Meeting new people, and then saying goodbye. For those with military experience it is an old story. It is pretty new to me.
Like civilian life, where you often meet people for one off events (i.e. at a conference, or a visitor at work, etc.), the military is no different. This is particularly true when traveling from station to station, where you can live and work with someone for a month, a few weeks or one night before you each move on, sometimes to different parts of the world. Unlike civilian life (well, in my experience anyway), sometimes a quick, strong friendship develops. It is based on shared experiences, shared hardships and the same unknown future. It doesn’t always happen, of course. Like everything, it is the sharing that matters, as any new arrival discovers when thrust unwanted into a long-established group. But in my experience to date it is the former, not the latter, that is the rule.
When I arrived at Fort Jackson I ended up bunking with an old machinist mate by the name of Hupper. And when I say old, I just mean he’s been in the Navy over 15 years, since he’s younger than me. But he certainly knew how to travel light, how to best rig up gear (armor, load-bearing vest, rucksack, etc.) with all those clever, helpful shortcuts, how to take charge of a room and even how to blouse your trouser cuffs, parachute style. Seeing as the Army was “unhelpful” in those matters, he was full of very useful information, and freely offered at that. Hupper was a tad bitter at the whole situation, having been tapped to be landward-security in Kuwait (unfortunately, he’d had some security training in the past) when he’d expected a period of shore duty at home. But like sailors everywhere, he grumbled and pissed and moaned and then dealt with it. For a gruff sailor with no patience for foolishness and incompetence, I was glad to have “passed muster” enough to hang with him. I learned a lot from him, and was sorry when his whole security group was shipped out from the camp in Kuwait before I had a chance to say goodbye.
There were others in that group, such as Haleday, a true redneck, large, lumbering, with a slow drawl who stood next to me in formation, to Olsen (also called “Red” for her hair), a tough sailor with curses direct from the Fleet for anyone who gave her flak, to Cdr. Shearin, our “Combat Chaps”, an old Marine turned Navy Chaplain who actually went through our same training (in contrast to every other Chaplain who moved through Fort Jackson).
My closest friend turned out to be Barkley, an IS3 (from Utah) who, along with IS1 Olson (from Oklahoma), were the other two intel people mobilized along with me for assignment in Iraq. We stuck together through the training in the desert in Kuwait, before which we lost most of the active duty officers (off to their own specialized training) and, as mentioned, all the master-at-arms and security ratings who peeled off for duty in Kuwait or on the Arabian Gulf to guard oil platforms (see the NPR story). We then lost the people headed to Afghanistan (Senior Chief Viola and Chief Laffey, both friendly but woe to those who earned their wrath!) and by the time we boarded the plane to Baghdad, all I had left to call friends were Barkley, Olson and Chief Fenner, the latter the perfect image of a Scotsman except for his laid back California attitude.
And even that did not last, as we dispersed in penny packets the instant we set foot on the tarmac in Baghdad, reduced at the very end to Barkley, Olson and I. But of course I said end, which it was not. For after another round of culture shock, that first unpleasant day and night in yet another new, dust-filled, scorching camp, with its new people and new places and new routines to learn and absorb, we only remained a team for that day.
For we discovered, to our dismay, that we were not to work together after all, but were to be broken up again as individuals, sent out as “replacements” in the old sense of the word, without that esprit and familiarity of comradeship that is at least shared by deploying units. Olson departed the very next day, off to work with the Polish brigade, and I left the day after, flying south to Basra to work in a liason billet with the British. Barkley got stuck assigned to the South Koreans in Irbil up in Kurdistan, where he should be quite safe as the Kurds don’t put up with anything from Sunni Arabs. I say stuck though, since it will be tough working with the South Koreans – they are nowhere near as friendly and informal as the Poles or Brits, and his low rank will hurt him.
Barkley is a very serious young man, in his late 20s, with two Master’s degrees and a competent demeanor. And he can shoot a rifle sweetly, having scored a 39 out of 40 on the Army range at Fort Jackson. We hit it off well, having the shared intelligence experience as a binder, and helped each other out as we got used to each camp at each phase of our journey.
And then I left, suddenly and without warning as seems to be standard here.
The same thing will happen this weekend here in Kuwait. I'm rooming with an Australian officer, who showed me the camp, etc., and he's a good mate, as they say.
It can be a fleeting thing, friendship. And I begin to understand why some refuse it, tucked away in turtle shells of self-reliance.
I forgot to put a pic of Barkley in my zip drive, so here is me at my new home on "Coventry street".
Fair Winds and Following Sands!