absence makes the heart grow fonder

I've been really missing the guard lately and it's kind of freaking me out. Because I DON'T really miss the guard, but I do. I am not really sure what to do with myself without that one screwy weekend per month where everything is not really "real", it's like your own separate alternate universe that no one understands except the people you are with.

I get text messages on guard drill weekend that really take me back. Messages like:

"Must. Cram. Meatball. Into. Donny's. Beer."

I miss Meghanism's, invented words like refreshness and perfemation, and completely false factoids like 'did you know that a McDonald's hamburger bun has as much sugar as a McDonald's shake?' (no it doesn't!)

I miss the smell of bacon and eggs on Sunday morning and Johnny O's dimples.

I miss building BDU-33's, even if it were 8 boxes of them, and even if we did have to tear them all back down again the next guard drill weekend because we never had to build them in the first place. (That's about 5,600 practice bombs)

I miss shaking out our dusty chem gear once a year and grumbling about having to put our sour gas masks on for fit tests.

I even miss getting made fun of for not once, but TWICE leaving my car running with the keys locked in the ignition.


There are plenty of things I don't miss. Lots, and lots, and lots of things I don't miss. But it's funny how those things fade away, and you are left with the parts that you do miss, and you wish you could just go back for a weekend and have it all be the same. But, it never will be.

General Lehnert

I had the privilege of meeting Major General Lehnert for the second time this weekend. He is retiring in a few months and apparently has been offered several top notch jobs, and has turned them all down (he is currently Commanding General, Marine Corps Installations West). I don't normally rave over high ranking officers, in fact most of the time I think they make people officers to get them out of the way of real work, but this man is an upstanding example of American service.

He was charged with the duty of standing up Guantanamo in the first hours of the war in Afghanistan (literally, he had 96 hours to create the holding facility). He strove to abide by the Geneva Conventions and international law in the midst of a policy void. Rumsfeld eventually pushed him out in pursuit of more useful information, and Guantanamo became the blight that it is today.

See the article in the Washington Post that was published in January:

When Gitmo Was (Relatively) Good

The Lonely Soldier Monologues

I was interviewed for a book on women veterans a few years ago. It is coming out soon. The stories from the book have been woven into a play consisting of dramatic monologues.

I am going up to see it on Saturday. I am looking forward to it, but also a little nervous. I have been very involved with the "veteran scene" the past year in DC and I feel like that's almost obscured my own personal experience, all the feelings that made me get involved with veterans have kind of been lost in the cobwebs...I think it will be somewhat strange to dust them off.

Review

Dr. John Pryor

I've been very swept up in the holiday season this year, thoroughly enjoying my time with family and friends and munching on every delicious morsel that has crossed my path.

But, today I read that an Army surgeon was hit by a mortar and was killed on Christmas Day, and I started thinking about all the men and women who do not have what I have this holiday season. The link that follows this sentence is tragic, heartbreaking, and stopped me dead in my tracks this morning while I wept and said a prayer.

Soldiers Angels Blog

Air Force commendation medal

I received an Air Force Commendation Medal from my unit in the mail the other day. It was a nice surprise. My boss at my job in DC is a former Marine, and he laughed at me for getting it in the mail...but that's kind of how we do in the Air National Guard. Not quite as much "military bearing" or whatchamacallit. I've actually seen promotional stripes simply handed to people before.

Actually, come to think of it, the medal wasn't included, I have to go buy that myself, but I got the certificate that allows me to claim I am a recipient of it. Which apparently carries some fierce penalties!

"Any false written or verbal claim to a decoration or medal or any wear, purchase, attempt to purchase, solicitation for purchase, mailing, shipping, import, export, manufacture, sale, attempt to sell, advertising for sale, trade, or barter of a decoration or medal authorized for wear by authorized military members or veterans is a federal offense punishable by up to six months in jail and up to a $5,000 fine."

New York Times article

Here is a sweet article about the new GI Bill and returning veterans. Virtually everyone I've worked with since I've been in DC and some of my good friends were quoted in this article, which was a Sunday NYT article and ran over five pages online.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/education/edlife/vets.html

making sense of things

I just finished reading Love My Rifle More Than You. I related to a lot of it, though not all. I think the author and I are very different girls, but some things are the same. Many things are different. I never experienced any guy physically grabbing me, I didn't watch anyone take their last breaths, and I always got to piss in a port-a-john.

But she talked a lot about withdrawing, because she didn't want to deal with advances anymore, and I could relate to that. Just completely shutting down, shutting everyone out, because you are sick and tired of being taken advantage of if you open yourself up to some of the guys you work with. You don't smile, you don't make eye contact, no small talk, no friendliness that could possibly be misinterpreted for an open door for an advance.

She had her waking dreams, as did I. The ones that consume you after the fact. The medic flirting with me my first time volunteering in the E.D. (me thinking "is this really happening?", trying not to be rude but trying to make it stop) and they wheel in the bloody, hairy Latino guy, kind of stubby, mostly I remember him being really bloody and everyone snapping into a frenzy, shouting and pointing and waving and working. I'm standing there, kind of stunned, tossing gauze and blankets and syringes at whoever yells loudest. And suddenly one nurse flips the guy on his side and jams two fingers up the guy's ass, a cavity check. I reeled. I was not expecting that. My stomach churned. It was a lot all at once, a very salient, bloody memory that I have never really spoken of until now.

Then they wheeled they guy out, on his way to xrays and surgery and the ICU and Germany and home. And the medic immediately resumed flirting, and I remember feeling angry and indignant, sick to my stomach, like screw you, screw you all, you animals, did you even feel ANYTHING watching that guy bleed all over the floor.

In hindsight I know it's a coping mechanism, how else could we deal, other than to pretend life is normal? It's all part of the job description, we maintain our cool and calm and plow through each day, flirting with the new female volunteers no matter what crosses our paths in the meanwhile, attempting to retain a sense of normalcy.

But I couldn't make sense of it, never have.