When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-Hunter S. Thompson

I’ve just spent the past few hours mulling over what may be one of the more amazing and candid stories from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan that I’ve ever read. It’s an interview with a contractor, identified only as “Nero”, who has spent time in both McMurdo, Antarctica, and (presumeably) sipping Mojitas at the Baghdad Country Club.

While I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the interview, it rings true, or at least has a ring of truth to it. When I earlier described the Green Zone in Baghdad as reminiscent of the Mos Eisley segment in the movie Star Wars, my analogy was apparently wholly appropriate. Perhaps I was able to sniff this out because in my own life, I’ve worked some fairly exotic jobs, and run into guys like Nero while drinking beer in places like BCC.

In any case, here’s a brief snippet of Nick Johnson’s Interview With a Contractor:

Johnny was soldier who lived right next to me. Young kid who came out to Iraq and had been there for almost a year. He had a few kills under his belt and was a wreck. He tried to act like he was fine with things, but would always end up breaking down mid-sentence and getting choked up. He wore nicotine patches, chewed the nicotine gum, smoked two packs a day, and always had a dip in his lip. He wanted complete annihilation of all the Iraqi people and to get back home to Disney World.

The list goes on and on. Afghanistan has a batch unmatched too… Characters you could not muster in your wildest dreams. The nuts and bolts of the machine are all loose and ready to drop at anytime. Some of the people out here are only one step away from the crazy fucks you see in a 7-11 talking to the hot dog machine. There are some sane people, but not many, and they are boring anyway…

FAIR WARNING: Some of the descriptions are exceptionally graphic, and the language is salty in the extreme. But it just sounds right, at least in my head. There are people like Nero and his cast of characters all over the world. There always have been, there always will be. I haven’t quite walked a mile in those shoes, but I’ve at least taken a few steps in them. Most of us have.

Nick Johnson’s interview was part of a larger discussion with Nero. After you’ve read the Middle East segment, I highly recommend clicking through to the precursor discussion on McMurdo, Antarctica to understand Nero a bit better, and what led to his decision to look for work in a combat zone. Only a guy who’s one step away from talking to the hotdog machine at 7-11 could frame it like this:

To be a part of a historic moment in time, part of a complete clusterfuck, a money monster that is chewing and chewing, part of the battle against the Axis of Evil, but no one is right. It is an insane “perfectness”. The War Zone and Antarctica both offer so much…

I promise you, you won’t be thinking about anything else for the rest of the day. And if you’re not listening to The Doors and making references in your own head to Apocalypse Now by the time you’re finished with both interviews, you have no soul…

… or maybe you just never saw the movie…