One Seabee Safe (One Seabee Down)

Our young friend comes regularly to Sabbath eve dinner. She is a delight, full of high spirits, lively conversation, and stories about her adventures of being an eighteen-year old woman. Her twenty-year-old boy friend--her first, serious, committed relationship--is a Navy Seabee. He left for Afghanistan last month. He's stationed at a forward base in Taliban territory, where he and his fellow Seabees are building the camp for the Marines, who are due shortly. In the dark of night, the Taliban come close enough to the base to lob mortar fire at it. It's a regular occurance. Our friend has regaled us, with an ambivalent mixture of pride and fearful concern, with the ongoing account her boy friend's acclimation to the incoming fire. He told her two weeks ago, he was used to it and sleeps through the explosions. Sleep deeply, he might, since he works from six AM to 11 PM on construction. This week, she told us that he told her, a morter hit a sleeping tent. A Seabee was killed. He doesn't sleep through the mortar fire any longer. And he feels his tiredness more. Shortly, the Seabees' construction assignment at the camp will be completed, the Marine detachment will arrive, and he will be shipped to another new, nameless, forward, operating base at an undisclosed location in hostile territory somewhere in Afghanistan. And we will wait for news of him. Here at our Friday evening home front.