The Battalion had left Dragon long ago, now we were neatly arranged in cavernous green tents with cots and air conditioners. We stripped the plates from our armor and turned in our ammo. The men watched movies on their laptops or slept...
Then, at the airfield, we palletized our green duffle bags and lines up for flight. In the terminal a Hooters Girl competition was playing on a widescreen TV above our heads. The First Sergeant tried to call out names for manifest. But everyone's attention was on the girls. We made the flight anyway, which came 2 hours early, and the last company of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, boarded the Air Force C-17 for flight to Kuwait.
That night in a chow hall at our temporary staging area in Kuwait, CNN broadcast a show on Obama's challenges in Iraq. Pundits came and went. Bulletitzed comments read: "corruption in Iraq is widespread" and "militias remain armed." I couldn't hear their opinions because the chow hall was churning with soldiers enroute to the United States. The men laughed, predicted first drinks, swore off responsibility, speculated on Afghanistan. What we owned in Yusufiya, fields and villages of the Euphrates River Valley, belonged again to Iraq. We had defeated the insurgency there. We were going home.
and it was as it had been before we left: a war of speculation. of our own uncertain terms. of patience as much as violence.
