RAIN

 The ironic irony in the ironic days of irony, stumble and fall ironically all over an ironic landscape. There seems to be so much to say, but the words are uninvoked. Outlets, there are none. What is this void? The directionless anticipation while crouched at the starting line of a directionless race. No one knows where the finish line is. No one knows exactly where the course is located.

I look for the purpose and the meaning. Somewhere up ahead, I keep thinking there is a drawstring to cause the bubble of chaos to give way to labor, to productivity, to focus. I speak the words and then yield to our friend who never sleeps. She alters the words faster than the speed of sound so that they taste like vanilla. Is that better? Is it a loss?

Deep down inside, I know there is an actual opening just steps away. I dream of delivering a solution, a plan, a result, something that does not lie in wait for something I cannot identify, with shock and awe. At this point, my contingent sits at the table waiting with anticipation. 

In my life, I have known true nebulae. Substantively, this is nothing if compared. This is more about keys. Doors that are opening, confirmation, and solidity. 

I guess I got stuck as I sat around the campfire and told the story of my travels to the lit and shadowed faces all around me. In doing so, I placed myself in a state of flux between the 2nd and 4th dimensions.

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What is it that is causing such a void? Nothing moves like November, December, January, February, and March. Then I realize it is raining. I noticed today that over the last year, 24 weekends have been rainy or snowy. Just 2 more and that will make half a year of it. It really is a cruel joke. I am certainly not laughing.  

Even more cruel, while we saturate, flood, and wash away, others are drying up, roots shrivel, and hopelessly blow away. The heavy rainfall following a particularly harsh winter is simply not palatable. Somewhere, there has to be a clearing.  I cannot see past it.  I cannot see anything.

When Democracy Came

Democracy was coming, and there was nothing I could do.

Voices of parallel universes merged in my head and sang me a lullaby on my bed.

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I fought so hard, but I could not resist

Change was rising like the sun after a storm, and I could do nothing to stop it.

I stomped my feet till I was tired, then had no choice but to listen.

You shot me with the arrows of truth and persistence.

I wanted to block it out and tell bitter tales of its unpleasantness, only to find myself tapping my foot to its beat and melting in the words sung by voices I never thought I would hear again.

There is more out there. More coming your way. Find it inside yourself to know that there is more, and it has been held down and not allowed to see the light or touch a single drop of water.

I doubted it so hard, but I had to let go. It was then that I found everything.

Jump and fly. Do it now. Make it happen. Rock it. Hit it. Forget the dumb stuff. Make it so.

Don’t lie down, don’t regret. Make it happen.

Democracy was coming, and I didn’t want it

I just wanted to be stuck and going nowhere.

Sometimes, I know I am still fighting and must let it go. I keep sticking to the physics around me, but I know in my heart I can float where there is no law.

The night sky twisted and pulsed with winds of change.

It brought me tastes I never knew I could imagine.

One after the other, beautiful and seasoned voices sang to me.

I listened to them as they spoke to my heart.

There was another world, and I was in awe.

The language was precious. 

Their wisdom was undeniable.

When democracy came, I cried.

I mourned all of my wasted time.

I was fighting within the bubble of my ignorance.

I was lazy and missed a lifetime of words.

When democracy came, everything came to life.

Safe Haven Part 11: Learning to Fly

 The end of what seemed like it could never end happened: Basic Training was closing. Not only was Jus moving onto his next phase of training, but he would have two days to see his family. This was a big deal. Mastering this previously unknown and mythical experience was empowering. Life was new, making his previous chemical dependence seem like something he had only read about in a novel. It was clear that part of his existence had been truly left behind.

The visit with his family made Jus anxious to begin his new life. He finally felt like a symbol of stability instead of a cautionary tale. He did not feel precarious anymore. He had wondered if his family viewed him more as a time bomb waiting to go off before. It was nice that this feeling was now gone. His regular life was still far off because of his next training, which began right after this visit. 

Advanced Individual Training was similar to Basic, but there were so many freedoms, too, which made it weird. Freedom felt great for Jus, but he also observed that it negatively affected the unit. They started out cohesive and making their leaders proud, but then everyone fragmented and failed to operate as a single unit. 

When Jus arrived at camp in January, smoking was taken away. This was not a universal military rule; it was a pre-non-smoking directive by the Post Commander General, who had lost one lung due to cigar smoking. He described it as an excellent opportunity for Jus and other new recruits. They, however, did not see it that way, and the moment that cigarettes could be procured while on a weekend off post, passes to go bowling or whatever, they all started smoking again. 

AIT was a melting pot for mastering new skills, extending physical conditioning to new heights that could never be imagined, and using history to advance. Jus could rely on some of his primary experience to advance his stature. This resulted in being promoted one grade in rank. There were so many choices, which was a complete turnaround from his previous training, which gave him only one option in most situations.

Some aspects of this showed that things were not as polished as they appeared. There were rumours of leaders taking recruits out to bars at night, and some wild times there. Females were held back due to not performing, holding administrative positions by day, and taking mutual liberties at night. None of which could be proven, but as years passed from this day, Jus would see a story in the news in which indiscretions like these were proven and exposed. He knew that for these stories to be exposed, there were probably some big career losses and damage to the brave ones who pulled all of this dirt into the light.

As the weeks of training were winding down, critical skill exams commenced. Jus was a natural at most of it. He got along alright with most of the people in Class 20, but a couple of recruits just rubbed him the wrong way in a predetermined way. Back in high school, Jus tried to bridge many gaps he found in groups of people, only to let the generations of war win. It left him bitter. These two recruits brought that up in him. Although he was never rude or disrespectful, he tuned them out.

Derek, one of these recruits, struggled with one very important skill that would pass or fail him. His frustration and disillusionment were apparent. Jus had been reading the gospels in his spare time since the only non-Army manual book was the Bible. There is no way one can read about the life of Jesus and not take a good look at themselves and just do better. The task Derek was struggling with, Jus needed no practice, it just came naturally. Jus told Derek he would work with him and they would make sure they both would pass.

Day after day, Jus and Derek prepared for the test. In no time, Derek mastered the task and, in the end, passed the test without struggling at all. It was a lesson for Jus. He needed to question everything from the past. No conclusions stood, with one big exception. There was no place in his life for chemical dependency. 

Graduation happened, and Jus made the journey home. He thought everything from this point on would be well defined and decisive. He did not see that he was about to enter the most nebulous summer of his lifetime. Soon after, he would be swept away into a massive machine that had swallowed up the entire world for thousands of years. 

Safe Haven - Part 10 - Blame it on the Rain

 The bus ride would never be long enough. When it was over, uncertainty abounded like never before. Jus had lived like he was pulling the handle on a slot machine, waiting to see what the next moment would bring, but this. This was someone else who was totally in control. His over-the-top form of diplomacy scanned for ways to blend in without making waves. He would find out quickly that that was not even possible.

When the doors opened, it was cold outside. He shuffled out into the slushy snow on the ground. Screaming voices barked orders from all directions, and he and his travelling companions were taken to quickly eat and given a bunk to sleep on. Voices and footsteps echoed through the cement-block hallways. 

Jus dreamt about this back in December. But in the dream, he was hiding in a closet, and the same noises he heard now were around as he hid. Maybe it wasn't him in the closet. Perhaps it was someone else. Whoever it was, they were troubled, deeply. They were very alone. One thing was certain: Jus was alone now, too. He also knew now that the answer to the question when he woke up in his bed this morning was clear: this is where he would be tonight.

Fluorescent lights turning on at 4 am is one of the most significant levels of cruelty you will ever experience. The boy jumped out of the bunk as forceful voices screamed at them, as if the building were on fire. He and a large group of people he didn't know were hurried to the showers, then to breakfast, and finally to a desk, where he was surrounded by many others. He learned very quickly that he had been lied to. Belongings that he thought he could bring on this journey with him to make it easy, even his final addiction, were contraband and had to be surrendered.

As the hours passed, the things that made him who he was—an individual—were taken away one after the other. Incredible threats were outlined that any attempt to turn back now would simply lead to an even worse life in prison. There would be no, "this is not for me." Forward was the only way. Last year's breakdown and rebuild, the assassin and his surety, believing that all change was possible, were entirely knocked off balance. None of it could be used. This was an unforeseen rebirth of which he had no control. When his old man had heard that he had done such a thing, he told Jus, "Well...That will be an experience." It was another way of asking him if he had lost his mind.

The riot act kept coming with every room visited, every stripping down of facade and attitude. Jus was with people he would spend the next few months with and, fragmentally, a lifetime with. Because so much had been taken from them, they only had to look forward to eating meals, which was a 3- to 5-minute experience, and so it happened with incredible savagery. Sleep would also be nice, but there wasn't much of that, and their captors found interesting ways to disrupt it.

Since Jus was an adventurer at heart and had moved around a lot as a child, he had never really understood homesickness, and for the first time in his life, he felt it. It was much worse than he had imagined. It made him look at others with new respect. As the days passed, he tried with all he had just to follow the flow. The job of his captors, however, was to teach him how to deal with life when the flow is broken and chaos is everywhere. He was used to chaos, but even so, he was always creating it, which gave him a license to apply the brakes.  Here, he controlled nothing, there were no brakes, and if you were caught trying the path of least resistance, they would suddenly inflict a challenge on you.

Two weeks into his nightmare, where music was not permitted, Jus thought he could stay off the front lines of attention. Of course, when detected, he was put in charge, and now the actions, words, and thoughts of those in his charge were all on him. He was accountable.

Overall, this worked for Jus. He had always been adaptable. It became apparent that his actions would not turn him into something else. It would only magnify and define the person he already was. Each week was a month long. He was kept tired enough at all times so that his brain, which could normally run several tracks of unrelated thought at the same time, could only run one. It was the one his captors wanted him to focus on.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it did precisely that for the Jus and Maarja. After just three months home, he was away again. This pattern would repeat for some time, but he had no idea. He was homesick and lived to get back, but that was so far away. It felt like years. 

When you watch military commercials, you see people mastering technology, machinery, and intelligence. They appear confident and gritty—life-changing. The truth is, it is indentured servitude. The grit and confidence are learned at the wrong end of a mop and a floor polisher. Jus and his comrades were ordered to clean every tile surface and sandy rifle range everywhere they went.

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They were never permitted time to unwind, except for some Sunday mornings, which, by law, they have to allow for worship. Most of the time, it is used to catch up on stuff they never let you get done during the week. 

Weapons qualification was intense and daily. Jus and his friends were loaded into troop transport trailers, which looked suspiciously like cattle cars, and hauled out to the ranges at 4 AM. They were sleepy, leaning against walls and each other, trying to steal another minute or two of sleep while being jostled around. Their captors never allowed them to take liberties such as naps. So as Jus and his friends were rocked back and forth as the cattle car rambled along the range road in the dark, the truck pulling it stopped. The doors flung open. "I can't hear anything!" the drill sergeant screamed. "We want to hear some cadence!" While riding in a cattle car? It seemed so ridiculous! Cadence was sung when marching or running to keep soldiers in step.  Jus thought, one stupid idea begets another.

When the cattle car started moving again, Jus cleared his throat and loudly began to sing: "Here's the story of a lovely lady!" Everyone in the trailer joined in and also sang loudly. "Who was bringing up three very lovely girls! All of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls! Here's the story of a man named Brady, who was bringing up three boys of his own. They were four men, living all together, yet they were all alone..." Suddenly, the cattle car swerved to the side of the road and skidded to a stop. Clearly, someone was not happy.

The doors flung open: "Everyone OUT!!! Formation now!" They all took their places in the cold, dark January morning at attention while the drill sergeant screamed at them. "You all think you are funny, don't you? FRONT LEAN AND REST! MOVE!" Front lean and rest is the plank position one takes to begin doing push-ups; palms of hands flat in the dirt, toes in the dirt. "AND ONE, TWO, THREE AND ONE, TWO, THREE, TWO, ONE, TWO, THREE, THREE! This brutal 4-count method could make 20 pushups into 40.

When Jus and his friend's arms were shaking to the point they could not lift their own weight even one more time, they were ordered back into the cattle car and continued onto the rifle range. As odd as this all was, there was something satisfying about never having to decide. Everything was ordered. Even when Jus did something perfectly, it was torn apart. He could do nothing right. No positive affirmation made him callous and hardened, and it worked.

Despite thinking he would lose his leadership title after 2 weeks, he remained squad leader until the end of Basic Training. Time and again, Jus was punished for the mistakes of those in his charge. It was hard enough to walk the line, and he could never do anything right. Times that by 14, and it was a gauntlet of three tireless drill sergeants pounding on him all the time.

It all peaked when he was being unceasingly punished for his squad's failure to achieve something that to Jus seemed inconsequential. He thought this would be like the past times in which there would be pressure, then it would stop. This time, it did not stop; it intensified with no end in sight. For the first time, Jus felt a nervous breakdown rising from deep inside him. There was no way to stop it. He was terrified because he was speeding towards an immovable wall. He felt certain of only one thing: he was going to die.

At a moment unexpected, just as everything Jus was made of was about to explode into fragments that could never be reassembled, he was allowed to go to the restroom. He rushed into a stall and completely fell apart. Total destruction was here. At any moment, he would be either dead or catatonic. As the last seconds of light in his life began to disappear, the immovable wall shook and fell in a great, awe-inspiring crash. The air was cleaner, the sun was out, and it was as though he could see for miles across lush green fields! There were no boundaries, and the warmth of peace filled him completely. The anxiety bubble had burst, and THIS is what was hidden behind it! He suddenly felt mighty and impervious to anything from outside of him. He felt wonderfully made. He had reached the confidence level of the very friend who caused him to even think about doing this stupid thing in the first place.

He quietly turned and left the restroom. He returned to his punishers and did exactly what they said to do, and it was absolutely nothing. He was suddenly a machine that could easily do this for the rest of his life. Jus realized, THIS is what they mean when they talk about breaking a person. It was remarkable. It redefined his whole life. Yes, he would have anxiety in the future, but he would always have this moment to reflect back on and know that he was millions of times bigger than the anxiety.

A Tactical Walk

Is it just another day, or is it the day? Will it be the predictable flow, or will it be a death-defying feat to get home? Stay cool, stay low. Shadows lurk, looking for ways to breach. Something keeps tapping on the glass, looking for weakness and access.

Thinking big, walking tall, and feeling strong is only a dream that is shaken and then falls when you realize it is later than you think. Jumping out of bed, I am taking inventory, knowing that in my commitments, I am already speeding on the highway, looking for a gateway to arrive a half hour ago at my destination.

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The arrow is released. It must reach the target. It means everything to me. As I feel the bow string graze the tips of my fingers, every lazy moment I could have done more comes to mind. I could have pressed on tirelessly like one with no limits. It is easy to say in retrospect. I curse the distraction that kept me from doing so.

As the arrow strikes down range, I realize exactly where I fell short. I hate this type of clarity. The drop is still remedial, but there is work to be done. It is similar to landing a plane a mile off the runway, then disassembling it, carrying the pieces through the forest, and reassembling on the runway so that you can take off. It represents how I have done things much of my life. I am getting too old to think there is time to do things like this regularly. But, then again, it is not even me. Once the arrow is released, it is no longer my carnival.

I figuratively slap myself for the "hands clean" idea I just mentioned because teaching and learning never stop. The most impactful teacher deals the cards, and we have to play the hand of the game we begged at the door to get into. 

On my side of the canyon, I look for little glimpses across the impossible terrain. I know there is nothing I can do, and I try anyway. I just love and nothing else. It is all I can do now. There comes a time when we can do more, but now, I can only be the sound of safety. It's not much, but it builds something that can be carried forever.

There are many of these sticky spots in the trail. I am busy trying to manage more than I should, resulting in static, white noise, and distracting noises coming out of the woods. Flashes of proper perspective keep crashing in, enough to discern that I must get my head straight.

Almost a decade has passed since I spied through the telescope at the far reaches of space, and discovered the fragmentation of my composition streaming toward the light, requiring me to deal with it whether I wanted to or not. The big surprise is that the answers are indigenous to me on the deepest level. In the most unconventional ways, all the fragments actually fit together.

I know there is no easy way to be better at this. Everything is work, and that is certainly ongoing. I know I treat my life like a class in preparedness for my children, and then sometimes, I get better and sit back and watch them blossom like only they can. 

The Bravery in Out of Range - Part 1 - The Way They've Always Done Before

 As I walk the roadways of my memory, those distant, forgotten lands, I think back to when my years were only 25 and I thought I would live forever. I could not envision limitation, weakness, or disease. I jumped up onto the fuselage and rode a rocket across the sky for days, landing in the dark early one morning.

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The sirens screamed that poison was rushing at us from the sky. We ran for our lives, thinking that at any moment, all awareness would simply end, like we were being unplugged. Out of breath and struggling to pull air through an M17A1 Protective Mask, which I was never all that comfortable with in the first place. The lights of a one-story building up ahead acted like a beacon as we ran across the airfield, in which every minute and a half, a fighter jet took off, shaking every internal organ inside of me.  It was very difficult to get on top of this and to feel like I had any control at all. 

Inside the building, I ran through the hallways and dove into a room to finish donning protective gear, and looked up. There was a television on, they were reporting that air raid sirens had just gone off in Israel, Riyadh, and Dhahran due to 2 Russian jets taking off from a runway in Kuwait. There it was. A satellite feed was telling me what had just happened to me. It was so twisted. All clear.

Backtracking to where all of our gear lay under the dark sky, the fighter jets and bombers never stopped. Some took off, others returned from their reign of fire. We found a bus. There was a big sticker on the side of it, officially declaring that it had been contracted by the United States of America.

We drove off, away from the city lights, which were ridiculously symmetrical in a fascinating way. The dark countryside we were moving into was very mysterious. Nothing felt official, and the bus was in rough shape. One of our more outspoken members talked and talked to the bus driver as though he were sitting next to him at a bar. He kept starting his sentences using the words, "Jesus Christ," to which I finally leaned over to my platoon sergeant and said, "Do you really think it is a good idea that he keeps using the name of the Christian saviour over and over again here in the Middle East, and derogatorily so, to a man who held the fate of our lives in his hands. We had no idea where we were; he could have delivered us into the hands of terrorists and made global examples of us. He was told to watch his mouth.

We landed around 1 am on Tuesday, after boarding in CONUS on Sunday night at 7 pm. It had already been a very long day. We drove for another couple of hours as though our "cab driver" was trying to put some miles on the meter. I'm not wrong about this either, because we eventually headed back toward the same perfect grid squares of lights we saw earlier, this time closer to the well-lit bridge that led across this part of the Persian Gulf to Bahrain. 

We went into the port where some of our trucks were. We had heard stories. We were a tractor-trailer unit. While our trucks and trailers were on the barges, the trailers were positioned adjacent to our tractors. While the barges rode the rough seas, the trailers slammed back and forth between a set of tractors on one side and a set of tractors on the other side. This caused catastrophic damage to the tractors on either end, reducing them to almost half their original width. Even though they were totaled, they were our responsibility. We had to post 24 24-hour guards on them. We had sent an advanced party nearly a week ago. Lonnie, usually a composed guy, stepped up onto the bus. "How many of you are glad you are finally over here?" Hands went up everywhere. He looked exhausted. "You're not going to be soon. All we have done is pull guard duty around the clock." Of course, he didn't think about the fact that there were five wrecked trucks to guard, and now, instead of a handful of people to watch them, we had an entire transportation company to rotate in. He told us where we would be going next, and our bus driver fired up the engine, and we headed back onto the road.

Before the sun rose, we were deposited onto the sidewalk in Khobar. It was clear that we were no longer alone. There were thousands of the rest of us, residing here in Khobar Towers, in apartments built in the late 1970s with vast amounts of oil money, as an attempt to modernize the nomadic population from the desert into a life of luxury. As the story went, the desert dwellers were bussed into the city and shown these beautiful apartments with five bedrooms, three baths with a bidet, marble floors, concrete walls, and mahogany woodwork. In the Saudi culture, it is an insult to hold the sole of your foot up to a person. It is severe enough that you even need to be careful when sitting, so that you do not point the soles of your feet toward the person you are facing. The nomads looked out at the 8-story buildings and walked back out into the desert. They found it insulting to have people walking above their heads on upper floors, nor would they participate in such dishonor.

The towers, which spanned a pretty impressive area, sat empty for over a decade. When the war buildup began, it was ideal for housing the multinational coalition invasion.  There was one little issue, however. When the nomads refused the accommodations, which I heard was in 1979, the complex's water system was drained and turned off. They did not turn off the electricity for some reason, so tens of thousands of hot water heaters remained hot, but without water, and eventually burned out. 

We lay on top of our duffel bags on the sidewalks as our leadership tried to find us a place to live. The sun came up, mixed with the smell of dust and diesel fuel. We had all been up for over 2 days now and were existing in some kind of existential zombie autopilot in which we acted only on impulse, guided by instinct and training. The training part seemed the most loosely connected, because there was no training like this.

I wanted to do something. It was weird that we were homeless. I was wound up and wanted to settle down. I joined my platoon sergeant, the first sergeant, and the platoon leader on a walk into some of the buildings to find apartments for us. Because there were 5 bedrooms in each apartment, you could fit a whole platoon in each, sleeping side by side in bunk style in the bedrooms and the living room. Walking into the lobbies of these eight-story buildings reminded me of starting at new schools when I was growing up. The push bars on the doors, the echo of the metallic locks, were strangely familiar.

We were in the stairwell, five stories up, when our first air raid sirens went off since we arrived. We immediately masked up. The first sergeant turned to me and ordered me to get the Lieutenant and his MOPP gear. Mission-Oriented Protective Posture is the additional protective clothing that a soldier puts on after donning and clearing the protective mask (6 seconds), and the subsequent 3 seconds of pulling the hood down. 

That gear included a heavy camouflage jacket and trousers, lined inside with neoprene —a firm, rubber-like material used for fuel lines. The jacket had a black mesh-like material against the skin, with activated charcoal powder throughout to also protect the soldier. MOPP gear was heavy, hot, and disgustingly dirty, but if you were caught in an area where chemical weapons had detonated, it all could save your life, while you sweat to death and have trouble breathing. Sounds rough, of course, but the flipside is that without this stuff, your solid organs turn to liquid in your last few minutes alive.

The request that the first sergeant was making of me was highly unusual because your MOPP gear was to ALWAYS be strapped to the back of your LBE (load-bearing equipment) which consists of a pistol belt and suspenders, upon which typical items are two magazine pouches, canteen,  first aid kit, flashlight, and MOPP gear all had respective places. In the field, it was as intrinsic as wearing clothes themselves. Soldier stuff 101. I was only an E3, Private First Class, which I do not recommend getting activated and sent to war on that salary. But it also meant that I was required to take even the most stupid orders and carry them out.

Obeying like a good puppy should, I went down the many flights of stairs to the 4 steel and glass doors and pushed my door open and took two steps. A Humvee went by on the road in front of the building, and a PA announcement came from the soldier inside: "SCUD LAUNCH!" I stopped in my tracks. "Forget the dumb stuff!" I said out loud. If there was a missile headed for us, I was not going to be searching for the gear belonging to career officers and soldiers who did not even have their basic issue with them. I just went to boot camp a year ago, and it was pounded into my brain that if I couldn't do this simple thing, I wouldn't survive.  I turned around and went back up to the fifth floor, continuing to put on my MOPP gear. 

The First Sergeant yelled at me, "Hey! I gave you an order. I told you to get our MOPP gear!" I looked at him, in his mask, through my mask. It was a world in which we all looked alike. "First Sergeant, General Order Number One: 'I will guard my post and not leave my post until properly relieved.' To carry out that order, it is implied that you show up with the equipment you were assigned. The way I see it, you are unprepared, and that is not my problem, First Sergeant." I am sure his face had to have turned red inside the mask, but really, what man of his rank or the Lieutenant's rank would ever take disciplinary action against me when the very charge would highlight their incompetence? I knew that even though I could not see the face of my Platoon Sergeant, Rob, I was sure he was smiling. He, of course, was a MOPP-4, which meant all protective gear was on.

We sat silently in the stairwell, not knowing how this worked. The sound of a missile quickly came into our range of hearing, followed by a series of Patriot Missiles firing up and taking off. Four explosions rocked the ground and were spectacularly loud. While the threat of dying in a blast had passed, if this SCUD missile was carrying chemical weapons, this was only the beginning. In a chemical environment, you could have to endure living life at MOPP 4 for days on end. Well, except the Lieutenant and First Sergeant. They would not fare so well with just a mask.

A long time had passed, but it was enough time for the NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) Teams to test and confirm there were no chemical warheads on this SCUD. Three short blasts of the air raid siren gave the "All-Clear". We could return to normal status.

When we returned to the company area, the Commander, Captain A, had informed us that we had accommodations. We had an apartment on the sixth floor of one of the towers. The apartments were not furnished; they just had thin, indoor-outdoor carpet over marble floors. I picked a spot under a window in a room where 8 of us could call home. 

Before we left Fort Devens, Massachusetts, we were issued very nice standard-issue army cots. At this time, no one knew where any of those were. They were shipped over with all of the other equipment in shipping containers. No one knew where anything was. There was no evident organization. No one knew we were coming. We had no idea where the majority of our trucks and trailers were. It was normal to be standing somewhere in the massive port and see your assigned truck go by. You would simply yell, "Hey, that's my truck!" And the driver would stop, set the brakes, open the door, grab his gear, and walk away. Even though there seemed to be order, this was also chaos, all coordinated by people essentially in control of much of the world. They were determining what every day was going to be like for me.