Warmed in Front of Wal-Mart

I don’t think I’ve ever found anything profound at Wal-Mart, let alone in their parking lot; but what I saw Thursday night almost brought tears to my eyes.

An hour or so earlier, the Charlie Company 4th Combat Engineer Battalion had pulled into the Marine Reserve Center behind multiple motorcycles and flashing police cruisers.  From its extended boom, a ladder truck from the local fire company unfurled Old Glory.  TV camera crews and newspaper photographers shot along the taped-off lines of hundreds of sign-waving, hooting families and friends.  The din reminded me of an NFL stadium, the images of something between a 1991 Lee Greenwood concert and Midwest Fourth of July parade.

My buddy wobbled out of the second bus—bulky, khaki bags forcing him through the door at an angle.  Somehow, amidst the thanking, you’re-a-hero signs, Dizo spotted his rowdy bunch of buddies.  Then his girlfriend found us, and he found her embrace with the soundtrack of our chants for kisses (as bawdy as a drunk groomsman’s). 

Dizo isn’t from here, and his family was still en route from South Carolina; but he was as good as home.

I handed him the key to my Cooper and told him to take Kat for a ride around the block. “Welcome home, soldier,” I said in my most official civilian tone. “You deserve this.”  The look on his face at that moment made me wonder for the next 20 carless minutes if he thought I had given him the car.

A half hour later he was driving my brother-in-law and I to Wal-Mart, the rendezvous point for Dizo and his immediate family.  After a year of Humvees and even harsher rides, Dizo smiled as he shifted through the gears as smoothly as if this had been his car all along.  Anxious to find his parents’ rental car, he drove against the arrows in the parking lot and spent two cell phone calls on the recon before slipping into the slot next to a waving, shaved-headed man.

Then, in the glow of the grocery entrance, Thandizo Sibande, still in his desert fatigues, embraced his Zambian father—arms tight, cheeks touching, statures rocking in quarter turns.  Through my open moon roof I could here multiple back slaps and the African-influenced voice of the senior Sibande repeating, “Thank you, Jesus!  Thank you, Jesus!”

“We prayed for you—we heard every day on the news. . . ‘one marine dead today in Baghdad’ . . . but you are here—you came back,” came the clenched words from the South Carolina pastor.

After a few minutes, Dizo’s Mom and sisters and niece spilled from the Supercenter into three-way hugs and then introductions.  Their beautiful smiles shown in the night, framed by their dark, royal skin.  We took turns with different video cameras, recording each like different-jacketed athletes at the Olympic closing ceremonies.

Time stood still for me, my mind recording in SLP mode—History letting me know that it was happening.  Not momentous, like a JFK or Challenger moment, just a quiet reflection on the freedom in love and the love in freedom.  One soldier in over a hundred thousand returning stateside may be a blip on the radar of American History, but not in the pages of my log book.  I will never forget that moment.

Dizo may feel more of a survivor than a hero, with four in his company not alive for the C130 from Baghdad to Kuwait, the charters from Kuwait to California then Richmond, and the buses back to Lynchburg.  He may think he protected more Iraqis than Americans.  He may even wonder what difference he made in the lives of those who cheered his homecoming.

But for all the check points we didn’t encounter on the way to Wal-Mart, for all the armored trucks that weren’t patrolling Wards Road, for all the time in the world to hug a soldier in a parking lot, and for the curfews we weren’t breaking—I’ve got to thank somebody.

© 2003: nonymous, ink.
a ryan george company