Activation

I did my two week AT (Annual Training) for my National Guard Unit in the summer, painting and doing mostly busy work, while bullshitting with fellow sufferers. The Operation Desert Shield thing was starting, and we were taking informal bets what would happen to us. I was in the bitter end of an abusive marriage, having a pointless affair with a guy in the Unit, I was sanguine about being taken out of the state for a while. We all figured that if we got activated, it would be to hold down the post for an Army Hospital in Mississippi, as had happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis- the last time this hospital unit had been activated.

Then the rules started changing. We would no longer be just at the beck and call of the Governor, but of the U.S. President, and units were being sent to the Gulf. Being a great pessimist, I figured we were for it. I had just escaped the entanglement of my marriage less than a month before. Taking Microbiology and organic chemistry, I'd heard other Reservists getting called up, and being given credit for classes that were already half over. And then it was my turn.

I had just bought myself a futon and frame, and a bedspread. (I had been sleeping on a foam pad.) Made my nice new piney smelling bed, new black bedspread, and the phone rang. I blithely answered. Told to report to the Armory at the usual time on Saturday when we were already scheduled for drill. I was On Alert. I laid down on my new bed, stunned, thoughts, or at least obscenities racing through my head. Not least of which was "Well, I may be able to have an affair with D." I have no recollection of the rest of the day.

At first formation, we were told we would be in Saudi Arabia for Christmas. We were not just On Alert, we were being Activated. My sergeant walked through his duties that day with tears in his eyes. He was not the only one. Parents were frantic about their children, students worried about their education and loans, the older ones speculated on whether their businesses would still be there when they got back. We were not given an end date, perhaps it would be for the duration. Gossip took over, and amidst the busy preparations- made easier in my section due to our Colonel "Mom" who had done her work to make us organized and ready, was a suppressed panic. D and I sought each other out, and found solace in catching each other's eyes, commiserating.

That evening, I would get dumped by the guy I had been seeing. Which took nerve on his part, and I give him credit for doing it immediately and not dragging it out. But I spent that night crying, not just for him, but for all my loss and anxiety and fears and uncertainty and mortality.

I would get up early with a headache that became a migraine as I stood in line after line to get this bit of equipment, that form, my will and insurance, all the Army shit. And D would be sure to stand in line with me, at some point getting me a chair and putting my head down on his mask carrier as we waited in another line. A gesture I found overwhelmingly endearing and comforting then, that still brings tears of gratitude to my eyes.

I would go to all my classes the next day and with up to a dozen other students in each class, to sign up for the "get the grade you would get for your work so far, and get credit for the whole semester" deal. My recent friends from class agreed to help with various tasks I could not do. One - then living with her grandparents, would move into my apartment, I would pay rent and she would cover utilities only, so I would not have to find a new place if and when I got home. Another friend would hold my checkbook, another would handle anything else. I was dumping on them but with only a week's notice, and friends I had not known that long, I tried to spread it out, to reduce both burden and temptation. I was desperate, and with few choices. They would all come through for me.

The week would involve most days at the Armory, but Thursday off. Because Thursday was Thanksgiving. I spent it with friends, one of whom had been a radio man in Vietnam, he gave me his infantry badge - to bring back to him. He would take me the next day, with D, to get some allowable comforts, a short wave radio, scissors, swiss army knives, a few other odds and ends. It was a lovely, normal day, and friend and D bonded in a gratifying way. Sunday night, at 0dark30, we were put in all the bulky webgear, and loaded on busses alphabetically, and sent off to wait at Fort Carson for a month until we were sent to Saudi Arabia.

Such began my first date with D. We would both come through changed, blind to the road before us, reaching out to each other. This is why we count our anniversary, the one that counts, as the date on our activation orders, celebrated on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Because we would survive, and this would turn out for us to be six months of annoyance in a footnote war.

Not like the current sequel.