I wondered if she believed what she was saying. If she did, she was crazy. Others looked on but continued with their phone calls. The phone cards didn”€™t last long and none of us wanted to waste them, but she kept crying and promising to look after herself. After she hung up the phone, I watched her pick up her notebook and pen and put them away. She didn”€™t look at anybody through her thick glasses, which must have been issued; there was no way anybody would have chosen those.

She then shouldered her day sack and walked out. I”€™d seen dead burnt Iraqis; I”€™d seen fellow soldiers carried into the backs of planes; I”€™d seen a dead camel on the side of a road with a bomb hidden in its stomach by the insurgents; but I”€™d never expected to see this. This war, I thought, this boring and mundane war where there was no close combat, this war where people would sit safely miles away and use joysticks to kill the enemy, this war that would never live up to the expectations of soldiers who were trained how to kill, was going to make liars out of some of us.

What did she want? Did she want to be bombed? It’s true that all soldiers are curious about war”€”all volunteer soldiers, that is. The forced don”€™t want to fight. The volunteers join for many reasons, and one is curiosity. Could I do it? Could I kill somebody? How will I perform in the heat of battle? These questions run through your mind. And this female soldier had not seen battle; she lied on the phone. She didn’t get the war she thought she would get. For that she might have been grateful, but it wasn’t the war her parents were seeing on the news. So she made that war up for them.

It’s said that truth is the first casualty of war. In many cases it’s the only casualty.