Thanks For A Noble Country

A few months ago, I returned from Iraq. I was made to feel very welcome still far away from home:

I arrived in Atlanta early that morning, enroute to Texas. I had just flown 12  hours with a plane-load of soldiers both eager and anxious to get home. When going back and forth to the combat theater, I encounter surreal feelings that seize at odd times. When going home, the notion of having ever been in the war-torn devastation that is Iraq seems alien, far off, unreal  –  the idea that people live in a place like that seems beyond imagining. Yet our soldiers willingly go there and sacrifice life and limb to be there.

On the way to Iraq, I encounter the flip side of that feeling: Could a place called the United States really exist, where people live in general peace and prosperity? While in Iraq, that notion seems as far off and ephemeral as the vagueness of Iraq seems when I am home.

I opened my eyes that day I landed in Atlanta, and knowing where I was immediately brought me awake. Soldiers still wore the uniforms, but weapons were gone, stored for another time.  We stepped across the airplane’s doorway into freedom, and friendly faces greeted our weary eyes. Moms and Dads celebrated, families hugged…some wept in quiet solitude…there would be no warm reunion for them.

I changed my clothes and rented a car and headed south to Ft. Benning.  Thirty-three years ago, I was there with my wife beginning a new career and a new family.  A week before our daughter was born we had stopped at a little town along this road called Pine Mountain. It had been a 4-way stop with a gasoline station, some shops, and a restaurant. Not much had changed in those 33 years. The road was wider, there was a light signal where the stop sign had been, and the buildings showed a community of people who cared.  

I parked my car and walked into the Aspen Mountain Grill. A pretty young girl greeted me and took me to my seat, but no one paid particular attention to my being there. I sat quietly, very tired while sipping a cold one, and chomping on the best BLT known to man. I felt exhilarated for being in the land of the free, and I watched how free people live. They come and they go, and they laugh and they cry, and they act with courtesy and respect. They’re young and they’re old and everything between, and they walk without fear of repression. They talk and discuss both quietly and loud, and don’t worry about offending a tyrant.

 My mind trailed back to places I’d been with names like Taji and Tarmiyah and Abu Ghrayb, where people live behind high, concrete walls, and travel through checkpoints with soldiers with guns. That’s what they have to do to buy milk for their little ones. They live in fear of saying too much, or not saying enough when required. But when American soldiers are near, they feel safe – to work, to play, to go to school, and to buy groceries.

People often ask soldiers why they do what they do. Why they leave families and friends and travel to far off places in heavy armor to shoot and to fight and to suffer depravity.

I finished my BLT and wrote out a note. “Thank you,” it said, “for my welcome home; it made me feel like I had finished a job well done.” I left as quietly as I had come, with the light banter continuing as I walked out the door. I got in my car and drove away with a lump in my throat because I had seen the answer to that same question of why soldiers do what we do. We do it so that good people can gather and live in peace and prosperity in places like Aspen Mountain Grill in Pine Mountain, Georgia. Thanks.


A Texan Thanks Pine Mountain, Georgia For A Warm Welcome Home by Lee Jackson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported