Air Support

Below is an excerpt from the first version of my play. This section has been cut but it fills in details about Trevor that are still evident in the play, as well as exemplifies the tragedy of war that plays out on all our soldiers in combat. Trevor, traumatized the the reality of his own actions in Iraq, still can not pull himself away from the screen of his laptop. He has obtained areal footage from one of his missions where he had a near death experience and he watches it over and over. In this scene, it is 3:00am. Why are we drawn to images of death? Why do we hold on to them and live in the past? Is war something we can ever move away from once experienced?



Although dramatized, what is described below is what actually happened to a soldier I met. He came very close to death and somehow got a copy of the video from the fighter bomber. He showed us the video as well, which looked very much like the one I have posed above.

Trevor sits on the be with Bunny watching a video
Trevor: OK, see that big building? We were up against that. All those black dots, that’s us.

Bunny: Oh I see. Like ants.

Trevor: Like fire ants!

Bunny: No, like little black ants.

Trevor: You’re ruining it. There are six Americans and seven of those good for nothing Iraqi police. They’re scared to shoot ‘cause the guys closing in on us could be their relatives or something. Ain’t that some fucked up shit. And there are at least 150 of them, insurgents, rebels, freedom fighters, whatever you want to call them- bad guys, that’s what we call ‘em. They tried to wear us down, thinking we’d run out of food an ammo, but hours and hours of fighting go by and we are still there and they are dropping like flies. So they swarm down on us, maybe 135 of them, to take us out. Like a zombie movie, crazies everywhere, within a few feet of us, and we are just blasting away. But we’re ultimately gonna loose. So I called to the pilot, see, called in an air strike. That’s me screaming for him to come.

Bunny: Screaming like a woman.

Trevor: Quiet. And here he is talking to AWAC, he’s getting the coordinates of the enemy position, and I’m like ‘hurry up god damn it!’ And here he swings around. Wait, see, see this, ok, that’s them. And pow! He lets it go, swings away, see, shit, how close it was?! Ok, look at the ring of debris, see he dropped it maybe three meters from our position, and the rubble, rocks the size of cars, went right over our heads and landed on the other side of us. I mean, a bit closer and we’d be vaporized, and a bit further away and all that concrete would have landed right on top of us. But it just went sailing right over us. So accurate. Jesus. (pause) I like to think that he did that on purpose. I mean, he could have had orders just to take out the bad guys, maybe sacrifice the six of us, who knows. Maybe we got lucky. Don’t touch me.

Bunny: Sorry.

Trevor: I gotta go.

Bunny: Please stay.