I’m Glad I Did It. I’m Glad I’m Not Doing It Anymore

There are things in life that you can be profoundly grateful for without wanting to experience them again. Military service is like that for me.

I spent 27 years in the Army. During that time, I served in conventional units and in three different special operations organizations. I deployed seven times to Iraq and Afghanistan. I served overseas in places like Korea, Egypt, and the Philippines. I spent years at West Point teaching cadets who were preparing to begin careers of their own. Along the way, I met extraordinary people, did things that I never imagined I would have the opportunity to do, went places I probably never would have seen otherwise, and accumulated enough stories to last several lifetimes.

I am glad I did it.

And I am glad I’m not doing it anymore.

Those two statements are not contradictory. In fact, I think they represent one of the healthiest ways to look back on a long military career. I loved the Army. I am grateful for what it gave me. I miss parts of it more than I expected I would. But I don’t want to go back.

The Things You Miss

What I miss most isn’t the Army itself. It is the people. I miss being surrounded by people who were exceptionally good at difficult things. I miss the dark humor that develops among people who have been tired, cold, scared, bored, frustrated, and miserable together. I miss conversations that would make absolutely no sense to anyone who wasn’t there. I miss the unspoken confidence of knowing that the people around you could handle themselves when things went wrong. And I miss being young with them.

That last part matters more than I understood when I retired.

When we look back at military service, we sometimes confuse nostalgia for the institution with nostalgia for a particular period of our lives. We say we miss the Army when what we really miss is being 25 years old, surrounded by our friends, with knees that didn’t hurt and an entire career still in front of us. We miss the people we were then almost as much as the people we were with.

I can look at photographs from those years and remember exactly how it felt. The body armor. The weapons. The aircraft. The dust. The ridiculous amount of gear. The terrible food eaten at strange hours. The endless waiting interrupted by moments when everything happened at once. The sense that whatever we were doing mattered enormously, even when we weren’t entirely sure why.

I miss some of that.

But memory is an excellent editor. It cuts out a lot of the bad scenes.

The Things You Don’t Miss

Nostalgia has a way of turning deployments into highlight reels. It remembers the helicopter ride but forgets the hours sitting around waiting for the helicopter. It remembers the mission but forgets the briefing, the rehearsals, the cancellations, the rescheduling, and the maintenance problems. It remembers the funny stories but not always the exhaustion behind them.

More importantly, nostalgia tends to soften the cost.

Seven combat deployments sound different to me now than they did when I was accumulating them. Back then, deployments were simply part of the profession. You packed your bags. You left. You came home. You trained. Eventually, you left again.

But every departure meant somebody else stayed behind.

There were birthdays I missed, holidays I missed, family events I missed, and stretches of my children’s lives that happened while I was somewhere else. There were people I loved who learned to live without me because the Army required them to. That is a strange thing to recognize after retirement: the institution may have been your profession, but in many ways your entire family served your career with you.

There were other costs as well. Friends died. Others were wounded. Some came home carrying things that were harder to see. Relationships changed. Marriages ended. Careers collapsed. People who seemed indestructible when we were young turned out to be human after all.

That is part of the story too.

I would not trade away my military career. But neither would I romanticize it into something it wasn’t.

The Gift of Perspective

One of the unexpected benefits of retirement is discovering that life does not become less meaningful simply because nobody is issuing you orders anymore.

For most of my adult life, the Army provided an enormous amount of structure. It told me where to live, what organization I belonged to, what job I would perform, what uniform I would wear, and often where I would be six months from now. Rank and position created an instant shorthand for identity. Walk into almost any military organization and within minutes everyone understands roughly where everyone else fits. Then one day you take the uniform off. But the Army keeps going.

Someone else takes your job. Someone else sits in your office. Someone else deploys. Someone else becomes the person everyone calls when something important needs to happen.

And that is exactly how it should be. There is something liberating about realizing that.

Retirement gave me the opportunity to discover that purpose does not have to disappear when service ends. It can simply change. I can write. I can teach. I can mentor. I can work with young people. I can spend time with my family without wondering when the next deployment, exercise, PCS, or late-night phone call is going to rearrange everyone’s plans.

I can still contribute without having to belong to the institution in the same way I once did.

That is a pretty good deal.

You Can Love Something and Leave It

Military culture sometimes makes retirement sound like a tragedy.

People approaching the end of their careers talk about hanging up the uniform as though they are preparing for their own funeral. Retirement ceremonies become celebrations tinged with mourning. There is a persistent anxiety underneath it all: Who am I if I’m not this anymore?

I understand that feeling.

For people who entered the military young and stayed for decades, military service isn’t simply a job. It becomes woven into identity. Your friends are there. Your memories are there. Your accomplishments are there. Some of the best and worst days of your life happened there.

Walking away can feel like walking away from yourself.

But leaving something does not diminish what it meant.

I don’t have to wish I were still deploying to prove that those deployments mattered. I don’t have to wear a uniform to remain proud that I once wore one. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to recreate the person I was at 30 or 35 or 40.

That guy had his turn. I’m grateful for him. I’m grateful for the people who stood beside him. And I’m perfectly content to let him remain where he belongs: in photographs, memories, friendships, and stories that get a little better every time we tell them.

I’m Glad I Did It

If someone offered me the opportunity to go back and choose again, knowing everything I know now, I would still join the Army.

I would still choose the difficult assignments.

I would still seek out the units that demanded more of me.

I would still deploy.

I would still take the risks.

I would still accept the frustrations, absurdities, bureaucracy, missed holidays, long nights, bad decisions, and occasional misery, because all of those things came bundled together with experiences and relationships that helped make me who I am.

But if someone offered me the opportunity to put the uniform back on tomorrow?

No thanks.

I like sleeping in my own bed. I like having more control over my time. I like playing with my dog, shooting my guns, driving my Jeep, and being home at a decent time. I like not worrying about people trying to kill me, or my friends, or the people I’m there to protect. I like being present for my family. I like knowing that when the news reports another crisis somewhere in the world, I can follow it professionally and personally without quietly calculating how long it would take my old unit to get there.

Most of all, I like this stage of life.

The Army gave me adventures I never could have planned, friendships I could never replace, lessons I could never have learned from books, and memories that I will carry for the rest of my life. Some were wonderful. Some were terrible. Most were somewhere in between.

I am grateful for all of them. But gratitude doesn’t require longing.

Sometimes the best way to honor an important chapter of your life is not to spend the rest of the book trying to return to it. You can remember it fondly, laugh at the stories, mourn the people who aren’t here anymore, stay connected to the people who are, and appreciate just how fortunate you were to have experienced it.

Then you turn the page.

I’m glad I did it.

I’m glad I’m not doing it anymore.

_____________________________

Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.