Aviation fuel and rotor blades

I have many memories from my service and deployments. So many are of brotherhood, camaraderie and bonds forged in the white hot intensity and chaos of combat and there are many good times that linger, and many bad. I've done things most people couldn't imagine, been proud to represent my country, critical of my governments' decisions and sought personal atonement in quiet places and the raging turmoil that is my heart and soul; I haven't yet succeeded. I mourn the loss those I called brother and I lament the loss of parts of myself but, then again, I am so much more than I once was, before my service.

I have many memories from my service and deployments and sometimes I can't sleep, look at myself in the mirror or see the present or future clearly at all.
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Aviation fuel

She never cried until I turned around and walked away; she was stoic and courageous wanting to send me off with a thought of her smile and the touch of her hand. But I knew she cried the moment I picked up my kit, turned and strode across the tarmac to the transport with the rest of my unit.

Her perfume would linger, rubbed off on my collar or neck, and I could still feel the moment her fingers slipped from mine as I stepped away and our hands parted. I never looked back, but always wondered if I'd see her again.

As I walked, stiff-backed and purposefully, nodding here and there to my personnel, I clung to the scent, the feeling of her skin on mine...but this airfield was no different to others; roaring engines, belching fumes and the smell of aviation fuel carried away the fragrance and tender touches of my girl. I was going to war and the smell of aviation fuel always caused a change in me. The first time was, problematic, but later it drew a line in the sand; I became someone else.

Rotor blades

As I walked down the ramp and my boots hit the ground I was eager to get to work. It was always bright, dusty and hot; I never liked that part. But I knew I'd be busy enough not to notice and would acclimatise to the discomfort soon enough. I thought about the handover from the unit we were replacing - a critical process - and the mission and the long nine months I'd be in the sandbox operating. I thought of little else. That's a lie though I guess, I thought of home, my girl and that tussled hair, no-makeup smile she'd give me in the mornings and how she looked in my t-shirt with nothing underneath as she made us coffee.

Sometimes we drove out in convoys, snaking lines of great hulking metal beasts, that crawled along roads peppered with IED craters, debris and the mangled, burned-out carcases from previous convoys.

I felt like a little bug waiting to be crushed by the combination of overpressure and dynamic pressure that follows an explosion. But usually, I'd go ahead with a select team in helos and as I walked towards them loaded with my loadout and arms the chopping of the rotor blades seemed to cut away the last vestige of who I was and snapped me to the moment and who I needed to be - I was, in-country, an American military term referring to hostile territory and derived from the term indian country, referring to the American Frontier lands back in the day. I preferred saying the sandbox though, because it was everywhere and got into everything.

The Black Hawks waited, rotors kicking up dust and sand into my face. The twin T700-GE-701C turboshaft engines would wind up and the blades span faster then the blades tilted to create the lift and we'd take to the air, gain altitude very quickly, then cruise at 180mph deep into the sandbox.

Fear

I remember being afraid all the time. I'd not cower in fear, but it plagued me days and nights. It sat beneath the surface, moved inside of me, crawled under my skin. I feared many things, not performing being the most prevalent; that and not getting home - but I didn't try to deny the fear, I used it, embraced it.

I once spoke to a soldier who was paralysed by his own fear, unable to operate, and whilst one of the popular lines was, just assume you're already dead and you'll be ok, I found it unproductive. I told him I never trusted a man who didn't know fear, and that it was necessary to feel it so that we knew we were human and to allow us to look inside ourselves, follow that thread of fear to the courage and bravery that resided in us all. He seemed to understand.

I followed that thread also, I did so every day, because I held so many fears I thought it might overcome me at times; but it did not. It focused me, caused me to seek more deeply within to find those things I needed to operate effectively, keep my men alive, and return home to my girl.

Courage and bravery

I don't know if it could be said that I found either of these things, but as I operated people said I did. I don't talk about what I did, there is no point, but I talk about what others did: their selflessness, determination, compassion, brutal efficiency, persistence in the face of adversity and their ability to do what was required, and when. They stood when others would cower, they were consistent when others would falter and they gave everything when most others gave nothing...and they did it for me and the other men beside them, not for themselves. I simply did the same, even though it put many of my brothers in harms' way, some of whom paid the ultimate price.

I visit them still, in my dreams and in reality. I see their faces, sometimes laughing and sometimes twisted in agony or stern with accusation. I hear their voices, sometimes the last thing they ever said to me, sometimes screaming mindlessly, and at other times they say a single word; why. I touch their headstones and say, thank you brother.

I didn't know how important courage and bravery would be to me when my service ended; the war ends but the battle continues, they say. I try to show courage, to put on a brave face and function as a man should, my girl deserves that, but sometimes I feel that chaos, death and destruction took the better part of me and I can't regain it.

The death letter

It took weeks to write and, when done, I second-guessed the contents; did I say enough, did I say it right, would she understand, should I not write one? Some say it's bad luck but if I went home in a body bag I wanted my girl to know how I felt, to read in the words I wrote the emotion and love I had for her. I'm not a writer so I just did my best. When I tucked it away in my top pocket, wrapped in a plastic bag so it wouldn't get bloody, I felt contentment. If my girl was reading it, it would mean I didn't get home and I'd be everywhere and nowhere; dead. I hoped I'd be able to look down upon her from somewhere, but I didn't know if that was possible; no one does.

I still have the letter. She's never read it and it's only come up in conversation once. She asked if I wrote one and I didn't respond. Silence is sometimes the best thing I thought, but she pushed. I broke down, cried for hours. She never mentioned it again. It is sealed in its envelope, still in that plastic bag. Maybe someone will read it someday when I'm gone.

Home and gone again

My life was a cycle of home, work-up and deployment repeated for several years. It wasn't healthy for me, or anyone. I was in peak physical condition but emotionally I felt destabilised when home and hyper-focused when deployed. Extremes.

I'd go from laser focus when on deployment to aimless and lost when home. It wasn't easy on my girl, it still isn't, although the work-up and deployment phases are no longer part of my life and that makes it easier. We fought at times. She felt I was lost, or at least somewhere else. I'd drift back to her talking about something when driving in the car and she'd stop talking, look at me and ask, where were you? I'd answer with the obvious, scanning the road for IED's, looking for threats. The transition is difficult.

We battled through; I call it the fight for my life, the irony of which wasn't lost on both of us considering when away that's what I did. We survived though, because of her. For the vast majority of my life I'd followed orders, and given them, but with her there was none. She helped me find myself with love, caring, patience and dedication. Looking back, I don't know why she bothered, but I'm glad she did. She'd do it each time I returned from deployment and it never got easier. She never ordered, never gave ultimatums and never lost faith and hope in us. I owe her my life just as I owe my life to those I served with overseas.

Aviation fuel and rotor blades

I have so many memories from those years, all burned into my mind and a part of who I am, my core being. I'm one of the lucky ones who have been able to manage life post-service and I attribute that to several factors, one of which is that I seek not to forget, as some do.

In truth, forgetting would negate the experience; sure, some was so bad that my mind reels with the memory, but to forget would diminish the bonds that were formed, the courage and bravery, honour and integrity that was required to get through it; myself and those around me I mean. No, I don't want to forget and I stand proudly as a veteran, a man who saved lives and who inspired great things in the men around me. I serve still, working with, and helping with other veterans, and I am repaid in kind.

To forget would be to lay waste to the efforts of my girl who fought every bit as hard as I did, for me, and she deserves better than that. This is a part of my life, a part of who I am and it has shaped who I am, for better or worse. No, I don't want to forget.

The memory of aviation fuel and rotor blades isn't a bad one. Yes, they took me away, many times, but they brought me home too and the thought of home, and who waited for me there, whilst often difficult, was the underlying factor that gave me the strength for everything I did in the sandbox; all of it.

[ fiction]