It is official. The administration of “Big Navy,” that monstrous beast of myth and fable, slouching its’ way through the fog of shredded paper, mountains of crushed data disks, piles of broken computers and (way, way down at the bottom) the tiny human lives dodging between its’ giant clawed flippers – yes, *that* big Navy – somehow spit out a tiny electronic garble, a hiccup in the grand scheme, a series of inconvenienced electrons (really, a little set of billet numbers) that said, “Hey Francis, go home!” Sort of reminded me of the 'administration of Heaven' scene in David Niven and Kim Hunter's 1947 film "A matter of life and death."

Yep, the Green Machine is letting me go (well, only ‘cause the Blue one said they wanted me back) and I will wend my way back to civilization over the next month or so. Hurrah!

Interestingly, after the initial elation, I was very quickly struck by a sense of guilt. It came with a sense of shame that I was abandoning my friends along with all those likeable Brits. Even now, a week later, I still feel a twinge of disappointment – odd as that sounds. I’m beginning to understand the old saying about adventures such as this; they may be uncomfortable, sometimes horrifying, often boring, with moments of fear, elation and excitement all mixed up together – but above all else there is the shared experience of hardship shared with your comrades. Certainly I’ll never forget the friends I made over here – there’s something about joking together during a rocket attack that clears away any slights or irritations.

There is also a shared sense of purpose. If you’ve read this blog this far, then surely you know we believe in the mission over here – maybe not in all the details, or in the way its’ been warped and blunted and molded by the friction of everyday life – but in its’ essence, in its’ unchanging sense of rightness, in the goal of a free Iraq, that we still believe – De oppresso liber.

A Jeffersonian might phrase it differently, saying “Death to tyrants” and leave it at that. But there is a nobility to the effort to fix this place, despite the many deep, twisted wounds (many self-inflicted). And yes, maybe the Arabs are too different here, still riven by tribal hatreds and the special poison of being at the western edge of the Sunni-Shi’ia divide. Like me, Iraq will never be what it was after we leave – we have touched it too much, leaving our fingerprints like a kid’s sticky hands on a railing. It doesn’t matter whether we leave as war-mongering Crusaders, evil oil-grubbing westerners or weak, morally corrupt sexual deviants – though to most Arabs’ we’re a paradoxical mix of all three – we’ve also changed them, in both good and bad ways. The “bad” way, of course, is the Arab civil war. We have to take credit for that, I’m afraid – for without us, the Shi’ia would have remained the dogs of the Arab world, beaten, abused, the whipping boy blamed for all the ills of the modern world. They’ve risen up now, and will make a new Arab world, forged in blood and iron – whether for good or ill remains to be seen.

I also have to apologize for not thanking Mark Hayes, Bill Hall and Glenn Helm for recent packages -- many thanks! And, given this news, please do *not* send me any more packages (unless you want my coworkers to plunder the box!).

Tim

Fair Winds and Following Seas!