1st Lt Prifogle’s Blog

Winter in Iraq

When you tell people “I’m a Marine.” There are various reactions. If you are the stereotypical Marine – tall, young, male, athletic – I imagine the response to be, “Oh thank you your service, we’re so proud of you.” If you are the less stereotypical Marine the response is for much different. The response for me is usually “really?” Like people forget that women are allowed to serve. Or maybe it’s because I’m too “girly” to serve my country. Don’t get me wrong people are generally appreciative and respectful. It’s the initial reaction that, depending on my mood, either pisses me off or makes me laugh. Usually this reaction is when I’m far from base – at the pub, or the zoo, or a dance recital, or baseball game. My hair down and wearing a sundress someone inevitably asks “Didn’t they make you cut your hair?”
Similarly, when I was preparing to leave for Iraq most people assumed the weather was going to be hot. Over 120 degrees like we hear about. Like we assume about deserts. “Make sure you drink water and wear sunscreen,” friends and strangers warned me. I do wear sunscreen and drink water, but not because of the heat. It is winter here right now.

Today it is cold. I wake up at 5 am like I always do and go outside. This is how my day always starts. My alarm goes off; I pry myself out of my pink sheets, make the bed (hospital corners), place my pillows in their arrangement and place my teddy bear in the middle. I step outside. The fresh air wakes me up from the stale, dirty air I have inhaled all night in my warehouse room. I do a 360 security check in the dark. I have a knife in one hand and a surefire flashlight in the other. After I check my surroundings before letting myself relax enough to enjoy the moment I walk into the middle of our street. It is a dead end street so the only traffic is coming and going from one of the four units in the compound. I walk into the street and look up to find the moon. The brink of twilight is breaking the horizon and the moon is full in the center of the sky. There is little light and I stare at the stars – it is spectacular. It is in this moment in the day I feel alive. I feel real. I remove myself far from the phone calls and emails and work bull shit and just breath. I forget how far away I am from friends, family, loved ones. It is in this moment when I am nothing more then one person on this base. One speck in this grand world. It is in this moment when I can escape. A few minutes later I realize I can see my breath. I am only in skivvy shorts and flipflops. I stand still for a moment longer – lingering; paralyzed by the freedom of being alive. I have always loved the cold – it makes me feel real, feel alive. I don’t know why other than the cold air piercing my lungs and the goosebumps on my legs makes me feel mortal, which in turn makes me realize how alive I am. When the cold gets too much I go back inside. I retreat back to my room; my prison cell. I open up my computer and check my emails. Another start to another day.

I must admit that I didn’t think it would be cold when I left. Marines warned me, but in my mind it was going to be sand dunes and a smoldering sun. It’s quite a bit colder then San Diego and a few weeks ago it even snowed – twice since I’ve been here.

The day was a normal day. A few days earlier I had told Achilles, my lifting partner, “it’s going to rain.” He looked at me like I was crazy and asked how I knew. I couldn’t explain it. It’s nothing really other then a feeling you get. You can just taste and smell the earth, and the sky looks dull. I can’t describe it other then it’s just how it is before it rains. I was wrong. It snowed. I had the wrong kind of precipitation. It wasn’t the kind of snow that sticks to the ground, but the kind that melts as soon as it hits solid ground. The flakes were huge. The largest snowflakes I have ever seen. It was weird, like everyone else I did not expect it to snow in Iraq.

I went for a run in the snow. That’s what I do. I run. It’s the one consistency in my life. No matter where I am – I can always run. The months before I left I thought of all the things that could happen. I thought of the Servicemen and women who have lost their limbs. I think if I were to loose my legs I would go crazy. I can not make it through the day without running, so I ran in the snow. My skin turned red and blotchy and my chest hurt - like trying to breath through a straw and not getting enough oxygen. I didn’t mind. It made life real to me even in the surreal setting of snow in the desert - the cold made made me alive.

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