Christmas

Christmas is a recurring marker in the narrator’s military chronology, but not a moment of uncomplicated reunion. In Iraq it marks the point when his unit is left on its own, while the phone line to Emily remains unavailable; later, a Christmas visit home during his final months in the Army exposes how badly he is deteriorating. The holiday connects separation abroad with estrangement at home rather than resolving either.

Before the Deployment

The surrounding chronology begins with the narrator’s enlistment plans in the first week of 2005. Recruiters were struggling to attract young people as reports described troops being killed or maimed, yet he arrived ready to join. After tests placed him in the 85th percentile, he sought the 91W medical specialty and wanted to leave as soon as possible. His parents thought his plans foolish, but he told them he expected to begin classes within weeks and believed he might remain near Ohio.

The Army’s arrangements redirected him toward combat. Assigned initially to a medical section at Fort Hood, he found its older personnel and unfamiliar jargon unappealing, asked to join a combat company, and was assigned to Echo Company. At the Thursday physical examination, he learned he was color-blind; this did not rule out 91W, one of the few specialties still open to someone with that condition. These details establish the path into the deployment during which Christmas would become a marker of both transition and isolation.

Christmas at the Iraqi Base

The unit arrived in Iraq in December to relieve the Mississippi Rifles. The handover was gradual: soldiers from the two units went out together in vehicles, one from each, while the departing troops withdrew. By Christmas, the last of the Mississippi Rifles had gone home, leaving the narrator’s unit alone. The holiday therefore marks a practical change in responsibility, not a pause from the deployment.

The narrator was serving as the third section’s medic in its quick-reaction force. That role placed him within a unit meant to reinforce patrols under attack and escort explosive-ordnance teams, although early on he and his companions were frustrated when mortar fire struck near the tactical operations center and buildings blocked their view of the impact. Christmas arrives within this unsettled account of duty: the unit is newly responsible for its area, while the narrator is still measuring the difference between wanting action and being kept from seeing it.

The Cut-Off Call

The telephone lines had been out of service since Christmas because of deaths in the unit. When service returned around New Year’s Day, the narrator went to the tent containing the phone booths and waited in line. He sat for half an hour with his calling card before he could enter his code and reach Emily. Hearing her voice made him feel much better and sharpened his sense of how much he missed her.

The delay gives Christmas a second meaning in the Iraq chronology. The holiday is associated not only with the unit’s departure but also with a communications blackout caused by deaths. The eventual call offers contact rather than reunion: Emily is present through the telephone, and the narrator’s relief depends on a voice heard from far away.

Christmas Back in Texas

A later Christmas visit home belongs to the narrator’s final three months in the Army, which he spent in Texas. During that period he drank two bottles of gin each night and was passing blood. At Christmas he returned home, had a sexual encounter with a woman who said she was menstruating, and masturbated while feeling that he wanted to die. The scene makes the holiday’s return home starkly different from the hoped-for comfort of homecoming: physical proximity does not restore his well-being or create intimacy.

After the visit, he went back to Texas and felt somewhat better. He observed that many people there were also falling apart, which made his own condition feel less singular as long as he remained there. Set beside the Christmas phone call from Iraq, this return shows two distinct kinds of distance: overseas, Emily’s voice briefly relieves separation; at home, the holiday coincides with despair, and relief comes instead from being among others who are also struggling.