We all got back to the base later than planned, IED's have a way of delaying convoys like that. We sat there on the tarmac just waiting, hoping, and praying that the big steel beast would show up to take us home. It had been too long since I've seen a good pair of tits and some cold beer. Everyone got to go home but there were more boxes full and less seats filled than when we started this trip through hell. I kept looking at my watch, "Fuck man it's already been six hours how much longer do we have to wait?"
"Shut the fuck up and wait, it will be here when it gets here. You wanna police call till then? Or maybe we should extend you?"
"No Staff Sergeant."
"Good, then shut the fuck up and wait."
Fucking Staff Sergeant, always busting someones balls.
We started this trip on a plane and I guess thats how we end it, looking out the windows after we pulled away from the place we called hell (or home, depends on how you look at it) for almost a year feels strange. I remember looking out the window and thinking, 'Why the fuck would anyone wanna live here? Look at all that space and to think I walked around most of it...Seriously though...why would you live here?' but I remembered I lived in the desert too, and I volunteered to do it. Fucking crazy huh?
Making the transition back is something you can't explain, but I'll try. Its like getting in a fight with ten people and then trying to bring your adrenaline down to play with a small child. It's you destroying and straining your body for months on end and keeping it going with energy drinks, dip, cigarettes, and then coming home to run a marathon.
Transitioning back is something I hate almost as much as the reason I need to do it.
"You gotta take this stress test and some other whatnot for your grapes! Don't take it lightly and don't fuck it up! Okay Johnson?!"
"Yes Staff Sergeant!"
"Good, I want the only mistake I see today to be your face, anything else will just piss me off more. Now go sit down and be quite."
Micro management was perfected while management was destroyed, all by the Marines.
In a day you can see a task change hands multiple times and each time is a different way to implement the "plan of action", all while confusing and pissing off the ones performing that plan.
"Click this button, write this word, sign this line," and all of it saying I won't get mad at the people that sent me to war so they didn't have to go. Old men always send off the young boys, I'm just making it so I can't sue them for when I punch some punk in the face for calling me a baby killer. Being spit on and cursed at by people hurts, but having that happen and your friends aren't there with you makes it hurt worse.
The worst part about coming back was the fucking formations, funerals and goddamn parades. I don't wanna sit on a stupid float covered in these bullshit flags with assholes who say "thank you" like a fucking broken record on repeat and I can't find the off switch. I hated getting dressed up to wish my friends goodbye, I'd rather crack a beer and laugh at the memories of the stupid shit we did.
I don't know what I miss more, being normal or trudging through a wasteland with the most professional assholes I've ever know.
Some people say they know what a real sacrifice is, they are liars.
You'll never know true sacrifice until you sit next to an empty seat that feels like a ghost is sitting next to you.
I guess for some of us it was really just a one way flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment