The dump and the well
Adam's father, the well contractor could represent the divine life in the garden of Eden. His time in Iraq as a Private in charge of the base's dump could represent the explicit casting down from his divine state. The Sergeant supervised others on duty at the dump.
Specialist John Fryer was a radio repairman, but after his job was given to KBR, to contractors that he had to personally train, he had no place to go. The Army made him serve out his duty here. He was in charge of scrap metal. It was the most sought after job because he dealt with the Sergeant almost daily. The Sergeant relied on Fryer's skills to recognize a piece of metal's reusability and cite the dumping individual.
Adam was an Individual Augmentee that thought he would get to see the insides of a borehole, but his well-drilling skills weren't needed by the Army. Halliburton was in now in charge of water wells. The oil wells were spoken for the minute the US decided to go to Iraq so that was out of the question also. So Adam just ended up responsible for the "garden", the food waste section of the dump. He was tasked with determining if the items were salvageable. If so, he would write up a report and hand it in to Sergeant Petty. Adam was constantly surrounded by local village kids who were taunting him from the other side of the razor-wire.
Private Andrews was in charge of the swamp, the toxic section of the dump. No one knows how this section began. Perhaps it was started when oil canisters were stored on the site and eventually their seals cracked from the heat and they burst open. After that it was hopeless. Trucks would come day and night and sometime just directly pour antifreeze into the swamp. There was no doubt this was getting into the water table. You could see the nearby village. Adam felt sorry for the villagers whose children would eventually drink water that was most likely flammable.
Sergeant Petty tried to make us feel important by carrying out special operations but they were minuscule compared to the big picture in Iraq. We would monitor the border of the dump at night. From the daringly dextrous to the haggard and handicapped, all types would try to dig under the razor wire and sneak in. We weren't allow to fire at them unless we were threatened. Sergeant Petty said we could fire if they just threw stones at us, but it didn't feel right.
Then there was our own "Scorched Earth" operations. That's when we had to burn the pits. Sergeant Petty put Private Means in charge of the burning. He was Lakota and joined the army to fund his education. Now they had him hauling the trash of the US outside of his native land. The waste had to be removed, compacted. It wasn't going anywhere and no one was instructing us to do anything else with it. So we burned it. We burned it ritually. We burned it at night and during the day. One time we got drunk and had our own fire dance
How does Adam suffer a stroke that eventually brings on his aphasia and gets him an Honorable Discharge?