Here & Home

Here: I have to walk 150 feet to go to the bathroom or take a shower.

Home: Indoor plumbing, sigh.

Here: Soldiers (the good ones at least) have a heightened situational awareness. Meaning they pay attention at all times to what is going on around them while driving or walking.

Home: People don’t seem to pay attention to anything that is going on around them. I found myself thinking several times while at home and observing people that most of them would not survive a day in Iraq. People just seemed to be so self absorbed that they usually have no idea what is happening around them at any given moment.

Here: People actually respect personal space, meaning they do not crowd up on you and actually keep their distance.

Home: You have no personal space. In restraunts, bars even walking down the street people constantly bump into you or lean on you. Or my personal favorite (once again I am lying) people that feel the need to either grab you or stand 2 inches from you or both to have a conversation.

Here: Having to use bottled water to brush my teeth or just too simply drink.

Home: Water from faucets that you can actually drink, what a concept.

Here: Even the youngest soldiers have some idea of the schematics of both Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to the different religions and what is actually going on.

Home: I would have to say from my experience back home that maybe 1 in 10 people actually knew what was going on here in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I was actually amazed at the amount of well educated people that knew absolutely nothing about either one of these countries.

Here: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are very real and are topmost on people’s minds.

Home: A lot of people seemed to have forgotten that we are currently embroiled in not just one war but two. I also hate to say it but I actually ran into several people that really just didn’t give a damn about either war and could care less about them one way or the other. I have said this before and I will say it again, most folks are not affected by these wars unless they have a friend or family member fighting in them. Welcome to the “its all about me generation” if it does not affect me I don’t really care. (Disclaimer: I am not saying that all people that do not have friends or family serving feel this way but there are a lot of folks that do).

Here: We have a PX which is the Army’s version of a store, sometimes called a shopette. The one we have here at Sykes is very small and there is not much to buy there.

Home: The sheer amount of stuff that was available to buy in even the smallest store was amazing. The first store I went to when I was home was a gas station on the way home from the airport and I remember just standing in front of the drinks cooler and being amazed at all the different choices.

Here: Darkness, complete and total. It makes for great star gazing but really sucks when you are trying to navigate around the base and keep from breaking your ankles on all the wonderful rocks in the area.

Home: Everything is lit up. From streetlights to businesses to front porch lights. There are not a lot of places that are completely dark. Even out in the country you can see the glow from distant cities.

Here: No real personal freedoms. You can’t just jump in your car or truck and go for a drive.

Home: Being able to wake up at 3am and just get into a car and go to a store was awesome. Or the simple fact of being able to drive down the road and not having to stop at 7 police checkpoints in a 20 mile drive.

Here: You are always around people. No matter where you go on this base there is always someone around.

Home: You can find someplace to just sit and relax and not be around anyone either at your house or out and about.

Here: Our generators have to be fueled and serviced every day at 9am and to do that they have to turn them off. This means that every day when I get home to my CHU I have to reset my clock and my alarm and relog onto the internet (when it is working that is).

Home: Constant power all the time (except when you have a big winter storm, hope you are all enjoying the snow, I do not miss it )