Joan Dixon - Embedded on the Home Front Where Military and Civilian Lives Converge

Working as an editorial team had its pros and cons. Compiling and editing an anthology was more work than we could have fathomed, but being able to share that load was a blessing. The co-editing process challenged contributors, too. Each essay showed us something new about the home front. And all of the individual contributors worked hard to fit within our collective concept while sharing their personal stories and literary craft. We salute them!

The editors and contributors would like to acknowledge the support of the Province of Alberta through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Drunk. And I mean, too drunk. I am sitting at the swim-up bar of the Azia Resort in Cyprus, and Ive been drinking beer, shots, highballs and whatever else seemed like a good idea for the last five hours. The whole world is my friend. I am young, strong, fit and excited. I have survived the last seven months in Afghanistan, and I am on my way home. I am on decompression, a three-day vacation in Cyprus that allows us a chance to party together before we get back to Canada. The army isnt stupid. It realizes that its soldiers should have a chance to debauch themselves before they arrive home and are released amongst the Canadian population. I am doing my best to debauch myself. Indeed, Bacchusthe Roman god of madness, mirth and wineis very much in evidence as the 80 or so soldiers inhabiting the resort drink and smoke and laugh. They fight each other, laugh together andby the end of the nightcry together. The tour is rehashed, and the stories that we lived through are retold. For the moment, the dark points are forgotten, although they will eventually make their appearance.

Five days before we arrived in Cyprus, I was sitting in the back of a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV), chewing tobacco and smoking at the same time, breathing dust. I tasted the too-familiar grit of the moon dust, and inhaled acrid tobacco that made me feel a little sick to my stomach. I felt the smoothness of my tan combat gloves, which still had partially dried raisins stuck to them.

These raisins had gotten stuck to my gloves when I leaned back into a pile of them a month earlier. We had blown the metal door of a mud-walled compound with C4 explosive and searched the compound for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). But when we cleared in, we were confronted only with freshly dried grapes, arrayed chronologically along the floor: dried raisins closest to the door and recently harvested grapes near the far wall of the 10-metre enclosed space. We didnt find any IEDsonly raisins, homemade wine and an ideal defensive position. We were in Pashmul, north of the Arghandab River and south of Patrol Base Wilson. We were in Taliban territory.

After two mostly sleepless nights, we were back at our base, Sperwan Ghara mountain of dust bristling with antennae. That was my last dismounted operation, and after a month of radio shifts and a handover to the Royal Canadian Regiment, I was on the road homeback to Kandahar Airfield (KAF) and, if all went according to plan, Calgary by way of Cyprus. The raisin jelly stuck to my otherwise smooth gloves was the only tangible reminder I had left of that compound.

Earlier, a man I knew and respected had died on these same roads, on his way back to KAF and home. I had heard the incident play out on the radio and watched it scroll slowly across a computer screen. A LAV had rolled after an IED blew up underneath it. Seven people were injured and one killed, all on their last trip before home. So I was understandably nervous during this final LAV ride of my seven-month stay in the country of Afghanistan. But there was absolutely no point in worrying. Something would either happen or it wouldnt; there was nothing I could do to change it. The freedom to choose whether or not to take part in things that directly affected my safety had all but been removed. I had no choice but to accept whatever came as the will of fate, God or physicsdepending on the day. InshaAllah.

We made it back to KAFthat bizarre world of red flags, floppy hats, Tim Hortons and the never-ending smell of human wasteand we were reintegrated into the regular rules and norms of the military system once again. We played Battlefield 2. KAF housed a double-wide ATCO-style trailer filled with two rows of computers that had almost every popular video game loaded onto them. While we waited to go home, the trailer filled up and we shot computerized versions of ourselves for hours. The game was broken into teams: terrorists vs. Americans. I found that virtual reality was infinitely more comfortable and fun than reality had been.

It is 36 hours later, and Im drinking beers in the Azia Resort swimming pool. Nothing in the world is wrong. I havent seen alcohol in almost three months, since my European break from the war with my girlfriend. It is affecting me more quickly than normal. I am drinking with the company headquarters sectionthe group I had been attached to since I started pre-training forever ago in Shilo, Manitoba. These were the guys who had sat with me in the grape huts of Panjwayand together, we have worked our way down the street to a beach bar. British waitresses, who tell us that they are in Cyprus on working vacations, are no doubt utterly tired of being hit on by Canadians. But they are tanned and young, and we are tanned and young, and flush with cash. More than one person at the table proposes marriage, and otherless honourablerelations to them. The night progresses and my head begins to bob. The conversations take place further and further away, and the world becomes more fragmentary, my interactions with it less controlled. I am right shittered, as those in the army would call it. I lurch through faltering steps back to my roommuch earlier than I had plannedand fall face first onto my mattress. In the split second before I am fast asleep, I am conscious of a happiness I havent known for seven months, or indeed for my entire life. I have made it through a war, and I am going home.

I dream of a perfect Canadian autumn, the leaves changing in the provincial park by my house, and the sun in my girlfriends hair, bringing out the highlights as she looks back at me with blue eyes and a coy smile. I dream, as I so often did while overseas, of being reunited with my friends, telling stories and playing video games like we had in university. Back then I thought that I knew everything there was to know about the world. But now, I dream of the world that I remember leaving, without realizing that it no longer exists. I have changed, and so has my home. I know less, although I have experienced more. I have seen things that made me realize that I knew very little about the world. Things that I wished I hadnt seen: starving children, mangled bodies and limbs torn to shreds, the eyes of evil men from across an opium field.

Drunkagain, and again, too drunk. It is three weeks since I got home from Afghanistan, and two months since I finished my last dismounted cordon-and-search operation in Pashmul. I am in Calgary at the Colonel Pryde dinner, named after a former commanding officer who had served in the Second World War. Im still technically on leave, but I wouldnt miss Colonel Pryde for the world. It is my units annual social event, known as a mess dinner. It is planned by the youngest officer in the unit and any new guys who dont know better than to volunteer to help out. We are in for a lavish affair complete with polished silver candelabras, four courses, a band and loyal toasts with port. Husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and friends are invited. It is a chance to break bread as a unit family. It is also a chance to drink beer with ones military friends. I love Colonel Pryde. I spend the night before the dinner watching