Return
Worldview, reaction, and reintegration
Home where my thought’s escaping,
Home where my music’s playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.
- Simon & Garfunkel, Homeward Bound
Home is, and has been, possibly the most thought about concept by soldiers who go to war. It is the center of Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus undergoes trials and tribulations to finally be at rest in his own home, with his own wife. There is a reason that Home, Sweet Home was the most popular song both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line during the American Civil War. Even all the Romantic Era BS of “could not love thee loved I not honor more,” from Lovelace’s wretched To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, cannot disguise the fact that the guy’s pretty broken up about having to leave, since he makes up lots of silly reasons about honor and such. Home evokes thoughts of love, family, safety, and, since the beginning of General Order Number One, beer.
Home also brings with it a multitude of changes. The first is to worldview. When deployed, we’re usually engaged in high tempo operations, often working long hours on incredibly important tasks (or just PowerPoints that we are told are incredibly important). Combat operations hold the highest priority and junior leaders such as staff sergeants and lieutenants can make decisions that change the shape of the battlefield. Leaders are required to having firm knowledge of everything happening within their “lane,” and most often shut out world news so as to not block out the critical local information requirements. Personally, although I watched with passing interest the Russian occupation of Crimea, I was far more engaged in the beginning of the fighting season and events in RC-East. Afghanistan was an open door to me, where, due to my operational role, I traveled throughout almost every regional command and most major bases. My head was full of exact specifications for base requirements and drawdown timelines. However, my knowledge was confined to the theater of operations. My professional life and interests were bound by the very borders of the country I was in, and very seldom passed them.
Similarly, when deployed, personal space shrinks to an absolute minimum. True personal space is hard to find, when sharing a B-Hut with seven other guys and using latrines that are designed “for your viewing pleasure.”
In one sense, it’s nice to have everything so close at hand. Simplification of life can be a blessing, and something you get used to. As can living with a bunch of other guys, who show their emotions through elaborate pranks. When you return home, however, your personal space expands dramatically.
With the expansion of personal space, comes expansion of personal life, interests, and worldview. All of a sudden, our focus is not on that one, two, or seventy things we were doing non-stop for nine months and got really good at. Suddenly there are multiple issues that demand our attention, like bills, family, pets, housework, school, and bills. Our world expands from the 6' by 8' limits to a seemingly unlimited expanse of human relationships and similar uncharted territory. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a dramatic change.
Like our personal lives, our professional interests and worlds expand outward as well. All of a sudden the world seems open all around us, no longer bounded in by the borders of our areas of concentration. Global news becomes pertinent again, world events demand our attention, and it all seems much more real than before.
None of this is necessarily what we would qualify as “bad.” It is, however, different. Very different. And people react differently to change. Some try to hang on to the identity that they, for better or for worse, held when on deployment: hard-nosed veteran with a short temper, etc. Others try to forget that they were ever gone and try to slip seamlessly back into society. Many are able to manage a happy medium of the two extremes.
It has been one month since I stepped off the tarmac on the runway at Bagram Air Field and onto the C-17 that would carry me to Romania and then back to the U.S. I think it’s still really not quite enough time to process a year of experiences, but this is me taking a stab at it. Friends have a lot of questions when I meet them: “Are you glad to be home?” “What’s the best part of being back?” They seem surprised when I say I love the vegetable isle in the grocery store, because it’s a full on sensory overload, the like of which my nervous system has been starved of for a year. At the end of the day, I can just look them in the eye and say, “It’s home.” And they understand. Because the idea of home is a universal.
Angry Staff Officer is an officer in the Army National Guard and a member of the Military Writers Guild. He commissioned as an engineer officer after spending time as an enlisted infantryman. He has done one tour in Afghanistan as part of U.S. and Coalition retrograde operations. With a BA and an MA in history, he currently serves as a full-time Army Historian. The opinions expressed are his alone, and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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