For All things there is a time

I am slowly cleaning my areas and gathering up all my stuff. It is amazing, I came here with 2 bags and I have sent home a full trunk and another small box. I still think that I have more stuff than when I came here. This is just the physical things. I know that I will be leaving behind a group of friends, as my last commander put it, "war buddies." We will always have a unique shared experience which is not describable in any amount of words. Things happen, don't really know why God lets them happen, but they do. Everyone deals with the things in their own unique way. One of my war buddies told me yesterday, I know why we get snippy with each other at the end of the deployment, because is makes it a little bit easier to part company. It's funny, I know we are in a war zone, and there is death and destruction all around us, but we all will miss the people, not the situation. But, if not for the situation, we would not have met these people and bonded to them. It is kind of like college, only different. Our first Sargent keeps telling us "short-timers" to minimize our footprint, so that when the new folks come in, there will be plenty of room to welcome them in, so we pack and get in redeployment mode, we live out of our suitcases for the next 1-2 weeks.