After the Donuts
After we came back to Fort Hood, I didn’t stay long. They sent me to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for military police investigation training, then on to Camp Humphreys in South Korea.
Every so often, I’d hear that some of my old unit had gone back to Iraq for a second tour. I thought about volunteering, too. It’s hard to explain—that strange pull, like in The Hurt Locker, where home feels too quiet and the noise starts calling you back. I used to think that only people who’d seen real combat or death felt that, but I understood it for a second. War becomes its own kind of gravity.
I got over it eventually. Life moved on, driven by my sense that time is short and we should keep seeking new horizons. Yet, the oddest moment was the brief gap between arriving home and actually feeling at home.
Still, when I think back on it now, what I remember most isn’t the fear or the dust or the noise. It’s the box of Krispy Kreme’s waiting on the bed. Somehow, that felt like the truest ending.
— K.C.
Notes from a Quiet War
