BIAP
I don’t remember the exact day we left Iraq, but I remember the waiting.
We were at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP,) killing time, watching movies, daydreaming about home.
Everyone was halfway gone already—bodies still in uniform, minds already across the ocean.
That’s when I ran into a few more classmates from Fort Huachuca. HUMINT school. It felt strange seeing them there again after everything—like the war had folded in on itself and delivered us all back to the same starting point. We talked about training, about how we’d changed, about what we’d do when we got home. It felt good. Ordinary. Almost like we were already free.
One of them didn’t make it much longer. His name was Joshua from Iowa, and we sat next to each other at HUMINT school. One of the nicest guys I’ve met in my life. Cancer took him after he came home. I don’t know if it had anything to do with Iraq. Probably not. But I still think about that conversation sometimes—standing there in the terminal, laughing about Fort Huachuca, none of us realizing we were already saying goodbye.
