Emergency Leave

Emergency Leave

During a year in the desert, most soldiers have the opportunity to take two weeks of R&R leave (rest and recuperation). Usually this is a time of family reunions, total relaxation, and quality time spent with husbands, wives, children, and extended families. Soldiers will eat meals they have been craving, and drink a little if that's something they enjoy. After about a week or so, it’s as if they never left. They are engrossed in their children's lives, though they know they only have another week until it’s time to leave again. Some soldiers decide not to take leave at all, because they don't want to have to say goodbye a second time. But the second time is not so bad. You know where you're returning to, you know what to expect, so the fear of the unknown is not so strong. Also, you're not leaving for a year this time, but only for as long as you have left. You've got some time under your belt.

But many soldiers are called home on Emergency Leave due to a catastrophe, a death, or the imminent death of a family member. You still get a break from combat. You still get to eat some good food and relax a bit, but you are not on R&R - you are home because something tragedy has happened or is happening to one of the people you love most in this world. So Emergency Leave, while still a blessing in its own way, is also a significant emotional event. And this is what happened to me.

I had an exciting morning at work. I went outside the wire on an Air Mobile mission in which I led a team to clear some buildings and check a piece of land for weapons caches. I was back on the FOB and sitting in the chow hall by noon. I had been speaking to my family a lot, monitoring my mother's condition as best I could. She has been battling breast cancer, chemotherapy, and radiation. She was getting very close, and my family was concerned she wouldn't make it past a few more days. After conversations with my sister and dad that afternoon, we decided it was time for me to come home, while mom could still understand that I was there, and she could still speak. She’d been asking for me, whispering my name in the long hours of the night. I was going to take leave in January, but I couldn’t wait any longer. So they called the Red Cross.

Yes, it’s that bad. The kindest soul God ever created is fading fast from this place unto the next. He wants to take her home and I have been discussing it with Him. My sister says my mom looks very different than she did the last time I saw her six months ago. To be honest, I’m almost more nervous about walking into that room and seeing my sweet mother, than I was when I flew in the helicopter that morning to lead a team into enemy territory.

In the span of 36 hours, I was in the bed of a 5-ton truck, three helicopters, one HMMWV, one C-130 military airplane, four Middle Eastern cities– and now, after two back-to-back 7 hour flights, my fourth country in two days – America. Now I'm the face in the window, traveling at 500 mph over West Virginia, and in less than an hour I'll be standing in Atlanta. What better place to enter the country? What could be more perfectly American? I feel like a fish out of water. I was so involved in my work in that I haven’t prepared mentally for being home, and I wasn’t planning on coming yet. One thinks of leave as a good thing, and perhaps this will be. This is a tough situation to find the goodness or fairness in, but I’ll keep looking.

I’ve been through customs twice, and I think all the authorities are convinced that I’m not trying to smuggle contraband into this country from . My bag is already checked, and I wasn’t allowed to wear civilian clothes on the flight out of Kuwait International, so I am still in my uniform. I typically shy away from this, but I couldn’t help it this time, and I really don’t care. Walking through the airport is a trip in and of itself. There are your early morning worker types in the TRAM and they're all business, no smiles. In fact, most people I’ve encountered seem very much preoccupied and talking on their cell phones. I had forgotten how prevalent cell phones had become. No one seems very aware of their surroundings – who is in front of them or behind them – a number of times I have been cut off or run into without so much as an “excuse me.”

I certainly don’t expect a welcoming party or any special treatment. I’m simply glad to be alive and able to see my family, however unexpected my travels in the last 24 hours were. But there are some folks, perhaps ten this morning who went out of their way to say hello and thank you. All I do is smile and nod. It’s humbling, because I’m just doing my job. Just now as I was writing a man walked by holding a young boy’s hand. He stared at me for a moment, sitting here in uniform typing on my laptop, and then he pointed with the hand that held the boy’s, and said “There’s one of the guys that protect us, son. Say hi to him.” The boy dutifully said hi. Again I just smiled and nodded. What else to do? 


I was quite excited to treat myself to a caramel Frapuccino from Starbucks. When I ordered it, the young lady working said, “You can pick it up right over there, honey. It’s on me today.”  Didn’t expect that one. A little while later I sat down at a restaurant for some nice greasy bacon and eggs. A man next to me began a conversation, and when he paid for his meal, he also insisted he pay for mine. Then he shook my hand and thanked me profusely for the work I’m doing. He’s got a friend who is a Lieutenant Colonel and is about to return to . Like me, he has a family member battling cancer. I appreciated his good intentions.

But most people look me up and down – I don’t think they’ve seen a lot of the new Army ACU uniform -  and they walk on by. That’s just fine. I would expect nothing more. As Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin sings, “The Song Remains the Same.”  I love the smell of coffee and the lazy casual atmosphere of this airport. I love watching the crowds go by. I don’t mind the rude people. Happy to be here, that’s all. I like the fact that I can hear the Beatles “ Penny Lane” playing over the speakers of the retail store I’m sitting near. I wonder what orchestra of emotions the next few weeks of my life will be composed of.

NOLA

New Orleans is weeping. Many of her roofs are covered with blue tarps, giving the city the look of a refugee camp from the air. Many of her stores are still closed, and the ones that are open have shorter hours. There are piles of trash everywhere. Refrigerators, water-logged carpet, childrens' swing sets, and a thousand other accoutrements of the lives people were enjoying before the storm. Some areas still look gorgeous. As you drive uptown on St. Charles avenue, he ancient oak trees that personify this place stand firm, and the homes look the same.

But other areas were utterly devastated. 50% of the city still has no electricity. Hundreds of thousands are still displaced, with no home to come back to. In one neighborhood in particular, I saw a four block area in which every last home had been gutted. The only thing left inside was the framing that once held the sheetrock for the walls. All of the yards and medians were filled with debris. All of the windows were gone, the home fronts sad and lonely. Where there was once a vibrant neighborhood near Lake Pontchartrain, there is now only a water-logged nightmare. And the residents that are still here, or have come back to assess the damage, like my parents, have the look of victims. This Hurricans has had a mass psychological effect on the people of this city. they're collectively depressed.

There are National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets with loaded weapons. There are HMMWVs (no armor, of course) all over the place. You see soldiers working beside fireman and police. There are crews going around as part of the "Blue Roof" program, putting blue tarps on damaged rooftops. The tarps say FEMA on them. There are base camps and FEMA centers and Red Cross shelters and incident command centers all over. There is one small park in an historic area called Algiers Point, where some people are giving free massages to any who want them. The Red Cross is also giving out food and supplies. It's bizarre to come from Ramadi, Iraq, where soldiera are fighting such a brutal enemy every day, to my hometown, where I see soldiers trying to secure this broken city.

The city has a distinctly different feel to it. Physically, of course, because commerce isn't back up to where it was before the storms and floodwaters. And of course the tourism has suffered. But also spiritually, and emotionally. You can see it in people's eyes. They've been through a lot. Some, like my parents, evacuated for a month and then returned to a home that was perfectly livable after a few weeks of hard work. Some left, and their homes were catastrophically ruined. Many lost friends and loved ones. Others tied their boats to the second story balcony of their homes. As the flood waters rose, they climbed in and prepared to find safety. Then they heard screams and plaintive calls for help. So, of course, they helped. They made trips around their neighborhood, seeing it from a perspective they never might have imagined, where the rooftops of the homes people made dinner in every night were mere obstacles in the water – objects to steer around so you don’t ruin the prop on your motor. While one particular man I know was helping people as best he could with his boat, someone decided it would be fun to try to shoot him. You have to wonder what makes some people tick.

The human mind has a way of adapting to new environments so easily. After I had been here a few days, my wife and kids flew in from Utah. When I saw my little girl running up to me in the airport, it was like I'd never left. My son was asleep on my wife's shoulder. I took him in my arms. He lifted his head up, opened his eyes, said "Hi daddy," and snuggled his head right into my neck. What an incredible feeling after not seeing them for almost six months. The intense love I feel for my kids is so easy to remember, so readily accessible.

All I'll say about my mother is that she's in a state of grace, and seems close to leaving this life behind, and we're simply doing our best to make the last part of her journey as comfortable as we can. This has been the most difficult thing I've ever done. She's a strong woman. She keeps hanging on to life. It's amazing and sometimes tragic to watch the endless cycle of change -the seasons, the emotions, the tides, the sun and moon, life and death.

Being in the states hasn't been what I might have imagined. There has been no celebration. My birthday came and went. I did not care. That's because I'm basically involved in hospice for my mother, and I find myself in a devastated city which I left almost 15 years ago. During those years, I have lived all over the country, and visited New Orleans countless times. It is not the place I wanted to raise my children. But god I love this city. It has such a unique personality, so many family and friends still live here, and of course it is a vestibule of nostalgia, a port of memories docked forever on the widest turn in the Mississippi River. I will always visit New Orleans. I hope she can recover. I have felt the pulse of the homeland, and it is good. I have yearned to travel back out west and rest my eyes upon those mountains. I have eaten some of the foods I missed so much. I ate a lot of seafood. I ate crabs and crawfish and stuffed eggplant. I are shrimp and oyster po-boys. I have spent valuable time with my distraught family. I was able to see my wife and kids, and hold them in my arms. I know the work of the next six or seven months will speed past me, delivering those children back into my arms, and me back into their lives full-time.


I have stared up at the sky at night here in New Orleans and remembered doing it in Iraq. And I have realized, more than ever, that home is where your heart is. Soon I'll be back in the Middle East, and I'll have the companionship of all my good friends there, and we'll work hard together. And I know that after a short while it will feel as if I've never left. And I know that when my mother does leave this world, I'll be able to rest so much easier remembering the time I had with her - the tender moments, the quiet mornings, the caretaking, and the pure, unadulterated love we have for each other. And I will always be grateful to have had the chance to be with her again.

So Goodbye , America, for a spell. I'll stand on your shores again one day soon.


Back to Iraq

Walking out of that room was by far the most difficult and heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever done. I had to tell my mom goodbye, and I know for a fact it will be the last time. It was harder than training for war, harder than being in a war, harder than the longest climb, harder than learning the patience of being a parent. I miss her very much already, and once again I’ll say how very grateful I am to have had the chance to spend a few weeks with her in the final days.

This place has not changed. It is still desolate and dirty. But the soldier’s attitudes are outstanding. They take things in stride, work hard, and keep their sense of humor about them. I am lucky to be a part of such a great organization. When I first returned to Northern Iraq, I spent the night on another FOB. I met up with a buddy of mine and crashed on a cot in his room. For just a minute there it was almost like being in college or something, coming back from Christmas vacation. Then I remembered where I was, and the fun was sucked out of the moment. The next morning I was in a convoy which drove for the better part of an hour on the most dangerous road in the world, and then for a little while through downtown Ramadi. It was quite a wake up call to have to slow down for traffic jams and wave vehicles off that come too close, and to see all those Iraqi people living their lives in the midst of this war.

But I am back and I am as content as possible, considering the circumstances. I continue to support the Battalion’s communications needs. I continue to pray in my own way. I have a kind word or a joke for my friends. And I continue to smile, in my soul, where it counts,  in the face of life's adversity.

"Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."    -David Searls

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