On The Way Home

Today is the day that my Battalion would have been on the plane going home had it not been for the extension of all Army deployments from twelve to fifteen months. One sergeant looked at his watch and said, “Well, we’d probably just be taking off right now.” Even if they are going to get about two years at home (My unit will. Others are just scheduled for one.) it is a real punch in the gut to have 90 days tacked on in the middle. Both of our active duty companies that were extended (National Guard and Reservists didn’t get the extra 90 days) lost a soldier during that that extension time. As if it would not be hard enough without thinking they by all rights should have been home.

There is no other hand to losing a soldier, but on the other hand of the extension I am now in my eighth month of extension beyond the limit when I “by all rights” should have been home. It still irks me when soldiers get snarky about how easy the Navy has it with our eleven month tours. The nerve. We are out here running their equipment. They can’t run their own gear by themselves and then they have the cheek to say that those who are running it for them are getting a good deal. Everyone loves to point out how much worse their lot in life is than the guy next to them – I don’t begrudge them that. But I’ve really about had it with that particular line of self-pity. When this war is over, the Army will go back to deploying once every blue moon, and the Navy will continue to deploy on a routine basis at pretty close to the same rate the Army is now. You can bet your last dollar that we will never go crying to the Army asking them to stand our watch.

Although every time sailors have to hang around soldiers it is also safe to guess that we will whine to them about how hard our life is having to deploy all the time. They won’t want to hear it from us either. Even though then it will be legitimate.