COLUMN: What would you do with two weeks?
Hello Family and Friends,
The luck of the leave lottery smiled kindly on me and I am typing this message from a computer at my parents house in beautiful Cache Valley. I was number 17 on the leave list and did not expect any leave during my one-year deployment in Iraq (leave started in September and my unit was only sending four soldiers a month. That would put my leave in the fifth month – about the time I’ll be heading home). Thankfully the 101st Airborne soldiers gave up some of their spots. Unfortunately, even with the extra spots, there are too many soldiers in theater who won’t get a chance to come home.
Getting home was an experience in itself. Following are two e-mail messages sent to parents:
Oct. 17 – I’m in Balad waiting for an airplane ride to Kuwait so I can get an airplane ride to Baltimore so I can get an airplane ride to SLC. Already I’ve run into the circus world of complications the Army likes to throw up to hinder easiness. I was supposed to fly a Chinook helicopter to Mosul and there catch a plane to Kuwait. But no one gave me the slightest instructions – there are three different tents to get flights out of Balad (the guy behind one desk didn’t even know where Mosul was) and now I’m trying to catch a space-available seat on a plane straight to Kuwait from Balad. In Kuwait I’ll have to find the right tent and office to catch the plane home. Why can’t they just assign someone to make the program smooth and not assume the soldier knows what’s going on?
Oct. 19 – After waiting a day and a half at the Balad airfield, fearing every minute I wouldn’t get a flight out and that I would be taken back to Ba’qubah, I arrived in Kuwait on a big Air Force C-17 – my only instructions being “go to Camp Champion, find tent 27 and tell them your filling a Mosul leave spot.” With luck, the lady who met us on the plane knew exactly where I needed to go. Unfortunately it was 9:30 p.m. and the people were out of the office. So I found a transient tent, took a shower and went to sleep. At 12:30 a.m. a soldier woke me up saying that it was his cot. I moved to an empty cot a few rows over and slept well. I went to the tent in the morning and my name was there at the top of the list and everything is going smoothly now.
I stayed another day in Kuwait reading books and enjoying the time away from the gun-filled streets of Ba’qubah. The contracted commercial flight left Kuwait carrying 275 stinky, tired soldiers in its belly, depositing us 19 uncomfortable hours later in Baltimore. Comfort Inn gives incoming soldiers a room to take a shower in, a clean bathroom where toilet paper can be flushed down the toilet! (Iraqi sewer systems can’t take toilet paper so we put it in waste baskets.) I caught a flight to Salt Lake City and 29 hours after wheels-up in Kuwait I was back home!
Driving down Wellsville (Sardine) Canyon the Cache Valley unfolded with patch-work quilt farms melting into river-hugging willows. There stood the LDS Logan Temple in the heart of the valley and USU’s Old Main Tower – welcoming all weary souls home. Cache Valley and the mountains are so beautiful with a yellow skirt of Autumn clinging delicately before the gray bareness of winter comes. The chill in the morning air is invigorating, giving way to the pleasant warmth of the afternoon sun. Where Iraqi sunlight is bright and harsh, Cache Valley light is filtered and gentle. Where Iraqi landscapes are colored in palm-tree green and desert-dirt brown, Cache Valley landscapes are varying shades of tree-leaf greens and wheat-field yellows.
I’ve been given two weeks to rest and recuperate before going back to the toil and strain of Iraq. How do I stop or slow time and make every moment last? How do I balance time between God and self and family and friends? I only have two weeks! I remember the words of Jesus, “Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” I guess that means to trust God, enjoy the present and not worry about what I can’t control tomorrow.
What would you do if you only had two weeks?
Chris
Christopher Keeley is a graduate student at USU and was working as a staff assistant in Extension Conference Services when he was called to active duty. He is from Hyrum, Utah, and is a member of the Utah National Guard specializing in counterintelligence and is a Korean linguist.