deployment

So when I arrived in Saudi Arabia in August of 2001, as there was no chemical, biological, or nuclear war going on, all I prepared for was to be bored until it was time to go home. Obviously, that plan failed.

Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one out- come is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up with each of those sisters as if a single day hasn__ passed. Only we can truly understand one another; not even our husbands can fully grasp what we__e been through with each other and how ironclad those bonds are.

We all reek of weariness. A room full of the black-soul phenomenon. All of a sudden I don__ feel so alone in the recognition of my own mixed feelings mirrored in those faces. In those faces, I see that the seemingly repugnant behavior wasn__ so atrocious after all. Everything is forgiv- able. Everything we said and did and felt was magnified by the pres- ence of something we couldn__ control, and that fact definitely brought out the crazy. Each of us will carry a balance of regret and pride for the rest of our lives.

Oh God, what do we do?""Do?" Levi said, looking oddly triumphant, like his plans for the night had finally materialized, Like he had been hoping for some disaster like this to happen so he didn't have to be bored anymore. Like even a dying girl in his bathtub was better than calling his mother to confirm that his grandfather actually was dead, and that what he had heard on the answering machine wasn't a mere auditory hallucination. "We save her, of course.

I did exactly what you told me to do, Nick. Didn't you tell me to just write the stupid book already? And that even doing the worst thing on the planet had to count for something? Well I can't think of anything worse than what I'm about to do, which is why I think you deserve an explanation. And maybe after you read it you'll realize why I don't have the hope that you have. The truth is this: We begin and end alone.

The world he had left was not ready for his return, or rather, he was not ready to return to the world he had left.

For the good that I would: I do not, but the evil which I would not, I do.

Most likely, they were writing the same type of macho bullshit that I wrote, trying to sound tough with their words in case words were all that made it home.

The Crazy feeling builds and builds. It never stops, it never ends, there is no relief.

I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.

As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't say it. I'm not sure he knows what it is.

Afghanistan changed him, but Iraq sculpted him.

There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.

But the shock wears off, more quickly for some, but eventually for most. Fast food and alcohol are seductive, and I didn__ fight too hard. Your old routine is easy to fall back into, preferences and tastes return. It__ not hard to be a fussy, overstuffed American. After a couple of months, home is no longer foreign, and you are free to resume your old life. I thought I did. Resume my old life, that is. I was wrong.

My wife is alone in our full bed too. Her husband, the father of her children, never came back from Iraq. When I deployed the first time she asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. Her grandmother would know what to do.__ow do I live with him being gone? How do I help him when he comes home?_ my wife asked. __e won__ come home,_ her grandmother answered. __he war will kill him one way or the other. I hope for you that he dies while he is there. Otherwise the war will kill him at home. With you._ My wife__ grandfather died of a heart attack on the living-room floor, long before she was born. It took a decade or two for World War II to kill him. When would my war kill me?

I hate myself that I wasn't there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He needed my help, and I couldn't feel it.

You__l never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isn__ your idea of love, is it? You__ rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here.

It is something that cannot be explained or even understood until you__e lived it; a man can__ know or fully appreciate his life until he__ been close enough to taste the end of it, and the bonds forged in battle are some of the strongest a man could ever have. We are brothers, the men of ODA 022, and though we didn__ have the same blood running through our veins, we had all shed the blood of others together, and knew that none of us would hesitate to step in the way of fate and take a round or jump on a grenade to save one another.