Almost ready to go

 
We’re on the edge of departure now. We don’t know when exactly (we never know when, not even when we’re sitting on an airfield with duffels stacked around us; when I mobilized to Afghanistan, we were trucked back to barracks twice before a suitable air window opened up), but it won’t be a lot longer.

So many things have changed since we arrived for pre-mobilization training, I long ago lost track. The roster, just in my detachment, has been reshuffled multiple times; we’ve lost people — to medical issues, personal issues, and movement to other detachments — gained others, lost them again … our overall numbers have held relatively steady, within one or two people, but it’s hard sometimes to keep track of just where we are.

We had a recent round of promotions. I was one of the lucky winners. I might or might not have time to manage one more promotion before I hit retirement age, but if I retired at my current rank it would be respectable. As it stands, though, after the latest ceremony, we literally have more chiefs than Indians. The main reason, of course, is that so many of us have already deployed before … and, if you’ve been there and done the job, they are going to put you in a leadership position. Only one of us, however, has ever worked in THIS job, so we’re still learning as we go.

I wonder at how our coming year of service will be affected by the current political climate. With the well-advertised shift of emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, we were advised last year to be prepared to switch from one theater to another partway through the tour. With the way things are moving in the world right now, we might want to be ready for Somalia, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran … Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be out of the question for us to find ourselves in Honduras, helping defend an actual democracy against the forces within and without that would like to turn it into something else. (The deposing of Honduran president Zelaya wasn’t a military coup. It was a legal action taken by people obeying Honduran law — the legislature, the Supreme Court, the army acting under lawful orders of civilian authority, even the man of Zelaya’s own party who accepted appointment as interim president and immediately announced that the elections already scheduled would take place as planned — against a chief executive who was attempting to perpetuate his own power by illegal action.) We live in interesting times, and my position has me seeing a lot of the results thereof.

I’ve done this before. I was a de facto volunteer the first time (in that I joined specifically in order to take part in a war that I could see was about to begin), a literal volunteer for the next two (signed waivers allowing my early re-mobilization shortly after returning from deployment), and I suppose the fact that I did early re-enlistment three years ago may serve to indicate that I’m going out this time, also, of my own will. Truth of the matter is, I’ve missed this, and I’m happy to be doing it again.

That doesn’t change my growing suspicion that the main purpose of the pre-deployment hoops they make us jump through is to make us so sick of the process that we’re joyful to get out of it, even if ‘out’ is a combat theater.