Not Going Home Just Yet

13 July 2008
2030

I am leaving Kuwait, but I am not yet going home. I have volunteered for another overseas tour. “Volunteered” is a bit of a stretch in this context, since in a way I don’t really have a choice.

It’s a long story, but it boils down to this: if I want to stay in the Army at all, I have to stay deployed until some outstanding issues are settled with my security clearance. The Defense Investigative Service did a crappy job of assembling the “facts” from their investigation. I had some tax disputes with the IRS a few years ago, which have since been resolved (mostly in my favor). But the investigator painted a totally inaccurate picture, and made it look like I owe hundreds of thousands of dollars (which, from a security standpoint, would make me a bribery or espionage case just waiting to happen).

As a result I had to document a bunch of stuff to prove they got it all wrong. Now I am waiting for the final adjudication. Until that happens, I have an interim clearance, which is *only* valid while I’m deployed. As soon as I come home it gets suspended until the final adjudication. That could take many months (they are something like 40,000 investigations behind). So meanwhile I could not teach ROTC or be active in my Army Reserve unit (which was my plan), as both of those require a clearance.

They had told me earlier that my interim clearance was good until the end of the year, but that turns out to have been based on a misunderstanding – somebody had told the security manager that that was when my mobilization ended. As I was preparing to out-process, they told me it would be suspended as soon as I demobilize, which is a whole different kettle of fish.

So I can either come home as a civilian with no chance to be active in the Army in any way until some indeterminate time in the future, or else I stay activated and deployed for another tour, and give them time to work through it. Either way I would eventually get the clearance, but unfortunately this is the only way I can still be affiliated with the Army while the process goes on. It sucks, but that’s the system.

I found this out a couple of weeks ago, and spent a few days working on finding a tour and getting my packet prepared and turned in. It turned out there was a position for an Engineer Major in Qatar, so that is where I’m going. When they got wind of it here, they tried to keep me at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, but I told them I would really prefer Qatar. I am ready for a change of scenery, and as long as the Army is screwing me I don’t feel the least bit bad about getting a better deal.

Qatar (like the entire Persian Gulf), is still considered to be in the combat zone, but the policies are more relaxed than they are in Kuwait. They run the R&R programs for the theater there. I've heard that we are allowed to go off post and visit civilian establishments, do recreational things, etc, so it should be much more interesting on that account.

There is a new type of administrative leave that you get after a mobilization, called PDMRA (Post Deployment/Mobilization Respite Absence). I have earned 18 days of that, so I will almost certainly still get to come home in August. But it will just be a temporary leave, not for good. They’re working on getting my orders now, and those details will be worked out in couple of weeks once things are finalized.

So – it’s not what any of us were expecting, but that’s life. I made a choice to resume and finish out my career in the Army, and now if I want to follow through on that choice I have to roll with the punches and do the best I can.

I keep thinking of the scene in “From Here to Eternity”, where Alma (Donna Reed) is talking to Private Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) about the rotten treatment he is getting from his commander:

Alma: “Gee, you must hate the Army.”

Prewitt: “No, I don’t hate the Army.”

“But look what it’s doing to you!”

“I love the Army.”

“It sure doesn’t love you.”

“A man loves a thing, that don’t mean it has to love him back.”


So that’s the deal. I love the Army, but right now it doesn’t seem to love me back.

It wasn’t my preferred choice to stay here for another tour, but that’s the price of staying in the Army for now. I’ll just have to put off the ROTC instructor plan for another year. It’s hard because of being away from my family for so long, but will be good for me in every other way – career development, savings, retirement, helping the kids pay for college, etc. So it’ll be alright.

Mood: What’s the adjective for “Equanimity”? “Equanimous”? :-)
Music: Merle Travis - Re-enlistment Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj4wzDQEdoo