The Last Deployment
The Last Deployment
by Jack Fernandez | New Orleans, LA
In 1983, Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen among others. I was a brand new F-14 pilot flying missions off the USS Independence in support of the survivors. I prayed for courage, promising I would walk the Camino when this deployment ended. This promise haunted me for decades.
Forty years later, my Camino began with a bitterly cold and cloudy uphill trek out of St. Jean Pied de Port. The next day presented a leg-breaking three-mile downhill into Zubiri featuring row after row of jagged rocks sticking out of grooves cut into the rocks. These three miles alone on Day 2 took several hours.
But over time, my Camino ritual became simple. Out the door around sunrise, 10 a.m. morning coffee and a pastry, rest stops at some village church for prayer in a semi-dark pew, light a candle (I really don’t like the new electronic ones), and stamp my pilgrim passport with the church’s unique stamp. At the end of the day, check into my lodging, wash my clothes, then to the local church for pilgrim Mass, sometimes celebrated by one of our fellow pilgrims assisting the village priest, then communal dinner.
About three-fourths of the way to Santiago, I took a detour along the longest remaining section of Roman road into Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. To the north lay an unbroken expanse of red, yellow, and purple wildflowers extending to the snow-capped Picos de Europa 50 kilometers away. Cuckoos sang their haunting two-note melody, but there was no sign of other humans other than this Roman road built 2,000 years before. Why had I been allowed to raise a family and have a life, while my 241 dead Marine brothers could not?
A week later, my Camino friend José Mir from València and I entered the Praza do Obradoiro in front of the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela to the sound of bagpipes—the latest pilgrims to hold their walking poles in a triumphant V-shape toward the sky. By and by, though, I began to see something different—pilgrims, backpacks beside them, sitting against arches looking dazed. What had this all meant? Is it possible my 241 brothers knew we were done? It dawned on me then. They had been with me those past 500 miles, reflected in the faces of every pilgrim I saw along the Way. Our 40-year deployment was over.
