Memories....

Not too long ago the base where I lived from the time I was 2 years old until I was a senior in high school closed. It sounds corny and silly but it is a little painful sometimes to see the places that I knew and loved so well abandoned. The bushes behind which I first kissed a girl, the overgrown football field watered over the years by gallons of my own sweat and even a bit of blood, or the Army Depot that for years was the “anchor” for so many aspects of my life. The last time I was there I walked through a lot of these places and I could just close my eyes and see in my mind things the way they were back then; the hustle and bustle of military men and women with a purpose, the horrible PA system and the smell of grilling at high school football games, even the AAFES warehouses where I spent thousands of hours slaving away shipping liquor all over Europe. At times it felt like there were the echoes of the thousands who had gone before bouncing around deserted hallways and rooms. And as insignificant as the history of Giessen was, it will always be a place that holds a special corner of my memory.

Another such place is over here in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Today as I drove over to a part of the base that an Army medevac unit recently pulled out of, it was kind of spooky to see everything just abandoned. There were trailers and offices with the doors open and debris scattered everywhere. It has only been a matter of a 5 or 6 weeks but already time is moving in on the place. There were still smoke alarms faintly but faithfully beeping out a warning in response to the dust that blew through the smashed and cracked windows. Books and papers littered the floor, everything pointed to a recent habitation by soldiers but there wasn’t a soul to be seen or heard, in fact it was silent except for the lonely wind and the faint chirping from the aforementioned alarm.

It kind of struck me that I have spent my life exploring places filled with ancient and even not-so-ancient history but it has all been sanitized by the passage of time. Only the most permanent and stubborn of reminders remain from history, things like castles or Hitler’s mighty WWII bunkers scattered throughout the forests of Germany. The battlefields have all grown over leaving few obvious reminders of the brutal carnage for which we remember the sites. But here in Iraq, it was an eerie foreshadowing sensation of things to come. Of bases that once buzzed with the excitement and business of war, all going silent, one by one, and being claimed and sanitized, and forgotten by all but the few who were lucky enough to be here to be a part of it.

I recently had to tally up my time here for some paperwork I was submitting and I realized that I have spent 60+ months over here. Sooner or later I will leave and I seriously doubt that I will ever come back but a part of me will always ache for that something that will never return: for the feeling of belonging that being a part of the mission here brought or that feeling of comfort and normality that mark my memories of Giessen.

Moving on is a human thing to do but it is up to each of us to realize in our own good time that we must do so. Bit by bit I’m realizing it. Either that or it’s just entirely too late at night and I didn’t want to go to bed so a rambling, semi-coherent rant followed. No matter what though, this is 2 minutes of your life spent reading this that you won’t get back haha! :)