isen.blog

You’re on that plane, and you’ve got your kit with you. You spend 18-20 hours on that plane, and all you can think is, I’m coming home. I’m coming home. I’m coming the fuck home. I’m coming home!

Then you start thinking about the kind of welcome that you’re going to get, and the things that you’re going to do. You’re going to get your party on, you’re going to buy this, you’re going to buy that (because there’s nothing to really spend your money on in Iraq, so you have a decent amount saved up, if you’re smart).

You think about the food you’re going to eat — I’m gonna eat some Chinese, some Mexican, man, I want some Taco Bell now! — you think about the beer you’re going to drink.

You get off the plane, you hurry through your inprocessing at the station, and then, just like that, you’re free on a four-day pass. . . . You shower. You eat. Then, you go out.

And…and…and nothing. You head to the mall, for lack of something better to do, and you see the people milling around — and it’s like nothing ever changed. If you didn’t tell them, they wouldn’t know you’re a soldier, they wouldn’t know we’re at war, and they wouldn’t know that you just got back.

Don’t get me wrong — they’re not ungrateful. They’ll thank you, they’ll congratulate you…and then, they’ll go on their lives and you’ll go on with yours.

Except for this: the whole time you were in Ar Ramadi or Balad or Tuz Khurmatu, your platoon leader and your company commander and various VIPs were telling you that you were the only thing standing between America and the massed hordes of Osama bin Laden. We were fighting them in some godforsaken shithole in Ad Dawr because the other option was kicking their ass in Aurora or Hilliard or Prestonsburg.

But none of this matters to the folks out at Nordstrom’s or JCPenney’s or Bed, Bath & Beyond. They’re just regular folks, they just want to do their thing.

You turn on the news…nothing. The very thing that was at the center of your life for a whole year…you might see it get 90 seconds in the regular news. And when I say a whole year — I mean it: I lived my life day to day. I was grateful to see the dawn — the end of my tour snuck up on my ass like a thief in the night. There’s really no way to describe the centrality of existence to someone who hasn’t been there.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, stories, War

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