(08NOV2008)My grandfather (on my mother’s side) served in WWII and my grandmother recently told the family about a record she had received from him during that time. It’s a recording he’d made just for her, a letter of sorts, that had no doubt taken weeks to make it across the ocean to her from Europe.
My father served in Vietnam and occasionally received tapes my Mother made for him. She mailed them and they, too, undoubtedly took weeks to find him.
My parents and sister have sent me care packages that arrive in less than a week, and last year in Iraq I had a phone on my desk that was routed through a base stateside. My parents could (and did) call it on their cell phones and it was treated as a call to NJ – free for pretty much every cell phone plan nowadays.
I don’t have a phone like that here in Afghanistan, or an office for that matter, but I have a computer with an internet connection that works pretty well after midnight when most of the soldiers are asleep – it’s when I reply to most of my work emails, especially if I have to attach a file.
This morning, long after I should have been asleep, my brother and I are chatting online and I may as well be in the States, or even in the same city as him. In this way, among many others, technology has made being at war on the other side of the world very different today than it was for the military of earlier generations.
My brother is getting married next June, and I’ve arranged to take R&R during that time, after ~9 months here. I think of it often, as we all tend to focus on the next time we’ll be home, the next time we’ll see family and friends, have a beer or – and this is a constant topic of conversation – eat well.
My brother sends me links to a couple of the restaurants we’ll be visiting as part of the wedding week, and I’m all but slobbering on the keyboard as I read about and look at pictures of porterhouse steaks, lobster risotto, and grilled pork chops. I go to bed with those thoughts and when the conversation inevitably turns to food later in the day, I relate to my colleague Alex all that I now crave.
And then we go to the DFAC and have God knows what for lunch.
R&R = Rest and Relaxation
DFAC = Dining FACility
