Once a soldier always a soldier

Last week Israel received the bodies of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Even though it was assumed they were dead, seeing them returned in coffins was a blow to the country. The night of the prisoner swap, one of the computer programmers/technicians where I work was getting ready to leave for the night. He had changed into army fatigues. Seeing him in uniform and with his gun threw me a little. I thought "Oh, he's going to miluim (reserve duty). No one ever really leaves the army here." Suddenly he became more than just the guy we all ran to when we had an issue with our computer. He was a soldier. I asked him where he was going to do his reserve duty. When he said he was in a combat unit in some Arab village somewhere, I thought "Oh boy." He's 25 and has a baby at home. Immediately the dead soldiers ran through my mind, but I quickly chased that thought away. We smiled at each other, I wished him luck and that was that.

On the way home I thought about how tough it must be to have to do reserve duty and make that switch from civilian to soldier. To me it seems very difficult, but for many here, that's just the way life is. Some people doing reserve duty are away from their families for days, weeks or even a month. I'm so happy the army didn't want my husband. I don't think I could handle him going on duty and spending nights away from me and not knowing what was going on with him or his unit. Thankfully, our wonderful computer programmer/technician whom we had trouble doing without came back from miluim just fine=)

The link below is from the funeral of Ehud Goldwasser R.I.P.

http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-25856-israelnews-bidding-farewell-udi-after-two-years-udi-home