Groundhog Day

Back in the early ‘90’s a great movie was released – Groundhog Day. Bill Murray portrays a news station weatherman who is tasked to cover the annual ceremony of “Punxsutawney Phil” the groundhog and his winter prediction. But Bill Murray’s character gets caught into a cycle of repeating Groundhog Day continually until he gets it right. In doing so, he finds love and happiness with a few crazy moments along the way. For those of us who’ve deployed, the movie’s reference to Groundhog Day has now become synonymous with the experience of every day seeming exactly the same. In other words, it doesn’t take long into a deployment for every day to be Groundhog Day. I reached that point on this deployment long ago. Every day in Bagram is Groundhog Day. But, unlike Bill Murray’s character in the movie, we don’t all finally get it right and move on to the next day. It’s just doldrums in which every day is a repeat. The routines are the same, the meetings are the same, the people are the same, the scenery never changes, and the clock seems to move in reverse. Since there is little to do during off-duty hours, most of us simply live a pattern of work, eat, sleep, workout, and then work some more. Yes, I do have my cigar night at the old Russian Control Tower. And I do get an extra hour of sleep on Sunday mornings. But those special events only serve as weekly markers for the steady barrage of days in which the day of the week is irrelevant. Sometimes I’m not even sure what day of the week it is unless I refer to the calendar. Have I really been here six months now?

The Winter Olympics in Sochi came and went without little interest around here. I began to suspect I was jinxing the US Hockey Teams. I watched the women’s team lose a heartbreaker in overtime to the Canadians. Then I watched the men also lose to Canada. Thinking they would take the bronze, I tuned into AFN the next night only to see the men get blown out by Finland. That’s when I stopped watching the Olympics altogether. Nobody at work was talking about the games so I assumed everyone here was indifferent. Either that or we are all walking zombies numbed by the continual Bagram Beatdown. In the meantime, the drumbeat continues. Every day seems like the one that preceded it and serves as a harbinger of the day to come. Yes, this is Groundhog Day done Bagram style. In the words of LTC Bob Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, “Someday this war’s gonna end.” That day isn’t today.

In honor of the late, great Mr. Harold Ramis. Thank you for making us laugh for all these years. May you rest in peace.