The Sacrifice of Coming Home

In the days immediately following Dh’s last deployment to Kandahar, we came on an accident.

It was still what I call the ‘shaky days‘ post tour. That was my 3rd time around and I was a little more prepared with what to expect.  The ‘shaky days‘ are when the dust still hasn’t settled on their time away.  Some days I give space.  Some days I hold tight.  But I know that he needs time to adjust to the reality that for the past 7 months life was happening at home without him and that life doesn’t look anything like what he was living.

It’s a balance.  Sometimes a hard one.

So driving in those ‘shaky days‘ to Costco, we can still see the smoke from the tires on the road, a car on it’s roof is in the ditch just ahead.

Dh pulls over on the highway and jumps out.  Getting to the car, it’s clear that the 2 people who had arrived first had good intentions but were unsure of what to do.

He took charge and gave instruction for calling 911 and grabbing a first aid kit.  And then broke the rest of a window, crawled into the car and did first aid on the terrified young women lying in the broken glass who was too injured to move.  We learned later her pelvis had been destroyed in the impact.

When paramedics and police arrived, it was still quite a while before he made it out of that car while they waited for a hole to be cut big enough to gently slide the broken woman out and safely onto a stretcher.  From where I stood by our van with our kids, I eventually saw him emerge, blood smeared on his arms, cuts on his jeans from the glass.

The police officer next to me said ‘Is that your husband?  She’s lucky someone was here that knew how to keep her calm and didn’t try to move her.’

I said ‘Yes.  He has a Combat Casualty Care course so I guess he knew a bit of what to do.’

Then as an aside, almost to myself, I said

‘He just got home from Afghanistan this week.’

The police officer looked at me.  Then she looked over at Dh walking towards me, peeling his gloves off and trying in vain to use a wet wipe to get the blood off his arm.


“oh.”

When Dh got to us, she said “Your wife says you just came home from Afghanistan… you were a big help.  Are you going to be OK?”

“I’m good.”

We drove in silence to the Costco.  When we got there, Dh walked directly to the First Aid kits and put the biggest one in the cart.

And that was it.

Later that night I told Dh I was really impressed with his amazingness.  He looked slightly bewildered.

“I talked to her and held her spine straight.  That’s not rocket science.”

I said “All that blood and being stuck in that car….. that must have been hard.”

I expected that after that last 7 months in an armoured vehicle, making a total of almost 20 months experiencing combat and witnessing casualties and injuries, being in a small space, all those close calls and seeing the violence……
that is would be the blood and the glass and the cramped space that could hurt his heart.

He said “No one knew what they were doing.  And when I told them what to do, they didn’t do it.  One guy called his family to tell them he would be late when I needed him to grab gloves! I just…. I needed them to do what they’re supposed to do.  Don’t people know how to do that??”

I thought to myself…..who cares?  Who cares what they did?  You had blood all over you!  Didn’t THAT bother you??? Why worry about them?

Because I don’t get it.

I have to say, one of the most frustrating aspects of being married to a soldier who has experienced combat can be the questions from well meaning friends and family about why he’d choose to do what he does.

After the 2nd and 3rd deployments to war, it’s common to be asked

‘Why would he go back?’

‘Doesn’t he want to be with you?’

‘Isn’t war awful?  What kind of person chooses that?’

And as an outsider, I can’t tell you his heart.

I am not a combat veteran, I only know combat veterans.
There’s the one I love more than anything on earth.
There are many others who I count as some of my favorite people in the world.

And I’ve answered their drunken late night texts on the anniversary of hard days and I’ve felt privileged to have had the chance.

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