Marsha P. Johnson Advocate (18:05)
I do. It's. It's one of those things. And it's funny when you talk about that, because when you looked at, I mean, the horrors of like World War II and World War I, I think were a bit different. I. I've probably the same, but a bit different. But, you know, when you, when you have 30 days to sail home or, you know, takes time to, to. To get out of that war zone, to, to come back to reality, so to speak. I remember one time we. We were coming out of Iraq and we had to get from our area in the Green Zone over to the airport. We were flying at that, that time. We were flying a CIA, CIA flight out from, from Baghdad to Jordan. And then we' aircraft and going away. And it was a rough day in Iraq. It was. I'm trying to think what year it was. 2004. Five or six. One of the, one of the three. Azerbunch. And I remember as we were going out of the Green Zone, the secure zone, there was a helicopter with a minigun just literally firing on a bunch of terrorists. And the shells were just falling on our vehicle. And we, we drove out into the streets and we got over to the other side and got to the airport and we, we jumped on this airplane. The next thing I knew, I was in the Ritz Carlton in, in Amman, Jordan. And we were at the bar and, you know, I don't know if I was drinking bourbon at time or scotch, you know, but I probably had a McAllen, you know, 25 and two hours before there's literally rounds like, you know, falling on your, you know, your vehicle. And it was one of those things like getting that, that, that quickness of. From this to that was always, it was always kind of odd. And then one time I flew home is. I was in Afghanistan. It was 04. Been gone about four months. And I'm flying the FBI G5 home. We had a FBI senior executive fly over to, to look how things were going. And I managed, it was at the end of my tour to get on this G5. So I jumped at the chance we fly and I think we did a remain overnight in, in Iceland. And then I was flying into. I was living up by Virginia by a Dulles airport about an hour from there. And, you know, I text my wife and I said, hey, I'm probably going to be in at 9am but don't tell the kids just in case something gets delayed. And so I land in Virginia, get my vehicle. And I mean, I had a big moolah beard. It was like down to my, you know, middle chest that probably. And I, I parked on the street. It's Sunday morning, it's like 9am and I park on the street and I run up to the door and I ring the doorbell. And you know, my wife knew it was me. So she tells the kids are all, you know, all four of them. I think the youngest was probably 18 months. Oldest was maybe five. And they're like, she tells him to go down and say, hey, who's at the door? And we had a glass, you know, front door, and the kids come running down and there I am with the beard. And they look at me and they all ran back upstairs screaming, you know, like. And then my youngest and the second youngest, Jude, they were. They didn't talk to me for like two Weeks. And they were the one that was most affectionate towards me at the time. And they didn't talk to me for, like, two weeks until finally. I mean, I'd shaved the beard that day, and. And I don't know if it was because I was gone or if it was that. That thing. But, yeah, those adjustment periods get really tough, and I. I'd done them so many times that I kind of understood them, understood the stress back on my family when I came home, especially my wife, because they were in a routine, and I would break it up. I would come home and, you know, they wanted to see dad, and there was a routine that was going on. It was really tough. And I started giving advice to guys that I deployed with later that was, like, their first or second deployments. I said I would give them advice like, hey, when you get home, your wife's been with the kids all the time. Like, you think you've had it bad, but trust me, you know, three, four kids, you know, and you have no break is a lot worse than a firefight. I always said I always knew where the enemy was in a firefight. Bath time with four kids. You don't know that. And I tell them, like, you know, spend the time with your kids. Let your wife be alone. Let her do things, and. And, you know, get back into it. But those. Those were always rough periods, and. And it took a number of deployments coming back and forth to get used to it. And then I remember another time I was out, A buddy of mine with the Army Special Missions Unit had been in town, and. And Mike was his name, and him and his wife came over, and we had dinner. And then after dinner, we were on the. You know, the deck, and we were talking, and me and Mike were joking about things that we joke about, like having. Once you're over there with someone, you kind of have this, you know, camaraderie, understanding. So we're. We're laughing. And Gina was over there with his wife, talking. And. And I think at one point, they. They left. Gina went up to put the kids down, and I was on the computer, and I'd just gotten back from a deployment, and I had. And I was moving my pictures from the deployment over to my hard drive, and. And Gina came down, and I quickly shut off the computer. And, like, you know, like, she's like, what, are you looking at porn or something? I'm like, no, actually, it's like deployment pictures. And. And she kind of. She saw me talking with Mike, and I think was, you know, like, why don't you ever talk to me about, like, why don't, like, you never, you know, show me the pictures? Never. I said, okay, you want to see them? And I remember going through them and I. I came. This one picture, and it was this green grass, and there was like these four or five chickens on it. And I. And she kind of looking at me, I said, look, that picture is really funny. And she's just like, well, why do. Why do you say that? I said, well, those chickens, I said, they come out of nowhere. And she goes, why is that funny? I said, well, it's like I said, anytime we shot someone in the head and the brains would go out, the chickens came out of nowhere to eat the brains. And we just thought that was really funny. And I said, do you want to see any more pictures? And she said, no. And I think at that point she figured out that there's something that goes on that you're just not going to understand. Like, it's like one of those things that until you're there, because we. We thought that was really funny because you want to see chickens forever. And then you do that and chickens come out of nowhere. And I think at that point, she never asked again to talk about it, to look at it, to. To. To get into that world. Because I think that at that alone just proved like, you're never gonna understand what was going on.
