Pain of Coming Home

After completing my basic training, I was advised ‘not to go home on leave’ while in the service. “The pain of leaving again just isn’t worth the trip back home,” several RAs (regular Army) friends told me.

Never the less, after basic I returned home. I had a week to kill before traveling west to my next assignment. It was a surreal experience because all my friends (and girlfriend) were still in school and had little time for socializing. The short time period hardly permitted any substantive projects or endeavors. I was like a fish out of water. It was almost as if I had jumped off the train of my past life but it was still rolling along and I was sidelined in the process.

Six months later another transfer came through. This time I was heading south; Louisiana in the middle of summer. That stay at home was another week of torture. My girlfriend was busy in school. Old friends were scattered about and mostly unavailable. I swore I would never do it again and I didn’t.

After that second venture home, I stayed away until I was discharged and returned home for good. I spent my leave on trips to Mexico City and Acapulco. I spent weekends in Washington, D.C. and Beaumont, Texas just to get off base. It wasn’t ideal but it was a break from military life and it wasn’t home. My friends were right; the pain of leaving was just not worth the trip back home.

Recently I returned home early for a workshop and some business meetings. The same phenomena happened to me. Returning home briefly on business / pleasure brought back all those old feelings. I was out of my element once again.

Rosemount Book Festival

It was the Second Annual Rosemount Book Festival. Unlike the first year, I didn’t set up a table to sell books but I did my writing workshop instead. The workshop went well as did the meetings with several folks talking about theatrical venues for this summer. I got to see my grandchildren on several occasions and a couple of quick coffee connections if ever so briefly. Once again, those old feelings came back.

In some very surreal mysterious way it reminded me of several incidents when the same feelings crept back into my consciousness. After graduating from high school, I was working one summer at the CYC, Catholic Youth Center, in downtown Saint Paul. I was on a crew cleaning their gym. Six months earlier, I had been there with my girl dancing some slow dance and wondering about my/our future. It brought back a wave of teen angst.

Another time we were at our children’s band performance at a football game. I saw several seniors who had graduated that spring back at the game reliving their past. ‘Glory Days’ by Bruce Springsteen immediately came to mind.  I felt sorry for them.

In a recent blog, I talked about ‘living in the past’ and my revisiting old haunts, times and relationships in an attempt to connect the dots that define my past and present life. This time it was different. I wasn’t trying to reconnect with any old feelings or past experiences. Instead I was like a stranger in a strange land. I was like a fish out of water. I was out of my element.

It wasn’t just the sun-drenched Mountains in my backyard verses the snow piled up at home. It wasn’t just the bone-chilling temperatures that were average and comfortable for the native Minnesotans. It was deeper than that. It was the feeling that I was on temporary leave from my other life. I had been taken out of my regular routine of writing and exercise and reflection. I was on leave from life as I had come to define it.

We’ve become one with the community down here and unlike snowbirds or visitors; we live as residents and not seasonal visitors. That comfort level and familiarity with my surroundings made a return to Minnesota even briefly a bit of a surreal experience. Much like, I realize, being on leave from the service.

Like life in the service, it was a temporary experience. Soon I’ll be able to transfer my background scenery and another space for writing and now woods to tramp through. The settings will be different but I’ll be home once again.

Once a Soldier Always

Me by my locker in boot camp

I’d forgotten about that period in my life for such a long time. It was two years juxtaposed between stumbles in education and prying open the door on my lost years. Now it’s back in flavor whether the conflict in question is justified or not.

Back in early 1964 I had dropped out of the University of Minnesota before they asked me to take a hike. Two weeks later I got my draft notice but fooled them all by volunteering for the Army instead of having to wait around for several months before the inevitable.

It was two years away from home and my girlfriend, learning new skills and traveling the country. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to return to civilian life. Back then I looked on that period not necessarily with fondness but rather with an abject acceptance of it being a minor detour out of my life. Now with creeping age and reluctant maturity, I realize I answered the call from my country and did my duty…and I’m damn proud of it.

So much of that period of my life was re-captured and/or imagined in ‘Love in the A Shau’ in the persona of Daniel and his adventures in life and the military.

Me on the steps of the barracks

Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri offered up my first taste of ‘hurry up and wait,’ screaming drill sergeants, diverse interests and goals and a yearning for life back home.

Showing off my PFC stripe

           

The Presidio of San Francisco back then was considered the ‘country club’ of the Army. I grabbed every opportunity it offered me. College classes at night. A great part time job in an art theater in a sketchy part of town. A motor scooter to challenge the hills of the city. Tip-toeing through Haight-Ashbury and the wonders there. Wandering down the coast to Half Moon Bay, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and other coastal communities. No serviceman had ever had better duty.

Life was so good there; I volunteered for duty in Vietnam because it was in a foreign land and included hazardous duty pay. The Army was getting 500 applications a month, but mine wasn’t accepted. Of course, they weren’t shooting GIs back then.

Fort Polk, Louisiana

                              

Fort Polk, Louisiana was the flip side of that city by the bay. It had to be some of the worst duty on earth. Summers in Louisiana are and were a modern day version of hell on earth.

Reading in a snow storm

Listening to the Beatles

                                   

Fort Lee, Virginia was good duty for a sergeant who was a short-timer and ready for a new chapter in his life. It was all coming to a close and I had no regrets. Then two weeks before my discharge the captain called me into his office and presented me with his best offer.

It seems he had been watching me and liked what he saw. Putting on his most father-like appearance, he confided in me. “As sergeant in just two years, I can see that you could have a great future in ‘this man’s army.” He threw out a few more platitudes then gave me his punchline. “Re-enlist now, son, and I guarantee we’ll send you to Vietnam.”

Mustering up my most sincere look, I politely declined, citing my enrollment back in college and classes starting in just several weeks. To be honest, I’ve sometimes wondered what my life might have been like if I had taken him up on his wonderful offer to tour South Vietnam between mortar rounds and sniper’s bullets.

After that, my life moved on and I forgot about those twenty-four months, 1964 through 1966. The bitter aftertaste of Vietnam lasted a long time for my generation. For me it was time spent out of the loop and living another kind of life.

Then eventually, some president found a reason to go to war again. We were off to the killing grounds for the next generation. Now the media and government PR machine embrace the military. “Thank you for your service to our country.” Sad but true, men and women go off to war and we’re back in the game again.

Spec 5 (Sergeant)

Politics aside, I’m proud of my time spent in the service. I wasn’t a ground-pounder or in Recon or Special Ops. Daniel got that out of my system and safely ensconced in my imagination. It was time spent in the service to my country and an opportunity to pay back my country for past generations.

My father holding me as an infant

This is the country of some long forgotten itinerant peasant who came over from France generations ago. An immigrant who brought his love of life and passion for work first to Canada, then Quebec and finally down through the generations to the Twin Cities. It was a grandfather, a father and finally the father of my children who now have children of their own.

In retrospect, my time spent in khaki was a small price to pay for what my country has given to me and my offspring. For all those generations and for me, it truly is the land of the free and a cauldron of opportunities for the taking.

45 Days to go

               

I did my job in the United States Army and I did it to the best of my ability. Two years is a long time out of a young man’s life. But it was time spent in service to my country.

I owed my country that much.