bear with me January 7, 2008

I want to tell you about my buddy gudridge. He is our company’s nbc (nuclear, biological, chemical) guy. He isn’t an infantryman but he does the job better than most of these guys. I met gudridge the first week of december 06. we were both on the hit list for being dirtbags so we got tasked with toc duty during a range. I remember that night because it was the first time that i saw him disrespect an nco. He never got punished for it and it definitely wasn’t the last time. He simply wasn’t going to take the army seriously.

Gudridge is a 20 year old redneck from way upstate new york. He makes the hillbillies from the south look like manhattanites. He has the word redneck tattood on his upper back, the phrase “bum 4 life” on his left forearm, and various confederate flags all over. He drinks the cheapest booze available; always claiming bud is the best. He always has a huge dip in his mouth. His favorite musician will always be hank, and it will always be blaring from some piece of junk truck. He always starts his ridiculous lies with “well actually that’s not true.” He claimed that the first book he read entirely was in october when we were in kuwait. In new york he always hunted and fished. He would hunt deer from a stand, from his roof, and out the window of his truck. He had an endless supply of stories about himself and his brothers and cousins getting drunk and acting stupid. Every other sentence in these stories has the word doohickey. He certainly isn’t an educated man but i love him.

This kid ran through 4 vehicles in two months. Old jimmy spent about 8 months paying for a 179 f100 with a huge lift. I helped him redo almost every piece of wiring in that thing. The lights were operated with a toggle switch and the blinker had to be held down to work; so did the brake lights. But it didn’t matter because he took it back home on leave (driving non-stop, fueled only by caffeine and nicotine) and promptly destroyed it. While he was up there he bought a ford ranger to get him back to georgia. He destroyed that one too. Left it abandoned on the side of the highway. He took off the plates and removed all the paperwork. When the new york state troopers called the company looking for him he told them that he sold it to some guy, “frank something or another. Lives off over by that there one road.” problem solved. then about two weeks later he bought a jeep wrangler. He took it mudding and ran it into an electric pole. So what does he do? Grabs another beer and tries to tow a f-250 out of a mudhole. When we deployed it was still sitting in a mechanic’s garage in hinesville. He told his uncle, who lives in florida, that he should come pick it up, all the while “forgetting” to tell his uncle about the bill. Jimmy then bought a 1983 malibu station wagon for $400 off “some guy in a wheelchair.” we took spraypaint and pickaxes to it. I can’t remember where he abandoned it.

When we were at ntc in april he told the first sergeant and commander he was going to marry a crack whore to get the extra money from the army. Then he would give her like a hundred a month. He had them so convinced they sat down with him and talk about what a bad idea that was. When we got back i got a marriage certificate and doctored it. I put a packet together for him to get the extra money and gave it to the commander to sign. Everybody lost their mind. His wife’s name was lakeesha kanika jackson. Everybody wanted to say “this is a black chick!! how could redneck gudridge marry a black woman?” our platoon sergeant dragged gudridge in and started yelling at him. He asked gudridge what her name was and gudridge replied with “i don’t remember.” our xo framed the marriage certificate and hung it on his wall.

At stewart me and gudridge worked together everyday. It was us vs the man. We were always watching each other’s back. If either one of us was pulling some shady back door deal, we could count on the other. If someone was mad about work not getting done we knew how to cover for each other. For a while i was his team leader, but i let him get away with murder. He should have been kicked out of the army multiple times, but always got by somehow. Whenever the company had some inspection or other big production we knew what to do. Everyone else would be running around like a chicken farm but us. We always knew the level of bs we were dealing with and how to handle it. At “mandatory fun” days or other functions we would always slip out early. While everyone else complained about staying late we would just wink and laugh. We evaded the army with ease. He was one the few guys who i looked forward to seeing and made the army bearable.

So why am i telling you all of this? My best friend in the army died yesterday. I am telling you this because jimmy isn’t going home again. His truck got hit by an efp while on an escort mission. The most minor and trivial of condolences is that i was there when it happened and know he didn’t suffer. If i wasn’t there at the time or had to see him in pain i don’t know what i would do. Josh ,the driver of the humvee, is in germany now and will probably lose his left eye. Steve, who was in the passenger seat, got some shrapnel and is to come back to the company tomorrow. I don’t know what else to tell you. I feel drained and hollow. I can’t write anymore.