(02JAN2009) 
I live right next door to several huts housing a unit of New Zealand soldiers.
I have had occasion to dislike them.
I see them pretty much every day, though I’ve yet to have a conversation with any of them. Mostly, they’re fine. The guys among them exchange guy-nods with me and the females smile prettily. Plus, they have those cool accents.
They park their HMMWVs near their hooches, which is to say near mine, and when they roll in late at night or early in the morning, the engines seem especially loud. Their loading and/or unloading the vehicles is equally loud, but all that is typical soldierly noise and I would never begrudge them that.
What I did not at all enjoy, however, was an early Sunday morning rousing to blasting American 80’s pop music. Now, I like The Bangles only slightly less than the next guy, but never at 0700 on a Sunday morning when I’ve only been asleep for 3 hours. The Kiwis were outside washing their vehicles, and I guess they needed the musical motivation. I put a slim pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep.
Some weeks later I was wakened by loud talking, shouting, and the occasional loud knock against the side of my hooch or door. Cars drive within feet of my almost-paper-thin walls and often kick stones against them, but this did not sound like that, and I heard no cars. It went on long enough for me to seethe, and then get up and poke my head outside.
The Kiwis were playing cricket. In the gravel. Facing my front door.
I look at the guy holding the cricket bat and raise my hands in a “You gotta be kidding me” gesture and he immediately apologizes. I crawl back into bed and the periodic shouting continues, and the ball smacks against my wall a few more times.
This morning, I’m sleeping – or trying to – through shouting just outside. I can’t make out what they’re yelling, partly because of their accents, partly because of the walls, and mostly because I’m still half-ensconced in a nightmare about a spider. I think at first that they’re playing cricket again, but it doesn’t sound quite the same.
I eventually get out of bed and look out my front door. Not 5 feet away, a Kiwi soldier is leaning over the hood of a HMMWV with his machine gun at his shoulder. Thankfully, he’s facing away from me.
I watch as he breaks away from the vehicle, shouting “Moving! Moving! Moving!” and I see two of his comrades nearby, scrambling back to join him as they all keep aim on an imaginary target.
It’s soon over, and they huddle with a couple of observers who presumably give them advice on the whole procedure, and then a different soldier takes up position at the HMMWV and it all begins again.
I can appreciate the importance of their training, and of course they’re doing this because they roll outside the wire and put themselves in situations where they may have to fight for their lives against a brutal enemy.
Hopefully they’ll all come back safe, play cricket in the gravel, and piss me off again.
HMMWV = High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle
I live right next door to several huts housing a unit of New Zealand soldiers.
