first time was a week earlier and was an overnight shift. That time, I had reported for formation around seven in the evening and didn’t get back to the tent until ten the next morning. I considered it supreme luck to have drawn the day shift duty this time.

It was relaxing to sit there on this beautiful spring day, even though I was wearing forty pounds of battle gear and was supposed to look intimidating and vigilant. I set my mind to enjoy the slight breeze and the fresh air.

I was jolted from my thoughts by children’s voices. Now four kids had appeared on the opposite side of the razor wire. They were practiced beggars. Previous soldiers had taught them some English words. “Give me water! Give me Pepsi!” they shouted. “Give me juice! Give me MREs!” (MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, are prepackaged meals that soldiers often eat in the field.)

Cole pulled guard duty every day, not just sometimes like me. He knew the children well, and told me their names. The boy who looked about twelve hung around for two or three hours, begging the whole time. We were not supposed to give them anything, but his persistence suggested that his efforts were rewarded often enough for him to remain stubborn.

In the next field, which was just out of sight, we could hear the engine of a tractor. In the background behind us was the hum of planes from the airfield on base. The sound blended with birdsong, the voices of children, the periodic chirps from the radio in our tower, Cole tapping his foot as he wrote a letter, and the occasional truck that drove by on the road directly behind us, stirring up a storm of dust.

The day’s early chill was gone by mid-morning. The rest of the day was warm and sunny, not unlike a spring day at home in Alabama. I watched a yellow butterfly float in and out of the open-air tower. There were much worse ways to spend twelve hours. I noted the new, bright green grass and the bare earth of the field, darker where the farmer had just turned it over.

The man seemed to be moving slowly, so I was surprised when I looked up an hour after he’d started to find that he had turned most of the field into a dark, rich brown. Both women were bent over, their hands busy in the earth.

They made me wish I was planting my own garden at home, or maybe mowing my grass in the sunshine.

-Melanie Patterson

© Forged in Words 2021