One of those days you never forget (redux)

With barely a month left on this 28-month extended tour, I felt it appropriate to re-publish this one from a couple of years ago, with a little editing...

Friday, May 16, 1991, was one of those fateful days I'll never forget. I was living in Fulda, Germany, and had driven my newly-purchased beater BMW with a friend's wife to Frankfurt-am-Main airport to pick up my young wife and our son, who was then only 17 months old (he is now 19 years old). We sped along Autobahn 7 to Fulda that afternoon without incident, and Mary Anne (my friend's wife) asked me to stop at the unit HQ to let her husband know we were back. I introduced Lori to my Platoon Sergeant (Jimmy "Groovy Man" Saunders), who later told me that he "didn't have the heart" to tell me then what he had just found out in the commander's office: we were on our way to Kuwait.

Oblivious, we drove to our new apartment on the other side of town, and started unpacking her things. Little Dallas toddled to every room, and I bounced him on the bed a few times. (I always loved wrestling with my boys when they were little.) Then, at about 7:30 p.m., the doorbell buzzed. Robert and Mary Anne Jones, and our friend Rick Mitchell, came to break the news to me. We were to leave in two weeks, and start processing tomorrow -- shots, wills, and life insurance forms. I still didn't even have a phone in our Army-furnished apartment.

I was devastated. Over the previous eight months, I had spent maybe four weeks with my young family. Following a year of language school in California, the Army sent me to training in Texas and then Massachussets, and because of the Gulf War build-up, we weren't even allowed to go home for Christmas. Lori and Dallas stayed with me at the Army Lodging at Fort Devens for several days, and returned when their plane was diverted in Rochester due to snow. We stayed in a tiny, one-room apartment in Ayer for three weeks -- no furniture, a blow-up bed, no car, and a 5-inch black & white TV. We still have pictures of little 1-year-old Dallas, up to his waist in snow. We loved every minute of it.

Then came my assignment to Germany, and a three-month wait to get housing set up, orders to get them over there, and passports. Living in the barracks, my buddies and I watched the entire Gulf War on TV over billiards and beer, never suspecting for a second that the Army would send seventy-five Russian and German linguists to Southwest Asia. I began making the arrangements, and spending the first installment of my enlistment bonus on things I couldn't afford. Finally, the day came when my wife and I could start our lives together again -- only to be delayed yet again.

Lori turned 19 three days before I left. On her birthday, I took her sightseeing downtown -- which, due its typical old-Europe charm, would have been great if we hadn't locked the keys in the car. We caught the bus to our neighborhood, and I walked a few blocks to the landlord's house. It was a balmy Sunday afternoon, and he was having a leisurely brunch with his family. Once I finally got the message translated through his son, I had to wait almost an hour for him to finish eating. They did not have a spare key, but fashioned a plan. We took a neighbor's ladder over to the apartment -- stuck through the sunroof of the landlord's BMW -- and I climbed through an open balcony window to get my extra keys. Fortunately, I had not locked the window before we left!

The next months were to be some of the toughest that our marriage would have to endure. Lori found out she was pregnant with Christian, and couldn't bear the smell of cooking. She lost weight. I was helpless in Kuwait, and couldn't afford many phone calls (thank God for today's cheap technology). Lori couldn't legally drive in Germany, and didn't know anyone there, much less the language. Long story short, Lori's aunt and uncle (who was in the Air Force) graciously took her and Dallas in after moving to Holland. They let them stay for most of the last month of my deployment, and that probably saved our fledgling marriage -- plus, her mother told her to tough it out.  It would be years before I could meet her uncle and thank him personally.

My unit, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, spent only three frustrating months in the desert. It would have been more, but an accident in our motor pool destroyed more equipment in one day than the entire Iraqi army did during the war (another story in itself).

Thank God for accidents.

One degree of Kevin Bacon

At this morning's official Signal Regimental Week Prayer Breakfast, the Chaplain -- speaking on the seven Army values -- described a scene in the latest Kevin Bacon movie, Taking Chance. Bacon's character is escorting the body of a fallen Marine home for the funeral, and at the airport security checkpoint he refuses to remove his dress uniform coat festooned with medals, ostensibly because it was his sacred honor to wear the uniform while performing his duties. I haven't seen the movie, but I presume that after some edge-of-your-seat moments of consternation, the TSA agents reluctantly let him on through with little more than a wand wave.

Nice try, Hollywood -- but in real life things ain't so easy. A couple of years ago I also volunteered the same duty, for my friend who had taken his own life. I too was told to keep my uniform on at all times until I got to my final destination, but at the first security checkpoint at 0600 at OKC, I faced a similar decision. Only I figured it was better to meekly comply than to be taken to some moldy storage closet and accused of hating America whilst being waterboarded for three hours by some huge, greasy, underpaid TSA agent as the plane takes off with my friend's coffin in it. My duty was to escort my comrade's body to its final resting place, not wake up in an undisclosed location and get my 15 minutes of fame on CNN because I've got a bone to pick with the collective ignorance of the TSA. I even let them scan my backpack which had the folded flag in it, that I would ultimately present to my friend's widow at the funeral.

Of course I had to strip down to my socks, pants, and undershirt in front of everyone, and when I complained I was pulled aside for "special screening," even after I broke protocol to reveal my mission. Now in that tense moment I didn't imagine some action-packed scene where I grab the agent's gun, shoot my way onto the plane and highjack my way to Atlanta just in time for the funeral -- I would never have dreamed of that, not even for a fleeting second. Even if I had to take a rubber glove for the team (which I thankfully did not), I was going to accomplish my mission. But I at least got to tell the TSA supervisor that it was a shameful moment in our country's history when a man in uniform had to be subjected to such nonsense. I later wrote a strongly-worded letter to the TSA on their website telling them they should be ashamed of themselves, but I have yet to receive my apology. And I refuse to be nice to any TSA agent until I do.

But none of that sells movies, or makes for good points in Chaplains' sermons.

Now quick, who can connect Kevin Bacon to Kenneth Branagh, using only military-themed movies?