Up the Hill

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge…
-Byron

Well, it’s finally happened. My precious, precious platoon has been taken from me, and I’ve been moved to a staff position. I knew this day was coming sooner or later, but I was hoping it would be after we got out of a combat zone. I feel uncomfortable leaving my platoon during a tour. Not that they have insufficient leadership; I just feel personally beholden to my soldiers. I miss them already, even though I see them all the time. I guess it is the same with any promotion.

I do not believe that I will be working that much harder than in my old job, but I will be working much longer hours. I had gotten a very efficient routine going with my old position where I had all of my work done by mid-afternoon, so that I had the rest of the time to read or sleep. This new job comes with an endless stream of meetings, and they keep me just busy enough to not be able to have free time, but not so busy that I feel like I’m accomplishing much. I used to have three meetings a week. Now I have three and sometimes four a day. I hate meetings so much.

I am pretty excited about going home soon, though. It will not be long now. I am more than eighty percent done with my tour now, according to the pie chart. I had such a good time on midtour leave that I can’t wait for block leave after we get home. A full month to take leave or just half-days, and several months of four day weekends and early Fridays after that. I’m looking forward to seeing Texas again, to walking around my beloved Aggieland again. Hopefully I’ll get to go to a ball game while I’m back. It would be great to see my buddies and catch up.

Speaking of leave, it was very nice. I drank a lot, and enjoyed my new HD television and my new XBOX 360, on which I played Oblivion, which in this lifetime video gamer’s opinion may be the best game ever made. I’m looking forward to wasting lots more time on it when I’m home for good. My parents came up and we did some touristy stuff that you never do unless family comes, which was nice. I always knew my area was historic, but it’s nice to have an excuse to get off the couch and actually go partake of some of it personally. Saw some movies, played with my boys, took long walks with Jen. That was the best—the walks. I love those.

I have to get ready for one of the seven thousand meetings I have today. I will try to get through it without gnawing my own arm off.

Georgia Soil

And when you stop
To let 'em know you've got it down...
It's just another town
Along the road.
--Browne

Being home does strange things to me. I have never been so relaxed. Suddenly when I stepped onto that plane in Kuwait, there were no responsibilities. Nobody bitching at me, and nobody at whom to bitch. For the first time in two years, I don't have fifty people directly under my control, and over three hundred depending on me. It is bliss. I haven't slept this well since summer break back at A&M.

I vaguely remember talking about distinctive smells in a very early post on this weblog. Whatever the hell I said, it is true--smells are all around me, and very strong. As soon as the doors of the 130 opened in Kuwait, I could smell the oil. It permeates everything there. And now that I'm home, my wife and I go for walks around our neighborhood. And I can smell...what is it? I don't know. Something about the soil and vegetation here in Tennessee. I didn't even know I'd missed it until I smelled it again. It makes you want to cry, knowing that soon, you'll be back to smelling motor oil, and burning feces and trash, and on the very bad days, froot loops.

To wrap up a very long-lived saga, I have now received my Arabic language software from Rosetta Stone. I even did the first lesson. I know how to say "boy under airplane" and "woman on top of table." Both, very useful phrases. It reminds me of when I was learning Spanish, and I'd always ask how to say "I've been kidnapped, please help me," but my teachers would always decline and insist on teaching me how to say "The fish of my brother, Raoul, is on top of the dresser of my sister, Anita."

Concluding other issues I've talked about since I left: My wife does indeed notice my enhanced physique, thanks to the workouts and the tanning, and likes it. Along the same vein, I do indeed notice HER changed figure, thanks to the workouts and the tanning. I think we may be, at this moment, the most attractive we've ever been.

My parents visited, and we spent some time doing touristy things that I've never gotten to do because my job, let's face it, sometimes just sucks. Saw some historic sites and houses and whatnot, and took a very enjoyable trip to a Civil War battlefield. Actually, it was just a Confederate hospital and graveyard, but I got some very good looks at the battlefield itself, and got a pretty good idea of how the battle was played out.

I am so far having a great time on leave. I will attempt to post again before I leave, but I make no promises.

An editorial note: the last four or five posts appear to all be posted on the same day, which, I guess, they were. My wife posted them when I sent them, and I even saw them up the first day or two I was home; but the Blogger server underwent some kind of maintenance or accident or something, and they were lost. So they have been reposted. I did not actually make four or five posts today. I merely reposted the ones that were cut off. Thanks and Gig 'Em.

Row on Row

You are
What you do
When it counts
-The Masao

(The day after Memorial Day. --Nick) We had a barbecue and some games yesterday. Severely reduced patrol schedule. It just means we have to work that much harder today, but it was nice having the day off. It was literally my first full day off since I left home. It makes me a little uncomfortable to celebrate Memorial Day. I don’t really feel like eating hot dogs and drinking beer and going to a big tire sale that day. Kind of feels sacrilegious.

I would like to be an author. I’d also like to be a musician, or to play video games for a living. I’ve always planned to go back to school to get a postgraduate degree. Travel around the world doing research for my books. I can’t do any of those things. I am increasingly worried at this point about who will stay and fight if I leave. This enemy, this ideal that we are working against…it’s not going to stop. People refuse to admit we’re even at war. They refuse to accept the nature of the enemy. They say that to acknowledge these things is to give in to people trying to manipulate our fears.

Some things should be feared. Our enemy’s intended long-term goal will mean subjugation and oppression of every man, woman and child on the planet. You have to see these people up close to realize the hatred they have for all things Western and free. It will never go away. No amount of aid or diplomacy will ever calm them. We must destroy them utterly; and the sooner we commit to that destruction, the less American soldiers we will lose fighting pointless holding actions. The less American firemen and policemen will die trying to save victims of terror. The less American schoolchildren or businessmen will become victims.

The people who deny the nature of this fight are hobbling us. It is because of these people that no matter what the circumstances or hour of my death, I will die terrified. Afraid that I’ve not done enough to keep this fight away from my family. And afraid that despite all my efforts, some people will still manage to surrender the country to the enemy.

The holiday is to celebrate those who fall protecting our way of life. I tell you that this life is not natural. By my own eyes I affirm that the natural way of things is brutal and harsh and full of graphic, noisy death. Those who fall do so not to keep you in khakis and iPods and digital cable and horrible pop music, but to keep your life from descending back into the norm. The way it is all over the world except for America. They keep us from becoming what all of humanity used to be. They maintain our forward progress and hunt down and kill those who want us to revert to their level. It has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with saying damn the rest of the world, I want my family and my countrymen to be safe and happy, and I’ll pay for that with my body and soul if necessary.

The fallen. We can never be as good as them. We can never achieve their level of honor. We can only pick up their torch and continue their bloody, unhappy work. Maybe if we give enough of ourselves, they will be able to sleep, in the field where the poppies blow.

I’m sorry for getting all serious. I just hate Memorial Day. As long as there are memories, I will hate it. I go on leave in a couple days. I promise to get back to talking about video games and movies in my next dispatch.

Sound and Foam

We love the hearth, the quiet hills, the song,
The friendly gossip come from every land;
And very peace were now a nameless wrong --
You thrust this bitter quarrel to our hand.
-Drinkwater

I was in the latrine the other day and somebody came in and sat beside me, in the next stall. He scared the hell out of me when he cleared his rifle. He didn't load it or anything, but people screwing around with weapons in the latrine makes me uncomfortable. I was worried he was going to load a round and shoot himself. I think the strangest things.

I have nine days, now, until I go on leave. I am beside myself with anticipation. Jen is very excited as well. I'll be two to three days in transit. I plan on taking Shogun with me, which Nick sent me in a big box of other books. It is pretty big, so it should suffice for the interminable plane rides there and back. I may end up sleeping the whole way, though, to try to fake out my jet lag. I am going to try to sneak an Irish coffee when we make our stop in Ireland. After nine months of no alcohol, that should put me out like a light.

I have been working like crazy. I didn't think it was possible to do more work than I'd been doing, but I guess we all discover things about ourselves on a deployment. My new boss is working me a lot more than the old one. I guess it's his prerogative, but I don't have to like it.

It is hard for me to admit how burned out I've become. I find it very hard to get out of bed in the morning. My buddies coming back from leave tell me it just gets worse after leave, so I have that to look forward to. I love my platoon, but I've been in the same job for almost two years now. I need some new challenges and things to learn. I need some weekends.

Well, this may be the last entry before I'm home. Hopefully I'll get there quickly. I promise to not keep you informed about how my leave is going, because I'll be extremely busy doing absolutely nothing. Don't even call me for the first week.

Probably Because It Sounds Scary

She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.
-Frost

I saw a big camel spider out by my office last night. It wasn’t enormous, but it was pretty big. It kept trying to get inside, but since there’s a step up into the office, it was falling off and not making it in. I decided to leave it alone since it couldn’t get in. Camel spiders are actually not arachnids; they are more closely related to scorpions. I guess it’s all the family arthropoda, but I’m not a big biology guy.

There was a huge op going on this last week, and whereas last time I got to lead the Forward Logistics Element, this time I had to stay back, probably because my counterpart is on leave. I was kind of upset that I wasn’t getting to participate, but the three days that the battalion was gone were probably the best of the deployment for me. There was not much work to do, and nobody in line at the DFAC or taking up equipment in the gym. I actually got to watch a movie the whole way through without getting sidetracked. I was able to sit down and do my work each day in one sitting, rather than getting distracted by a million different issues and having the process take all day.

We keep hearing about operational security, and people are always cautioning us against even hinting at a specific date that we will return home. But I talked to some guys that came back from leave, and they said that there are already big banners up all over base back home, saying “WELCOME HOME” with the date we get back right under it. It wouldn’t take a genius, or even a very smart person, to figure out exactly when each echelon will get off the plane. I am pleased that the dates that keep getting tossed around for redeployment are about a month earlier than when I thought I’d get home. That is fine with me. I’ll take an extra month at home.

I have been working out, like I talk about nearly every entry, and I’m pleased with the results. However, several of my buddies have remarked to me how white I am, and that if I got some sun on me, got a little darker, it would make me look much more defined. So the last couple days I’ve been crawling up on the roof to lay out on a cot that I threw up there. This afternoon I realized when I was finishing up that if you stand up, up there, you can see right into downtown Tikrit. I realized that anybody with a decent rifle and a scope could put one in me very easily; so I think I will just put the cot down on the ground and tan down there. I can imagine the news story now: “a soldier was killed today by a sniper while he was, um, getting a tan.” All my friends back home would say “I had no idea he was so into sunbathing.” Ha. What would the letter to my wife say? Usually, even if it’s an accident, they try to church it up a little, make it sound like the guy was a credit to the unit and not screwing around when he bought it. I’m not sure how easy that would be if I got shot while tanning. Probably when she got up to heaven and saw me, she’d punch me.

My wife is very excited about me coming home on leave. I am as well; I know down to almost the exact hour when I will get on the chopper to go down to Kuwait. I am interested to see the changes she’s made to the house while I’ve been gone. It is not easy being an army wife. In my short time in the army, I’ve seen it ruin relationships of all kinds. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends; you name it, and somewhere, a deployment has screwed it up. It has made me kind of paranoid about my friends’ marriages; for a while now, in my nightly prayers, I have been detouring off into praying for the marriages of people in my family and my circle of friends. You realize how fragile some of them are when you live this life; you also are surprised, sometimes, at how strong some of them are. I want mine to be one of the strong ones.