June 28, 2007

  • Bye bye to Baghdad


    The sand was thick in the air this morning.  It looked like a dirty fog had rolled in off the Euphrates, but really it was just the sand that had rolled in last night and had settled in for a stay when the air stopped moving.  Running through it was hard.  I tried breathing through my mouth, but I could taste the sand coating my tongue and the back of my throat until it was painful to swallow, like trying to down sandpaper.  Breathing through my nose hurt less, but then I had to contend with the stink of Baghdad - shit, burning trash, exhaust, sunbaked sand and concrete.  The smell of this war.


    The smell will never leave me.  Every time I walk out the door, I'll be surprised not to smell the stench.  I'll be surprised when breathing doesn't mean inhaling sand.  When a mask isn't necessary for easy breathing.


    The time when I'll be able to forget the smell and all that's associated with is coming up soon.  Our replacements are here, and our RIP has begun.  I'll be back on US soil in less than a month.  I don't think I'll be able to return to "life as normal", but it'll be at least a little bit closer.  I'm living in a TOC tent right now.  It's not so bad, really.  The site manager hooked us up with beds and a bedside table, so we have some comforts of the trailer.  The portajohns outside are closer than the latrine trailer was to my old hooch.  The only real downer is that we don't have any shower trailers, and have to drive to a nearby pad to take a shower.  But it's nothing I can't deal with.


    I'm not sure I'm actually looking forward to going home.  Yes, being deployed has it's low points, but it also has it's high points.  I miss my family and friends, and my cat , but I've made friends here, some who seem closer than family, and the jackal that lived under my trailer was always friendly.   And I feel that I have a purpose here.  I've made a difference.  Maybe not in the role the Army intended, but nonetheless.  What purpose do I have back home?  To be another cog in the great lumbering wheel of some anonymous company, doing a job I hate?  Why go back to that when I could stay here, and make a real contribution?  Stay here with the friends I've made, who place their wellbeing in my hands, and count on me to support them?  I know I have friends back home who are waiting for me to return, but I don't feel the same responsibility to them as I do towards the people here.  Maybe it's because we're in a combat zone, or constructed our friendship under stress, or because we're brothers in arms, but it's a different feeling.


    I know I have no real choice.  I'll leave in a few weeks with the rest of my unit, and head home.  It's just a matter of balances for me - will the pain of leaving here be balanced by the joy of coming home?  I'm worried that it won't...


    later