I remember when the death toll of the (current) Iraq conflict reached 2,000 in the US. If I recall correctly it went from under 2,000 to 2,004 in a day or something and with that leap it broke into the headlines. I was drinking with a pal at Carol’s Pub on Clark St. in Chicago, a north-side honky tonk bar frequented by many hipsters on Thursday nights when all the prices sky rocket before coming down again for the rest of the week. This is when the regulars returned and before too long that was me. Old Style on draft was not the incentive, it was the quiet of the place and simplicity of the experience. There was no being sexually harassed at Carol’s and the juke box was never turned up too loud. And on TV, Jean Claude films or Cubs games.

The afternoon the death toll rose I lamenting with a pal but at then mention of this news bite a fellow drinker lurched into our conversation to defend the government and the war. Mind you I hadn’t said anything about the war or the government, though I suppose my contempt was implied when I suggested what a tragic waste of 2,004 lives, men and women who joined up for any number of reasons. The number one reason, I put it to this rather foolish man, because they were poor and had no choice but to join. He railed – his dad was a Nam vet and his grandfather was a World War II vet and I had no place to talk/what did I know/they were dying for me. I wasn’t able to shut him off easily, even when I told him I too had a combat veteran father (a man who saw more tours of duty than his father, I might add – though it isn’t a contest of that kind) and my grandfather was a fighter pilot in WWII. So while we had the same vicarious service record,  he couldn’t hear a word against the war.

Guilt that he wasn’t there dying too? As he said, they are sacrificing the ultimate ultimately for me. Well, no, sir, they weren’t dying for me, I told him defiantly, though he be drunk on both cheap lager and nationalism. They weren’t dying for me and if they were I rather wish they’d stop. But if he’d like to die for himself, he was welcome to have a go and send those folks home. And though he wasn’t a hard man, I doubt he relished the gore, understandably he wanted to feel the deaths were a waste but were noble costs necessary for a greater good. Believing otherwise makes it too difficult to bare. So he wouldn’t hear my lamentation at the dead in the bar that afternoon. The dead should be proud. Their families should be proud. We should be proud of the dead.

Imagine wearing the body count of one’s own army as badge of courage…

On e.bay I bought 1,000 plastic g.men. The toy soldiers that were always around for playing with when I was a kid. My father recently sent me a pack from the States (can’t get them here, it seems) because I had a hunch I’d be using them in the Hard Man project. The Hard Man, you see, loves the nightly casualty report. He loves those images, stories, and the morbid mathematics of the conflicts around the world and the trail of dead it leaves behind. Including the men and women on his “side.” So, why not give him a real trail, a trail of 1,000 men. A trap. The dead men are bait for me and my collaborators to trap the Hard Man, to catch him out and then poke him with sticks…