Afghanistan. The wandering soldier returns. When I heard of this, a soldier wandering off outside his post and getting captured and held for five years, my first thought was “That could have been me.” Immediately comes to mind an incident in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I was nineteen. Our platoon was on the perimeter, two men to a foxhole, one man awake at all times. That became our life for a week. The week went by, mostly without incident. Somewhere along the way, in the middle of the day, I decided I needed something from over there; somewhere outside our perimeter. I don’t remember what attracted me; maybe I was looking at carnivorous plants or harvesting bananas. Maybe I just wondered where a trail led. Anyway, some time later, I realized that I had walked quite a ways and was sitting on a ridge enchanted by a magnificent jungle view, well away from where I was supposed to be. I had wandered off without any supplies or weapons, and without anyone even knowing I was gone. This was not good. How did I get that far afield without even thinking about it? A momentary lapse; that turned into a very long moment. I headed right back to camp.
On the way, I realized that my next problem was that I needed to cross back through our perimeter without alarming anyone and getting myself shot. My sense of direction got me back to where I needed to be, generally, but not exactly to the spot I left from. I couldn’t tell quite where the perimeter was… until I set off the trip flare. Happily, I didn’t set off something destructive like a claymore mine; it was just a trip flare that makes a very loud POP and lights up everything around it (if it happens to be dark out). Given that this was the middle of the day, the loud POP just alerted everyone with rifles pointed my direction. “No Problem!” “It’s just me! “It’s Taylor!”
No shots were fired. I got back in safely. That could have been me in the news. “He just walked away from his post.” “He never said anything to anybody.” Luckily I didn’t make the news or end up an inadvertent statistic.
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