I went to the pub last night with a couple of friends. We went from my local to another traditional music pub down the street. When we got there, two blokes came in and started drinking. They were being pretty boistrious and come to find out they were Royal Marines whose commander gave them leave to see Edinburgh while their ship was in port. One of them was a white Englishman and his friend was a Black South African Welshman. We found out as the night went on that they were going to Denmark then on to Afghanistan. For one of them, it was his second tour there but for the other it was his first and he was "kind of nervous about it" because "it was really a dangerous place."
This is not the first time that I have met people either coming or going from a war zone. I am always at a loss as to what to tell these people. I want to be sympathetic but, at the same time, they just wanted to go out and have a good time before they leave. These guys may never see home again alive. What am I supposed to tell them? I ended up just agreeing with them and just letting them tell me what they were going through. I cannot identify with what they are going through because I am sitting in an Ivory Tower where the most danger that I have in a day is if I run out of milk for my tea. I think I made the right choice by just letting them have a good time but not talking about where and why they were going but it is difficult whenever this happens. In any case, they had Physical Training (PT) at 9 am the next morning and they were very very drunk. I do not think they had a very good Saturday morning.
posted by Chris #5:19 PM | 2 comments |
