Improving Position
Digging in red clay
I stab clay, displacing cooked earth. Wipe my brow. My face is sunspots and dirt lacquered over with perspiration. I reach to flick a gnat from between two rolls of skin. Chalk hands catch hold of my collar, and the sun grows tumescent.
Air hangs in a noose. Sweat traverses my skin like space fabric, I’m the heavens, meteors go to shower, and I place a paper clip in a matchbox.
I’ve spent days in the same uniform, caked with sweat and grime, and the conditions yield prickly rash. My uniform pants, rigid with dirt and salt, crinkle when I move. My arms are bronzed from many days sun. Sweat and manual labor, the life of an infantryman, something to be proud of.
When digging the defense, there’s no good enough. You continually improve your position. So I dug until my arms went limp, and when the mortars came I took shelter, and when the mortars stopped, I resumed digging. The foxhole is a continuity all infantrymen share in common.
Soldier positions require digging, shelter, and camouflage, then each position is marked by sketches and rifle terrain cards and engagement boundaries. Leaders have other duties—supply planning and operations—whatever the rank or role, there is little rest. Continuous improvement is the expectation.
When I was a cadet, a mentor encouraged me not to worry about big accomplishments. He said, do one thing a day to make yourself better. Eventually you’ll approach excellence. I’ve carried that lesson ever since. I don’t panic that I’m not where I want to be. I look for one thing.
The cross-country team motto my freshman year: there are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going. But I look around and see a lot of people taking shortcuts. Makes me awful sad, because they’re missing out. The destination doesn’t mean anything without the journey.
Reminds me of a quote from Rocky III. For those familiar, it’s the scene on the beach when Adrian confronts Rocky about what he wants. He explains Mickey carried him for years, protecting him by selecting easy title defenses.
Says, “It was always some angle to hold onto the title longer than I should have had it.” Adrian argues that it was Mickey’s job to protect him. Rocky says, “That protecting don’t help nothin, it only makes things worse. You wake up after a few years thinking you’re a winner but you’re not, you’re a loser. And maybe we wouldn’t have had the title as long. So what? At least it would have been real, Adrian.”
“It was real,” she says.
“Nothing is real if you don’t believe in who you are. I don’t believe in myself no more, don’t you understand?”
The scene hits me. You can fake your way to fame. Recognition. Money. But you can’t fake your way to self-belief.
The process of living, for me, has always been about self-belief. If I earn an A in calculus, but don’t know how to do it, what’s the point? If I have wealth but cheated in business, what’s the point? I don’t want to reach the end only to discover my accomplishments are sugar dissolving on my tongue.
Living is about codification.
Florida. It’s night in the swamps, and there’s plenty darkness leftover from a new moon. My entrenching tool’s in my right hand while I scrape with my left. The moon is lost like a drop of oil on black tar. A wind blows. It brings cool relief.
North Carolina. The wet bulb’s off the charts. A five on the heat index and two soldiers are flagged as heat casualties. It’s barely noon. I dig the dirt and unspool razor wire while issuing instructions.
Iraq. Half-scoops dug in the ground. The mortars are real in the way they turn us to mist. We take cover in our basins. Hard, desert, dirt. Briefly, I think about before. Other foxholes dug on other days. And I think about preparation. And continuous improvement.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
"So I dug until my arms went limp, and when the mortars came I took shelter, and when the mortars stopped, I resumed digging."
Sounds a lot like life, too
Hey Roman, what of those who have no spade to dig? Is there no option but get lost in the mist?