The Desert, Luxembourg, and the Coat Rack of Death

Given Gwen's recent departure, I have definitely been slacking off on my posting of late. Hopefully that will change in the coming weeks. Regardless, here's an attempt to catch up on "stuff" of all varieties.

The Latest From the Desert

Well, Gwen is in Kuwait, and is (as predicted) fairly miserable. But hanging in there. She has started updating her blog again (link to the right --->), so check it out and enjoy the absolute madness that deploying with the army can be. If you know her as well as I do, you may begin to slowly gather (and really only through micro-examination of text and subtext) that there is an oh-so-slight bitterness to Gwen's current mental and emotional state that comes through in the tone of her posts. It's subtle, but it's there. (Just trust me on this.)

She heads to Iraq and her actual duty-station-to-be sometime in the next week. I'm not sure if things will be better or worse (vs. Kuwait) once she gets there. We'll see.

I have been fortunate in that I have been able to talk to Gwen twice since she was deployed and we have been emailing most days as well (excluding her 3-day camping trip). So communication is pretty good. (Gwen's first email to me was entitled "This is terrible". The second was so-named "And it gets worse". Poor, poor Gwendolyn). I've talked to Big Pete as well who is also hanging ou there. Despite pointing out the every day is basically "Groundhog's Day", his most telling comment was, "Dude, it's gonna be a long year."

And there is news regarding MY potential deployment as well. Big news, in fact. It looks as if I will be joining Pete in Kuwait at the end of March. Its not 100% yet, but I'd say its about 75%. Everyone probably remembers how I was slated to go to Iraq back in the summer WITH Pete. Well, the higher ups tried to force me into the slot for another doc but it was blocked by the even-higher ups at the US Army Europe Command level. As it now stands, though, that original doc (who is in Kuwait with Pete) is due to get out of the military (his obligation is up in a few months). So, they need a replacement - and guess who's number one on the list? That's right. Me.

Now, nothing the army tells me shocks me anymore. So I am both ready to go and ready to stay, and await only official orders. (What a dutiful soldier I've become).

Because Pete's entire unit (1st Armor Division, Second Brigage....Huah!) doesn't really have a mission at this time other than being "ready reserve" in Kuwait, there are several scenarios. First, I may never go. Second, I may leave in March only to come back at the end of April. Third, I may leave in March and stay all the way until November 2006 (the original plan). Fourth, I may leave in March, come back in April, and then go BACK down for a 3-4 month span at some point over the next 12 months. So it's all up in the air. But I have a PSP, a laptop, and a long reading list, so bring it on Army.

I sort of semi-volunteered for this spot because it gets me on deployment cycle with Gwen. Our hope is to be gone (if we have to be gone) at the same time, rather than the obviously worse scenario of you go one year, I go the next year, and so forth.

The Army never ceases to amaze me. If Gwen, Pete and I were truly smart, we would gather all our experiences in writing, collobarate and write about them. Then we could publish this beast (after getting out of the service) and have it be heralded as the second coming of Catch 22. Something to think about.

I will say this - the army can be a very scary place for educated people.

And so it is. Stay tuned.


Luxembourg

Through an odd turn of events that I won't go into here (it involves yet another deployment story), I found myself in the small country of Luxembourg this past Saturday night. Luxembourg, a small country nestled in between Germany and France, is about an hour and a half drive (when you drive like a maniac, aka me on the autobahn) away from my apartment. I was with a visiting Madigan resident (here to do a 1-month ICU rotation) named Trish. We had met up with her on-his-Germany-layover-while-deploying-to-Iraq-from-the-US boyfriend earlier in the day (long story), and afterwards were already pretty close and thus decided to roll into phat Luxembourg city and get some dinner.

We ate a small French place where the waiters spoke horrible English. In classic Mick fashion, I made about five faux pas during dinner which made the night even more entertaining. Most of said faux pas came from the cultural gap between myself and the wait staff and the fact that we could barely communicate. The most entertaining touch came when I went to get my own coat off the coat rack at the end of the meal. The various staff, who'd already had enough of us by this point, (damn French snobby jerks) nearly flipped their lids when I had the gaul to attempt to take my own jacket off of the finely-honed organizational system that was the restaurant coat rack. As I walked over and reached for the jacket, I heard no less than three anguished cries of "Misseur!!" go up behind me. I turned to look as they stormed over to me. Apparently, they didn't want me touching the coats. At all. One waiter escorted me back to my seat (by my arm!) while the others rushed wide-eyed to the rack to make sure everything was OK. It was pretty hilarious. Everyone seemed to break out in a cold sweat as if the simple act of getting my coat was like trying to defuse a bomb and potentially cutting the wrong (blue) wire. Good stuff. Trish and I were laughing and shaking our heads. The wait staff...was not amused.

Before and after dinner we walked around the main little plaza of Luxembourg City. Overall, it is a cool little place - unfortunately, we arrived too late (already dark) to get good pics, but here's a small sampling with some nice blurriness on some shots for effect:







I wish my church was guarded by a centaur...










"Hey Luxembourg, don't you realize America could kick your little ass!?!? Make way for the American!"










Male Model shots - always funny. Funboy male models? Gold.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Gwen has gone off to war. On Tuesday night I stood in the door of my car and watched her march away from me in formation with her unit, around some buildings and into the cold and dreary night at some small little army base north of Frankfurt. It was the last I saw of her.

Had either of us dreamed of this when we signed some stupid forms all those years ago before even starting medical school? Had either of us even contemplated the possibility? Certainly not I. All I can do is shake my head.

The last few weeks have been touchy. Gwen's departure date to go to Kuwait kept getting pushed back. She was supposed to leave a week and a half ago. Then at the end of last week. Then maybe over the weekend. Then Monday. And finally, Tuesday. The extra days were nice - they encompassed a four day weekend where we did everything to basically act as normal as possible and just enjoy each other's company without going nuts about it. I think we did that. I'm happy for that weekend. We went out to eat. We stayed at home and ate in. We watched DVD's. We watched the playoffs. In these unpredictable life-can-change-drastically-at-the-drop-of-a-hat times, the ability to have a few regular evenings is critical to maintaining sanity.

On Monday things got tougher because departure was imminent. Gwen was a trooper through all of it. I was quick to try and make light of everything to keep her smiling. (I found that relating Frodo's "I wish the ring had never come to me..." speech to Gwendolyn's own predicament helped a little - for what it's worth.) Tuesday was really tough. I came home from work and then it was time to go. To Friedburg. To the base. To say good bye, maybe for a full year.

Gwen and I watched a Bugs Bunny Cartoon ("The Hare of Seville") prior to leaving the house. I had done the same thing with Pete, prior to taking him up to his drop off point a few months back. "Hare" is a classic. I saw Gwendolyn smile at it. That made me happy.

On the ride up, things still weren't too off. The place is about an hour and 45 minutes away. Gwen was dressed in all her army crap, with her helmet, holster, and body armor tossed in the back seat.

When we got there, we had to drop off her bags and then she had to "form up" and then do a couple of things. I used this time to get food. There was nothing open on base, so I went to the first thing I could find locally - a German McDonalds. I brought the food back and we sat in the car and ate. We had about 45 minutes until she had to leave for good.

The time ticked by, we talked and joked a little. Gwen was fighting off tears for some of the time and losing (all this despite my explicit yet tongue-in-cheek "no crying rule"). It was all very depressing and very surreal. When I got back with the food, she had already been issued her gun. Unloaded, but on her person. We sat in my car, and ate McDonald's. Gwen had a 9-millimeter on her hip, an American Flag patch on the shoulder of her uniform, and was getting ready to go to Iraq to go to war. I'm sure there's a profound and sarcastic symbolism in all that somewhere, but I'm too beleagured to even begin to try and find it. Somebody call Kurt Vonnegut.

In the last few minutes, as the time ticked down, it was brutal. We got out of the car. I helped Gwen put her flak vest on, thinking to myself, "Who does this shit? Who help's their girlfriend put on her Goddamn body armor before she heads off to war?!?." There's no book for this stuff. I guess military types do it all the time - and leave children behind to boot. But Gwen and I aren't "military types". We're simply stuck paying off our end of a contract. Hired guns. Unhappy football players on a team we don't want any part of. A team that won't trade us no matter how much we grumble. And we're slowly becoming cancers in the locker room.

And that's perhaps the hardest part. There's an entire cutlure that pervades the military that Gwen and I simply do not belong to. And never will. And don't want to. And it makes certain tasks and certain times immensely difficult. I tend to deal with most Army bullshit by laughing at it. Gwen prefers vehement rage. But unfortunately the only thing evident on Tuesday night, was a deep and sorrowful sadness.

I kissed and hugged Gwen goodbye, and then looked into her eyes one last time for the foreseeable future. Then she walked off. Then she was in formation. And then the formation was walking away and Gwen was looking back and waving. It was very dark and cold. And so damn surreal. Her unit walked through a big plaza and then behind some buildings while I stood at my car and watched her disappear into the night. And so it went.

I wish I had gone in her place. It would have been easier, for both of us, if I had gone and she had stayed. I felt helpless watching her go. Up until she finally left, I could at least keep some jokes going and keep her smiling through the tears. Once she departed though, I knew it would be brutal for her. The hardest part was knowing how miserable she would be - and knowing I could do nothing about it once we were separated. All I could do was drive home.

Back at the house, now, the silence is deafening. It is incredibly lonely here and I'm of a sound mind to go to MY apartment, fix it up, and start living there. Because THIS place isn't the same without Gwen. There's no more sound of Gwen's slippers shuffling on the floor. No more soft humming. Just me and a big empty house. And that's depressing, too.

This is life in the army, I suppose. THIS is the contract we signed. And there are many who have it worse than us. But you know what? Over the past three and a half years (and over the past 6 months in particular), I've realized that a little financial debt isn't that bad a thing. No sir - not a bad thing at all. There are worse things, in fact. I bet Gwen is thinking the same thing right now. Wherever the hell she is.

Godspeed, my Gwendolyn. Until we meet again.

Time for a New Post

I've been working on getting some new stuff up - updates on recent events and the like. It's been a busy few weeks, not the least of which all centers around Gwen's imminent and depressing departure for the great beach with no ocean. For the record, she's still here at the time of this posting, but is leaving rather shortly. In keeping good Operation Security, (affectionately known in military circles as "Op Sec"), I won't be posting any dates or times or anything like that. It's been a trying few weeks leading up to this, as I guess everyone assumed it would be - but we're making due alright given the circumstances. I'll likely elaborate on it a little more later, though I've made the staunch decision not to turn this blog into a depressing vault of lamentation over her departure. That posture simply wouldn't befit the Lord of the Funboys. Stay tuned.