Back when I was in the Army I ran into men who had never left their hometown before. I found that odd, but then again, there I was in Fort Stewart Georgia and I was from Georgia. But a guy we called Buddy, his last name was Eastern European and had about a gazillion letters in it. We called him Buddy. It was a lot simpler.
Buddy lived in the north part of Minnesota, grew up on a farm, was a large man but seemed to shrink sometimes, when he was sitting around with us, playing Risk and drinking. He would sit on the floor, his back to the wall, and he seemed to almost disappear in his silence.
Christmas rolled around, his first Christmas in uniform, and he couldn’t get a flight into anywhere close to where he lived. The whiteout conditions sealed him out of his home state, and away from his family. Buddy started drinking early in the morning on a Monday, Christmas Eve day, and most of the guys who were going home were already gone. I was leaving Christmas day, and could leave early and be there by lunch. I asked Buddy to come with me and he shook his head.
“That would make it worse, I think,” he said, and fell deeper into silence. We drank, played Risk, and the guys who had been in for years had gotten used to the routine of not going home, and some of them didn’t want to for one reason, or a lot of reasons.
Buddy was a quiet man who read frequently, drank on an irregular basis, and by and large seemed neither happy nor unhappy about being in the military. When he called home from the payphone in front of the barracks he would spend an hour or so talking to his folks, or his sister, or grandparents, and this made him happy. His father sent him a photo of a new tractor and he passed the picture around like it was the first photo of a new baby.
As the night grew thinner, most of the guys wandered off, and the winner of the game, it wasn’t me, I remember that much, declared himself ruler of the known world, but somehow Buddy had disappeared.
I went back to my hometown, stayed a day or so, then returned. Buddy and I had breakfast together and he seemed more alive. Buddy had met a woman. Instead of going to his room and passing out, Buddy had left Christmas Eve and started walking. He walked all the way to the edge of the base, and then he kept going, until he hit an all night restaurant. He got something to eat and the waitress sat down at the table with him and they talked for the rest of the night. She had married a guy in service, divorced him because of drinking, and wound up sticking around Fort Stewart. Buddy walked to the restaurant two or threes times a week, and finally, she picked him up after work one day, and took Buddy home with her.
They got married after I left service, and I found out when I dropped in for a visit six months after I got out. Buddy was with his woman and he rarely hung out with the guys anymore. He still had three years left on his contract, but he had shown the guys a photo from his father, where they were building a house near the one where Buddy grew up. However many Christmas days he missed being in uniform, he had found love in an odd way, and in the end, Buddy was home for Christmas not because of where he was, but who he was with.
Take Care,
Mike