New friends

There are things I really missed about the military. One of the biggest things is the camaraderie that you tend to develop with your co-workers. This proved to be true again at Fort Jackson. In just a short time, a group of about 14 of us became fairly close friends. We are all captains, and we all got out for different reasons. We were from different branches - Logistics, Communications, Infantry, and Armor. Yet, we all ate together everyday; we hung out together at night, and when we had a free night, we went into town and had a good meal and some drinks. After a week, it seemed as if we all were old friends. The hardest part about going to Fort Lee was leaving these guys and girls. Luckily, 6 of us were going to Fort Lee together. Two more will go to separate places and re-join us at Fort Riley, where we are supposedly meeting up with the unit we will go to war with. Not so luckily, the others are going to completely different places, probably ending up in Afghanistan. We exchanged emails and phone numbers, and have kept good contact so far, but we all know it will never be the same. There are bonds formed between people who go through similarly tough situations, and everyone can relate somehow. The bonds you form with your teammates during pre-season conditioning; the bonds you form with co-workers on tough road trips; the bond you feel with your family after someone close to you dies. We all know that the bond will always remain, but it’s never the same as when you are toughing it out together. As a good friend likes to say, such is life.