Souvenirs and Tokens

"Souvenirs and Tokens: the reality of consequence...
As I sat at my desk, I opened the email that had been sent to me from a soldier that I had come to know over the course of the fifteen months I was embedded. In it he wrote, "The thing that scares me the most is that the war will be over and there will be no place for me at all." His words were a snapshot of a generation of people who have been forever changed and who will never be able to view this place they call home the same way again, "I forgot how much I don’t fit in here." This soldier had served three tours and was now preparing for a fourth.

Wars are not so much forgotten as misunderstood. The change that war brings to those that walk within its shadow is, at first, only recognized by those who wait anxiously for their loved one's return. It is a collision of two worlds, a supper alone with the kids and a loved one five-thousand miles away finding the other in the scent of a letter. War is the slayer of innocence, a giver of dark dreams with an impact on life just shy of death itself. War becomes the undeclared mistress whose embrace we never fully escape."
KGW Afghanistan Blog