"Specialist Jason Disney."

"Sergeant Stephen Lewis", I said.

Disney straightened up a little. "Nice to meet you, sarge. Wonder why they have us sharing a room."

"Search me. Must be low", I replied. "And by the way: we're on leave, so just call me Steve."

"Okay, sergeant. I mean, Steve. I'm Jason."

I dropped my duffel on the other bed in the room and looked around. I had just gotten my first pass after six months of active duty in Afghanistan and decided that a few days on an Air Force base in Turkey would do me well. Besides craving a beer for the past half a year, I was looking forward to several other creature comforts that most war zones don't allow themselves, one of them being a flushable toilet.

After a particularly wonderful hot shower and a run to the shopette, Jason and I sat down with a six pack of Bud and started chatting. We were both stationed in Bagram, but had surprisingly never run into eachother, there being only several hundred people there at the time. After further discussion, this wasn't that strange as our jobs were distinctly different: he was a welder, and I couldn't talk about what I did. Made for excellent conversations. So we moved our talk to things stateside.

Jason had a sweetheart back home in Pennsylvania and was looking forward to coming back to the States, getting discharged, and starting up a metal shop. He was a pretty good welder by his own admission ("I can weld anything you want") and was obviously proud of his work. I asked him what he had worked on at the base.

"You know the front gate?", he asked.

"You mean that big ten-foot high, iron thing?", I asked.

"That was me."

"You made that whole gate? That thing is huge. Who helped you?", I queried.

"Just me. I was just one of two welders at the time, and the other guy was busy doing something else. We were in high demand. So I rigged that up myself."

We spent the next couple of hours talking about the hot topics: the Taliban, UBL, 9/11. He was heading to K2 the next day, and I had three more before I returned to Bagram.

I took some time to see the sights in the Adana area, which Jason wasn't particularly interested in doing. "After being in a foreign country for so long," he waxed, "I really just want to be around Americans for a little while." The city itself was very busy. I strolled through some of the marketplaces, looking at the relative junk that the peddlers were displaying. At one point I found myself walking behind a girl wearing jeans, a sight that I hadn't seen in a long time.

I took a turn on the base's golf course. In the rain. It was still good, even though by some miracle my golf game hadn't gotten any better after not playing for so long. At night, I would walk down to the base's obligatory Burger King and order myself a Whopper meal. They even had a small, outdoor cafe area for eating. I was in heaven.

I left on a Tuesday night to take a C-17 back to Bagram. After reporting to my commanding officer, I asked how things got along while I was away.

"Not too well," he informed me. "We lost a soldier."

"Was there an attack?" Up until that point, we hadn't had any encounters, and I was sure I would have heard something on the news.

"No, it was an accident," Major Weingast relayed. "Welder. He was cutting some big piece of equipment from the wall of one of those shitty Russian machine shops, and it fell on him. He died not too long afterwards. There was nothing anyone could do."

"Jesus. That sucks." I stared out the open end of the tent. "When's the memorial service?"

The major replied, "Tomorrow. I'd like both of us to attend."

"Roger, sir." I thought some more. "You know: it's really weird. I just shared a room at Incirlik with a specialist who was a welder here. He's heading to Karshi-Khanabad for a few weeks before returning. I assume they knew each other, since he said there were very few of them here."

"Most likely. He'll probably find out when he gets there."

"Hmm" was all I could reply with.

About to check on some other matters, I stopped before leaving.

"By the way, sir. What was his name? The soldier who died?"

"Specialist Jason Disney", came the response. "He died on the same day that you left."

Afterword:

This story is not entirely true, but some aspects are. I did room with a welder on my four day pass, and we did lose a welder at Bagram in the early days, but they were not the same person.

My purpose for framing the story as I did was to show something that I have felt very strongly about since I joined the military. Whenever a servicemember dies and it makes the news, I sometimes have non-military people ask me if I knew them. Not going for melodramatics, I usually reply "No. And yes". I feel very strongly about the fraternity that exists between members of all of the services. We all make sacrifices (some much more than others), and we all have common experiences. I call every one of them my brother or sister.

So was it the same welder that I bunked with? No.

And yes.

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