(10DEC2008)
When I arrived in theater in August, I was met by two people I knew from my previous trip to Afghanistan last March. They were the only people in country I’d ever met before, and they left within weeks of my arrival.
People come and go. The only constant is you. Everyone I know and work with here now, I met within the last 102 days. They are good people, friendly and hard-working, and we are sharing a unique experience here at war, but there is no depth – no history – to these relationships. Not yet.
Personnel routinely move in and out of
- or within - country, and I haven’t gone more than a couple of weeks without saying
Good-bye to someone I work with and
Howdy to his/her replacement. Sometimes it’s people on the periphery of my job – someone I’m used to seeing in a meeting I always attend and suddenly they’re gone and there’s a new face, a new personality to get to know. Sometimes it’s someone I see every day.
Whole units come into and depart theater together, of course. I work closely with a few here on BAF, and the one I know best is leaving in mid-January. I have asked them to introduce me to their replacements, but you never know how those will go. It’s a whole new command structure I have to brief and get on-board with my mission.
Generally, when people leave it’s a happy event. For my inner circle of colleagues, we have had a couple of people redeploy and we’ve gotten together for dinner (something we don’t do as a large group very often) and then head over to Green Beans for some café mocha or whathaveyou. The conversations still tend to work, but there’s a little more joking around, some slaps on the back, and the perfunctory questions about what we’ll each do when we get home, what we miss most.
A friend of mine left earlier this week and we had our get-together for him, told stories and laughed, wished him well and told him to keep in touch.
Sometimes when people leave it’s not as happy an event. The KTRs I work with have a saying that if things get to the point where they’re not enjoying their work, or if they’re needed at home, or would just rather
be at home, they have an easy decision to make:
aisle or window?
As the vast majority of KTRs are not full-time permanent employees, and will therefore have no connection with the company they currently work for after their contract expires. If they’re not happy, they can pick up and leave.
I don’t have that flexibility, because I’m a permanent employee of the military acting in the same position here as I have at home. Were I to leave before my time, I’d have a lot to answer for. While I could undoubtedly convince my command to let me come home (I did volunteer for this assignment after all), it would at least look bad, and at most could adversely affect my career. At any rate, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
The soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen have it worse, of course. They are very much confined to the deployment/redeployment schedule of their unit and have no opportunity to leave early under any circumstances. They get their two weeks of R&R and can rush home for emergency leave (vetted by the Red Cross, I believe), but other than that they’re here for the duration.
One of the KTRs I work with was let go today. Though he’ll work until he was planning to go home for the holidays, it is a bittersweet time for him. He will not be returning to finish his contract, and so must readjust his financial plans for the next year. And, of course, getting fired is never fun.
As disappointed as we all are, it is never hard to find the silver lining in going home, even when it’s unexpected. My friend is married, as so many here are. He has a young son, and his wife is pregnant with a second. Certainly being home is not the worst thing that could happen to him and his family right now.
He is also in a unique position of having a job stateside that is eager to reemploy him. Given the current state of the economy, many KTRs I know are extending their tours because their options at home are limited or absent.
As one of them put it to me “
I can either stay here and make more money than I’ve ever made in my life, or I can go home and be unemployed.”
Another easy decision, if you have the opportunity to make it.
BAF = Bagram Air Field
KTR = Contractor
R&R = Rest & Relaxation
When I arrived in theater in August, I was met by two people I knew from my previous trip to Afghanistan last March. They were the only people in country I’d ever met before, and they left within weeks of my arrival.
