Meet in the Middle

Me, not a Major, in Germany. Unsure whose cap I’m wearing.

You spend a lot of time in the Army hiding. No not from the enemy....while kind of, I guess..lol. Let me explain. I'm talking everyday Army, not wartime Army. When you think about what the military does on a day to day basis, what do you think of? Running around in the field, practicing what you would do in wartime situations? Digging foxholes, shooting weapons, standing guard in the rain for no reason? Performing maintenance on your equipment, vehicles, weapons so that they are always ready to go when needed? Practicing war time scenarios and what your specified role would entail at that time? All of those things happen, for sure, but there is a lot of down time. Or at least there was for us. We were a combat engineer battalion so we spent weeks at a time in the field so that we could practice with our equipment, stay vigilant and ready on guard duty, eating crappy MREs or hot chow every once in while, usually breakfast. I'm telling you that when I smell bacon being cooked for hundreds (yes there is a different smell when its being cooked for that many) I am instantly transported to my days in the field. Recently when I was on a morning walk past Delmar Gardens Retirement home I smelled that smell and holy wow, I was taken back.

And THEN you get inspected to make your personal equipment is clean and all good to go as well. Days, I'm telling you, it takes to do this. But I digress.

After all of that, there is down time. Sure, you still have daily work to do, but one you done that, sometimes it’s time to hide from leadership. This is where some of my favorite memories are from.

My squad consisted of a squad leader, Sgt Crosson, and about 6 of us E-4 and below, me being at the bottom of the totem pole (or the top of you truly understand totem poles). There was shit bag in our squad as there always is, but we all got a long pretty well. And we loved music. One guy, Harbison had an amazing voice, Sgt. Crosson was a drummer, played keyboard and sang and I was too shy to do anything but listen and play a little keyboard every once in awhile. Harb was a good ole boy from Missouri, he could sing anything it seemed, but country was his specialty. He used to tell us how musical his whole family was, how they would all gather around with their guitars and spend hours jamming/singing. I could picture it, as I knew he was a country boy, all decked out in camo (hunting camo not Army camo) orange hat, shotgun by his side, strumming and humming with his cousins, dad, grandpa. The perfect family, in my mind. A musical one. We, as a squad, spent many afternoons hiding in a barracks room singing/making music. Diamond Rio was IT back then and Meet in the Middle was the song de jour. Harb could sing it perfectly, Sgt Crosson perfectly harmonizing! I don’t know why this song brings me so much peace when I think about it. It’s definitely not the lyrics…I think more than anything it’s the bonding from music that happened in that room. This was my first duty station, halfway around the world in Germany. I was the newbie and lowest ranked who knew nothing about nothing. But music evened the ground. I know music, I love music and rank doesn't matter in music.

But let’s look at the lyrics after all these years. Obviously it’s a song about making a relationship work. Listen to it here: https://youtu.be/U3BTx5mwk-Y?si=1OLvF0sFF_ysg0sy

I'd start walkin' your way, you'd start walkin' mine

We'd meet in the middle, 'neath that old Georgia pine

We'd gain a lot of ground, 'cause we'd both give a little

There ain't no road too long when we meet in the middle

If that ain’t the crux of a successful marriage, friendship, parenting dynamic…I don’t know what it.

I haven’t kept in touch with anyone I was in the Army with, but I did become Facebook friends with Harb, who still lives in Missouri. I’m sure he doesn’t know the huge role he played in my early Army days. But funnily, through Facebook I saw that his daughter completed Navy Bootcamp about 3 months prior to Alan going into bootcamp. I reached out to him and we actually spoke after 20 years about the do’s and dont’s of Navy bootcamp graduation. It was a wonderful moment for me.