Traveling today from New York to Portland, via Dallas, I was seated on the plane next to a soldier.
She was dressed in fatigues, which I was surprised to realize were light brown, with irregular dark brown oval sections (so the uniform would blend in with sand) — as opposed to the green fatigues (to blend in with jungle) I remember from the Vietnam era.
She was returning from Iraq to her home in Washington, for 15 days of R&R, after five months in Iraq. She told me she was finishing up 28 hours on planes making her way home. She slept most of the way — tired, she said, by the trip, not by the last five months.
Thanked for what she had done, she shrugged it off. Thanked again, she still declined any credit. We’re doing our job.
Asked by one of the attendants whether it was worrying to spend each day in Iraq, she answered: “Only if you’re a worrier.” She said unless you were in a convoy or an infantry patrol, it was not particularly dangerous, although mortars regularly came in. “They don’t do much damage.”
She said she had found Iraq an interesting place and is not worried about going back. At the end of the flight, her friend — also dressed in fatigues and seated a couple rows ahead — looked back and said “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“One day at a time,” she answered.