A Few Ponderings...

~Be careful what you wish for... the rain has now decided that after having been on hiatus for my entire deployment it is now going to soak in as much time with me as possible. Since that first storm I shared with you it has now rained almost every other day, turning the normally baby powder fine dust into a thick muddy peanut butter that clings to you with the adoration of a labrador. My clothes are caked after a single day and my shoes are, safe to say, trashed. 

~It's pretty incredible to look up into the sky on a cloudy night and stand mesmerized as brilliant flashes of light splash across the sky. The incredibility comes not in the beauty of the moment but in the terrifying thrill of not knowing if those flashes are an act of nature or man.

~Yesterday (October 28) my teammates and I took part in what's known as Golby, the redeployment medical processing. I found the process disturbingly simple. We went into a small room laid out in a lecture hall formation. We were each handed a palm pilot with a 42 page survey. As we casually breezed through the questions (Have you had thoughts of suicide?Have you seen dead bodies? Do you have recurring nightmares?) I began to wonder...how many soldiers skimmed through the questions just as I was now doing?  Answering those questions the way they knew needed to be answered: to ensure that they would successfully return home without branding themselves for follow up evaluations. And how many of them would later pay a price as the result?