Patrol Week Ex

Nothing builds team work like a mass hallucination. 3 am in thick woods, 38% illumination, canopy too thick to see the moon anyways. 8 km patrol, 4 days without any sleep. I have a dozen dreams before I realize I'm marching, my hand wrapped tight in the tac vast of the man in front of me, holding my friend Alex's hand, pulling him along as he falls asleep at every pause, waking with a shudder and marching full speed right into me. I dream of friends, and places, and memories and hopeful futures that will never pan out. Branches cut and slice at my neck and hands, sticks and leaves whip at my eyes, thankfully protected by my ballistic eyewear, or officially, eyewear, ballistic, for protection of vision, known more accurately at night as eyewear, ballistic, for prevention of vision. At long halts we lie in rain soaked swamps, waiting for some poor candidate who is completely lost to find himself with the flakey army GPS unit and get us back on track, and pass his assessment, and be one step closer to not failing off this most important of courses. I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm not fucked up enough to have to fear an actual patrol - my written assessments have set me aside as successfully meeting the standard, balancing both planning and tactical abilities. If I'm that good I shouldn't fear a live patrol, but I do, because when you're that tired, nothing is scarier than responsibility.

So, I lug my light machine gun and follow the man in front and guide the man in back through the impossible darkness and let my thoughts drift, knowing full well I am shit-pumping, but I don't care, the imaginary enemy of this ridiculous scenario are not going to find us, we don't even know where we are. I can take a few minutes to drift off, and try to think, try to put almost 2 years together into some cohesive story of what the hell is going on, and sure as anything, it won't work.

Riviere-de-loup is the symbolic half way point on the 11 hour drive between Camp Gagetown and Ottawa. I've made this drive a handful of times. 3 provinces and each feels very different. I'm an ardent opponent of New Brunswick. If it wasn't too late, I'd be voting against it. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because half the province is the Gagetown Training Area, but I don't think so. It's just a strange place, I can't justify it, but it's too far from home and I feel nothing for the place. Quebec on the other hand, that's a whole other story.

I had been to Montreal a handful of times while I was living in Ottawa, and really, it never struck me as anywhere special. The city of my birth, where my parents lived their entire married relationship, until I was born, then they split and my prospects of growing up bilingual and stylish died along with the family unit. Cut to 22 years later, the part where I make a wrong turn while checking out some pretty girl walking alongside the highway of life, and join the army. I am sent to do my basic training in Saint-Jean-sur-Richlieu, a little bedroom community 30 minutes from Montreal. I visit a few times during basic, but rarely, I'm still trying to get back to Ottawa every chance I can get to wake up next to a girl I can't forget every time I'm there, but forget far too easily whenever I leave. Basic training ends and I prepare to be sent to Gagetown, but a surprise is in store, and I'm posted to the Canadian Forces Language School for 8 months to learn French. At the time, I'm not happy, but I as time goes on and I learn more and more French, it begins to grow on me. The town is pretty, if small, the people interesting. Maybe it's the lifestyle, the stores, the locales, the food, the products, everything is the same but the culture is still foreign. It's like leaving home one day and coming back to find a family of immigrants living in your house, wasting all your croutons in steaming bowls of beef and onion soup. And frankly it's kind of neat.

So this is where things get a little sketchy. While at the French school, I meet a young aspirant officer who is working on the campus of the prep school for young aspiring-aspirant francophone officers. And it starts completely un-innocently, with a lot of flirting in uniform and abuse of rank and continues right along the same path, with fraternisation and violating barracks orders and sneaking out of buildings and running from security guards and completely forgetting condoms. But it only last 3 weeks before she is off back to the military university and I'm stuck there like a sucker. But after she leaves, before she goes back to school, I come to Quebec City to visit her at her parents house. And Quebec City, I don't know what to say, it's fantastic. Meeting parents, after 3 weeks, in a language you barely command is terrifying, but they are warm and put up with me and make me feel at ease, and I pass by on what little French I know at this point, and make them dinner and win them over with Pad Thai and we try to quickly have sex while they walk the dog and it doesn't quite work, though we don't know if they know and pretend not to. And the girl takes me downtown to the old city, and its beautiful and romantic and I'm in love with all of it, and the history and the streets and the culture and her. And we kiss on the back of the Citadel, allowed permission to the military side of the tourist attraction by our status as serving officers, though we are briefly mistaken as errant young tourists. So she tells me she loves me and I know she doesn't because she is young, and I tell her I love her even though I don't, because I'm old enough to know I wish I did.

And this is the lasting memory I will have forever of Quebec City, looking over the high walls of the Citadel, on a beautiful day, across the river, down on the city, at 400 years of history and a fascinating people, and a beautiful girl.

And the next time I'm in Quebec City it's once I've been posted to Gagetown, 3 weeks before Christmas. 3 of us have packed my car literally to its maximum capacity, and we joined the convoy of recently bilingual-fied (to various degrees of success) young officers and stop to party for one night in far too fancy hotels paid for by the government. We eat a delicious meal and wander the old city in the biting cold before finally finding a popular club. We dance a bit, standing out like English army interlopers, with an army base literally 3 blocks away, still starkly in contrast with the local populace. I meet a girl, and I want her to be the last girl I kissed in Quebec City, but she's not, so she doesn't become the 2nd but we talk and exchange information and I make what turn out to be hollow promises to visit her on the way back.

Then again, on the way back. This time, alone. Another trendy hotel, this time paid for by my own credit card, thankful for a generous military discount. And I walk the old city, wrapped up against the January cold, uncharacteristically bearded after a month of leave. I eat dinner alone and playfully catch the eye of the cashier at the pay by weight vegetarian cafe. I head to the Citadel, and walk the same walls, and sit in the same spot, but everything is different now, 4 months later. The memories encompass so many things. Quebec City, Saint-Jean, Kingston, the home of my dear friends where they let me a room so I could come visit the girl on weekends while she was at school, anxiously driving 4 hours through Montreal traffic every Friday to come see her. Passionate sex and waking up wrapped around her tiny frame, and dressing up for my friends wedding, and talking about getting married ourselves one day, and shopping for a ring, and everything turning sour, and sitting on a cold park bench with the waves crashing up on the shore with my arm around her but my heart hardening against what she's just told me, and then the end.

And to this day I love the French, because they remind me of Quebec City. And to this day, I still can't go back to Quebec City. But I want to. I want to blast through Riviere-de-Loup, through the shortcut we learned when the police escorted us through the first time we got lost on the move to Gagetown, then scream 3 hours down the highway, across the bridge, back to the old city, and I want to live weeks there, then head back to Montreal, and eat delicious omelettes in the Jewish quarter with my good friends then head back to another week of learning French, then go back further to the first weekend of leave from basic training, and partying and just trying to be a person again with 40 strangers who were suddenly my entire world, then keep going back, to before it all started, to Ottawa, and taking things for granted, and going home with girls from Thursday night at Barrymore’s, and back to dating dozens of girls in a few months, but never for more than few weeks, then to the big ex, to 2 years of mediocrity I will forever remember as the best years of my life, to her beautiful pale body and her soft pink bra in the bright lights of my bedroom the first time we had sex, the first time I had sex, on top of the sheets, as she smiled at me and looked into my eyes...

And when I open my eyes I'm still there, lying, legs locked in a circle with my 39 fellow soldiers, my machine gun pointed out towards an imaginary enemy, still on patrol.