Spring Break for the Soldiers: A Four Day Break from War

Written by Josh Grenzsund

Thursday, 20 March 2008

Doha, the capital of Qatar, where those serving in the Middle East can go for a four-day spring break. It's the time of year for college students to relax (or get wasted) over spring break. World Writer Joshua Grenzsund discusses the difference between a spring break from college and a spring break from serving in the Middle East. College is stressful, no doubt about it, and spring break is a chance to escape the normal pressure of school for a few days. Some of us will either sleep for a week straight to make up for lost time, or drink and screw and save all the sleeping for when class is back in session. But this year, the few days away from lectures and exams has me thinking about those serving in our combat zones and how badly they may need a break from the business of killing and staying alive. Not long after Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were rolling across Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon recognized the need to give people a few days’ break in order to keep them motivated, productive and—in many cases—sane. They selected the United States base As-Sayliyah near Doha in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar to serve as their year-round Central Command spring break. Most troops on a 12- to 18-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa get at least one four-day rest-and-recuperation pass. Many of them elect to spend it on a military-sponsored trip to Qatar rather than stay locally in their post or a nearby base. I made one of those trips myself, in October 2004, on break from duty with the Army in Afghanistan, though I got out altogether in 2005. For me, the choice to spend two miserable days of traveling in the back of a C-130—one each way from Bagram, Afghanistan to Doha, Qatar—was hinged on two key factors. First, there would be no chance of running into unstable colleagues still carrying their weapons and live ammo, and more importantly, there was a 100 percent chance I would be able to get my hands on a real beer—three beers a day to be exact. Despite these factors, you have to consider nothing in the military is done without its extra layers of bureaucratic fun-sucking. And in the words of one Lieutenant Colonel who made notes of his trip to Qatar, once you arrive, you have to expect to “be processed like beef cattle at the slaughterhouse and move from one room to the next and one briefing to the next, 'Do this, don't do that, watch out for this, look out for that.'” The adventures with Vorpal Bunny, his human counterpart and others provide good examples of how the average person gets cycled through the on-post fast food shops and swimming pool, and the off-post chaperoned trips to play golf, go dune busting, walk thought the mall with an indoor ice rink, and for some reason go to see a 20 foot statue of a clam pearl. I saw the clam statue myself, but the whole point of this trip was not so much tour Qatari culture, but to be re-oriented to the shocking concept that there was a peaceful and functioning modern world out there, outside the combat zones. CW2 Bert Stover wrote a blog for The Washington Post and in one of his postings he described sitting down to watch TV in civilian clothes, drinking a beer and how “memories of life in the U.S. came back instantly. I forgot everything about being in Iraq: the flying, the heat, the people, all of it.” When I got my pass to Qatar, I had been in Afghanistan for nearly six months without a day off, working 14-hour days in old Soviet buildings with dust blowing through cracks in the walls, or in mud Afghan huts with rotted corrugated tin ceilings, making decisions about people’s lives and probable deaths each day. My pass had been revoked once before, and I was aching to escape for even just a couple hours of mindless solitude. My moment of personal escape to the reassurance of the westernized world came on my first full day in Qatar when I found an ex-pat sponsor to take me out on the town. It was the second full day of Ramadan, and there had been mild threats towards U.S. personnel, so many of the usual outings had been canceled. Instead of going to the dunes or the Qatari markets he took me to an ordinary western-style grocery store. I spent the better part of an hour walking up and down the clean brightly-lit and colorfully-stocked isles, just touching things, buying things, lost in the marvelous experience of not carrying a gun, knowing nobody’s life was in the balance, and just shopping. A guy blogging on Going Down Range wrote about other startlingly pleasant experiences that civilians don’t know how to fully appreciate, like when he could “sleep in without the fear of a rocket attack, use real toilets and take a nice long hot shower.” Coconut Commando posted a thorough account of his trip to Qatar on his blog. Though he recognized the artificiality of the oasis of U.S. fast food in the desert, he also pointed out the genuine contrast of being on R&R and life in a combat zone that most service members take notice of. “I sat on a berm for about two hours, and just listened to the wind blow," he wrote. "I know it’s the simple things in life that have the most impact.” In the end, there can really be no comparison between taking a spring break from school and a four day pass from war. If anything though, looking at what we give to and expect from our service members—especially on this fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq—it helps put our academic lives in perspective. As university students, we take our few days of getting wasted and then get back to the task of earning a degree. The guy blogging at Going Down Range, however, sums up the difference of responsibility and expectations. “It was nice to relax for a few days,” he wrote. “Now it is back to the task to helping Afghanistan to join the 21st century.”