[Fat Charlie]

In 2002, people were screaming about how we had to invade Iraq. It made no practical sense except to get Murricans to the polls- nothing to worry about, I re-upped for three.

In 2003, guess what? No worries though, nobody's going to send towed artillery to a mechanized war. Later that year the Administration unveiled Operation Fait Accompli: Gee, it turns out this is going to take a while longer... And everyone who could correctly identify a rifle got handed a brown uniform, and not much else.

In 2005 we made it home. Everything else we did got met with a cheerful "Don't matter to me, I'm out in October!" I looked hard for some other duty position, but the root was that no matter how much I loved being in I wasn't willing to go back and back and back to the same stupid damn war. I wasn't going to spend my time until retirement scamming out of deployments, either.

Taking the shortest hitch meant I only had to do one year of dehydration, back injuries, IEDs, hillbilly armor, corrupt command and KBR contractors making more money than any soldier ever will. After I got out my unit kept training on its howitzers while repeatedly sending its troops over as MPs. I had to go to a funeral this spring for one of the guys I had been there with, he killed himself not long after his third trip over there.

So while I really miss being in and recommend staying in if you like it at all, it's more important to not commit yourself to any more time than you have to. You can always extend, but it's wrong to back out once you've committed.