It’s my turn to wait on the home front
HROUGHOUT MY FOUR DECADES IN THE NAVY, I SAILED ON my fair share of deployments, in both peace and war. Most were at least six months long, and during most of my time at sea, there was no reliable communication from the ship to my home—just scratchy HF transmissions over radio systems using military protocols to conduct the conversation, e.g., “I love you, over.” Some of my deployments were relatively benign “show the flag” cruises with
