Stephen Bradley is kind enough to pick me up from the Monterey Transit Plaza and drive me to his apartment for our interview. As we pull away, I see the station’s sandstone carved mural of victory. It depicts a squad of soldiers fighting their way through a mountain pass, easily the most iconic image of the Western Theater of the war. Compared to these stone carved icons my host looks almost overly laid-back with his unkempt graying blond hair, beard, and faded FFDP tank-top. To the casual observer, you’d never guess this almost stereotypical “beach bum” was one of the most decorated NCO¹s of the Eastern Theater.

I was getting out of the military when they called us up to reinforce Belleville. I joined the Army right out of high school, got deployed to Afghanistan, and spent most of my tour at FOB² Fenty before the pullout. After that, my military career involved me bouncing around from one bullshit assignment to the next, before being used to babysit government buildings while a bunch of immigration goons rounded up brown people. After the clusterfuck after the election, fighting cops, protestors, and nearly getting into a firefight with my own friends before they unfucked our coms, I was ready to call it quits.

Were you worried things would get worse?

Man, the Army had just bitch slapped the rebs out of DC. They’d fucked off to West Palm to throw some fake inauguration with a bunch of the losers from the last election. I mean, anyone normal thought the whole thing was just gonna be another cycle of right-wingers pissing and moaning about the election they lost, all while a bunch of liberal dick sucks never actually arrest anybody. I mean, yeah, they cuffed a bunch of their uparmored mall cops in DC, but nobody really thought any of those little trust fund cunts would actually do anything real. I was still thinking that way even when they deployed me to Belleville.

Scott Air Force Base was the HQ for Air Mobility Command and Transportation Command, maybe 20 miles outside St. Louis in Sothern Illinois, and responsible for coordinating flights for the whole military. So, it was kinda like our LAX, but instead of Starbucks it had black mold. Normally the local zoomies provided base security, but I guess the CO pooped his pampers after Junior and the gang demanded the armed forces turn over our shit to their fake-ass army.

The NDF³.

[Steve nods while making masturbatory motion.]

Cops, militia freaks, and teenagers all tooling around in technicals and our hand-me-downs with no real training. Maybe a handful of actual defectors, and a few vets who couldn’t hack it in the real world. That’s what we were told anyway. I’d heard about the bases in the Red States that just opened their doors when their governors told them too, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t worry me a little. But what were they gonna take? Those stores had been mostly emptied out over the last decade from either aid to Ukraine or equipment transfers already made to the cops. And when they rocked up to an actual military base like Rock Island, Wright-Patterson, or Fort Drum they just camped out on the other side of the road.

That’s what I thought we’d see. A bunch of dumpy fucks in ballcaps waving ARs and campaign flags, all too pussy to actually throw down.

Did you know about the refugees?

Not really. My grandma called me the day before, told me she’d seen a bunch of people piling into their rigs back in Nevada-not the state, Nevada, Missouri -and heading out of town. I figured it was just a handful chickenshit libs convinced the sky was falling. As we got within sight of Scott AFB, I realized just how bad the situation really was.

We got in just after 6am, and in the morning light you could see the line of cars streaming all the way back to St. Louis on I-64. At the base, and adjoining civilian airport, there was a moat of people on the other side of the wire either in cars or on foot. I’d thought the brass were nuts pulling in nearly the whole 33rd Brigade Combat Team, about 3,000 troops back then, but when I saw the mob of refugees I said, “there’s no fucking way we have enough people to handle this!”

My team leader, Sgt. Ryan Wright, immediately told me to shut the fuck up. I just sulked and kept driving, but I knew he was right. Morale across the whole military was in the shitter by then. We were the bad guys to a lot of our own people, no matter what side you were on. Our leadership had been hollowed out to the bone, our friends told to kick dirt if they were trans, gay, Muslim, black, left handed, you name it. With everyone barely keeping it together, looking for any excuse to get out, the last thing we needed was my little freakout infecting every other guy in the truck when we needed to be at our best. Ryan and me served in Afghanistan, and stayed together in the 33rd ever since. We always called him Sgt. Wright All the Time. I was lucky to have him.

[He pauses. Takes another sip of beer and another drag on his cigarette before continuing.]

Our mission was supposed to be providing extra security to the base, but once we were inside the wire our orders changed. Now, on top of providing security against a mob of refugees that was growing by the second, we were also supposed to assist with the civilian evac effort. That was the Brigade’s mission. Our little truck was just supposed to poster up near the fence, sit tight, and try not to scare anybody too much. But we probably left our vehicle with maybe two guys in it at most, because every half hour you’d have somebody asking for help with breaking up fights, hauling trash, digging latrines, KP duty, all the while hoping the crowd didn’t panic and overrun us.

We did that shit for three days, while the fugees loaded onto planes, flew off to who knows where, and new planes landed for the next batch. Despite all the BS duty, despite my own grinding guts, it was an amazing thing to witness; sometimes I swear one plane wouldn’t even have its tires off the ground before another bird would touch down. But despite all of that, all the work we did, the crowd only got bigger.

The civilians ran out of supplies after the first night, and we had go on patrols to requisition food, water, and medicine from grocery stores in town. That’s when I saw the first people changing flags.

Changing flags?

The locals, the ones not trying to get out of town, were pulling down the Stars and Stripes and throwing up Confederate Flags, Thin Blue Line Flags, I even saw a South Vietnam flag that I only recognized because my grandpa had one from his time in ‘Nam. I saw one, must have been hand drawn, that just said, “Jesus is Lord,” like that was news or something. Most of them though, were Junior’s campaign flags from the election. I didn’t see any NDF, not yet, and the local grocery chains still let us in, but driving through those suburbs was the first time I really felt like shit was getting real. Like I was in hostile territory again.

Conditions in and around the base kept deteriorating, mostly due to shortages of supplies and troops to keep things from going completely fucking sideways. We had to bivouac the civies in an impromptu refugee camp outside of the base. Attempts to resupply us became a real clusterfuck from all the partisans sabotaging stretches of the I-55 and I-70. They’d tear up holes in the road, set pipe bombs and other shit to stop our rigs. Hardly ever any casualties, though. Bomb hardened vehicles were the one good thing to come out of the GWOT. But whenever it happened, it always cost a unit time to change a tire or push a vehicle off the road. We actually had one patrol that was stopped by a literal wall of horseshit from an overturned manure truck. Most of that was just annoying. But when the bastards started stealing fuel from civilian gas stations, that really freaked me out. If our trucks ran dry, we’d have no way to bug out if things got out of control.

Thankfully, Ryan managed to keep us from losing our shit when he came up with a plan to siphon gas from the civilian vehicles. When the LT gave the green light, I ended up parking cars for a couple days, moving them inside the wire for bucket brigades of POGs to drain their tanks. They ended up forming a partial secondary barricade on our side of the fence. That made everyone relax a little.

Did you know that Scott was designated as indefensible by the new administration?

Sure now, but they didn’t tell us that. We knew the situation was fucked, but we did our jobs. When they started flying in more planes, with more zoomies to help us out, I actually thought we might be able to pull this off. I didn’t know about the ultimatum from the NDF to abandon our position, or even that Col. Nowak, the base CO, refused.

The only thing that made me aware of any of that was when our radio started going crazy and PFC Lasser, our turret guy shouted, “Sgt. Wright, we have major activity on the Northeast MSR!”

Ryan was talking to the LT when we all looked toward the “Main Supply Route,” just a stretch of road connecting Scott to the civilian airport on the other side of the Silver Creek woods. I could barely make out what the fuck anyone was saying on coms, and by the time I got the guys on the civilian runway to calm it the hell down, a pack of civilian trucks smashed through the chain-link gates. Ryan was the first to shout, “Enemy Contact!” but a couple of seconds later, before those technicals⁴ came to a stop, I heard buzzing from a shitload of suicide drones.

These were converted civilian models mostly, and a handful of the bigger cardboard ones that radar couldn’t pick up. They carried pipe bombs, mortar rounds, grenades. All things the bottom and sides of our trucks were built to resist, not so much their roofs. I don’t know where they launched from, but we had no time to button up.

We got hit from above. Lasser’s blood poured into the cab of our JLTV. None of us could see that his head was gone. My ears were ringing, couldn’t focus, then Ryan piled into the passenger side door. He was bleeding a from a scalp wound, shouting at me, but I couldn’t really hear him. Then he smacked me upside the head and I came to.

“Fucking Drive Corporal!” I was back, got the truck moving while Ryan got Matty and Garza to pull in Lasser’s body. The M2 was fucked, so while Lasser stunk up our truck with the smell of gray matter all we could do was try to find a firing position on the tarmac. Ryan had me pull the truck into opposition with the enemy vehicles, keeping what had been the line of refugees behind us.

They were mostly civilian trucks and a couple Humvees, less armor than us but they could at least shoot out. With our M2 gone, that fucking truck was nothing but a bullet magnet. We had to exit the vehicle to fight, but the JLTV was so damn tall only two soldiers could use it as a covered firing position. So I’m inside with Ryan, while Garza and Matty are shooting from behind this fat ass truck. Matty was out in front, so at least he could just pop over the hood, but Garza’s got barely any time to get back into cover anytime he pops around the back. I don’t know when he got hit, but it was about the least surprising thing that day.

At least the radio chatter finally calmed down, just in time to learn that with half our vehicles disabled, a line of APCs and MRAPs were moving in through the hole the lighter vehicles had made. They ignored us at first, and just drove to block the runways so no more planes could take off. The civilians had already freaked the fuck out, and were running back to their cars or outside the wire. Every few minutes one would jump into our line of fire. We’d hold fire, but the other guys didn’t give a shit.

I saw one pretty red head catch a .50 cal round in her midsection. Blew her in half. I saw one heavyset old guy in overalls and a cane actually try to low crawl his way through our fire. He almost made it, when some asshole tossed a grenade at us. It came 10 feet short of our truck, but peppered that poor dude in shrapnel.

Orders kept coming in to maneuver to keep us between the civilians and the guys assaulting our position. Fire and maneuver. Fire an maneuver. Well maneuver to where motherfucker? It was an open field with a runway and some taxiways, not exactly an environment with a lot of cover and concealment. All we could do was fall back to the tin plated hangar along the western taxiway currently getting peppered with enemy fire or the cluster of buildings to the South.

The buildings to the South were safer, concrete walls, lots of cover. But the LT ordered us to protect the hangar. Well protected with what!? Our .50 was gone, we were down two guys, a handful of grenades, no mortars, and one M250 gunner. Our Company was down to just 4 squads, and the biggest gun we had was a Mk19 grenade launcher with anti-riot smoke rounds. And the Chery atop this shit sundae was that because were were designated defensibly non-viable, no air support would be coming our way. We held that hangar for maybe 45 minutes before we lost two trucks and had to cut and run, regrouped with the rest of the unit to the cluster of buildings to the South.

Our wall of vehicles that kept us feeling so safe was now a barricade preventing us from repositioning. The only way for us to go out along Adams St. into a base housing complex. The CO wasn’t willing to give up. I remember seeing him argue with the other officers that “we just hold up here until they deplete their ammunition!”

After 14 hours of that shit, we had so much wounded we didn’t know if an evac would be possible.

[He stops. Puts out his old cigarette and lights a new one.]

We abandoned the position. Abandoned the base, the 70 odd aircraft that couldn’t take off, god knows how many refugees. They say by the time it was over, around 5,700 soldiers and civilians had been killed. The Illinois National Guard lost half its strength that day, I lost half the guys in my truck and plenty of friends in the others. We were ordered to withdraw and regroup at the State Capital. I don’t think anyone said a word on the trip up.

As we entered the suburbs outside of Springfield, the locals gave us a warm welcome throwing rocks, bottles, and even small arms fire from civilians-turned-militia. The State Capitol Building was barricaded by troops from the 108th Sustainment Brigade who were brought in to establish a command post and direct operations in Southern Illinois. By the time we got there, they were serving as emergency garrison troops, holding position against I don’t know how many rioters.

Our CO was now a 24 year old Captain who had held the job for about 25 minutes after entering the city when his CO was hit in the forehead by a brick. I actually saw it happen. Some soccer mom wearing an "Adorable Deplorable" T-shirt threw it when he stepped out of his vehicle to try and clear an intersection for us.

What was it like once you got to the actual Capital?

Abject panic. The governor’s office window was open, so we could hear him literally begging for help from DC. I knew no help was coming. On the way up, Ryan asked the LT what reinforcements we could expect. He told him any troops in Illinois that weren’t with us were defending the Rock Island and the Savanna Depot from an even bigger attack. Air support had to come in from Whiteman and Wright-Patterson, which were also under siege. Springfield was in effect surrounded.

As if to drive the point home, from the capitol building’s grounds, we could see the mob dragging three women in business suits to a gallows constructed outside of the State Bar. Their suit jackets were torn off, and the mob beat the shit out of them before they hanged them. Then they brought out another group of people and did the same thing. I asked Ryan if we should engage when it started, but the LT told us to hold position. I couldn’t believe it!

[He angrily puts out his cigarette, and lights a fresh one.]

We were supposed to be the good guys, to protect people from shit like this, and all we could do was just sit back and watch as Americans murdered each other over what? An election not going their way? I was this close to telling the LT to fuck off, and unload against the crowd with my M4, maybe some of the other guys would join in and we might be able to get these fuckers to turn tail and run home.

Ryan must have known what I was thinking, because he took me aside and told me to grab a piss break inside, and see if I couldn’t find some snacks. I was tired, the Mod Fuel⁵ was wearing off, leaving me with a killer headache. And I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

I knew why we couldn’t help. We were low on ammo, and everyone knew we’d be overrun if the city decided to come after us. Our guys were wiped, and we had too many wounded to make any kind of a standup fight.

When I came out of the Capitol with an arm full of junk food, the mob had this older black man stripped down to his skivvies. That’s also when the Governor gave the order to evacuate to Peoria and regroup with the rest of the National Guard.

We joined the rest of the troops who’d been stationed outside of the State Armory and gathered whatever weapons and ammo we could carry. The governor took a helicopter to Abe Lincoln Airport where the 182nd Airlift Wing still had some control of the situation. We commandeered civilian aircraft for the evac effort, in addition to the Air National Guard's fleet of C-130s we already had. We loaded up VIPs, wounded, and whatever civilians were at the front of the line, then got the fuck out of town.

Everyone expected the order to be to hold and organize a complete evacuation of civilians like before. Instead, we were given the order to leave the civilians and just start driving Northwest to Peoria. I’m ashamed of how much relief that gave us, to just abandon those people. The mob and the NDF overran the town right after we left, and I don’t like thinking about what happened to people we left behind.

By the time we regrouped outside of Peoria they ordered us to withdraw again, this time for a counterattack at Rock Island. The rebs were assaulting the arsenal while a huge mob was moving against Chicago. The rebs had split our forces in two.

Who organized this? Seriously, what stars on his shoulder, West Point dipshit let us get completely butt fucked by a pack of assholes in pickup trucks and MRAPs on our own goddamn soil!?

[He puts out his cigarette. Considers lighting another, but puts the pack away.]

Before we left for Rock Island, we got Garza and Lasser’s bodies out of the truck, hosed out the blood, reupped on whatever ammo we could find, and I took 5 to call my grandma. Cell phone service was still working, thank God. I told her I was fine, that I loved her and I was gonna be heading out soon. She asked me to come home. Told me I didn’t need to prove anything to her, that I should just come home.

She wanted to you to desert?

She’d watched the whole TV all day in her singlewide. As far the media, and as far as she could tell the country was concerned: we’d already lost the war. The fact that it happened the day the new President was being sworn in with no White House, only made the government look completely fucking helpless.

That was the lowest I’d ever felt. I wasn’t angry with her, I wasn’t scared, I was just empty. Everything about the world I knew had been blown apart in 36 hours. It’d been going downhill for years, So maybe this was the end. That’s when my buddies started calling on me to load up and get Oscar Mike.

I didn’t know what to say to my grandma. I just told her I loved her and that I had to go. that was the last time we ever spoke.

¹Non commissioned officer.

²Forward Operating Base

³The National Defense Force, the unified armed forces of MAGA America after 2029.

⁴A light improvised fighting vehicle, typically a modified civilian pickup truck or SUV.

⁵Modafinil or Mod Fuel was a central nervous system stimulant and wakefulness promoter often used by members of the military.