"When I returned from Afghanistan this past spring, a civilian friend asked, “Is it good to be back?” It was the first time someone had asked, and I answered honestly. But I won’t do that again. We weren’t ready for that conversation. Instead, when people ask, I make it easy for everyone by responding, “It’s fine.” That’s a lie, though. It’s not fine."
I had a lot of not-so-latent rage when I came back to the United States, even though I had not personally seen any close combat. One of the things (but not the only thing) that made me so crotchety was the realization that real people, including two people I knew, got killed executing the plans I wrote.
Two and a half years after the fact, I acknowledge that I did not kill them myself, and that sometimes the enemy gets their vote in too. I still felt guilty.
It was a few years later that one of my instructors in a military course told me he knew colonels who did not compete for tactical brigade command because of the belief they were responsible for the deaths of the soldiers in their previous commands at battalion level. I understood those colonels' perspectives.
Home is a very tenuous concept. I didn't (and for the most part still don't) want to talk to a lot of people after I came back.
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