The war

I will admit that I rarely, if ever, discuss the war in Iraq. I know it's there, but I tend to insulate my life from things that I feel helpless about. When I'm at work, I work. When I'm at home, I play my favorite music, take care of my husband, my animals, and my house, and try to enjoy my leisure time while also getting the chores done. I am staunchly apolitical, and I just do my best to affect my portion of the world in the most positive way I can. I try to make my home a bright, peaceful place where my family and friends can come, have a glass of home-made iced tea, and relax.

When I got to work last night, I checked the roster to see what position I would be sitting at. As usual, I strolled through to the break room to fix myself a cold drink, then headed back to the radio room and relieved the 8-4 operator at my position. I plugged in my headset, adjusted the seat, the lighting, and the angle of the computer screen. I logged in on the time-sheet web page, checked my business email, and adjusted the volume on the VHF and HF frequencies.

I was now ready for my shift, working the long range position, which often handles phone patches between flights and their dispatchers, and sometimes MedLink when they have medical emergencies on board. This position is generally slow volume-wise, but some very important calls get patched through. You never know what's going to pop up during your shift.

I got a call from a flight that requested a phone patch to the Dover Air Force Base. This is a request I'd never had before, so I leaned back and called across the room to the team lead. He came over and showed me where to access the phone number. I patched the call through. Unfortunately, the connection wasn't great. The flight couldn't hear what Dover was saying, and Dover couldn't hear what the flight was saying. Since I could hear both of them, I relayed the information between them.

The flight asked me to tell Dover "ETA 1316 and 9 HR's on board". When handling a phone patch, we often don't understand everything that's being said. Some phone patches are conducted entirely in foreign languages. Sometimes pilots are discussing detailed mechanical stuff with the repair people on the ground. So we just relay information as it's told to us. I relayed the requested info to Dover.

After the phone patch had been completed, the team lead came back over to my position and asked me if I knew what I had just relayed to Dover. I said that I knew what an Estimated Time of Arrival was, but not what the HR's were. He said, "Human Remains".

The pilots call ahead when they're bringing our boys back from war, so that the military has time to get together an honor guard to meet the coffins. And I had relayed the message, not even realizing I was talking about nine soldiers whose families will never see them again.

My job felt different from that moment on. I realized that while I may have the luxury of insulating myself from the war most of the time, there are soldiers and families of soldiers that are finding out the real cost every single day, and they have nowhere to hide.