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FICTION: Report of a Court Martial
by John R. Guthrie
When the sand storms come in
This jail smells like fresh paint. The walls are concrete blocks,
painted cream colored. The cell is eight feet wide and nine feet deep. There
are two bunks bolted to the wall, just steel pans really, like big biscuit
pans, each with a thin pad for a mattress with a mattress cover and an army
blanket. At the end of the bunk there’s a toilet and a sink. There’s no seat on
the toilet, so you can’t rip it off and use it as a weapon. The floor is vinyl
tile. The ceiling is made out of tile with lots of holes in it, and there are
two air vents high on the wall. The air comes in one and out the other so that
they whisper like they’re telling secrets day and night. There is a window, a
tall skinny window made out of Plexiglas in the wall, but I can’t see much but
other buildings through it, that and a little patch of sky. This jail is built
by the best prison builders in the world. Somewhere, somebody’s yelling,
screaming, crazy. Hurting? I don’t know why.
My name
is Lassiter, Kelsie S. Private First Class Kelsie S. Lassiter. US Army, 208 68 2141.
That’s it; name, rank, serial number. That’s me. I’m 21 years old. I am five
feet, three inches tall. One hundred and five pounds.
Which is really five pounds too much ‘cause I’ve got
too much butt -- but not enough boobs. I have dirty blond hair, blue eyes. I
have little white spots on my fingernails. Back home they used to say people
got white spots on their finger nails from telling lies. But I have told no
lies, and I will not lie now.
I’m from
Back home, Mama has pictures she took when I was a baby, sitting on
somebody’s lap in front of the trailer where Mama still lives. Some man’s lap. My daddy, I think. I don’t know for sure, ‘cause I didn’t ever
know my daddy. Mama said that it was, though, and I believe her. I knew my
granddaddy, and I used to play checkers with him. I had curls then, long hair. Blond, lighter than now. There’s another picture with Granny
before she died. She said I was a cute baby. Granny, she used to twist a rag up
and soak it in sugar water and give it to me. A sugar tit.
I guess that’s why I've always liked sweets, which wasn’t good for my teeth.
That is one of the good things about the army, the dentist.
Mama said I’ve been on every news channel back home now. She told every
body, this ain’t Kelsie. Kelsie’s sweet. If you were at Mama’s house, you could see
that picture of me, lots of them actually. Mama keeps them in a drawer. She
started off putting them in a picture book, but then just put in a drawer. You
could see pictures of me when I started to school. Skinny
kid, staring at the camera like I wondered if it was going to bite me.
When I started to school, I walked. Everybody knowed everybody. When spring comes, lots of people
go barefoot. It feels good, really, the earth cool and damp under your toes,
your feet tender, but they toughen up soon and you know summer’s coming. I
liked school, really. Did good, did whatever the teacher told me. I played
softball at school, which I liked.
When I was 10, I started getting boobs. I didn’t like that. I walked
hunched over, so as to hide them. All that changed, I guess you could say, when I met Sonny. Sonny Lambright. Sonny liked to play the pinball machine,
fish, drink, smoke dope. He also liked to sing along with Justin Timberlake
when he was on the radio. Just a pretty normal type of guy.
I was crazy about Sonny from the time I was 14. We got to where we’d go
fishing.
There’s
a dirt road lead back to this place on Shawnee Creek, which is nearly a river.
The water’s usually pretty brown and muddy, 'cause there’s
mine tailings in it. But it’s pretty, and it’s peaceful, not too many
people coming through. To get there, you walk back through stands of oaks climb
right on up toward the sky like they’re not gonna
stop. Close to the creek, there’s a patch of loblolly pines, deep green, sweet
smelling and fresh, and next to the creek, willows, their branches hanging down
sad-like, like they’re grieving over something, but still pretty. There’s a
gully there leading down to the creek. That was the place, in the gully that
is, where people threw things they didn’t want any more. Some of it was pretty
good stuff. Like you might find a kid’s wagon that you could still use cause
some kid’d growed up and
didn’t need it any more. All sorts of other stuff; car radiators, an old
washing machine, TV’s with their smooth and round-cornered screens broken in.
Cut off tree limbs, ragged, tattered, throwed-away
clothes. Pieces of scrap lumber. Bottles for beer and every
thing else. Big and small tin cans, some square but mostly round, old
smoothed-out tires, kitchen garbage. The rats loved that. There was always plenty of rats.
There was an old car seat on the edge of the gully. Sonny and me dragged it over to the creek bank, laughing and talking
the whole time. We’d sit on it and fish.
Know
what? We didn’t catch any fish. And we didn’t care. Yeah, we’d drink a little
beer, still laughing at everything, talking. We’d smoke a little dope when we
could get it, but mostly was lucky to get a few of beers And there was an old
mattress we pulled out, and…you know, we’d get it on, do the wild thing. That’s
the first time I ever did it, there with Sonny. I was crazy over Sonny. I’d
come in late, so sure enough, Mama said I couldn’t go out with Sonny any more,
’cause I came in so late and he was two years older and all.
After Mama said I couldn’t see him any more, I went right out the
window. To see him, that is. Stayed out all night.
Mama got the preacher to talk to me about slipping around to see Sonny. The
preacher was skinny, old, rawboned, his hair wispy like a spider web stirring
in the breeze. He was tall, his forehead bulging, huge and bald, like a beetle’s
head. Loved to talk about sin. Loved to talk about
Hell, which is where he said teens living in sin, by which he meant having sex,
would go. You cannot disregard His decrees. You must repent, Kelsie, he’d say. Say if a teen was in a car wreck before they
repented and died, they’d go to Hell. That happened to my cousin up on the
Mama called me some really bad names I don’t even want to say. Said no
daughter of hers was going to whore around like I was doing. But I loved Sonny,
really loved him. Listen! You think you can’t love somebody when you’re 15? 16?
You can love somebody then more than you ever can again ‘cause then you don’t
know no better. When you get older, see, your heart
hardens, like your feet getting tough when you go barefoot in the spring. You
can love somebody so much when you’re younger that you want to live in the same
skin. Die in the same skin too if that’s what it takes. So much it makes you
catch your breath and your heart swell up just to think about them and so much
they can make that same heart ache like a rising. You can love somebody you'll
do whatever they want; die for them and die smiling though you know you’re
going, just like the preacher said, to hell but it don’t matter. That's’ how
much I loved Sonny. White hot love, I guess you could call it.
Finally,
though, I just plain wore Mama out, and she didn’t have much more to say. Just looked at me real hard. Right before the end of senior
year, Sonny and me went to
He
slapped me so hard my teeth rattled. Then he cried and promised he wouldn’t no
more, said he was sorry. I took him back. Then it happened again. Worse. I took him back. The he blacked both my eyes. I went
back to Mama’s. Mama had the preacher come by again, just to talk to me, she
said. The preacher said marriage is a sacrament, ordained of God. It is till
death do us part. Well, I may be dead if I go back, I said, me or Sonny one.
I’m not going back, I told him. Mama’s standing there frowning, hands on her
hips. The preacher left.
Mama
said, Kelsie, this trailer ain’t
big enough for both of us no more. She said, I got a
life too. She was right, you know. She was already 34 then, but didn’t look it.
Had a boy friend, pretty nice fellow, he was gone a lot but he made a good
living but he was gone a lot ‘cause he was an
over-the-road trucker for a big pig farm. Me and Mama,
fighting all the time, her calling me something bad if I went out with
somebody. Sonny mostly, we’d get it on, do the bad thing. Sometimes it
was good again with Sonny, just for a little while. Then he’d get mean again.
So I went out with other guys I knew. I mean, I wasn’t dead, if you know what I
mean, and I was lonesome. Like Mama was supposed to have a life and I wasn’t.
But Sonny started coming around in the middle of the night, following me if I
went out. I knew he was running around,
doing what he wanted to. But that was OK. He’s coming around, beggin’ me to come back, saying how he loved me. We’d been
married 8 months. I got a divorce. That’s when I joined the army. Mama and
Sonny and all that seems like a long time ago, so long it’s like maybe none of
that ever happened.
The
things that have happened here, in
I went
to recruit training at
When I
finished boot camp, it was like Sonny, Mama, all the rest, didn’t matter. My
eyes misted up the minute we got in formation. We were looking good, creases in
our uniforms sharp as a knife edge. The
flags were snapping in the breeze. The band played the “Star Spangled Banner”
first. They played “I’m Proud to be an American.” Sergeant LeFeu
was in front. He passed the order down; “FORWA’D MARCH!” The band played “The
Bridge Over the River Kwai.”
I was in the back of the platoon, ‘cause I was the
shortest in my platoon. But I could see him, marching along in front. He called
out “EYES RIGHT!” They were playing the caisson song as we marched by the
reviewing stand. I was crying so hard by
then my nose was snotty. Anybody in the reviewing stand could see I was crying.
But I did not care. Then I was happy. Then I was proud.
It’s
hard to sleep where I am now. This place. You just
sort of keep your head down and go through the motions of being alive, and keep
doing what they tell you. I want to sleep all the time, but I wake up early a
lot of time. Sometimes I feel like I’ve already been in that car wreck the
preacher talked about back home, like I’m already dead, and these concrete
walls, they are my coffin, they are my grave. It is hot. I am in Hell. When I
sleep, I dream about stuff.
Sonny is here. We go fishing again. And
there’s a baby, there’s always the baby. Then Sonny is gone, and I’m at
I used
to think, even when I was stationed at Abu Graib, of
ways I’d become a hero. Of how I’d make some prisoner confess about a plan by
the terrs, which is short for terrorists, to blow up
something big, like the entire Coalition Provisional Authority Headquarters,
the Green Zone, and everything inside. Using the nukes they had which is why we
came here, too. And I’d wring it out of him. And I’d get a medal, and it was
always Sgt. LeFeu pinning it on, saluting, saying
well done, Lassiter. Sometimes I still dream about that too, how it would be,
how it would feel.
When my
lawyer comes, he says, tell me what happened in Abu Graib.
I tell him, trying to soften it up a little, make it sound a little better, but
I tell him. Something would happen in
The lieutenant, Lt. Rucher, gave
us a lecture about terrorists when we got here, and about weapons of mass
destruction. He also talked about how and why people blow themselves up. I
think about that now, how people blow themselves up. Like the terrs who flew the planes into the
They’d sweep up suspects in the city, bring them in. MI,
that’s military intelligence, was there, like in the cellblocks, checking them
out as they came in. Lots of time they, the prisoners that is, had hoods over
their head. The prisoners, the detainees, they were different. We called them
rag heads. We called them sand niggers, we called them towel heads. They’d come
in, maybe a hundred at a time, some times more.
MI said to soften them up, meaning to get the ready to
confess to being terrorist, to talk about what they knew. Sometimes if MI
thought somebody knew something and they wouldn’t talk, they’d put them in
solitary. No clothes, then pushed into the cells with
their shriveled up dicks hanging out which was kind of funny. No lights, no
nothing in the cells. We were ordered to leave them in there until they talked.
If they talked in a day, fine. Back to a regular cell.
If they wouldn’t talk, leave them there. Some of the cells were set up with air
conditioning so they became refrigerators. That helped make the terrs talk. Sometimes we wouldn’t feed them for a while,
just a few days. Some of them could speak English, some couldn’t. We’d yell at
them. Say move out you fucking bunch of faggots, or we’d call them Hindus, or
just plain assholes. They seem to especially not like being called queers. Which is understandable. Everybody hates a queer. We’d take
them into the showers, ‘cause that was a convenient
place to soften them up for interrogation. Also, if things get bloody or
otherwise messy, you can rinse it right down the drain. What I mean is, usually,
we just threatened to beat up on them, but sometimes some of the guys had to
follow through just to make believers of the detainees. MI would come by, see
what we were doing or maybe look at the photographs. Always said we were doing
a good job.
I used to ask prisoners, when I first came to Abu Graib, where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? You now,
like nukes and germs and stuff. About
I tell him all that. About what Sergeant Kimbrell
did, what he said, about, dragging the prisoners around by their handcuffs, or
by their shackles. Punching them.
Kicking them. Making them crawl on broken glass. Near drowning them. OGO’s taught
people how. You tie them on to a board so they can’t move, then dunk them into
a tank made from a 55 gallon barrel. Allah,
Allah, they’d say. Which is their word for God.
They don’t worship the same God that we do. The chaplain told us that when we
first came here. Sometimes when we’d shock them a little or punch them, or kick
them, they’d scream. I told my lawyer about putting their food in the toilet
and making them get it out and eat it. Making them drink alcohol, which I’m
quick to add was really only just a little beer. Or we’d make them say that
Jesus is Lord. My lawyer says, did you fondle a
prisoner? Only in fun, I say, just horsing around. It’s what everybody said do.
Captain Lambert’s questions go on. I tell him everything; we
did everything we could to help soften them up. We made them jack off, all
together. If they wouldn’t do it, we’d cut off their air with a special choke
hold. We’d make one them one get down in front of the other like he was going
to suck the other’s dick. We’d make them get in a pile like they were cornholing. Your Iraqi, see, hates
a faggot even more than an American. We told them we’d send the pictures to
their wives. We told them we were going to send them to their children if they
didn’t talk.
Captain Lambert said again why? Why did you do that? Because
that is what we thought we were supposed to do. Why did you take pictures of
all this? I say some of the guys took the pictures just for souvenirs. It’s
like guys back home would have pictures taken of an eight point buck they’d
killed or a big fish they’d caught. We didn’t think it mattered. Also, the OGO’s which are Spooks, like FBI or CIA,
they said that the pictures would help, that the pictures could be used to help
make them talk. We figured if the OGO’s were doing
that to help soften them up, we should, too. We were told this was a part of PsyOps. They said we were doing great. They said keep it
up. I also told him that in Abu Graib, people, that
is the soldiers get wound tight from not knowing where they’re going to get hit
from next, from waiting for those people that were supposed to welcome us with
flowers to blow you into smithereens with an IED, or to drive up in a car
loaded with plastic explosive and set it off. You’ve got to let off a little
steam. Again and again Captain Lambert comes.
It is the middle of
the night. I here footsteps coming down the hall. I
know it is Captain Lambert. For some reason, he has the key to my cell, and he
unlocks the door and comes into my cell. He is in a civilian suit. He comes in,
and I am lying there, waiting on him. I’ve already got my clothes off. He gets
undressed and gets it on. Captain Lambert, after we finish and are just lying
there, he tells me it’s all OK, it’s over, it’s all a
mistake. I’m going back to my unit. But I wake up and it’s all just a
dream.
When my lawyer comes back, he asks how many died? Not many, I tell him, which is the honest-to-God
truth. The first one that died, a captain came in and looked at the body lying
there on the shower floor and said I haven’t seen this. Get rid of him. I heard
some of the buys took his body out in a truck and threw it off the back of the
truck on the outskirts of
My lawyer asks about the prisoner on ice; the one in the
picture that everybody saw. This one came in, he was
in the Iraqi army. He had a hood over his head. He was mouthy. He was laid out
on the shower floor, maybe ‘cause somebody hit him a
little. Then when we took the hood off, he was dead. He had already been hurt,
he’d been beaten around his face, his head, but we didn’t know it. He was iced
down with plastic bags of ice to buy time ‘cause we
didn’t know what to do with him.
Then there was the general, an Iraqi Air Force General. When
he came in, the sergeant and some others put him in a sleeping bag upside down
just to soften him up. Then somebody sat on him. Then somebody sat on his
chest. When we took him out, he was dead. But he was an old guy anyway, and it
was an accident. Specialist Kostner said good fuckin’ riddance, Raghead. All of
those were just accidents.
What sort of things, Captain Lambert says, did the detainees
tell you. Lots
of them did talk, I said, though I don’t know how important what they said was.
Sometimes, they’d just say whatever you wanted to hear. Listen, one said he was
Osama bin Ladan. I said you fucking queer, you can’t
be, you’re not more than fourteen. He said, I’m in disguise. Sergeant Kimbrell
came over and slapped the living shit out of him.
When the court martial came, the specifications were read to the court,
a major standing up and reading stuff:
Headquarter
Company, 216th Military Police Battalion:
In that Private First Class Kelsie S. Lassiter, U.S. Army, did, at or near the Central
Correctional Facility, Abu Graib, Iraq, on or about
28 January, 2004, conspire with Sergeant Leone L. Moses, Specialist Timothy C. Westerfield and others yet to be determined to commit
offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Specification 1: Conspiracy to
maltreat prisoners and battery, assault, abuse, cruelty and maltreatment. To
wit, that she ordered the detainees into a pile and jumped on the detainees,
performed acts intended to sexually intimidate the detainees, to wit: forcing
the detainees to simulate performing oral and anal sex on each other in full
view of other prisoners. Forced the detainees to publicly
masturbate.
Specification 2. Did strike and shove the detainees,
and made photographs or participating in the making of photographs intended to
be used to humiliate and degrade detainees.
Specification 3: Engaged in sexual
behavior and conduct unbecoming to a member of the US Armed Forces to include
public sexual acts with other soldiers in her unit.
Specification 4. Making a statement intended to deceive
an investigator...
The
major kept on reading for a long time.
My lawyer got up and told the court martial board that
detainees were held outside of the purview of the Geneva conventions pursuant to
policy promulgated by the President of the United States and the Secretary of
Defense. The entire chain of command was part and parcel of these acts, he
said. He mentions how the general who was the expert on softening up prisoners,
the one from Guantanamo was transferred to Abu Graib specifically to help get more information quicker. He
mentioned all the generals in the chain of command in Iraq. The colonel in
charge of the court marital wouldn’t look at him, just sat there looking down
at the table while he was saying this. Captain Lambert read from some papers
from the Justice Department and the White House lawyers that said what we were
doing wasn’t torture. The he read another paper in
which the Secretary of Defense orders a hurry up in
getting information from detainees at Abu Graib. Then
he read a paper in which the woman who was the commanding general at Abu Graib in which she said that the Secretary of Defense had
approved the tactics we used, and that the way
prisoners were treated was taken out of her hands by the higher-ups in
The Colonel turned red, stood up, started
shouting for Captain Lambert to shut up.
So Captain Lambert, who, after all, is only a captain, starts down
another line of thinking. Captain Lambert mentions the President of the United
State. The colonel says, in a pained sort of way, Captain Lambert, the
president and the secretary of defense are not on trial. Private First Class
Lassiter is on trial here today, and no one else. Captain Lambert started other
business, asking me did I get training in the Geneva Convention. I said no, I
didn’t, which was true.
Yes, I said, when they asked me, actually, I did fool around
with some of the guys in front of the prisoners. The guys sort of talked me
into it. They said. It would help soften the prisoners up. I don’t think it
did. But one thing lead to another. Besides, after a
while, I had a thing for Specialist Westerfield, and
he did for me, though that’s over now. That’s history. But that’s the way it
is. The officers on the court marital panel, some of them, they seemed really
more worried about this, this fooling around, than anything else, than in hitting prisoners or prisoners dying or anything. I
understand this now. It is a war, a war on terror. People always die in a war,
but fooling around is prejudicial to good order and discipline.
For me, it is over. Just like for some of the detainees it
is over. Outside the wind howls around the corner of the building. Sand rattles
against the Plexiglas of the window. The sky is dark now. The air through the
vents whispers its secrets. And I am responsible for what I did. I wanted to be
something bigger, better, I guess, than I was meant to be. I have disregarded
His decrees. I am repentant, and I am justly humbled.
Though I am not
tired, I do not want to dream. But I lie down on the bottom bunk, because I do
not know what else to do.
The
Chickasaw
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