Editor’s note: Army Lt. Matt Spartz, a lifelong Lombard resident, served a one-year tour that ended in May with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan. From there, he provided reports for the Daily Herald on topics ranging from his own wounding to our troops’ reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. His final day on active duty is Saturday. Spartz is a 2008 journalism graduate of the University of Illinois.

Last Veterans Day my hands were shaky. I sat in the concrete cubicle that was my room, my oasis, under the sky-scraping Afghan mountains that our company was going to air-assault into during the coming pitch-black hours. I prayed this largest mission of our deployment would be uneventful.

My hands were shaky. I obsessively cleaned and loaded my M4 carbine ammunition, studied my maps and checked the batteries on my radios.

By the end of this mission, called Bulldog Bite, six of our brothers were killed and nearly 20 wounded, including myself.

Today, also Veterans Day, marks my final day on active duty, though it’s technically an Army holiday. My final leave begins Saturday, and I will be separated from the Army on Dec. 1.

The dichotomy of these two days astounds me. A year ago my greatest concern was quite literally staying alive. A five-day air assault mission that involved resources from around the entire country, and a targeted bomb drop that I organized — one that had to be signed off on by former Gen. David Petraeus himself — may as well have been a Bruce Willis movie I fell asleep to on Netflix.

At home these past few months has been back to business-as-usual, and sometimes I forget I was ever even in the war.

A few nights ago I was driving down a narrow street, squinting through a dirty windshield to see the road. My eyes nervously scanned the cliffs buttressing our path. Suddenly there was a white trail of smoke darting from a house. It was too late. It sliced through my windshield and exploded in my face with a concussive BANG! That startled me awake at 2 a.m.

These dreams are now rare but sometimes seem to be the only thing that make my yearlong deployment seem real. Only intense experience could cause such a visceral reaction, I tell myself. Looking back at pictures and reading journal entries from last year may as well be the adventures of Huck Finn — fiction, but familiar.

And if you can believe it, life has gotten much more complicated. Some returning veterans have trouble coping with the mundane mediocrity of finding parking spaces in crowded malls, keeping up with grocery lists and abstract political debates. My girlfriend, Brittany, has effectively become my post-traumatic stress-o-meter, venting my anger at simple problems upward and not outward.

My current stress is now job interviews, relearning business professional matters and wondering what people do on dark fall mornings when you aren’t expected to run until your eyes water, lungs burn and fingers freeze.

War is easy. Wake up, eat, walk, shoot, sleep. Repeat.

After our deployment, and during the readjustment period of last summer, it seemed like I had to run away from the noncombat garrison Army and away from the newly complicated civilian world. I wanted to finally live close to Brittany and find meaning in a nonviolent world. I’d given the Army everything I had on as many days as I could; I ran through a piece of broken bone in my foot, narrowly escaped the shrapnel that ripped a speck of flesh from my arm, the memories of brotherhood lost now a sullen hole in my heart.

Every vet has a life after the Army, and so begins mine. I leave the Army with a smile on my face, knowing it was and will be something I wanted to do in my life, but not for my entire life. The important thing for every separating veteran should be how to revive and appreciate the memories of our service, recognize those who are currently forging their paths, and to serve and strengthen our civilian communities.

But most of all, we honor our fallen brothers. To those I’ve served with: It has been an honor and my greatest pleasure. To those we’ve lost: You’ll never be forgotten.

Copyright © 2011 Paddock Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

The epic ABU VIDEO!

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Editor’s note: Army Lt. Matt Spartz, a lifelong Lombard resident, was deployed to Afghanistan a year ago with the 101st Airborne Division. A 2008 journalism graduate of University of Illinois, he is submitting occasional reports for the Daily Herald.

Last week, six more soldiers were killed in one of our deployment’s hardest battles.

This week, the government looks set on losing a battle with compromise, probably resulting in a freeze of government — and in turn, military — paychecks.

Imagine telling our boys before last week that in return for one last mission — in the month you expect to go home — that they will probably not get paid this month. What would the Wisconsin teachers union do if they were told that they probably wouldn’t get paid next month? You might be hard-pressed to find them at their desks.

We already know how Midwest senators would handle the news.

In protest of making hard decisions on the battlefield, we could have fled ourselves across the borders to Pakistan, China, or Tajikistan.

But would any of us really not show up for work? Of course not.

There are some general grumblings in the ranks about the precarious state of our paychecks, just as my company first sergeant said there was in 1995 when the government shut down for 27 days at a cost of $1.4 billion.

But now the American Federation of Government Employees is threatening to sue the government if essential employees are mandated to work through the shutdown.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates discussed last fall the growing divide between members of the military and the civilians we protect. This truly is an embodiment of the burgeoning warrior class developing with a deep chasm in our society. Many have commented on this gap as deeply troubling.

What is more troubling? Public worker unions threatening to strike because they are being required to contribute more to their retirement benefits and subject to merit-based pay increases? Or a sect of citizens who in the absence of basic pay are willing to march and air assault to their deaths for the enforcement of the national security blanket?

It’s worthy to note that despite some of the hardest fighting here in years, with 117 soldiers killed in our division this deployment, with the lowest military pay increase since 1962 (when we didn’t get one), our brigade has a 100 percent re-enlistment rate.

The government is in dire need of belt tightening. The military, in the midst of a 10-year war, has made giant budget cuts led by Secretary Gates, and taken the minuscule 1.4 percent pay increase. And this year we have fought harder than ever. Other public employees may get paid late, or be forced to take unpaid leave, and they threaten to sue the government that employs them.

Maybe it takes the raw experience of actual life and death actions to distill the pettiness from logical policy decisions. Maybe it’s because in the absence of a C17 flown by the Air Force, soldiers fighting on the Afghanistan border have no choice but to show up for work.

If public employees are dissatisfied with the way their employer does business, then quit. You have that choice, because we live in a comparatively free-market democracy.

Being in Afghanistan you learn a thing or two about making hard decisions. Opting to not fund the government as a political tactic doesn’t seem like one of them. I mentioned in an earlier column that this war can be “won,” however we decide to define it, if we are willing to do whatever it takes.

Perhaps we just aren’t there yet.

Here my CO gets a COIN from the bosses bosses bosses boss…I think… He gave out coins to guys for various things, including having three years or more deployed. One of our guys was even in the 101st during Petraeus’ command in Iraq.

He also presented our Battalion Commander with an Army Commendation with Valor award.

For some time I have thought if I were writing something, it should be worth reading. During the past few months I hadn’t written much, and in fleeting moments I simply figured I didn’t have anything left worth reading. I also had a shadowy fear that I couldn’t write anything worth reading after the fall campaign that claimed six of our soldiers, and the winter passing of my grandpa.

But after nine straight months in combat, I finally had my two weeks “R&R” vacation. I was concerned that being reunited with my family and friends would be a barrage of questions and heart-to-hearts. They were all very understanding, and never pushed an issue farther than I wanted to talk about it.

And that’s when I realized that I could have had plenty to say over the last few months. Sometimes it’s just easier to shut off our brains.

It took actually coming home to realize that I was at a point at which I didn’t even want to come home. I was more than caught in the daily grind. At one point in January, I was filling in for two other officers on their vacations and working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. I could have cared less if I came home or stayed in Afghanistan another year.

My brain was shut off, the cruise control was on.

Coming home did more than hit the dusty reset switch in my brain, and my soul. It gave me a chance to again be on the reader’s end of the war. For example, one tragic incident in my Pech Valley reportedly claimed the lives of nine Afghan children.

One of the few times I spewed some noxious commentary on the issue to my dad and girlfriend, they stared at me in deep thought. They had never considered, for example, that it was a little more than an odd coincidence that a herd of boys were collecting firewood in the mountains during a rocket attack on one of our bases, and that they stayed long enough for helicopters to respond to the situation. They had never heard of boys being used to aid insurgent attacks on coalition forces.

Now, I am in no way saying that is what happened in this incident. This time, I was not there. However, these relative details of Pech Valley fighting are usually glossed over in standard coverage. A U.S. military mistake usually makes a better story than the recent report that civilians killed by the Taliban (75 percent) have risen sharply this year while the numbers accidentally killed by coalition forces have decreased by more than 20 percent.

During my brief home stint many people graciously complimented this column. Here I’d like to apologize for taking the easy road these last few months and turning off my brain. I would like to continue advancing my readers’ depth of understanding of this complex war.

Heck, if I told you I completely understood it I’d be lying.

But now I’ve entered the fourth quarter. One thing Glenbard East football instilled in me was to “play to the whistle.” Let’s just consider the last few months my half time water break. Of course it was my family and friends who reminded me the importance of finishing what you started, even when it’s the hardest thing to do.

So, my brain is back on, and I plan on taking you all with me these last two months to the final end zone.

A C-17 holds 158 passengers. There are over 500 people waiting for flights to Bagram. This place averages two flights a day. One flight from last night was canceled.

I believe this is an ACT question in which the answer is: Not getting out of Kuwait anytime soon.

Getting here was relatively straight forward but anything but painless. The jumbo jet the government commandeers for cost-effective military transport is probably the oldest, most cramped in any modern fleet. It’s like flying in that old, broken down jet from Transformers 2. You know, the one that was a transformer from before the time of the Mayans, and awakens as a falling apart rust bucket.

The plane gives you a comfortable seat 12 inches wide, three to a row on the edges and a claustrophobic four wide in the middle. This allows about negative three inches of shoulder/elbow wiggle room and barely that in leg realestate.

Part of me doesn’t mind a pause in the squirming air travel. If there’s one place to get stuck, this is it. Like I said, good food and actual (albeit, slow) internet. But with the downhill ride to the deployment finish line less than 60 days away, I’d take a time portal to Honaker in a heart beat.

So here I sit in the USO bidding my time. It’s really not all that bad; I had a wonderful breakfast (why is he food so much better in Kuwait?!), read Stars and Stripes, and owned their Sudoku while sitting outside in the thick spring air.

Last night I thought I dreampt of being lost in a giant storm, a concoction of stumbling on a rainy tugboat deck and wandering through some Afghan brush. When I emerged from the tent this morning I realized the air was still pregnant with last night’s very real storm, and sporadic rain continues to pelt a feedback-static on our tent.

But my outlook is fairly bright. Fourth quarter, ladies and gents. Time to pick up the pace, dig deep and grind it out (insert which ever army cliché de jour).

I had an interesting conversation with my besty, Tom, regarding the end of tour slide. It was an odd thing taking leave after nine-plus months. I was definitely in a rut of unforeseeable end. You work so much and are in a place so long, you become so disconnected you don’t really miss “the real world.” Before I left, I could have stayed another year and it may not have phased me. Like hitting the wall on a run, my legs and brain and heart were chugging along without regard to whether it was killing me or not.

Coming home, for better or for worse, reminded me that life exists beyond Afghanistan. I remembered what it was like to have a real day off, to drink coffee on the couch and watch “Meet the Press,” to call and text Britt more than a few times a week, and have it be the same time where she is receiving it. I remembered what it was like to be able to get in my truck and drive anywhere.

Cancun was a different story all together. Besides being the greatest vacation I ever had, I went from one extreme (Afghanistan), to normal (home), to the antithesis of war. This all-inclusive gluttony of relaxation felt like waking up from a bad dream by being thrown into a cold ice bath – eye-opening shock and numbing.

My hair was a little long, I ate way too much, and partied a few times until sun rise. Had anything of the last year actually happened? It didn’t seem so. When my family came to the house for a small get together, it seemed like literally yesterday when they were sending me off on my last birthday. Time in retrospect always fades quickly. The days are long only when you are dragging through them, not in remembering them. But this honestly felt like I had walked out of the longest movie ever, in which I was playing a part, and now the curtains opened, the lights came back on, file to the exists everyone and we hope you come back real soon.

I guess things will get real enough soon enough, so we’ll see how that changes things.

Well this is probably the longest post of the last year; we’ll see if anyone gets this far…

Next stop, Afghanistan – The Ending.

We have been hearing for months that the “fighting season” leaves as soon as the snow arrives. Until the last few weeks, this was not the case. But as the temperature drops and clouds fade to snow fall, these shoeless, roofless mountain warriors have all but clocked out. Not that I’m complaining, but it has been a seismic shift in the order of business.

At times I’ll sit in my room watching a movie on my laptop and completely forget that I’m in Afghanistan, or a “war zone” for that matter. Even when I briefly walk from my room to the latrine through soupy mud puddles, with the mountains ripping rain out of the sky, I might as well be on a camping trip.

The only thing this really does is make my wait for leave arduous. Things aren’t so bad when you’re busy, as the hours scream by like wailing RPGs through the trees. But when you are less than a week from a promised flight to civilization, rainy days can drive one crazy.

I have been less than motivated to write lately. I’m sure my adoring fans have been remiss without my bi/monthly columns (ha!). I’m trying to do what I can to break out of this funk and writer’s block. When that happens, I usually turn to my camera.

We had a visit from the commanding general, ironically named GEN Campbell. He presented one of my soldiers with his valorous award for kicking ass and taking names on New Years Day.

As some know I used to have quite the hand for drawing. Over the years that talent has transfigured to photography and now even some graphic design. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is put my thoughts into words on a page; sometimes it is much easier to write a thousand words in the snap of a shutter. And soon, I’ll be playing with my new 24mm lens! Another reason the wait to go home is so painful…

We had a few (possibly too many) guys on R&R the last month, so I’ve been filling in for nearly five different jobs. It wasn’t terrible, just that taking the ball while running was a lot like drinking from the fire hose.

The only real update in the past few weeks, however, is that it has finally gotten cold enough to show some snow. I realized I hadn’t really updated any photos since, like, October. I’ve gotten pretty sick of taking the same pictures for six months, so I took a break.

But now, new scenery! My CO says he feels like we’re in a Coors Light commercial and I’ll agree to that. Ironically enough it still doesn’t get too cold during the day (for us Chicago descendents) but the nights are nearly freezing.

Other than that, we haven’t let up on taking the fight to the enemy. Yesterday we tested our TOW missle system that was back from maintenance, and I got one of the best shots of the deployment!

Now, R&R is right around the corner. At the end of February I’ll be taking my “mid tour leave” – at month 10 of 12. Oh well. When I get back, there will be less than two months left!

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By 1st Lt. Matt Spartz

Editor’s note: Army Lt. Matt Spartz, a lifelong Lombard resident, was deployed to Afghanistan in May with the 101st Airborne Division. A 2008 journalism graduate of University of Illinois, he is submitting occasional reports for the Daily Herald.

When I was a boy, I loved watching my grandpa, John Spartz, lead his VFW post during the Memorial Day parade in near-West suburban Berkeley.

World War II was more than half a century over, yet his Navy uniform was as crisp as it was in the faded sepia photo of his graduation from explosive ordnance disposal training.

I remember how proud he was a few years before his stroke when my dad’s boyhood friend, the mayor of Berkeley, presented him with the war medals he never received due to lost paperwork.

Grandpa Spartz led his final service parade on Tuesday. He passed away at the age of 91. And more than 60 years since his service, he was still given military burial honors.

It is a cold, necessary reality that the Army can grant leaves of absence for soldiers only when immediate family members, or their childhood primary care givers, pass away. Missing the last moments and burials of beloved family is yet another sacrifice thousands of service members choose to endure while serving away from home.

I’ve experienced the memorial services in Afghanistan of my fellow brothers-in-arms. Through the grace of modern technology I was able to experience the final prayers for the most influential service member of my life.

I called my mom, Nancy, on her cell phone just before my grandpa’s funeral. She clandestinely slid the phone into my brother Eric’s coat pocket as he helped carry grandpa’s flag-draped casket to St. Domitilla Church and then to his burial plot. Mom said I was a pallbearer in spirit.

Then at grandpa’s final resting place, the phone was next to my grandmother, Rosemary, as the Navy honor guard played taps and presented her with grandpa’s flag.

That was too much. I could see in my mind the fresh inches of snow that had blanketed Chicago the night before, and the red, white and blue flower arrangement my family put on display for me. The trumpet sliced through the cold air, over thousands of digital miles, and to my ear while I sat on a hard folding chair in an unusually quiet command center.

I could hear grandma’s voice as she accepted the flag, and tears welled in my eyes.

Their story bleeds true Americana. Grandpa was the son of Luxembourg immigrants. Grandma was raised in an orphanage. They eventually adopted two of their own, raising a total of five Baby Boomers.

Grandpa toiled for 40 years at tool and die manufacturing. Grandma started Berkeley’s first girls softball league. Grandpa was always the stoical family patriarch who knew the American dream was working hard every day to provide a better life for his family.

He had said a few years ago that no one should cry at his funeral because he had led such a good life. But I know we don’t cry solely for sorrow; it will be hard coming home and simply not seeing him anymore.

I had hoped he would make one more year, enough time for me to come home and see him one last time. But in a sense it’s fitting. Grandpa made sure he saw me off to serve our nation in another time of need.

He led that parade for so long. Next year, it’s my turn.