| Hi, folks. I'm back after about a three week absence. That makes it seem like I'm starting the act of contrition -- forgive me, reader, for I have sinned; it's been three weeks since my last posting. Well, I've been away from 'home' for most of the last three weeks, traveling around Iraq and beyond courtesy of the most inconvenient travel system in the world, military travel. An example -- on Sunday the 22nd, I was supposed to fly to Balad Airbase for a week of training. The Air Force won't tell you when your flight leaves until 0700 on the day of your flight. But the word doesn't come directly to you, the traveler; it has to be filtered through about 10 different offices before you hear about it. That's why most flights are after dark, because it takes that long to inform the right people.
So it's 0835, people are starting to arrive for 0900 worship, and one of our majors comes in the door to say, "Chaplain! We need to get moving to the terminal in 10 minutes!". "Sir, church starts in ten minutes!" "Doesn't matter; we have to go now!" You can imagine what kind of mood I was in; when I miss church, EVERYBODY misses church. Did I mention I hadn't finished packing yet? So I threw everything into my enormous rucksack, stumbled out the door (you have to wear your full body armor when you fly, in addition to hauling a 70 pound ruck), and made it to the terminal just on time. WHen did my flight leave? 12:15 PM. Three and a half hours wait. Then we arrive at Balad and I discover that I've forgotten my shower bag/shave kit. I love traveling around Iraq.
Anyway, my week of travel before last was a little easier and started out much more fun. A four day pass to Qatar -- sunshine, civilian clothes, 3 beers a night, a round at the Doha PGA course, swimming in the gulf. It's the military's R&R program for those who have been or don't get to go on pass. It's supposed to be 4 days, and I enjoyed each one of them. Then on the night I was to return to TQ, there was an incident where a soldier was stabbed by another soldier, accidentally but fatally as it turns out. Both were from another unit in my brigade. All of a sudden, the post was locked down, and the other chaplains on the post were asking me to help counsel all the soldiers who were involved as witnesses, including a good friend of mine who has worked as my chaplain assistant in the past. So, I stayed a few days longer, but vacation was pretty much done and it was back to work helping deal with the cruel horror of this death.
Then I returned, was home for a couple of days, and off to Balad (aka Camp Anaconda, known informally as "Mortaritaville" for all the mortar fire they take. It's aptly named) for a week of "Warrior Transition Training". Some of you know, from reading my updates or from many other sources, the psychological cost of being in combat as long as we have been. Warrior Transition is designed to help soldiers make the shift from combat back to civilian life, to process what we have seen and done and learn to move on when we get home. I went through the training myself, then learned to train others, and my team will be training every soldier in my battalion. This may be the biggest challenge of the deployment for many, coming home and going back to normal life. Others will have no problem at all. Either way, whether hard or easy, I expect to make that change successfully. Don't believe the horror stories, that we are all coming back with PTSD and we're all hyperviolent, etc.
We're going to come home in a few months and do as good a job reintegrating into life as we have done every day fighting the war over here. See you then, and talk to you soon.
God be good to you!
CH Steve Timm
|
