My brother, SPC BroCubus, is a member of the 118th Maintenance Company in the Army National Guard. For the past 12 months, he was stationed in Bucca in Iraq. For those 12 long months, the only word I got back was the incredibly infrequent phone calls (many of which missed because I didn’t hear the phone ring/was busy :mad: ) emails, and snail mail letters.
While he was gone, other relatives were trying to contact him via phone or email. Meanwhile, I took the more practical approach of writing handwritten letters. I must have written over twenty letters to him the past twelve months, asking him how he is doing, and also keeping him abrest of our boring, but placid civilian life back in California. He sent me many letters back, often with intervals of a month or longer between correspondence. While my parents and other relatives talked to him on the phone and exchanged occasional emails, I was the only one who actually wrote to him and had him write me back.
Being gone was very hard on him. Barely twenty when he left, he discovered upon returning for a 10-day leave that many of his friends had all but forgotten him when he was gone. None of his friends had made any effort to contact him in Iraq. He said it was like coming back from the dead.
He was never able to give a whole lot of details about what he was doing over there. All I know is that he volunteered(!) for a job in which he would help recover disabled vehicles from dangerous places and bring them back to their base. So kind of like a battlefield tow truck driver, I guess. He had told me many times, “Incubus, its much different here than the media claims.” I never knew quite what to make of that, but I’m more than willing to accept his position on the whole Iraq war is unique because of the perspective he had in all of it.
When he finally returned, they bused his unit to Manteca, California. Last Friday, they had a motorcade in honor of the returning soldiers, and many locals came out to give flowers, cheer, and shake hands. On Saturday my whole family came out to visit him during a celebration they held in a local church there. The experience was surreal for me (the 12 months he had been gone I had transitioned from Agnostic to Atheist) and the whole idea of doing all this in a church with prayers and whatnot kind of rubbed me the wrong way. However, I was able to put those uneasy feelings aside and be happy my brother is back; his entire unit came back alive and well. When we finally got to go up to him and say hello, my brother returned a pendant my stepdad had given him, a good luck charm he had worn when he was in Vietnam. Guess it worked! Next weekend I get to visit him at my dad’s and help him enjoy coming back to civilian life, optimistic that he is strong enough mentally to not have totally lost all his marbles from the experience (when he was gone I was more worried he’d come back mentally screwed up that physically hurt. I’ll only know for sure in the next several months.)
No idea if he might have to go back; some men in his unit were there for a second or even third tour. I’m just happy to have him back for the time being 
My brother, the badass, who grew 1.5 inches and is now taller than me :dubious:
