Deployment Roundup, Part I

8/13/2007 01:06:00 PM UTC +0300

I'm back at Camp Sather, and what do you know, they lost my flight reservation out of BIAP. At the very least, I'm booked for the 16th, which will still get me out of Al Udeid by the 18th. Plus I have a good spot on the "space available" list, which will probably get me out according to my original plan. Nonetheless, I'm back to the musty bunk beds for at least 12 hours or so. 'Marginal internet service, and not a lot of places to hang out, but at least they have air conditioning and electrical outlets in the tent. Though the unease of living in a war zone still persists, I couldn't be happier to have left the International Zone behind.

What's really most amazing to me is that all of this knowledge that I slaved over the last six months is now valuable for nostalgic purposes only. I no longer need to know where all the Iraqi Heavy Equipment Transporters are, or how many ILAV's are remaining to be delivered, or what kind of equipment is necessary in a Mobile Field Kitchen. This sort of information was really the only thing for which I've been accountable for the last six months. All the sudden my life feels empty, but it's also incredibly liberating.

I was surprised by how attached I felt upon departure. Just prior to leaving my office for the last time, I made the rounds, shook everyone's hand, and let them all know how good it was to work with them... Most of the time I really meant it, and by the time I got to my bosses (I had three), I was a bit of a wreck. I shed a few tears and eventually just had to sit down and regain my composure. We all smiled and laughed at each other, because we all felt similarly. It was a touching moment--despite all our differences and disagreements, we were able to just sit for a minute and acknowledge that we would miss each other.

I had a couple of goals for this deployment. One was purely a physical one--I planned to get myself in the kind of shape necessary to get a 100% score on the Air Force Physical Fitness Test. I'm still not quite there on pushups (I'll never be good at them, given the way my body is put together), but I managed to reduce my three-mile run time from about 23 minutes, down to my personal best of 19:29, all while putting on about 5 kg of muscle. I'm in the best shape of my life.

I'll be honest, part of the reason to come here was also to save a bunch of money. I managed to pay off my car and academic loans (roughly $20k total), and save up an additional $10k or so, which feels great. The pay here is nothing extraordinary, but having essentially zero living expenses makes essentially every dollar earned go straight to the bank. I'm excited to be able to start investing and looking into perhaps owning some property in the next year or so.

Another goal of mine was to gain a better understanding of what the military really does. It's fine to sit in an office all day and work on procurement for the military, but you just can't have a great understanding of what military ideology is all about until you've really lived it.

A fourth goal was to better comprehend what's happening in Iraq. We hear all kinds of things on the news, and it was always interesting to read the volumes of reports about what is going on right in front of your nose, and be able to confidently say that only a minority of it is both accurate and balanced.

I'll elaborate on the fulfillment of the two prior goals in my next post, which I realize is what a lot of people will be most interested to read about, and is deserving of a post of its own.

Lastly, I simply wanted to better understand people. It's very easy to become sheltered in our private lives, since we tend only to engage people and activities with which we feel we have some sort of commonality. I've grown tired, over the recent few years, of all the politically-charged conflict that seems to exist within the American people. Everyone is convinced that they know what is best for the world. Yet without a broader perspective, it became clear to me that I could never appreciate the variety of good intentions people have in communities outside my own. This deployment gave me an eye-opening glimpse of just how broad political and social discourse can be. On a similar note, I'll leave you with the brief address I gave to my peers at my farewell reception (edited for readability, and because I don't have a clue what actually came out of my mouth):

"Today is a bittersweet day for me. It's a sweet day because I'm finally going home after six months away from my friends and family. But it's also a bitter day (short pause, allowing the audience to prepare for me to say that it's bitter because I'm leaving all these great people) because I cut myself shaving this morning.

"I hope that all of you truly appreciate what a tremendous opportunity it is to serve here. We will all go home to our other military assignments or to the civilian life, and will be among peers who will either not understand what it's like to deploy, or will have had vastly different deployment experiences. Most of us will never do anything of this magnitude the rest of our lives.

"After such an experience, it's important to ask yourself, "What have I learned? How have I grown?" I could list a couple dozen things, but I'd rather just describe one important thing, something that perhaps you'll actually remember about me.

"Over the past few months, you've gotten to know Lieutenant Currie, United States Air Force, but few of you know anything about Daniel Currie, United States Citizen. I grew up in a middle class family in Portland, Oregon. I busted my ass in school and managed to graduate salutatorian of my class. From there, I went off to an Ivy League university, one of the more liberal schools in the country, where I studied mechanical engineering and music composition. And just four years ago, I joined 300,000 New Yorkers on the streets, protesting military involvement in Iraq. How did I end up here?

"My rather unique background has given me an interesting perspective. For many political and social issues, I've spent time on both sides of the wire. I've experienced different environments and lifestyles, and have known people of many different ideals and beliefs.

"Shortly after my arrival, [our unit commander] said in one of his allocutions of few words (this is a joke--he is a bit long-winded, and yet begins most of his addresses by saying, "I'm a man of few words..."), "Nobody wakes up, looks in the mirror, and says to themselves, I want to do a bad job today." I think he was referring to the J4 (our organization's name), regarding the level of professionalism and dedication exhibited by all of us. But if you believe this to be true, you have to expand this idea beyond J4, MNSTC-I, the Department of Defense, or even the United States. This is true of every man and woman on Earth.

"What have I learned? How have I grown? I've learned that we are truly a product of our environment, that we are all genuinely dedicated to making the world a better place. I've grown in that I am less apt to see people as right or wrong, but rather as having different solutions to similar problems. And I've learned that if you really step back and carefully consider how greatly another persons background, upbringing, and current circumstances differ from yours, you can rarely find fault in their actions.

"Those of you staying behind, I wish you the best of luck and that you safely find your way home. Thank you making this deployment such a positive experience."

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