I have to be honest. I have not been looking forward to writing about these things. I can only go on so long about friends dying and bodies being loaded onto helicopters. It is part of life here but it just feels like 'reverse catharsis'. So, having given the facts of what I have been doing lately, here is what I really wanted to write about...

The night of SGT Vandling's memorial we walked a long distance across FOB Stryker in Baghdad to the chapel. It had been raining a lot here so the mud was three to four inches deep in most places, and mud here is not like mud at home. It is more like clay or axle grease. It was dark which added another level of difficulty since the mud is marked with pits and ruts from humvee tires.

As we walked along, about twenty of us or so, we began to divide into smaller groups as groups of people walking in the dark often do. The four or five I was walking with pulled ahead of me and I found myself walking alone trying to keep up. I remember thinking, "One of you guys are going to fall into this crap." Then I remember thinking that having that thought, or thoughts like that, usually results in the bad thought happening to me, sort of a 'karma of suggestion'. I guess the incubation period on that sort of thing is about ten to fifteen seconds, at least for me, because it was about that long before I landed in the mud on my hands and knees, my weapon hitting with a loud "Crack!"

The sound of an M-16 hitting the ground is distinct and familiar and cannot be hidden by mud or darkness. So my fall did not go unnoticed. Normally soldiers are comically cruel in situations like this but I was spared through a combined effect of my being a captain and the fact that we were walking to the memorial service. The mud felt like cold cake batter on my hands and I had to walk a few hundred meters more before there was any running water available to clean up.

After the memorial, several of his friends and I went to the 'Green Beans Coffee' trailer. I treated and they shared stories and tried to shake off the funeral blues. As we walked back a couple of guys passed me and I caught a little piece of their conversation. All I heard as they passed was, "You know, like a smoking monkey or something..." It made me laugh and think of SGT Vandling.

Once he asked me if I had ever caught a little piece of someone's conversation that just made you laugh and wonder what the hell they were talking about. He told me that it had happened to him that day. He was passing by these two guys and all he heard was, "Yah, well you're no Tony Danza yourself!"

I laughed out loud when I thought of it so I shared the story with his friends as we walked. They laughed and as we went on in the dark my smile lingered on my face. SGT Vandling would have laughed at my falling in the mud. He would have helped me up too, but he would have laughed.

The other day I wrote about measuring lives. This morning at about five I woke up thinking about that passage and about the walk back from SGT Vandling's memorial. Here's my thought: If I die over here, let the measure of my life be how soon after people feel allowed to smile and laugh again. I hope they don't waste any time.