The Odyssey

The last time I returned home from war, I returned alone. I left a week before my team so that I could be there to help arrange medical care for my son, who had a neurological event and stopped talking…and learning while I was gone.

I spent 36 hours on the floor of the helo station in Ramadi waiting for sand storms to clear. I took a C-130 out of Balad to Kuwait. I walked out of a Toyota Hilux and into the departures area of Kuwait City airport with a dead hooker bag still wearing my body armor. I handed my rifle, my side arm and my mags to the driver (an old teammate) and did a quick double check to make sure I didn’t have any loose rounds on me. Nothing like wandering into coach with 40mm golden egg still on me. I changed out of my uniform in the bathroom. And I tried to check my DHB but it was too heavy. My body armor alone was 42lbs. So they gave me a box and some tape. I knelt on the floor and loaded my ballistic helmet and my body armor into the box and taped it up. And then I got on the 17 hour, middle seat, economy flight to San Diego.

I took a cab home and woke my wife, sleeping with three kids under five around her in our bed. She looked at me and asked me if I could go down the street to register our oldest for kindergarten. I hadn’t seen her in months. I grabbed the folder on the table and ran down the street. I didn’t know where our car keys were.

The school nurse told me that his immunizations weren’t in order. And that he couldn’t be registered. And that I was going to have to come back. I asked her to explain what was wrong. She said it was clear in the email we got, looked over my head and said “next person please”. I still had Jazeera desert sand in my hair. I still had the 10 digit grid from the last target we hit written on my wrist.

Anton Chigurh to the trailer park administrative woman. I was powerless.

I read The Odyssey for the first time today. 3000 years late to the party as a man who spent 10 years at war and 10 years trying to come home for good. It left me with two profound realizations. And a list of ancient truths that have survived the arc of western human warrior culture. The first is that the shape of the human deployment, and the pattern of emotions that come with it, are clearly very old human things. The second is that the Odyssey is, at its core, the warrior fantasy. To use the craft a warrior learns at war, to exact justice in his own house.

Thinking of the feeling of standing in front of the school nurse, powerless against her, I wonder how Odysseus would have responded if he would have been denied the justice against the suitors because they’d appropriately established tenancy in his absence. Of course that’s not Homer’s epic. He allows the vengeance to be realized and leaves it to the gods to clean up. The fantasy that has launched a thousand books and movies since.

For a long time after I came home, I had a recurring dream. I found myself deployed to some far off land. I felt at home. Like I belonged. Familiar. A singularity of purpose had returned. And then I realize that I have no gear. My rifle is missing. My body armor is gone. I can’t find my helmet. And the mission is coming.

I search frantically. I find nothing. And I would wake up.

The lesson was simple. Part of me was still there; trapped on an island with a goddess that would never die.

The deepest pain I’ve ever felt was leaving my wife and kids behind to go off to war. It was a physical pain. One I couldn’t live in. And once returning there was no way to reconcile the two men who lived within me. One capable of violence. One capable of love. The dream was a signal to let me know the two versions of myself could never meet.

That’s the experience of the Odyssey. The hero away longs to be home. And once home struggles to be recognized by those that he holds most dear. It’s an epic that builds to that narrative on ancient truths:

The son you leave will never forget you. Even if he never knew you. The rest of the world is outside the warrior creed. You will pay for the glory you seek. It is not free. The wives of the fallen have given their loves over to the masses. But kept the grief for themselves. The gods rarely agree. So you never make it home until you are home. Your friends are with you only if the gods are. The people you encounter are either friend or foe. But you never know until you meet them. Dawn cures many things. Your men have thoughts and wants. But there is only one neck in the noose. And it is yours. You can never truly go home. And your journey only ends when you tell the tale of it to the one you love.

No one will believe you are who you are. Because you are no longer who you once were.

The whole world of human existence lives within the experience of those waiting for us to return. But that story is not mine to tell.