It's been a few years now since I was in the deserts of Afghanistan. My time there sucked, I'm not gonna lie, but damn do I miss that shit. I miss patrolling after you just got back from patrol. I miss not being sure what was going to happen on the next patrol. I miss being covered in sweat because the humvee has no a/c and probably never did. I miss looking over and my driver and teasing him, saying that he would one day be the Sargent Major of all this shit. I miss yelling at my boot in the turret because he is a dumb ass.
I remember one night we were on a patrol to a place that I couldn't tell you the name if I remembered. I had a big dip of grizzly wintergreen from God knows where in my mouth. We were the second to last truck in the patrol of four truck. My driver, for whatever reason, couldn't see through any NVGs. His eyes just couldn't handle it or something. We were driving probably 25 or 30 mph and I was having to tell him every move he had to make. We were driving for about and hour and we started to fall behind so I told him to speed it up. He reluctantly did so. I continued to scan the route ahead, not for IED's, but for big rocks or bumps in the way. Ahead I saw something on the ground but I couldn't really tell what it was. We started getting closer and I realized it was a Soviet fighting hole left unfilled and weathered since the '80's. As were were going my driver started to go towards it so that we could go in the general direction as the rest of the patrol. When he started to do that I yelled at him, "Stop." He kept up the speed and the direction and simply yelled back, "what?" Humvees are loud, lets just get that out there, but I am even more loud. So we are still flying towards this hole and I start realizing the immensity of the situation: We are driving a vehicle that has 5 people in, it's dark and my driver can't see shit, the original vehicle was meant to be about a ton but it has 2 more tons of armor on it, we are traveling at about 40 mph and still headed towards a giant hole in the ground that nobody has bothered to fill in for the past 25 years. I yell at my driver again. "Stop. Fuckin' stop dude. FUCK DUDE, STOP THE GODDAMN TRUCK!" My driver slams on the breaks and we stop less than five fucking feet from this piece of shit hole. Even though one of us might have died that night we all laughed about. I still laugh about it, its one of my favorite stories. But its something I will never be able to do again. Even if I went back in right now my education would at least get me promoted, which means I would be in place where I couldn't fuck around anymore. If I went back in as an officer it would be even worse. Fuck, it's like I'm having a midlife crisis.
Right now I'm sitting in a library typing this up on my laptop. I got out of the Marine Corps nearly three years ago and now I miss it every day of my life. I'm happy though, I am a college student and I'm doing well. I am happily married and have been for over a year. My wife doesn't understand why I miss it or what I miss or any of it. I don't try to push it. It seems like living with the part of my life behind me though is almost like retiring or sending kid off to college, where a part of your life is gone.
