In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

"When you exist in the circumstantial vacuum of a war zone, many words and phrases shed their old world catches and connotations. This is often a result of the rebirth-via-military acronym-process, rising like a brevity phoenix from the ashes of English language clichés. Relativity and conditional overload numb the deployed soldier’s reality into a mantra of no apologies; survival is unabashedly priority numero uno for anyone not taking prolonged hits from Uncle Sam’s patriot bong. Not that Uncle Sam smokes weed. He’s drug-tested every month. Been that way ever since the Sixties.

One of those infinitely delicate and ever-malleable terms in combat is “close call.” For a phrase that is sure to be used in every Iraq War yarn spun in bars across America, it certainly leaves a lot to be desired in terms of exactitude. The Gravediggers certainly have had our fair share of close calls – some of which I’ve written about, some not – and our definition of that elusive axiom obviously carries more legitimacy than some pogues’ close calls with an unexploded mortar round that landed on the other side of the FOB. Conversely however, the killing experts in the Other Units operate on levels of precision and death-defiance that I can barely comprehend, let alone compete with. In the Army, there's always someone else more high speed and more badass. We’ve seen more than most, but some have seen more. Like I said. It’s all relative."
Kaboom