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Red Bud and north to Glorietta that Maggie Rayburn was giving up everything to live a moral life.

2.0 ORDERS
    It started with the surge, which was officially called The New Way Forward. In order to build up forces, tours were automatically extended by presidential order.
    —PFC Pablo Hernandez
    It’s true I didn’t relay the information to the men in a timely fashion. For a long time it seemed too soon to tell them, and then, suddenly, it seemed too late.
    —Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Falwell
    I was standing in the back. I’m not saying we always understood what the colonel was talking about, but usually we could at least hear the words.
    —Specialist Win Tishman
    Some of the men went fucking crazy. The captain had to do something about it, and he did.
    —First Sergeant Vince L. Crosby, aka Velcro

2.1 Gordon Falwell
    T wo weeks before Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Falwell’s Forward Support Battalion was scheduled to go home, Falwell was informed that all tours were being extended. The order had come down “effective immediately,” but whether he did it out of fear or compassion, the colonel put off telling his troops. He had considered writing a letter on official stationery that they could have in their hands as he made the announcement, but he couldn’t get the wording right. He liked to write things. He liked the feel of ink from his West Point pen flowing onto a fresh sheet of paper and he liked the crisp credibility of the final word-processed document. Above all, he liked finding the perfect word for a particular sentiment. But what was the perfect word for “fucked”?
    As the day of liberation neared, discipline had deteriorated to the point of insubordination, which reflected badly on all of them, but mostly on Falwell himself. All day long, irritation had been squeezing his eyebrows together and forcing itself into the cavity behind his lungs, and now he was being called to brigade headquarters to get their new orders. Which meant he had to tell his troops ASAP.
    One leadership lesson he’d learned was to get his ducks in a row before making a pronouncement, but his ducks depended on other people’s ducks, all the way up the chain to the president, who had the upcoming election to consider. Meanwhile, did he continue to send supplies to the northern bases? What did he tell the news crew that had come to interview him about the New Way Forward, which was also being called the Surge? And where did he put the incoming troops if nobody was leaving? He was jumpy. The jumpiness, combined with the guilt he was feeling, made him snap at Miller, his Command Sergeant Major, when Miller came in with yet another stack of reports. Lunchtime came and went. By midafternoon he could put it off no longer. He slammed his fist on the desk and told Miller to muster the troops. An hour later, 300 men and women stampeded into the DFAC, tipping over chairs and telling high-spirited jokes because they still believed they were going home.
    “One more trip to Tikrit and we’re free,” said one of the soldiers.
    “Too bad we missed Mardi Gras,” said a second soldier, and a third said, “There’s always Burning Man.”
    “Haven’t you seen enough of those right here in Iraq?” asked the first.
    “Yee-haw,” said the third.
    “They can celebrate after we win the war,” grumbled the colonel as he followed Miller to the front of the room. Washington promised that a surge in troops would be accompanied by a surge in support for the war, not only among Americans, but among Iraqis. But Falwell thought they should have fucking surged back at the beginning instead of committing to that zip-in-zip-out light-footprint strategy, which had been the only way to sell a war without raising taxes and upsetting the folks at home and which someone or other had described as “just enough troops to lose.” Not that political considerations were any of his concern, but now and then he couldn’t help thinking, What the fuck?
    Whenever