By Matt
On Friday afternoon, I left Gardez, the city where I have spent the past nine months, for the last time.
The departure was routine and unceremonious. Few people came to see us off. I experienced no cathartic moment, no final revelation about all that my time here has meant. The mountains surrounding the base, whose contours I have memorized, never revealed their secrets.
We boarded a helicopter and flew away. That was it.
I had wanted it to be a Hollywood moment, one where all the memories of the last year came flooding back at once. One in which I would see the war and my small part in it in a new light. I wanted to be moved. All I got instead was a pair of earplugs and a broken seat.
Still, I can’t complain. My tour in Afghanistan is officially over. I am coming home.
I, and the handful of soldiers with whom I’m traveling, will spend the next few days base-hopping our way to Kyrgyzstan, the final debarkation point from the “theater of operations.” By mid-March I'll be back in the United States, where Molly will be waiting for me in Savannah. Before month’s end I’ll be a civilian again.
***
I find I’m more excited for the future than I’ve ever been, even if that sentiment has been a long time coming.
I spent a lot of time this year dwelling on all the things I was missing out on back home: friendships I might have cultivated, places I might have traveled and strides I might have made in my nascent journalism career. There were tough stretches last summer and fall when I felt downright sorry for myself. But I shouldn’t have.
I now recognize that this experience has proved fulfilling on all those counts and more.
First, several soldiers with whom I’ve served in Afghanistan have become close friends, people I hope I’ll keep in touch with for years to come. Other friends and colleagues back home have written to me extensively throughout my tour, giving me an insight into their lives – and mine – that, ironically, I might never have gained if I weren’t halfway around the world.
I’ve gotten to travel, too, even if it’s not the kind of travel I envisioned. This deployment has carried me across a breathtakingly beautiful yet utterly shattered country. In the devastated cities of eastern Afghanistan, I’ve been deeply affected by people whose faces reflect the trauma of perpetual war. In rural mountain villages, I’ve encountered extremes of poverty and piety that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Finally, my time in Afghanistan has rejuvenated my passion for writing, largely as a result of “Here and Far.” To be sure, composing this blog with Molly was the best decision we made this year, and it has immeasurably strengthened our bond. But as someone for whom writing had become more of a chore than a pastime in recent years, I have rediscovered its power to lift me up and to help make sense of my world.
***
My return home from Afghanistan means more than just the end of a deployment. It coincides with another major milestone in my life. This coming June, having completed my eight-year "military service obligation," I will resign my Army commission for good. My military career will be over, and I will never again be recalled to duty.
My resignation will be bittersweet. It will mark the end of a remarkable journey that began at West Point in 1998, when I was only 18. I showed up that year full of idealism, enamored of the academy’s timeless traditions and its promise of producing men of character and integrity. However, the romanticized expectations I held of the Army I would one day enter were dispelled by the realities of the coming decade.
For me, the national distress and tumult of the last 10 years – 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, Afghanistan – have been intensely personal. Because of the Army, I’ve spent the greater part of my twenties in and out of war zones. I was marooned in Iraq throughout the tortuous recovery of New Orleans, my hometown, in 2005 and 2006. And at the beginning of 2009, just as I was settling into a new life as a journalist in New York, I had to put it all on hold for one last duty. I regarded my recall as an ignominious way of concluding a commitment to my country that I once made so willingly.
And yet despite all that, there are aspects of my time in the service that I will always look back on with fondness and pride.
Thanks to the Army, I’ve spent most of my adult years living or traveling in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, places I probably never would have gotten to see. The Army has pushed me to my mental and physical limits, challenging me in a way that no other institution could. And I’ve made life-long friends whose loyalty I wouldn’t hesitate to stake my life on. Above all, the Army has been my family: providing shelter and protection, instilling discipline and fostering an unparalleled sense of belonging.
I can honestly say that my years as a soldier have been the best of my life. And I’ll be sad to have them end.
***
For now, I plan to spend the next few months getting my life back in order.
In April I’ll take some time off to decompress: a trip to St. Barth’s with Molly and her family, followed by a week in New Orleans during Jazz Fest with mine. I look forward to long runs with Molly through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and to watching dozens of movies at home with my dad. This summer I plan to cycle solo across America, a feat I’ve wanted to perform for years.
Beyond that, however, I’m unsure of what the future holds. In the coming years, I envision myself doing any number of things. I may return to journalism or go back to school or even become active in politics – maybe all of them. Time will tell.
I learned long ago that the experience of war has a way of wiping the slate clean and rearranging one’s priorities. My tour in Afghanistan has been no exception. It’s taught me that life is fragile, short and often spent at the mercy of forces beyond our control. It’s reminded me of dreams I once had for my life, dreams that were stifled by professional responsibilities, financial concerns or frivolous distractions.
And for all the turmoil this year in Afghanistan has brought into my life, it has, in the end, made up for it. I’ve been given the kind of chance a person rarely gets in life, especially at my age.
To start over.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Translation
By Molly
I called a member of the Family Readiness Group, or FRG, last Tuesday night before dinner. This group, based outside Atlanta near the headquarters of the National Guard battalion with which Matt has served this year, is made up primarily of military wives. Like thousands of similar organizations across the country, its purpose is to keep those here informed about those far away, or “downrange,” as Matt tells me to say.
I called because Matt is coming home soon and I plan to be there when he arrives. I wanted to make sure I am in the right place at the right time to welcome him back. But between the acronyms and Army speak, I had absolutely no idea how to make that happen.
It was the first time I’ve ever made a call to Georgia, actually. Physically, I’ve only been to the state once, when I traveled to Atlanta to report on a high school robotics competition. Then, I was ferried back and forth from a nondescript hotel to the Georgia Dome for three consecutive days. We ate at McDonalds and Starbucks. I don’t think it counts.
On Tuesday, while a pot of tomato sauce simmered on my stove, I threw my questions at an almost uncomfortably friendly Army wife, who spoke with a lilting southern accent. She spouted esoteric Armyisms that have become moderately familiar thanks to Matt, terms like HHC and ADVON, yellow ribbons and redeployment and IRR. I tried to follow along, though Army is ultimately a language I do not speak. I smiled when she called me ma’am.
On the phone, we covered a range of unintelligible details: The timetables and phone trees, abbreviations and organization of the days to come. She told me told me about the FRG’s use of Twitter and Facebook to get messages to members of the group. I wrote some things down, though remained relatively confused.
But not everything we talked about was unfamiliar. Some things made total sense: The macaroni and cheese at Paula Deen’s restaurant in Savannah, for one—a dish, she said with a charming giggle, that is so creamy that strings of melted cheddar can be pulled from plate to mouth a mile long. She told me about her husband, and about the hordes of women and children who would be waiting outside the gates of the base, raring with excitement, when their soldiers arrived home.
I eventually ran out of questions to ask. But I didn’t want to hang up.
I’ve felt very isolated this year, something I’ve written about here many times before. I didn’t anticipate the loneliness of loving someone deployed, of having a long-distance relationship to Afghanistan until it became a defining feature of my day-to-day life. Here, family and friends have surrounded me with unflagging support. But there is hardly anyone I know who has experience with this war. How could they understand?
As the days of Matt’s deployment dwindle, however, I have begun to realize the good that has come out of something so difficult. Knowing Matt has widened the aperture of my worldview, and that of every member of my family. The newspaper headlines, the ones that have always been disturbing but never tingling with fear, no longer exist on a different plane. The disparity between here and far, them and us, together and apart has taken on a greater significance.
But none of that has made me fluent in military-speak. It hasn’t made the logistics of being at an Army base in rural Georgia at an unknown hour on an undetermined day any less daunting. It was refreshing to have a cheerful woman from the FRG kindly try to explain what has been so incomprehensible this year. It was surprising to be understood, even if it wasn’t mutual. After all, as an Army wife, she is living it, too.
“So how long have y’all been together?” she asked before we hung up.
“About two and a half years.”
“Wow,” she said. “And he’s been gone for almost a whole one of those…”
“Yeah.”
I sighed.
“I’ll bet you’re ready for him to come home.”
“You have no idea.”
“Oh,” she said. “But I do.”
I called a member of the Family Readiness Group, or FRG, last Tuesday night before dinner. This group, based outside Atlanta near the headquarters of the National Guard battalion with which Matt has served this year, is made up primarily of military wives. Like thousands of similar organizations across the country, its purpose is to keep those here informed about those far away, or “downrange,” as Matt tells me to say.
I called because Matt is coming home soon and I plan to be there when he arrives. I wanted to make sure I am in the right place at the right time to welcome him back. But between the acronyms and Army speak, I had absolutely no idea how to make that happen.
It was the first time I’ve ever made a call to Georgia, actually. Physically, I’ve only been to the state once, when I traveled to Atlanta to report on a high school robotics competition. Then, I was ferried back and forth from a nondescript hotel to the Georgia Dome for three consecutive days. We ate at McDonalds and Starbucks. I don’t think it counts.
On Tuesday, while a pot of tomato sauce simmered on my stove, I threw my questions at an almost uncomfortably friendly Army wife, who spoke with a lilting southern accent. She spouted esoteric Armyisms that have become moderately familiar thanks to Matt, terms like HHC and ADVON, yellow ribbons and redeployment and IRR. I tried to follow along, though Army is ultimately a language I do not speak. I smiled when she called me ma’am.
On the phone, we covered a range of unintelligible details: The timetables and phone trees, abbreviations and organization of the days to come. She told me told me about the FRG’s use of Twitter and Facebook to get messages to members of the group. I wrote some things down, though remained relatively confused.
But not everything we talked about was unfamiliar. Some things made total sense: The macaroni and cheese at Paula Deen’s restaurant in Savannah, for one—a dish, she said with a charming giggle, that is so creamy that strings of melted cheddar can be pulled from plate to mouth a mile long. She told me about her husband, and about the hordes of women and children who would be waiting outside the gates of the base, raring with excitement, when their soldiers arrived home.
I eventually ran out of questions to ask. But I didn’t want to hang up.
I’ve felt very isolated this year, something I’ve written about here many times before. I didn’t anticipate the loneliness of loving someone deployed, of having a long-distance relationship to Afghanistan until it became a defining feature of my day-to-day life. Here, family and friends have surrounded me with unflagging support. But there is hardly anyone I know who has experience with this war. How could they understand?
As the days of Matt’s deployment dwindle, however, I have begun to realize the good that has come out of something so difficult. Knowing Matt has widened the aperture of my worldview, and that of every member of my family. The newspaper headlines, the ones that have always been disturbing but never tingling with fear, no longer exist on a different plane. The disparity between here and far, them and us, together and apart has taken on a greater significance.
But none of that has made me fluent in military-speak. It hasn’t made the logistics of being at an Army base in rural Georgia at an unknown hour on an undetermined day any less daunting. It was refreshing to have a cheerful woman from the FRG kindly try to explain what has been so incomprehensible this year. It was surprising to be understood, even if it wasn’t mutual. After all, as an Army wife, she is living it, too.
“So how long have y’all been together?” she asked before we hung up.
“About two and a half years.”
“Wow,” she said. “And he’s been gone for almost a whole one of those…”
“Yeah.”
I sighed.
“I’ll bet you’re ready for him to come home.”
“You have no idea.”
“Oh,” she said. “But I do.”
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