Subconscious reminder, conscious gratitude

Last night, amidst a flurry of disjointed and strange mini-dreams, I was visited by a more unsettling vision. In this dream, I was watching television with Lori. Except the screen was rather large and I got the impression we were in a house of the near-future. We were watching the news with passing interest while engaged in miscellaneous household activities. We watched various news stories from the top of the broadcast -- the usual montage of scandal and vice.

Immediately after a commercial break, the anchor intro'd a story about the latest violence from the Middle East. The screen resolved to show some grainy "home footage" from a ubiquitous Iraqi street. I asked Lori if she had seen the footage, and she nonchalantly answered yes as she crossed to another room.

The footage appeared to be from a dashboard video camera -- like the kind all the police chase videos use. However, what I was looking at was a scene of a Humvee flipped on its side and two soldiers on the ground writhing. One was in the extreme foreground very close to the dashboard camera that was clearly upside down. The soldier in the background was trying to crawl away toward a sand-colored wall.

As I watched the soldier in the foreground, the camera slowly pushed on his face. The Humvee was on its side, but teetering on the brink of rolling onto its top -- the edge of its roof a tenuous fulcrum. The soldier in the foreground was suffering from a broken leg, I sensed, and couldn't get out from under this Humvee. Again, the camera pushed tighter as I started to become aware that some dangerous edge of this unstable Humvee was now pressing down from off camera onto this GI's head.

I physically became quite distressed and I wouldn't be surprised if I was moaning or mumbling in my sleep. Soon, this Humvee started bringing its full weight to bear on the cheekbone of the soldier, easing back occasionally to give me the hope it would roll off of him. His face was round and moonlike. Pale and young. He started screaming frantically at the other soldier who was incapable of providing help.

Finally, the camera pushed so tight as to only frame his head and the metal edge of the Humvee captures what I feared was coming. The vehicle rolled at a weird angle, straight down, and collapsed the man's head like so much melon. It flattened it at the equator between his ears, sending blood and matter shooting every which way and out every orifice. The screaming finally stopped, but the Humvee then became like a hammer, repeatedly slamming down to completely flatten the soldier's head -- until finally squeezed of all inner substance like roadkill that has been traversed for a week.

Even writing about it still unnerves me. It was frankly quite horrible.

But I awoke with a feeling of two things: I was impressed that this horrible footage was stuck half-way through the news broadcast. Like the conflict was no longer top story-worthy. I had the same reaction a few weeks ago when the footage surfaced of the helicopter being shot down by insurgents. That even included the Belgian pilot being executed as he tried to plea for his life. After all the beheadings and car bomb cleanup imagery, what does it take for video to be important?

Secondly, I was left with a lingering sense of sadness and gratitude. Gratitude for the men and women who are in the shithole every day and night, fearing they'll end up beneath a Humvee. They do a greater work and know greater courage than I ever shall.

Thank you.