Those concerned with political correctness may call me obese, overweight, differently bodied, or healthy at any size, but I’ve sadly reached a personal high weight record. I’m fat.
It’s good that I’ve aged out of military eligibility because the Army has weight standards for good reason. A soldier must be fit to fight. A fat man can’t run well. He’s an extra burden if his fellow soldiers need to lift him. His uniform doesn’t fit right, and he’ll chafe on a long march.
To my shame, there were a few times during my years in the National Guard when I didn’t meet that standard. At one point, I was a 6-foot-4-inch, 250-pound disgrace. Then came the deployment to Afghanistan. We arrived at Bagram Air Force Base, which had a chow hall so large, with so many options and so few limits, that I had to cut over a page from its overlong description in one of my novels. Bagram wasn’t going to cut the pounds.
By July 2004, my squad was part of a limited group sent to live in an Afghan residential compound in the middle of the city of Farah. In the blazing sun, it reached 120 degrees, and there was no air conditioning or even fans. In full uniform, with around 30 pounds of body armor and ammunition, plus a helmet, we sweated until our uniforms looked like we’d been swimming.
There wasn’t much food. The house had limited cold storage, so we mostly ate field rations. The meals Cookmaster did provide were small. Something you didn’t like? “That’s OK,” Cookmaster would say. “Have an MRE or starve until tomorrow!” And sometimes, on a patrol in the blazing heat, we didn’t want to eat despite our hunger.
“You OK, Reedy?” someone would ask as I retched.
“Fine.” I’d flash the thumbs-up. “Just the noon nausea.”
Then, we all caught the “Farah Flu,” a bowel infection just short of dysentery, which, for your sake, faithful reader, I will not describe.
Very low rations, long, hardworking hours, constant sweat, and ridiculously frequent latrine visits. It was extraordinarily unpleasant. But, it turned out, it was great for weight loss. One evening, as I swatted the constant flies from my meager meal, my team leader laughed. “Reedy, you’re just kind of wasting away down to nothing!” Was I? Hard to say. We had no scale, only a small shaving mirror in what passed for our latrine.
Through August, we roasted in our larger, dustier, still incomplete compound outside town. More squads arrived finally to allow a little relief from guard duty so that we might sleep. Someone brought a scale. I weighed 190! I’d lost 60 pounds in July.
By September, our barracks, with functional latrines, were complete. Wearing shorts on the way to the shower, I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in months. I’d been transformed, lean all over, ribs showing.
We’d been ordered to pack a set of civilian clothes. The officers on our little outpost thought it would be good to institute casual Fridays. We could wear civvies off duty. I never did this. It was strange seeing my fellow soldiers in normal clothes. But one day, I tried on my prewar jeans. The giant denim clown-pants slipped right on with more than enough room for my arms up past my elbows. I ran down the barracks hall with everything save for my upper arms, chest, head, and feet in that enormous pair of jeans until our medical master sergeant ordered me to stop. “If you trip, with your arms shoved down inside your pants, you won’t be able to break your fall.”
It was quite a shock to my family and friends when I returned home a much thinner man. Now, I face the weight loss challenge again, this time without the uncomfortable but effective assistance of a war. Wish me luck.
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Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.