Ready to come home

I’m ready to come home now. How these guys do it day on day out for six months I simply do not know.

After the operation I felt like I was in a coma. The walking dead.

I didn’t blog on Thursday or Friday because I simply don’t know what I did.

I miss lots of things about home and I’ve been here for just two-and-a-half weeks.

I know it sounds strange but I miss silly things like roads. Seriously over here they don’t have tarmac roads like we do. They have dust tracks.

The occasional piece of tarmac is around the airfield and that’s pretty much off limits to civilians.

I miss colour. When all you see is the same golden colour sand you can’t help but yearn for lush green fields or trees.

I miss playing my guitar. And I also miss having a mobile phone that connects to a network. Being without communication is so strange in this day and age.

Most of all I miss my girlfriend, Suzie. Christ knows what went through her head with me being out of touch during the operation – and of course what she’s read since.

Seriously I don’t know how servicemen and women disappear for six or seven months at a time.

It would tear my soul apart. Yes, they are well looked after here but it’s not the same. They have some of the comforts of home without surely the most comfortable thing of all – loved ones.

I also seem to have caught the sniff that is doing the rounds over here. It’s hard to tell, with all the dust in the air, whether the sore throat is from that or indeed an oncoming cold.

I’ll go with the latter given how my head is feeling.

So… I’m now tying up loose ends before heading home.

I think it will take several weeks for the dust (not literally) to settle and for me to take in everything that has happened.

Another comedy moment happened last night around dinner time when Gaz Faulkner (42 Cdo’s photographer) and I were looking at images to send back to The Herald.

An air raid-style alarm sounded across camp signalling an imminent rocket attack.

Within a flash all the other people in the office dived for cover under their desks leaving Gaz and I looking at each other.

It seems with all we’ve been through in the last week with all the ‘contact’ you can’t help but get complacent about a mere untargeted rocket attack.

We just erupted into laughter and the all clear sounded a short while later.

In any case right about now I feel ready to fall over. Night night.