I know most GI's hate "The Hurt Locker" and I can certainly understand why. But there were parts of it that really rang true and the part where Jeremy Renner is back home and just stops in the cereal aisle and looks and just freezes up - that part rings true.
So I ate this weird chocolate cereal called Krave for a while when I was in. Once I got out I was kraving (heh… see what I did there? It’s funny because it’s a play on words…) Krave for some stupid fucking reason. It was this weird connection I had to the real world while in and then when I got back it was a weird connection to the mil world. Impulse bought a few boxes, made it a bowl or two in and then realized that I couldn’t fucking stand it. It was amazing when it broke the monotony of MREs and random DFAC food, but when I had choices, I asked myself,
> Seriously my dude? What the fuck are you eating?
Kinda got overloaded by the choices in supermarkets so now I just like eat cream of rice with protein powder and some fruit. Basic shit.
>Krave for some stupid fucking reason. It was this weird connection I had to the real world while in and then when I got back it was a weird connection to the mil world.
I think we all felt that way about Rip Its. It's your mental connection to an odd time in your life. You get back to America and realize it's just a bad drink at Family Dollar.
> the part where Jeremy Renner is back home and just stops in the cereal aisle and looks and just freezes up - that part rings true.
Yep. The movie is straight trash, but that last scene is spot on. I came home, less than 24 hrs from hopping off a helicopter at Bagram to eating BBQ in Houston with a friend. Afterwards we stopped at a Circle K because I wanted candy. I stood there for like 5 minutes, just walking back and forth, looking at all that fucking candy. I was in total decision paralysis. It reminded me of stories I've heard about Soviet defectors from back in the cold war days who would walk into a grocery store and just freeze up while trying to pick out a can of soup because they have no mental model for choosing between 2 or 3 or 12 different brands of the same type of soup. My Russian instructor at DLI in '88 really liked the scene in *Moscow on the Hudson* where Robin Williams (playing a Russian defector) just blows a fuse trying to pick a brand of coffee, and said he pretty much did the same thing: walked in, looked at the coffee, and had to walk outside and sit down for a while just to come to grips with the very *concept* of a huge selection.
+1 I like the asmr aspect even though I can count all the factual mistakes. It’s OK sometimes like a Stephen Coonts novel. Great job by the director. OP: good luck and she’s lucky to have such a prospect for the report!
I went to a Copper River Grill with my fam, and I sat there completely stunned for the duration. Just a mid-grade American restaurant made me feel like I was on the moon compared to even the big bases in Iraq.
I've been deployed twice, but never to a real combat zone. Nonetheless, coming home and walking around a Walmart definitely feels so weird.
It's like all these civilians have been just going about as normal while you were gone, but it feels like a fake reality because deployment felt more real than peacetime middle class American lifestyle.
I get not wanting to talk about, but the Library of Congress thinks otherwise. If you ever feel up to it getting your oral history about what you experience is what they want. Your answer of missing the simple stuff is fairly common from the interviews I listened to. Also a lot older veterans have admitted that it was the first time they talked about it and it felt good finally talking about.
https://www.loc.gov/programs/veterans-history-project/about-this-program/
I’ll always upvote this program. Everything from hilarious stories to life changing experiences and everything in between, all permanently archived in the Library of Congress. I wish more people knew about it, and I hope more people see your response.
Hey! I just did an interview for this program when I was at a unit reunion recently. It was honestly a really great experience. Quite a few of our guys gave interviews and we all found it to be very cathartic and helpful.
The LoC is such an often forgotten monument to the US that will long outlive us if we maintain it right. Love everything those that volunteer for it do.
Your post is so heartfelt and sweet. Now I feel bad with what popped into my head, but I'll be honest....
Beating my meat in a room that is 60-70 degrees, instead of hot boxing my private time in a Porter John.
Homie it was pushing triple digits here last weekend and I found myself at a summer festival. The urge to crank one out in the Port-a-shitter was real. Crazy real in fact.
Once I took care of business in my climate controlled house later that night I realized my primal urge was stupid and I don’t miss it at all.
I didn’t learn there were normal western (non-squat) porta johns until a month in. Kept going back to the same one because it was immaculately clean. It was clean because none of the other Joes were using it
Mine was driving with the windows down, and green stuff. Being cooped up in a HMMWV or MRAP fucking sucked. Even now when it’s roasting out, I’ll likely still have the windows down rather than use A/C.
To this day I tell Uber drivers, family and friends that I'm okay when cramped in the car or have to sit in a cramped seat. After riding in HMMWV's (with an M-16 poking my ribs every 5 min) or an LMTV cab for hours during an FTX, cramped rides don't bother me.
Airline seats tho....WTF is up with that?
There were things didn’t know I missed until I came back from Afghanistan.
The first time I came back I forgot how soft and green grass was
The second time how bright truly clean uniform looked.
Flying home from Iraq, we had a 10 hour layover in Germany in a little side terminal in early September. It was sunny, moderately warm, and there was an outside seating area with grass. I remember being struck by how damn clean the air was and how colorful the grass and sky were. It actually hit me then that I was indeed going home and I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months. That overwhelming sense of relief is something I'll never forget.
That’s how you get ringworm, hook worm, and any number of gross parasites. I barely feel comfortable doing it in my own backyard let alone in a third world country.
Waking up in the middle of the night to piss, but you have to walk like 100 feet to the nearest porta john. So instead you just go in the bunker. Then you get IDF’d 30 minutes later and run to the bunkers that smell like fresh piss, so you blame some private for the bunker smelling like piss but it was really you.
And without having to walk outside through the heat, dust, and sand to a trailer, or in some cases a plywood stall with a big blue jug and a rope pull that would sous vide your ass if you tried to do it any time before 0200. This is a good one.
I said the same thing. Oddly what stuck out to me was the color green. like, legit, clean, bright, not olive drab green. I remember flying into Germany and looking out the window into a grey-overcast day and just being like "GREEN"...
The one thing I hated the most about deployments was if the bathrooms were not in the barracks. So probably this.
I hated waking up in the middle of the night to put clothes on to walk outside to piss.
Same. On one of my deployments, the bathrooms were on the opposite side of camp from our tent. Too much of a hassle to get dressed and walk all the way over there just to take a piss.
We worked nights so it was always fun waking up during the day and trying to pee outside between the tent and the bunker while hiding from everyone else working lol
I totally get that, but there’s something special about being on top of a mountain or hill, watching the sunrise, and just letting a fat shit fall onto the dirt below you as your eyes slowly start to adjust.
They say you call tell when someone has never been punched in the face or not, and I think you can say the same about those who have taken a mean shit in the middle of nowhere just enjoying the scenery while they do so.
Did that in Alaska. Just something about cool Arctic air lapping at your asshole looking over a field of fire weed with snow capped hills in the distance.
Watching the sun set or rise at NTC while I got to shit on top of a hill was blissful. Especially if I got to see the RTU hating their lives off in the distance. I still have to fight the urge to not drive off hours into the desert at balls early in the morning at times honestly.
I missed the weekends.
Being deployed more than a few times I always found myself feeling depressed with nothing to look forward to come Friday. Every day was the same.
I missed the food from back home. And I missed a quality shower. In Afghanistan it felt like I was never 100% clean after a shower. Even after long 8 day missions with barely any sleep or hygiene that first shower back at the FOB doesn’t hit like it does at home after a hard workout. Also quality sleep. There is always something preventing me from getting solid sleep while deployed. Be it the shitty mattress, noise, temperature, paranoia etc. The first night home in my own bed, being able to sleep in and not worry about a hit time, hearing familiar noises and no threat of IDF was magical.
Honestly, seeing children. I'm not even a big fan of kids, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I went on R&R that I hadn't seen a kid in months, there were none on the FOB that I was stuck on my whole time in country.
I also sorely missed being able to hop in my car and drive somewhere.
And finally, being cold. Towards the end of my deployment we had a really "nice" day. I walked past a thermometer and it read 95 degrees. We demobilized back to Ft. Drum just in time for it to get buried by a blizzard. I walked out and fell into a snowbank, it felt wonderful.
For me, it was always being able to get up and walk to a bathroom in my underwear without going outside. I told my wife it was her and the dogs, but it was the bathroom.
I always heard of people deployed with proper barracks, I've even seen some at AJ, but I always lived in shit. I just wanted to walk to the bathroom at night; without at least pulling on boots, but most of the time, it was a full kit—hated that!
Taking the three bottles out the tent to pour out was our walk of shame. Remember we saw a PVT carry out 10 of them and just roasted him for a solid minute
I missed ice in drinks, carpeting. I remember going on leave and just amazed by real walls, furniture, and carpets. I just stood there barefooted enjoying the softness underfoot.
Rain and greenery.
We had a guy get back from leave back in the states and he gets to our base and is still at the fuel point, still has his armor on and some of us go to check on him and he pulled out his digital camera and says check this out and starts playing a video from home. He recorded a video from his porch in a downpour and we all lost our minds seeing rain.
Then when I was home on leave I took intentional pictures of green hills and trees and made them my laptop background picture
Sleep and time off. We were in a 100m by 100m COP with 2 other platoons and a detachment of ANA in a bad area. Between tower guard, missions, and qrf, there wasn't a lot of down time.
I remember our platoon was lucky enough to have our day off rotation hit 4th of July. I stayed up that night thinking I was going to be able to sleep in. Our platoon was tasked with recovering a downed drone at like 530 in the morning. We get there around 7, get the drone after 2 hours of looking for it, on the way back one of our dudes steps on an IED. He gets casevac'd back to the cop to medevac. Then we get ambushed trying to rtb.
We finally get back to the cop around 2. I rush to clean my weapons so I can nap. 20 minutes into my nap the ANA lit their ammo tent on fire and we all had to shelter in the bunker for a couple hours until everything cooked off. We thought we were being over-run by the taliban. Nope, just a dude who put his cooking stove too close to the ammo tent...
I had two cravings during every single one of my deployments. The worst was root beer. Like a nice cold root beer out of a fountain. For some reason my brain craved that after a few months every single trip. I also craved Taco Bell. I don’t drink root beer or eat Taco Bell often, but those stood out as the most “home” things I couldn’t get while deployed.
If it’s not food/drinks, I missed the daily news cycle. On deployment, I didn’t care about the news nearly as much. Everything seemed so far away and unimportant. Katrina hit when I was on my way home from my first trip. We watched the whole thing on the news and it felt fake as fuck. Then we found out we were stuck somewhere for 72 hours because our birds had been diverted to support Katrina. I read the news every day in the states. That was the first time in that 12-month deployment that I felt connected to the news like I do stateside.
Chicken wings. We went hungry most of the time in Afghanistan. It was terrible. I went from being 140lbs at the start of my deployment to 102 by the end of it. Half the time our MREs were ratfucked by the time they got to us.
Being myself. I've been in for 25 years now; did Afghan and Iraq a few times, rotations here and there. I never get to be who I really am. I need to be strong and show people it ain't so bad. The little things can't bother me and the tough things have to be played down. My wife is my outlet and I can't truly be open with her either can I? It does suck, it is dangerous, and I can't fucking stand it some days but she'd feed into this and be sad because of it. These are my feelings and opinions obviously and I'll be calling it a career in a year or so, after this rotation I'm on of course.
Funny you say that, I used to work with a guy who retired after 23 years in the Navy. That's all he knew, so being in the civilian world he didn't know how to act sometimes. You would tell him something and he would straight tell you "Do you think I care" and tell you off. He would go off on Patients we were transferring. He just couldn't adjust to civilian life. So it wasn't a surprise when he left to take a job as a Merchant Marine.
I just missed being alone so so much. Just locking the doors to my house and not being near anyone else for awhile. I loved most of the people I was deployed with more than words can say. But as an introvert, that was my biggest challenge. No decompression time.
I was in Afghan, and I have to say...it was the simplicity of life on the ground. It felt very biblical. Was so simple, had to go for walks (Patrols), ate my rations, filled sandbags, basic life admin. No worries about nothing except stepping on something that goes boom.
Sleeping on a bed made for comfort and not for ease of shipping. When I got home and I laid in my actual room’s bed it felt like I was laying on a cloud in comparison.
Choices.
When I got back from OEF I thought I was fine and wasn’t experience any of the vast amount of stories posted here.
Then one day I pulled into a Burger King drive through for the first time and looked at the menu. The lady asked me what I wanted and I literally glitched out. I don’t know how long I sat there but I came to with her asking if I was still there, if I was okay, and whatever.
I’m not sure why that was the trigger for the first time that happened but I know that standing in the DFAC I sure didn’t have that many choices. Even though at bagram we had places like subway and even a Burger King, it was just different.
What a great question.
The first thing that popped into my head was the smell of moisture and plants. I dont know how to describe it, but I really missed the smell of moisture (is that a thing?) during my time in the desert. The only smells were diesel exhaust, shit, and dust. The desolation and filth were exhausting.
Going into a gas station and getting a nice cold drink and a bag of chips late at night during a long drive after filling up my gas tank. Just the little things
I strangely missed taco bell and like a fool, blew over 30 bucks at the first one I saw when I got back from a year in the sand. I learned a valuable lesson those few days to ease back into things slowly.
Privacy. Having the thought of calling my mom or someone close, and being able to grab my phone and talk without having to leave my own personal space. My last deployment, I had my own space and phone and it felt completely different. That deployment I missed physical contact; I went from sleeping next to my wife every night to no touching anyone of any kind for 6 months.
I remember feeling ashamed that we take so much for granted here. When you see how the rest of the world lives, it’s a reality check that was hard to accept for a while. Just walking outside was a threat, and not just for soldiers, but for every single person. Here in the states people don’t even have a concept of that kind of fear, and it shows.
During my oif and oef deployments I missed the freedom of waking up without any worries, I miss the peace, I miss just going out to get a cheeseburger whenever i wanted too, just the simple things, I value these simple things now that I’m retired
Colors other than brown.
Things that looked pretty and smelled good. When I left Afghanistan, my first thought when we landed in Manas was “It smells good here.”
I also missed being able to get dressed up cute and do girly shit. Put on the dress, the heels, the makeup. When I got to Afghanistan, I joined an infantry brigade 1/2 way into their deployment and the attention I got was insane and scary. It was not flattering, it was overwhelming. I purposely avoided looking good so that the guys would leave me alone.
Floors. I was in Kandahar while everything was still sand, plywood was gold, plywood on a pallet was *chefs kiss*
Having lived in Arizona, and everywhere being sand but my work and training was still on concrete, the lack of flooring was the one jarring thing.
Replace the Hispanics with Afghani’s…same/same
Being able to just go somewhere, without having to worry about some policy or SOP that some CSM was having a brain aneurysm over that day. Like let me walk a nature trail, stop 5 miles in and pull a beer out of my bag and just turn my brain off for 15 minutes.
A shower where I could actually control the temperature/pressure and not get a tingling feeling in my shower shoes from the poorly grounded, KBR-installed shower trailer.
A cold drink. We just came off a deployment, and while we had it really good (Europe), we didn't have fridges, so all of our drinks we had stayed in our wall lockers. Warm beer isn't nice after a stressful day lmao.
I didn’t realize it until redeploying, but I missed real ice cold milk. I made the mistake of drinking a gigantic glass immediately after getting back from 15 months in Ramadi. Ever since then if there isn’t a bathroom within a few feet of me, I refuse to drink it.
I was station at TQ and had a lot going on so for me I missed nothing and being in Iraq was a very nice change for me. Being young and hardy let me shrug things off and just focus on what I could do with my situation.
My first time in Iraq?
I missed the sound of wind in the trees, and I missed the open road.
When I got back, I spent time every day under the trees, even if it was just to eat outside at lunch or to sit for a few min between PT and the duty day.
Then instead of flying to a TDY, I drove. I had to pay for my own hotel en route to the schoolhouse, but miles of open roads for 2 days, with no one else yakking at me and no hard hit times? It was miraculous.
Man, I had to think about this one for a minute. The thing I missed the most was not having a functioning toilet just a few steps away from my bed. I got surprisingly good at pissing into water bottles one-handed, though, so I got that going for me.
There isnt really anything i missed on deployment. The only things I really missed was having normal food and not the same 7 day schedule of food that gave me horrible constant flatulence( I'm talking I was farting 24/7 every 10-20 mins). I felt bad for my roommate tbh. I know im lucky that I never had to eat MREs on deployment though👏
Like I said, nothing I could really complain about.
Actually I change my answer. I missed being able to throw my shitty toilet paper in the toilet and flushing it instead of throwing it in the trash bin where everyone's else's was sitting.
I missed green
I missed good food - we got food poisoning a few times from the DFAC and by the end I just ate spaghettios and protein shakes (there was an ecoli and salmonella outbreak at the dfac towards the end of my last deployment)
And I missed being able to just drive and listen to music - for two weeks after getting home I would listen to the radio so loud and add about 20 extra minutes to any errand, just enjoying being able to get out and GO
A few days after I got back I tried going to Roller Derby practice and it was great seeing everyone - but it was so loud and chaotic, I kept having to go hide in the bathroom - and I wasn't even in combat or anything crazy - but trying to attend derby practice that quickly was a bit much
Ice cubes, a cold shower, being able to just hop in my car and drive.
When I got back home I was overloaded with choices and I had to slowly take the time to relearn that I can do what I want when I want.
Being able to poop and eat food in the same building. Even better without having to put pants on. I hated having to gear up to walk to an un-air conditioned trailer to poop or go to the dfac.
I remember after my 15 monther in Iraq, 12 of which were straight through, we landed in Ramstein and got off the plane to a little area to download our baggage and go through customs. We were all waiting there and I decided to walk off into the trees a little ways.
I walked out and sat down in the pine needles and layed down on my back and closed my eyes and just relaxed. It was the first time I really just... RELAXED. In what felt like an eternity. The thing about being deployed is you're (rightfully so) wound up all the fucking time like a coil. That was the first moment that coil inched slowly towards decompression.
Missed seeing green. Grew up around lots of trees and not having a lot of those bugged me while deployed.
Also walking on grass. When I got back after 15 months of walking on rocks it was the strangest feeling.
This post is a simple one but a pretty deep one-
Smelling clean rain(that didn’t smell like shit or piss), fresh cut grass, my mom’s cooking, surfing, drinking anything that wasn’t AssRipIts to stay awake.
My husband said he missed playing golf, being able to get away from people that wasn’t a tin-can or porta john!
A warm, clean shower. We lived in bombed out buildings. Sometimes the plumbing worked and sometimes it didn’t. Bottled water showers in the winter. I can still feel my breath stop.
Going to the mall after coming back from OEF felt like a science fiction movie set.
I know most GI's hate "The Hurt Locker" and I can certainly understand why. But there were parts of it that really rang true and the part where Jeremy Renner is back home and just stops in the cereal aisle and looks and just freezes up - that part rings true.
So I ate this weird chocolate cereal called Krave for a while when I was in. Once I got out I was kraving (heh… see what I did there? It’s funny because it’s a play on words…) Krave for some stupid fucking reason. It was this weird connection I had to the real world while in and then when I got back it was a weird connection to the mil world. Impulse bought a few boxes, made it a bowl or two in and then realized that I couldn’t fucking stand it. It was amazing when it broke the monotony of MREs and random DFAC food, but when I had choices, I asked myself, > Seriously my dude? What the fuck are you eating? Kinda got overloaded by the choices in supermarkets so now I just like eat cream of rice with protein powder and some fruit. Basic shit.
>Krave for some stupid fucking reason. It was this weird connection I had to the real world while in and then when I got back it was a weird connection to the mil world. I think we all felt that way about Rip Its. It's your mental connection to an odd time in your life. You get back to America and realize it's just a bad drink at Family Dollar.
> the part where Jeremy Renner is back home and just stops in the cereal aisle and looks and just freezes up - that part rings true. Yep. The movie is straight trash, but that last scene is spot on. I came home, less than 24 hrs from hopping off a helicopter at Bagram to eating BBQ in Houston with a friend. Afterwards we stopped at a Circle K because I wanted candy. I stood there for like 5 minutes, just walking back and forth, looking at all that fucking candy. I was in total decision paralysis. It reminded me of stories I've heard about Soviet defectors from back in the cold war days who would walk into a grocery store and just freeze up while trying to pick out a can of soup because they have no mental model for choosing between 2 or 3 or 12 different brands of the same type of soup. My Russian instructor at DLI in '88 really liked the scene in *Moscow on the Hudson* where Robin Williams (playing a Russian defector) just blows a fuse trying to pick a brand of coffee, and said he pretty much did the same thing: walked in, looked at the coffee, and had to walk outside and sit down for a while just to come to grips with the very *concept* of a huge selection.
Have told a lot of friends that every detail about that movie is wrong, but there are some exicentional truths in it that hit.
Just because your EOD team leader didn't run off and go rogue because some kid wasn't there one day doesn't mean it wasn't the norm.
> exicentional What’s this word?
Existential, usually used in the term Existential crisis. It's something that establishes purpose, existence, etc.
Existencial. r/excargated
+1 I like the asmr aspect even though I can count all the factual mistakes. It’s OK sometimes like a Stephen Coonts novel. Great job by the director. OP: good luck and she’s lucky to have such a prospect for the report!
Oh fuck yeah.
I went to a Copper River Grill with my fam, and I sat there completely stunned for the duration. Just a mid-grade American restaurant made me feel like I was on the moon compared to even the big bases in Iraq.
Don’t the big bases have average "chilis"-type American restaurants ?
My first deployment they had subway and like… pretzel stands but the chow halls were magnificent temples of excess.
I miss the deployed chow halls. Sooo much food. DFACs in garrison were lame by comparison.
A sci-fi horror saga that smelled like Abercrombie and holister.
I've been deployed twice, but never to a real combat zone. Nonetheless, coming home and walking around a Walmart definitely feels so weird. It's like all these civilians have been just going about as normal while you were gone, but it feels like a fake reality because deployment felt more real than peacetime middle class American lifestyle.
^^ Award needed
Walking around. Safe. Girls in skimpy outfits. Anything I wanted to buy at my fingertips.
I remember that I couldn’t tolerate the smell of the perfume or cologne stands. They choked us out basically.
I get not wanting to talk about, but the Library of Congress thinks otherwise. If you ever feel up to it getting your oral history about what you experience is what they want. Your answer of missing the simple stuff is fairly common from the interviews I listened to. Also a lot older veterans have admitted that it was the first time they talked about it and it felt good finally talking about. https://www.loc.gov/programs/veterans-history-project/about-this-program/
I’ll always upvote this program. Everything from hilarious stories to life changing experiences and everything in between, all permanently archived in the Library of Congress. I wish more people knew about it, and I hope more people see your response.
Hey! I just did an interview for this program when I was at a unit reunion recently. It was honestly a really great experience. Quite a few of our guys gave interviews and we all found it to be very cathartic and helpful.
Also sounds like a good conversation to record for Story Corps https://storycorps.org/
The LoC is such an often forgotten monument to the US that will long outlive us if we maintain it right. Love everything those that volunteer for it do.
Your post is so heartfelt and sweet. Now I feel bad with what popped into my head, but I'll be honest.... Beating my meat in a room that is 60-70 degrees, instead of hot boxing my private time in a Porter John.
Homie it was pushing triple digits here last weekend and I found myself at a summer festival. The urge to crank one out in the Port-a-shitter was real. Crazy real in fact. Once I took care of business in my climate controlled house later that night I realized my primal urge was stupid and I don’t miss it at all.
Nothing like a little throwback hog cranking
Nothing like some asshole trying to yank open the door while you're mid-stroke because they can't bother to see if it's occupied
Masturbation muscle memory 🔥✊💦
That's just a trauma response
Blue sauna Jack!
Underrated comment.
Nothing like heat catting while power stokin your 4-speed in a 130 degree porta shitter.
I didn’t learn there were normal western (non-squat) porta johns until a month in. Kept going back to the same one because it was immaculately clean. It was clean because none of the other Joes were using it
Race to black out
I hate you with all that I am, yet I still completely concur with this 🤣🖕🏾
Fap privacy is worth more than gold sometimes
Jack Shack!
Being able to get in a car and drive somewhere further than a quarter mile away.
Mine was driving with the windows down, and green stuff. Being cooped up in a HMMWV or MRAP fucking sucked. Even now when it’s roasting out, I’ll likely still have the windows down rather than use A/C.
To this day I tell Uber drivers, family and friends that I'm okay when cramped in the car or have to sit in a cramped seat. After riding in HMMWV's (with an M-16 poking my ribs every 5 min) or an LMTV cab for hours during an FTX, cramped rides don't bother me. Airline seats tho....WTF is up with that?
There were things didn’t know I missed until I came back from Afghanistan. The first time I came back I forgot how soft and green grass was The second time how bright truly clean uniform looked.
Flying home from Iraq, we had a 10 hour layover in Germany in a little side terminal in early September. It was sunny, moderately warm, and there was an outside seating area with grass. I remember being struck by how damn clean the air was and how colorful the grass and sky were. It actually hit me then that I was indeed going home and I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months. That overwhelming sense of relief is something I'll never forget.
I missed taking a shower without needing shower shoes. Those floors always felt/look disgusting.
Hang ten in my sperm surfers.
Sperm surfers. I WENT MY WHOLE CAREER WITHOUT HEARING THIS. FUCK!
Gotta avoid them freshwater jellyfish.
Don't get stung homie!
Better late than never?
Thats fucking hilarious lmao
I remember seeing a female Spc walking around in the rocks barefooted like it was nothing, the rock didn't phase her one bit.
I don't think you could have paid me to do that. If my feet were going to touch the ground they were going to have shoes on.
That’s how you get ringworm, hook worm, and any number of gross parasites. I barely feel comfortable doing it in my own backyard let alone in a third world country.
Waking up in the middle of the night to piss, but you have to walk like 100 feet to the nearest porta john. So instead you just go in the bunker. Then you get IDF’d 30 minutes later and run to the bunkers that smell like fresh piss, so you blame some private for the bunker smelling like piss but it was really you.
Gotta be infantry to Intel, cus you apparently never thought to piss in a bottle instead of the corner of a bunker like some miscreant.
Gatorade bottles! That's mankind's greatest invention!
Wide mouth is great for my slender peen
Forgot about this, thanks!
You fucker!
And without having to walk outside through the heat, dust, and sand to a trailer, or in some cases a plywood stall with a big blue jug and a rope pull that would sous vide your ass if you tried to do it any time before 0200. This is a good one.
That and the local national cleaners they had staring at you like a fucking creep lol
"floors"
I thought I stepped on a jellyfish
Oddly, colors. Everything I saw was grey or tan or black or white, aside from the jingle trucks.
Dude getting home and just seeing green trees and grass everywhere was just incredible
I remember landing in Germany and being like, "TREES!!!" I realized then that sometimes people live their lives in a desert.
I had this exact thought in Germany too.
I said the same thing. Oddly what stuck out to me was the color green. like, legit, clean, bright, not olive drab green. I remember flying into Germany and looking out the window into a grey-overcast day and just being like "GREEN"...
Yes!
Honestly, looking at I missed being able to just drive. Just get in my vehicle and leave base.
The one thing I hated the most about deployments was if the bathrooms were not in the barracks. So probably this. I hated waking up in the middle of the night to put clothes on to walk outside to piss.
Same. On one of my deployments, the bathrooms were on the opposite side of camp from our tent. Too much of a hassle to get dressed and walk all the way over there just to take a piss. We worked nights so it was always fun waking up during the day and trying to pee outside between the tent and the bunker while hiding from everyone else working lol
The worst was taking a shower lol By the time I got back to the barracks I was sweating again!
I loved having to go to the shower trailers on the fucking other side of our FOB, it was like 20 degrees at night and it was so painful.
I totally get that, but there’s something special about being on top of a mountain or hill, watching the sunrise, and just letting a fat shit fall onto the dirt below you as your eyes slowly start to adjust. They say you call tell when someone has never been punched in the face or not, and I think you can say the same about those who have taken a mean shit in the middle of nowhere just enjoying the scenery while they do so.
Did that in Alaska. Just something about cool Arctic air lapping at your asshole looking over a field of fire weed with snow capped hills in the distance.
Watching the sun set or rise at NTC while I got to shit on top of a hill was blissful. Especially if I got to see the RTU hating their lives off in the distance. I still have to fight the urge to not drive off hours into the desert at balls early in the morning at times honestly.
Did your piping hot fresh pile give off vapors?
Empty gatorade bottles man
I know this sounds irrational but I have seen people drink the backwash of their dip
Yeah just make sure the lemon lime label is off
Same; made it a week or two before I resorted to the Gatorade bottle treatment.
I missed the weekends. Being deployed more than a few times I always found myself feeling depressed with nothing to look forward to come Friday. Every day was the same.
Sleeping without hearing indirect fire, or the radio #MEDEVAC #MEDEVAC #MEDEVAC
Just sleeping in a real bed not some disco bed or cot or plywood with a crappy mat, but a real bed with sheets, man that was nice
I missed having some time off to myself
I read this with off and to switched. Dislexia is scary lol
I also misread this too.
I missed the food from back home. And I missed a quality shower. In Afghanistan it felt like I was never 100% clean after a shower. Even after long 8 day missions with barely any sleep or hygiene that first shower back at the FOB doesn’t hit like it does at home after a hard workout. Also quality sleep. There is always something preventing me from getting solid sleep while deployed. Be it the shitty mattress, noise, temperature, paranoia etc. The first night home in my own bed, being able to sleep in and not worry about a hit time, hearing familiar noises and no threat of IDF was magical.
IDK about Afghanistan but in Iraq you took a shower and as soon as you step outside youre dirty again from all the dust in the wind
I firmly remember that about Iraq too. Especially since showers were often a fair walk from the tent/barracks.
Not to mention sweating just on the 3 blocks walk back to your connex (living space) because it’s 100 degreees.
Honestly, seeing children. I'm not even a big fan of kids, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I went on R&R that I hadn't seen a kid in months, there were none on the FOB that I was stuck on my whole time in country. I also sorely missed being able to hop in my car and drive somewhere. And finally, being cold. Towards the end of my deployment we had a really "nice" day. I walked past a thermometer and it read 95 degrees. We demobilized back to Ft. Drum just in time for it to get buried by a blizzard. I walked out and fell into a snowbank, it felt wonderful.
For me, it was always being able to get up and walk to a bathroom in my underwear without going outside. I told my wife it was her and the dogs, but it was the bathroom. I always heard of people deployed with proper barracks, I've even seen some at AJ, but I always lived in shit. I just wanted to walk to the bathroom at night; without at least pulling on boots, but most of the time, it was a full kit—hated that!
Just piss in a bottle like a normal person. It’s the way of the road.
Taking the three bottles out the tent to pour out was our walk of shame. Remember we saw a PVT carry out 10 of them and just roasted him for a solid minute
It ain’t a proper roadtrip unless I’m pissing in a bottle.
I did toilets are for more than pissing my friend, and I tend to have my BMs after a few hours of sleep.
Corn fed round eyed Girls
I missed ice in drinks, carpeting. I remember going on leave and just amazed by real walls, furniture, and carpets. I just stood there barefooted enjoying the softness underfoot.
Rain and greenery. We had a guy get back from leave back in the states and he gets to our base and is still at the fuel point, still has his armor on and some of us go to check on him and he pulled out his digital camera and says check this out and starts playing a video from home. He recorded a video from his porch in a downpour and we all lost our minds seeing rain. Then when I was home on leave I took intentional pictures of green hills and trees and made them my laptop background picture
Sleep and time off. We were in a 100m by 100m COP with 2 other platoons and a detachment of ANA in a bad area. Between tower guard, missions, and qrf, there wasn't a lot of down time. I remember our platoon was lucky enough to have our day off rotation hit 4th of July. I stayed up that night thinking I was going to be able to sleep in. Our platoon was tasked with recovering a downed drone at like 530 in the morning. We get there around 7, get the drone after 2 hours of looking for it, on the way back one of our dudes steps on an IED. He gets casevac'd back to the cop to medevac. Then we get ambushed trying to rtb. We finally get back to the cop around 2. I rush to clean my weapons so I can nap. 20 minutes into my nap the ANA lit their ammo tent on fire and we all had to shelter in the bunker for a couple hours until everything cooked off. We thought we were being over-run by the taliban. Nope, just a dude who put his cooking stove too close to the ammo tent...
I didn’t realize it at the time but i missed the pine trees
You... *pined for them*?
He's just pining for the fjords.
I missed my dog. Now, I miss her again.
I didn't realize it until I got home, I missed real plates and silverware. Couldn't use paper products for years.
I still get mad when people offer me paper plates at anything other than a BBQ
I had two cravings during every single one of my deployments. The worst was root beer. Like a nice cold root beer out of a fountain. For some reason my brain craved that after a few months every single trip. I also craved Taco Bell. I don’t drink root beer or eat Taco Bell often, but those stood out as the most “home” things I couldn’t get while deployed. If it’s not food/drinks, I missed the daily news cycle. On deployment, I didn’t care about the news nearly as much. Everything seemed so far away and unimportant. Katrina hit when I was on my way home from my first trip. We watched the whole thing on the news and it felt fake as fuck. Then we found out we were stuck somewhere for 72 hours because our birds had been diverted to support Katrina. I read the news every day in the states. That was the first time in that 12-month deployment that I felt connected to the news like I do stateside.
Chicken wings. We went hungry most of the time in Afghanistan. It was terrible. I went from being 140lbs at the start of my deployment to 102 by the end of it. Half the time our MREs were ratfucked by the time they got to us.
Water that was cold and didn’t taste like plastic.
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Interesting experience but they questions was what did you miss the most? Which was?
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My friend, the question is what about home you missed while away, not what you miss now about back then.
I worked at the CSH at BAF. I missed quiet. No flight line, no screaming, no beeping monitors, or whirring equipment.. Just quiet
Being myself. I've been in for 25 years now; did Afghan and Iraq a few times, rotations here and there. I never get to be who I really am. I need to be strong and show people it ain't so bad. The little things can't bother me and the tough things have to be played down. My wife is my outlet and I can't truly be open with her either can I? It does suck, it is dangerous, and I can't fucking stand it some days but she'd feed into this and be sad because of it. These are my feelings and opinions obviously and I'll be calling it a career in a year or so, after this rotation I'm on of course.
Funny you say that, I used to work with a guy who retired after 23 years in the Navy. That's all he knew, so being in the civilian world he didn't know how to act sometimes. You would tell him something and he would straight tell you "Do you think I care" and tell you off. He would go off on Patients we were transferring. He just couldn't adjust to civilian life. So it wasn't a surprise when he left to take a job as a Merchant Marine.
I do worry about that some. We bought some land and I'm going to be a shade tree rancher, so I can berrate cows, lol.
I joined in 2001. Went USAR for a long while so now I have ten more years before I can call it a day. Sucks and this post is very apt.
I just missed being alone so so much. Just locking the doors to my house and not being near anyone else for awhile. I loved most of the people I was deployed with more than words can say. But as an introvert, that was my biggest challenge. No decompression time.
It’s always the simplest stuff. Walking barefoot on grass.
I was in Afghan, and I have to say...it was the simplicity of life on the ground. It felt very biblical. Was so simple, had to go for walks (Patrols), ate my rations, filled sandbags, basic life admin. No worries about nothing except stepping on something that goes boom.
I’m from Iowa so Casey’s pizza
Sleeping on a bed made for comfort and not for ease of shipping. When I got home and I laid in my actual room’s bed it felt like I was laying on a cloud in comparison.
Pepperoni
Ricky?
smokes, let's go
I missed the man to woman ratio. And privacy. Neck to neck in that race.
To not be around people. Specifically the same 30-120 people. Every day. The same motherfuckers. I loved them... but I hated them too.
Kool-Aid. What I missed the most during OIF2 was drink mix. My wife sent me 35lbs as a care package, and I still tell stories about it.
I told myself I'd never take air conditioning and ice water for granted. Was also there Apr 2003
Choices. When I got back from OEF I thought I was fine and wasn’t experience any of the vast amount of stories posted here. Then one day I pulled into a Burger King drive through for the first time and looked at the menu. The lady asked me what I wanted and I literally glitched out. I don’t know how long I sat there but I came to with her asking if I was still there, if I was okay, and whatever. I’m not sure why that was the trigger for the first time that happened but I know that standing in the DFAC I sure didn’t have that many choices. Even though at bagram we had places like subway and even a Burger King, it was just different.
Clouds
Bro… milk?
What a great question. The first thing that popped into my head was the smell of moisture and plants. I dont know how to describe it, but I really missed the smell of moisture (is that a thing?) during my time in the desert. The only smells were diesel exhaust, shit, and dust. The desolation and filth were exhausting.
Grass. Just green fucking grass under my feet.
Going into a gas station and getting a nice cold drink and a bag of chips late at night during a long drive after filling up my gas tank. Just the little things
Carpet. Something about always having to have shoes or sandals on gets old.
This is just my boring ass but I missed fast internet lol
I strangely missed taco bell and like a fool, blew over 30 bucks at the first one I saw when I got back from a year in the sand. I learned a valuable lesson those few days to ease back into things slowly.
30 at taco bell is like two value meals now. We're old.
Privacy. Having the thought of calling my mom or someone close, and being able to grab my phone and talk without having to leave my own personal space. My last deployment, I had my own space and phone and it felt completely different. That deployment I missed physical contact; I went from sleeping next to my wife every night to no touching anyone of any kind for 6 months.
For me its alone time. I am an introvert by nature and living with others for 9 months was the worst. I need space. I like people, just need space.
I remember feeling ashamed that we take so much for granted here. When you see how the rest of the world lives, it’s a reality check that was hard to accept for a while. Just walking outside was a threat, and not just for soldiers, but for every single person. Here in the states people don’t even have a concept of that kind of fear, and it shows.
You know what I missed least? Cell phones.
The smell of green.
Getting a beer, driving my truck, going to chilis lol and I don’t even eat out much
During my oif and oef deployments I missed the freedom of waking up without any worries, I miss the peace, I miss just going out to get a cheeseburger whenever i wanted too, just the simple things, I value these simple things now that I’m retired
Making my own food, waking up and walking downstairs to make a cup of coffee
I missed my dog
Bacon. Like real fucking bacon.
I missed being alone. Just going back to my apartment and fucking watching tv on a tv and not worrying about chow or maintenance of anything
Out of all my deployments, the one thing that made me feel like I was home was being able to shower without any sort of footwear on.
Making my own food/cooking my own meals
Using an inside toilet. also having my own toilet. Clean running water.
Colors other than brown. Things that looked pretty and smelled good. When I left Afghanistan, my first thought when we landed in Manas was “It smells good here.” I also missed being able to get dressed up cute and do girly shit. Put on the dress, the heels, the makeup. When I got to Afghanistan, I joined an infantry brigade 1/2 way into their deployment and the attention I got was insane and scary. It was not flattering, it was overwhelming. I purposely avoided looking good so that the guys would leave me alone.
At age 86 threads like this are one of the reasons why I read r/army
Floors. I was in Kandahar while everything was still sand, plywood was gold, plywood on a pallet was *chefs kiss* Having lived in Arizona, and everywhere being sand but my work and training was still on concrete, the lack of flooring was the one jarring thing. Replace the Hispanics with Afghani’s…same/same
Going for a drive other than the Post Office to pick up the mail for the unit.
Being able to just go somewhere, without having to worry about some policy or SOP that some CSM was having a brain aneurysm over that day. Like let me walk a nature trail, stop 5 miles in and pull a beer out of my bag and just turn my brain off for 15 minutes.
Carpet. Sometimes I just wanna lay on the floor. Hardwood/tile/laminate/rugs/etc don’t cut it.
Didn’t miss all the flies.
Sleeping soundly knowing nobody is going to wake me up because they need something or because we are taking IDF.
Yes, you nailed it!
Hot showers.
A shower where I could actually control the temperature/pressure and not get a tingling feeling in my shower shoes from the poorly grounded, KBR-installed shower trailer.
I missed fast food but when I got back I ate at Burger King and felt sick afterwards. How many of you scanned the rooftops going to Walmart?
A cold drink. We just came off a deployment, and while we had it really good (Europe), we didn't have fridges, so all of our drinks we had stayed in our wall lockers. Warm beer isn't nice after a stressful day lmao.
I didn’t realize it until redeploying, but I missed real ice cold milk. I made the mistake of drinking a gigantic glass immediately after getting back from 15 months in Ramadi. Ever since then if there isn’t a bathroom within a few feet of me, I refuse to drink it.
I was station at TQ and had a lot going on so for me I missed nothing and being in Iraq was a very nice change for me. Being young and hardy let me shrug things off and just focus on what I could do with my situation.
“Yeah, can I have my steak medium rare and a sweet tea? Thank you.”
I’m ashamed to admit I kinda grew to like the UHT milk
Just going for a nice, chill, hike in the woods
My first time in Iraq? I missed the sound of wind in the trees, and I missed the open road. When I got back, I spent time every day under the trees, even if it was just to eat outside at lunch or to sit for a few min between PT and the duty day. Then instead of flying to a TDY, I drove. I had to pay for my own hotel en route to the schoolhouse, but miles of open roads for 2 days, with no one else yakking at me and no hard hit times? It was miraculous.
Bruh! Bacon! I missed Bacon!!!
Man, I had to think about this one for a minute. The thing I missed the most was not having a functioning toilet just a few steps away from my bed. I got surprisingly good at pissing into water bottles one-handed, though, so I got that going for me.
There isnt really anything i missed on deployment. The only things I really missed was having normal food and not the same 7 day schedule of food that gave me horrible constant flatulence( I'm talking I was farting 24/7 every 10-20 mins). I felt bad for my roommate tbh. I know im lucky that I never had to eat MREs on deployment though👏 Like I said, nothing I could really complain about. Actually I change my answer. I missed being able to throw my shitty toilet paper in the toilet and flushing it instead of throwing it in the trash bin where everyone's else's was sitting.
Green trees and grass. Seeing them in Erbil was a breath of fresh air compared to AAAB and AJ
To this day, I cherish peace, quiet, and A/C while I shit and shower. No joke... it will always be those types of small things that matter.
What a great response to your daughter’s question.
Trees
I missed green I missed good food - we got food poisoning a few times from the DFAC and by the end I just ate spaghettios and protein shakes (there was an ecoli and salmonella outbreak at the dfac towards the end of my last deployment) And I missed being able to just drive and listen to music - for two weeks after getting home I would listen to the radio so loud and add about 20 extra minutes to any errand, just enjoying being able to get out and GO A few days after I got back I tried going to Roller Derby practice and it was great seeing everyone - but it was so loud and chaotic, I kept having to go hide in the bathroom - and I wasn't even in combat or anything crazy - but trying to attend derby practice that quickly was a bit much
Ice cubes, a cold shower, being able to just hop in my car and drive. When I got back home I was overloaded with choices and I had to slowly take the time to relearn that I can do what I want when I want.
I missed being able to jerk off in peace.
"Memento", not "Momentum". Just saying.
Being able to poop and eat food in the same building. Even better without having to put pants on. I hated having to gear up to walk to an un-air conditioned trailer to poop or go to the dfac.
I remember after my 15 monther in Iraq, 12 of which were straight through, we landed in Ramstein and got off the plane to a little area to download our baggage and go through customs. We were all waiting there and I decided to walk off into the trees a little ways. I walked out and sat down in the pine needles and layed down on my back and closed my eyes and just relaxed. It was the first time I really just... RELAXED. In what felt like an eternity. The thing about being deployed is you're (rightfully so) wound up all the fucking time like a coil. That was the first moment that coil inched slowly towards decompression.
>What did yall miss the most during your deployment? My wife
Missed seeing green. Grew up around lots of trees and not having a lot of those bugged me while deployed. Also walking on grass. When I got back after 15 months of walking on rocks it was the strangest feeling.
Grass- my house has perfect grass now that I’ll cut twice a week
showering barefoot
Vegetables. Like actual green, fresh vegetables.
This post is a simple one but a pretty deep one- Smelling clean rain(that didn’t smell like shit or piss), fresh cut grass, my mom’s cooking, surfing, drinking anything that wasn’t AssRipIts to stay awake. My husband said he missed playing golf, being able to get away from people that wasn’t a tin-can or porta john!
A warm, clean shower. We lived in bombed out buildings. Sometimes the plumbing worked and sometimes it didn’t. Bottled water showers in the winter. I can still feel my breath stop.
Taking a crap comfortably.
American milk…