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17 SERGEANT JARRELL ROBINSON MELTDOWN It was a New York rush-hour lunch on Bagram. I sat in my office with four other sergeants conducting my normal duties, attempting to update all the information and documentation required on each of my soldiers. My desk floated like a boat in a sea of standardized forms punctuated by little mounds of paper clips, silver volcanic islands. I was so busy I didn’t know what to do next. That’s a cliché, fair enough, but you get my drift. Okay, relax, I told myself. Take a deep breath. What I needed was a break, five minutes on the other side of heaven. I crossed my office threshold into the Afghanistan sun on my way over to BSOPS (base operations). Like always, it seemed a split second before I was rushing back to the office as if chased by a viper. I noticed a soldier standing outside one of the beige stucco buildings left over from the Soviet occupation. He seemed lost, standing on the cement step staring at, well, at nothing, really. “Soldier, you okay”? I asked. “Roger, Sergeant. I’m okay,” he said, without ever making eye contact. Before he even finished the words, I was a block of ice, frozen in my tracks. He was missing his usual identifiers: his US Army tag, IR (infrared reflective) flag, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) patch, and his PFC (private first class) patch. He still wore his name tape, but that was it. I tried again. “What’s the problem? Talk to me?” I took a step nearer as he raised his M16 and inched from the top to the bottom step, and then gently touched the lips of the barrel to the center of my forehead . His finger rested on the trigger, weapon on semi–ready-tofire , and his breath raced as if he had run miles to reach this moment . I began edging backward, but he kept up with me. “I am not the right person for this situation. Let me get that person for you,” I said, which strikes me as rather funny now. I mean, who would be the right person to have an M16 pressed against their forehead? I never took my eyes off him, and in turn his were riveted on mine. Three minutes felt like thirty. I drifted back to my grand- 18 MELTDOWN mother’s backyard. I’m walking across the shining Louisiana grass in May complimenting her on a great dinner. My three-year-old son is heavy in my arms, squirming around, batting his feet against my thigh, ready to play, but I am playing. I won’t let that kid down for nothing! And all the while I never let go of my reflection in that soldier’s eyes. I imagine it is the same feeling a drowning victim has in fighting his way to the surface of the lake, a burst of undirected energy in every limb grabbing toward a point of light. I twisted out of the weapon’s sight, dove for it, for an instant even touched the ground with two fingers to steady myself, and then I stumbled over the chunks of gray rock that cover every surface inside a military camp and caused me to run like a drunk. Silence. No shots rang out. I ran to the smoking area behind BSOPS to get the soldier’s supervisor . His NCOIC (noncommissioned officer in charge) and OIC (officer in charge) ran to assess the situation, which is Army for “find out what the hell is coming down.” Then I tried to notify the S2’s (battalion intelligence staff officer’s) OIC and NCOIC. After I checked her office and around the BSOPS area, I just thought, forget it, I’m calling the major on her cell—which is a tricky thing for a sergeant to do, but I figured it couldn’t get more important than this. The damn phone rang and rang until she finally answered. “Ma’am, there’s a situation you should know about.” I described what had happened in the short version, as I could not say too much on the phone line. “I can’t make it back right now!” she screamed into the receiver. “I am in a meeting. I’ll be there when I get there, Sergeant!” Sergeant Jarrell Robinson visiting his son,Terrell, in Jarrell ’s grandmother’s backyard in Crowley, Louisiana, while on leave from Afghanistan, 2009. (Courtesy of...

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