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From an article originally printed in the Colorado
Woman News
A Comedian in a War Zone ~ by Edith Weiss
“Three weeks in a war zone,” the agent said. “You’ll
sleep in tents, fly in helicopters, play bases in Hungary,
Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia.”
“I need to think about it,” I said.
“The tour starts in five days. I’ll give you an hour to
decide.”
This was in October 1998. At that time I’d been a touring
comic for 8 years, working clubs from Alaska to Philadelphia.
I had already been sent on one MWR (Morale-Welfare-Recreation)
tour in Korea, Japan, and Okinawa. My thoughts went back to
that tour.
Some of those shows put the ugly in the saying “Comedy
ain’t pretty.” In Korea I did a show in Kunsan, a “hard
duty” base, meaning there were no women and lots of pissed
off tough guys. I stood on a dark stage, trying to be heard
over the din of pinball machines, televisions, and music, in
front of glares that ranged from unfriendly to seething with
hostility. My mind occasionally wandered to the question of
what they did to deserve this hard duty and if they were
thinking of doing it to me, which is not conducive to the
rapport you need to make people laugh. Military policy states
that shows have to be squeaky clean, politically correct,
nothing that would be offensive to anyone, anytime, anywhere.
No making fun of the military, the President (which was
Clinton - I mean, come on. You can’t take Clinton away from
a comic), religion; or any jokes of a sexual nature. So I was
staying within those guidelines, especially since I knew a
comic who got stopped mid-show by an offended Colonel and
shipped home on the next plane. However, when you’re up
there, slick with flop sweat and hoping they’re not armed,
the chance you might be ignominiously fired and not able to
meet the mortgage is one you’ll take rather than ever face a
hundred bitter and bored faces again. After that show, I
decided policy be damned, I’m doing my act uncensored. The
jokes got real, my show was funny, and the audiences stopped
glaring and started laughing.
At the end of that tour, as if to get me back for my
audacity, I was forced to spend a night sleeping in a Korean
whorehouse. Due to an unexplained snafu, (just try getting an
explanation out of the military) no reservations had been made
for us anywhere, and shelter of ill repute is better than
none. Remembering that night, sleeping in a tent didn’t seem
so bad. I agreed to go. The Balkan tour turned out to be very
different from the Asian one.
First, I flew into Budapest, where I was met the other
comedian, Patrick Candalaria from Texas, at the airport. We
were taken to Camp Taszar, in Hungary, and were outfitted with
sleeping bags, Kevlar vests to protect against shrapnel, and
helmets. The vest weighs 26 pounds, the helmet 7. Wearing them
was mandatory, and, on my scrawny, civilian body, ridiculously
heavy. I wondered if the main purpose was to keep us from
running away.
We met our bus driver, Ricky, a Briton living in Germany
with a German woman. Patrick hailed from El Paso, of Mexican
father and German born mother, and me, of Czechoslovakian
father and German mother. We were officially Laugh Force Five,
and we felt like a ragtag United Nations.
Everywhere we went, it was in the midst of an armed convoy,
with a soldier manning the machine gun in the turret. Stopping
before our destination was politely discouraged, and I learned
real fast to limit my intake of liquids. Guys can hold it
longer. Much longer.
We drove through Hungary south through Croatia to the
bridge at Brco (pronounced Britchco). The bridge had been
destroyed in the war and rebuilt by NATO and the de-mining
process was still going on. We were told to walk only on the
roads, for the Balkans are full of unexploded land mines. Once
over the bridge into Bosnia, the devastation of the war was
everywhere. The road turned to mostly dirt. Many of the
buildings had been bombed, and those still standing had bullet
holes. Many had no roofs. People hauled water. Shell-shocked
stray dogs ran around, tail between their legs. On the side of
the dusty road sat a very old woman with her crutches,
watching the men rebuilding their homes. It was already very
cold. I was told she’s sat in the same place every day for
at least a year. People we passed just stared at us bleakly.
Borrowing money to build a house is not done here, people save
for years and build their houses one story at a time, one
story for each generation. During the war, bombing a
three-story house usually meant that three generations of the
family were killed.
At the time NATO had been threatening air strikes because
of the situation in Kosovo, and the deadline was October 26,
six days from when we got there. In Bosnia all soldiers were
at “Bravo” alert: armed and Kevlared at all times. No
alcohol. Take your M-16 to the shower. We asked what Charlie,
the next level after Bravo, meant. “That’s when you’re
under fire.” Things were tense, and so uncertain that we
never got an itinerary. Our first stop was McGovern base, and
nobody had been told there was a woman in the group. (me) This
meant I got a Con-X, a four by eight structure with only a cot
and sometimes a kerosene heater, all to myself. It was pretty
close to the showers and latrines. We did the show in a hangar
that housed tanks.
Bright and early the next morning: (we do more before 6
a.m. but why? was one of my unvoiced questions) we traveled in
our convoy to Camp Comanche. It was a mud pit. The latrines
were in a tent, just like in M*A*S*H. They didn’t realize
there was a woman in the group. (me again) Troy, our contact,
kept saying in that vague yet insistent way I would get
familiar with in the army: “you could sleep in the Con-X’s
at the other end of the camp but it’s so muddy.” “I don’t
mind mud so much.” “It’s so muddy, though. Really muddy.”
“That’s all right.” “What a mess that mud is. And, it’s
really far away, those Con-X’s. You know, you could sleep
right here.” After the fifth “really really muddy” we
realized we were supposed to agree, which we did, not
realizing that “right here” meant in the rec center, on
army cots. And that the rec center was open till two, with
stereos, video games, ping pong…pretty much anything that
was loud. I decided to opt for the privacy of the bus, while
Patrick and Ricky slept on army cots in the center. Which I
realized, hours later in an unheated bus with no toilet, was
one of the stupider things I’d ever done.
Bright and oh so early (why?) the next morning we
took a helicopter to Camp Dobol. There I learned about Bosnian
Muslims: the women are not veiled, drinking and smoking is
allowed. Many Bosnians work in the camps, doing the chores of
cleaning, cooking, and laundering. The man who ran the P.X.
was a Muslim nicknamed Nookie (this amused him) who apologized
for his English. I wonder how many times people who speak two,
three, and four languages apologize for their English to an
American who only speaks the language he was born to. It’s a
form of graciousness Americans can’t comprehend. He told me
that when he got a bonus for the Best Employee Award, his
family and friends who work on the base with him didn’t
speak to him for weeks. We take competition to be the “best”
as a good thing, in Bosnia it speaks of belittling others to
single out one as the best.
Next day, camp Demi. (named for Demi Moore) The soldiers
here play soccer and basketball with the people of Klidanj,
the nearest village. They get beat in both. The Bosnians love
basketball in the larger villages kids play it all the time.
As I was doing my act, now fully uncensored, one of my
jokes was about a butt thong, and I noticed many soldiers
looking nervously at the chaplain, a black woman. I asked her,
“Chaplain, are you okay with this?” “You bet!” she
answered. I asked her if she had ever worn a butt thong, and
she said, “What do you think I have on under my fatigues?”
The show was talked about for days afterwards. We looked
forward to doing the shows. No sullen faces here, just
gratitude and often a desperate need to laugh. We were told at
one camp that the soldiers had spent the day digging bodies
out of a mass grave. We helicoptered to an observation point
high on top of a hill in Macedonia where 12 guys do lonely
lookout duty. We did the show in the mess tent at noon, right
after a meal of cold tuna noodle casserole. The camp is fogged
in most of the time. When I asked the camp commander, a stern
man with a German accent, what the point was of having an
observation post that was fogged in most of the time, he
answered with Teutonic stoicism: “That is a very good
question.” And walked away.
Traveling through Bosnia, I saw the beauty of its wooded
mountains where wild horses still run. The Muslim mosques and
Christian churches in ancient villages, where each house has a
garden and goats. The poverty sets the country in another
time; I see women wash the family laundry by hand, goats roast
on a spit in front of houses. Old and young men in small horse
drawn carts. And always, grim reminders of war: bombed cars
and buses rusting by the roads, rivers whose banks are
brightly colored by children’s clothing and household goods
which have been clinging to the tree roots for years, an
abandoned mountain resort. Houses with only the skeletal
structure left, with trees growing tall inside. This means
that everyone in that family is dead, or they are gone.
Leaving Slav-Brod, we were warned we’d see terrible
devastation. For forty-five minutes, we passed entire villages
and towns bombed into ghost towns. Not a living soul.
Thousands of small memorials with pictures of the dead dot
the country. Many villages still have no signs to identify
them; during the war they were taken down to confuse the
enemy. I was often told: during the war, everybody killed
everybody else. This was no clear-cut good guy -bad guy war.
I came back from the Balkans a more thoughtful person and a
better comic. At first when I got home, I felt depressed and
displaced. I found I had little patience with the whining and
self-pity that passes for normal discourse here. I wrote a
joke about it: we’re so self-indulgent we make stuff up to
be upset about. Like the mid-life crisis. Somebody turns 40,
and then they fall apart: “I have to find myself. I don’t
know who I am.” If you’re 40, and you don’t know who you
are, make something up, nobody gives a crap.
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