I'd been having some GI problems for about two weeks. At first I thought I had some food poisoning. Sharp yet non-radiating pain in lower right quadrant, and other symptoms. It went away, then came back last Friday. Sunday I was a mess. Decided at work on Monday that the pain meant something so I called Dr. Cutey.
7:30 am Tuesday, I saw her. 8:30 am I had a CAT scan, and not the kind I get at home from any of my five kitties. I hate have procedures sprung on me and I went to the scan unaware that I'd have an IV for dye and an enema. Yay!
Before I left the scan site, I was called to the phone to talk to Dr. Cutey who informed me that I had a hot appendix and I needed to go the the E/R at Hxxxx hospital ASAP. Ran around, made arrangements, and the lovely wife, my darling sister, and I went off to the hospital.
Let's just say that there are qualitative differences in hospitals and leave it at that. When the E/R attending and the triage nurse personally have to come and find you in a hallway in the x-ray department, you know things are a little awry. That would be after spending an hour or so in x-ray just lying there.
Six hours in the E/R, two visits by the surgical resident, signed consent for surgery. Then I was taken to a room... not to surgery.
Well, it turns out that the surgeon wasn't certain what I had. And... they lost the CAT scan films that I had hand carried to the hospital. IV and IV antibiotics. No food.
Wednesday dawned hungry and messy. My GI problems were extreme. Wait for the GI consult. Wait for the GI consult. Pound on tray. Call Dr. Cutey. Pound on desk. GI guy shows late in afternoon. Refugee from "Saturday Night Fever". Open shirt. Chains. Attitude. Too dangerous to do colonoscopy, due to inflamation and such. Yay! Surgeon says too dangerous to operate, too dangerous to send me home. OK to have clear liquid diet. I ate jello, lots of jello.
12:30 am Thursday. Wake up. We have to move you into quarantine!!!!!!! You have GI infection you got in hospital!!!!! WTF?????? Thursday dawns in noisy room directly across from nurses' station. Surgeon? Surgeon? I want to go home. Liquid diet isn't enough. Pound on tray. Pound on desk. Nurse says resident hints I may go home. Let lovely wife know. Hey, moved to low residue diet at lunch. Got to eat two lunches, the clear and the low residue. Low residue contained wheat product and milk, odd since my chart clearly shows I am lactose and gluten intolerant.
OK, definitely going home. Need orders. Call lovely wife.
Orders written. Call lovely wife. She is coming in cab. IV removed. Shriek like gurly girl at pain [not really, very pain free. Nice nurse.] Pack up my troubles and go down to the lobby in my slippers and scrubs. Look like homeless bum but don't care. Driven home by Arab on cellphone. Cats all ask "Who are you?"
#1
To create one more acronym, these soldiers have what I call "JSS", for "Joyful Soldier Syndrome". In an odd analogy, they are like angels sent to Hell to fight demons and redeem sinners. There is no higher calling for them. Nothing in their civilian world lives that could be so worthwhile, so fulfilling.
In most cases, only a small fraction of what they do involves combat. In every other way, they are trying to help people. Even the smallest thing they do helps others who cannot yet help themselves. To continue the analogy, only rarely do they need to fight demons; their greatest fight is against Hell itself.
It helps that their enemies often have "demonic" goals. Violence, tyranny, oppression, hatred, and to victimize the innocent. They are Philistines. Brutalitarians.
What at first I called JSS is much like combat fatigue or delayed stress syndrome in action, seen more in those who have returned home than those at the front.
Granted, where they have been was most unpleasant, but it had meaning, purpose and emotional intensity that cannot be reproduced at home. Unlike combat fatigue or DSS, they are not suffering because of where they were; they are suffering because they are no longer there.
As a Marine said to the author: "I don't want to be anywhere else but Iraq. . . .This is what manhood is all about. I don't mean macho [stuff] either. I mean moral character."
#2
Anonymoose's comment is not off the mark. I noticed this very same thing in a Marine platoon commander back from R&R with his Family. He's glad to be with his family, but feels that Iraq is "where the battle rages". I mentioned this article to a co-worker, who said he also noticed it in two of his friends fresh back from Iraq.
While the article is complimentary with regard to Evangelical Christianity, I think that's not the whole story: the transition to the volunteer army not only raised the quality of the soldiers in it, but also lifted the moral ambiguity surrounding the question of why a man is in the army fighting for his country if there is an active draft. That, and also the effect of battling something truly evil.
The marine commander I mentioned above noted that the bachelors in the unit spent the shortest times in the States, and the atheists had the highest re-up rates.
God bless all our troops. We ought to pick a day for an official New York City ticker-tape parade to honor these warriors. Until then, don't fail to thank them as you find them.
#3
You feel it even years later. Its there - the itch you cannot scratch: you want to do something - something you've done before, and done well. Done the right things. There's a righteous fight on, and you feel in your heart that you should be there helping these baby-faced kids (and protecting your own), your bones tell you that's where you belong...
...even though your head tells you "you're too old".
Its almost painful at times. But its a hell of a motivator in the work that I do get to do. Makes my job soemthing more than a paycheck.
After 9/11 I was lost. I felt the itch, the need do something, anything - but I was too old to go into military service and to out of practice to do any intel/analyst type work (I did some work as a civilian defense intel analyst with the military/DOD for about 6 years during my youth).
The loss of my civvie desk job was another blow on top of that. I had to do something, but I didn;t know what I could do. A friend suggested getting into the security field (most people look down on security officers until they actually need one - there are estimated to be 23 security officers for every police and fire dept and EMT on duty in most cities and localities - although, to be honest, I wouldn't trust more than a handful of the ones I've met to react correctly in a crisis).
I got into security (breezed the background check so quickly even my new employers were surprised (5 calendar days to clearance, 10 caledar days to when I had my guard card (which is also basically guaranteed employment anywhere in this country and in many places abroad))).
After a couple of missteps, I ended up working at one of the nations' most prestigious national labs - a soft target if there ever was one.
The jobs' fun, informative, different - and most of all rewarding. While I haven't had to go toe-to-toe with any terrorists, I've had a couple of run-ins with some miscreants, some accidents (no deaths thus far, but one pretty serious injury), and some other incidents. And, if I want, I have the opportunity to move up to a classified lab and get on its police force or security detail sometime in the future.
Every day here is a discovery, a learning experience. The work here is rewarding because I know I'm doing good work.
I still wish I could be out there with the guys hunting terrorists though. The itch is still there though it's milder...
#5
From the movie Gettysburg, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: "This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here you can build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, is each other. Sorry. Didn't mean to preach."
More and more, force projection has become an expensive proposition. And yet the clients in need of soldiers capable of deploying where needed around the world continues to grow. No longer only in the realm of nations; corporations and other organizations who could not possibly afford to create or maintain a mercenary army, can now afford to rent one.
There has long been a stigma associated with mercenaries, often with much justification. But in the future, mercenaries may be seen as performing roles for which military personnel are ill-suited.
Nations are often willing to commit soldiers to protect their citizens living in other countries, but only if those citizens have no other organization to look to for support and are in grave danger. Corporations in such cases, are becoming more and more willing to look after their employees, and long before they are at imminent risk.
Other organizations, even humanitarian organizations, are caught in the dilemma of personnel who are only trained to operate in safe situations. Much of the criticisms leveled against them are based on the fact that they are utterly defenseless, even against modest aggression. Hiring a security detachment could allow them in to far more areas than they can now go. And some humanitarian missions could even operate if they had to "go in shooting" as combatants, to deliver humanitarian supplies to non-combatants, past an army hostile to the despised civilians.
Last but not least, the US is engaging in an experiment with having what are in essence mercenaries provide services and support to its soldiers in the field. Such assignments are, of course, non-combatant, excepting those who operate in parallel missions to combat soldiers.
With the conclusion of the Iraq-Afghanistan campaign, there will be an enormous number of skilled ex-military personnel whose talents could prove to be of great value to the US in particular and the world in general.
Such personnel could perform peacekeeping functions for the United Nations, perhaps even as a permanent UN force, deliver supplies for the Red Cross, provide rescue services in disaster areas, security services for corporations and friendly governments, logistics support for deployed armies, and most of all act as skilled "surge" or "temp" personnel in time of great need. Their price would be high, but far lower than keeping a standing army to do the same.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
