Half Way To Home.

This afternoon, the weather is perfect: Sunny, 75 degrees F, light breeze from the south, and just enough clouds to block the sun from getting too hot. But it’s not home. We all have, in our own ways, found things to occupy our time and minds. We distract ourselves from the tugs on the heartstrings: the little boy at home that needs a daddy, the wife that needs a husband, the colleagues at work that faithfully cover their partner’s call, the friends that miss their buddy. Whether it is working out at the gym, reading books, taking on-line classes, playing computer games, socializing, journaling, eating, or sleeping, we all avoid thinking of home.

This task is at times very easy to accomplish. The army tries its best to make a very foreign land feel like home. There is a movie theater that plays just released movies. There are great fitness facilities that rival anything in the US (although they are usually covered in the ubiquitous fine dust that finds its way into every corner of one’s life here). We have internet and pool tables in nicely appointed “coffee shopes” with nice names like “aloha” and “the palms” and “the VIP room”.

For us that would normally be working in a hospital, the easiest way to have time pass quickly is by doing our job. The irony with this is that when we are working it means someone else is hurting. So in a way, we feel a bit guilty that we want to do what we are trained to do. Now one might argue, “It’s the same situation back home…if you are operating, someone else is having a bad day.” Now this is true, but back home, they are….well….HOME. They recover at home, their loved ones are at home, their friends are home, heck, even their pet is at home. They can shower in their own shower, they can go to the bathroom in privacy of their own bathroom, they can shave without wondering what the heck yellow stain is from on the tray under the mirror where you have to set your razor as you rinse your face. And you don’t have to use lamisil to prevent athlete’s foot from ruining your runs in the morning. All of those things are taken for granted when you are home. And our soldiers, when they recover here, go back to work when they are done recovering, hence the expression, “soldier on…”

But that is what makes the military so unique…so much like a family. We must provide a home for each other when our loved ones are millions of miles away. We rely on each other. Each MOS (Military Operational Specialty) is designed to be a part of a whole. And only when we are all doing our best in our given field do we feel truly “at home in the army”. That is when you hear sentiments expressed that indicate that the soldier doesn’t fight for a cause, but rather for the guy on his right and his left. It’s TRUE! I, as an individual, am not here for some glorious cause of freedom…although at times I do desperately wish that everyone could experience the freedoms I enjoy, rather, I get the most satisfaction, the most fulfillment, the greatest sense of purpose, when a soldier rolls into the ER in need of medical care! In that instant he has come “home” to the CSH…and his family here will fight (sometimes, unfortunately, to the death) to see that he gets the best medical care available anywhere in the world!

So the days go by, and lives move on, both here are back home. Each connected only by skype, email, letters and care packages. (speaking of care packages… when there is mail call, the best thing in the world is to get a letter or package from home. You could put a piece of dirt from the gutter in the road in front of your house in a package and send it here, and it would make the day of the soldier who received it. Really! It doesn’t matter what you send…its amazing. A friend of mine got a gum wrapper in an envelope that his wife sent with a little note saying: I just popped this piece of gum in my mouth and thought of you. And you know what he did… It is now proudly displayed on the wall in his CHU as a reminder that his wife was thinking of him when she put that silly little piece of gum in her mouth.)

And now that this blog entry is far too long for my attention span, I will close with a few pictures of the surprising greenery in the desert…the tigris river runs nearby and so here we are by the “stream in the desert”, 7-11, the care package that my awesome brother, sister-in law, nephew and nieces sent to me, and the crescent moon that shines above while “call to prayer” eerily echoes through the streets of Ninevah………I hope they are praying for peace.