My husband’s cousin, a young husband and father, is currently at Ft. Riley, KS for last-minute preparations to be deployed to Iraq.  He’s a Navy man, a Lt. Commander, who was a month away from leaving the Navy when he got the call.  Now he’ll have a year “boots on ground” in Iraq. 

Hard, yes.  But he’s not alone in getting the call, so I won’t bemoan the unfairness.  The rest of his company is doing a tour in Afghanistan, so he’s going with the Army.  Not sure how that works, exactly.  But it’s funny to read his weekly e-mails detailing the cultural adjustment he’s making to working with different branches (Air Force is also represented). 

My father was also a Lt. Commander.  The Navy gave him a first-rate college education in engineering, and he served immediately upon graduation.  Dad is a Korean War veteran, and I enjoy hearing about the career he had in the Navy.  During a recent visit, he showed pictures of his ships, even the ceremony they do when people cross the equator for the first time (think fraternity hazing).  I’m amazed that decades later he can recount the date of photos by the way flags are flying...and pick out himself by locating a white speck up near the Captain’s seat.

Dad was fortunate never to experience brutal combat.  My father-in-law was not nearly as fortunate in Vietnam.  He was a helicopter gunner, and he still occasionally cries out in his sleep.  The nightmares only started to recede about six or seven years ago. 

I know only one soldier so far who has lost his life in Iraq...the son of my sixth grade teacher.  Andrew Lamont was only two years older than me, and his mother was my favorite elementary school teacher.  His helicopter crashed into a river early into the conflict, and I think of him whenever I hear about the numbers that scroll across the bottom of the screen each night. 

I hope Ryan’s cousin makes it home safely to his wife and son.  I hope his sisters get to see him emerge from a plane, exhausted from the journey, but safe nonetheless.

I hope.