Yesterday I met a soldier
Yesterday I met a 30 year old soldier in the Atlanta airport who was stuck there overnight. He asked me for a light. Then he told me he's a Sargent on his 4th deployment who had been in Iraq and is now stationed in Kandahar. He had come back on a very short leave to visit his Dad in Virginia, but missed his connecting flight and was going to have to go back without seeing him. His Dad is in the hospital. He told me he didn't feel sorry for himself because he knows a family from Kandahar, the nicest family you can imagine, he said, who has much greater problems than his. He showed me a tattoo he had on his arm in Sanskrit that he got after his best friend stepped on a mine right next to him. He said, "I told him not to move, that I was going to run around a corner because I couldn't watch," after which he heard his friend blow up alone. It means "purity" he said. He was very skinny and told me about sleeping in foxholes and getting shot at. He was afraid Trump was going to get us into something bad in North Korea and he said PTSD care for returning vets isn't good unless the caregiver has actually experienced war and not just read about it in a book. He said after 12 years in the Army he makes only $40,000 a year. He had the kindness to ask me about myself, why I was traveling too. So it was a mutual listening session. We shared my last two cigarettes, said our names and shook hands, and then I walked to the Park n Ride bus back to my bubble of safety in this world.
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You may have helped him more than you can imagine.
Bless that Soldier. .& YOU. 
I had just taken some built up leave and took a MAC to Mildenhall AFB for a cheap "birthday vacation" ($20 to take a MAC overseas if not on orders; pack your own meals and dress for Arctic weather...) while we were still in the yards because it would be a good time to go to Great Britain just offseason on a youth hostel/BritRail pass, and I had enough leave I could still go home and visit my parents in Seattle for a few days before going back to the ship.
So, I was back at Dover, it's 10pm and I'm waiting for a 2am parts run to Tinker, and this cute Corpsman that was my rank and about my age sees me in my Navy Uniform, and sits down next to me. He was heading back to his unit after a vacation, and actually just needed $20 for the flight back to so as not to be AWOL, and we got to talking about history, and science fiction, and music and all sorts of other things until they called his departure.
We exchanged names and base addresses. As I said, he was cute, and we had a lot in common. Did I mention he was stationed with the First Marine Battalion that was supporting UN Peacekeepers in Beruit...
Four days later, the compound was destroyed in a suicide truck bomb. A week and a half later, I read his name in the casualty columns. I wonder sometimes, if I hadn't given him that $20 that night, if he had not caught that flight and had to wait a day or two later while he scavenged the money or got friends or relatives to wire it so he could depart from Dover, would he have still made it back at the barracks or would he have still been waiting for the next European Eagle departure in Ramstien or Siganella?
It still hurts occasionally.
Haele
