God, the
things you bitch about in the Army. Do I have to share a tent with guys?
With snoring guys? Do I have to share a room with other people? OMG,
latrines. Hauling jugs of water to do laundry; standing in the burning sun
waiting for chow, walking a mile each way in the heat to get to the internet
cafe, all that stuff. And then you get home and you find that life is strange
and different, and that you miss those things. Most of all you miss the
greatest irritant of all, your fellow soldiers. All along it was there, and you
didn't appreciate it. All along it there, hiding in plain sight, and you
couldn't appreciate it till it was all gone. And then you miss it and them with
your whole heart, and you're left trying to explain how, in war zone, there
were these people who irritated the fuck out of you really bad...and you miss
them. Bad.
Ah, your
fellow soldiers. What a bunch. They irritate you when they're all you've got,
and yet somehow they leave a mark that can't be forgotten once you separate and
you're home...alone. Get a good group of good soldiers, and it's a return to a
kind of innocence, before gender, before any of that stuff. You're not male or
female yet, even though you all might be middle-aged, but something more and
less and all of that: you're just human, and you're tired because you've been
hauling your fucking duffels all over Camp fucking Wolverine, Kuwait, for hours
after a hellacious long flight and you're so tired you just want to close those
burning itching eyes and rest. It's an elemental existence. Sometimes the
elements one gets reduced to are inhuman, but sometimes-----oh, sometimes, it's
a delicate thing, where a huge ex-Marine asks shyly if he can have that set of
Harry Potter some kind soul sent, or a grim-faced Captain sees the handful of
chocolate you've got for him, and his whole face smiles. If you're all bitching
about the same thing, you're not bitching about one another, and that's what
counts. Pity it's bitching that binds people together, pity that it's war that
gives people an appreciation for these tiny little moments that pass unnoticed
in civilian life.
Every
little second of happiness and contentment is finite in a genuine war zone, one
where bullets really fly, where mortars land and people die. You savor those
tiny little bits of privacy or quiet or happiness with some guilt and some
desperation, because they can't last and unless they're happening right here
and now it's hard to put your finger on them later. Only when you're home do
they hit with full force, when you dare to experience them fully, and by then
they're gone, like the smoke from a long-dead fire. You might as well try and
catch the smoke.
You
remember that tent choked full of soldiers in Kuwait, when you were so tired you
dropped your duffels on the cot and leaned against them and conked out till
they shook you awake for chow. You remember the thrill of opening boxes and
handing eagerly-awaited stuff to soldiers, the way their faces light up, the
way they scurry off with their treasures. Sometimes it's a soldier from another
country, in good times and bad. I was feeding some wild Iraqi cats one day with
food purloined from the chow hall when a Polish general stopped dead in the
courtyard and watched, his expression changing to something lost and longing.
After a bit, he came over to me, a tall, spare, stark man, with hollow
cheekbones and a luxurious mustache, to pet the kitties and sigh over them and
what they meant to him. "I...have cat home," he said. "She is
very bad." The mamacat, rasping at him when he paused in petting her,
purred like an engine. "She is boss, she is queen."
"I
have cats, too," I said. We smiled at one another in complete and
international agreement: cats boss us around. I don't know what rank of general
he was, but love of cats reduced him to just another supplicant before the
Almighty Feline. Later on, in the twilight, I came out to put out some more
food and found some already placed there: a bowl of tuna and some milk. Home is
where your pet is, evidently; home is where you have something fluffy to cuddle
and love, no matter your nationality or rank. Even generals bow before cats, it
seems. Not a startling sentiment, but when you see it in action, it touches
you, literally. Every time that general and I spotted one another, after the
salutes there was a tiny little bond. You look for those when you're far from
home, you're living in a weird environment in a strange way. A lot of those
tiny moments can add up.
Later,
after the XO had his first kid---pretty much listening in on the phone the
whole time---and then got leave to go home we goofed around so much before the
convoy that we were late in line le