Well, after a break of over a month, I finally found the courage to watch the final few episodes of M*A*S*H... My God. I cannot even describe how I feel right now.
So I opened Word and put it in somebody else's words.
There was no place like home after this.
He started realizing it after a few months of Korea. Months that felt like years, with wounded, Koreans, Chinese, army regulations, sad stories, and everything green. He thought that would be the one thing he would never bear to see again: that filthy army green colour.
Even the country took on the colour, he thought as he took in the landscape around him. It was charred by the fire, but he remembered before. It had always been green and grey. Drab. For a few short weeks in spring, flowers would blossom, but the rest of the year, it was a dreary colour.
And yet, he could not bear to leave it.
Nobody was here anymore but he himself and the men who would be going through the country, cleaning up all the camps as they went. Everybody he loved was already on their way.
He'd never been good with goodbyes. When the time had come for departure, he hadn't been able to look at Peg. He'd held her and hugged her, kissed Erin and left without looking back. Instead, he'd poured out all his emotions in letters that he couldn't even always send, simply because he did not want his sweet Peg to know everything about this place. The horror of patching up kids just so they could return to the front to get shot at again. The pain of watching your patients die – it hadn't happened often, but it was one of the worst things.
Everything about this place was terrible. The reason why they were here, the food, the work, the weather, the homesickness – he hated it. He was sure they all hated it. Which is why they were all thrilled to go back home.
But there had been sadness, too, in that thrilling. Sadness to be leaving the place, no matter how terrible, that had been their home – for some longer than for others. He was glad to have come in when the war was already going on. He couldn't imagine having been stuck here since the beginning, and that was why he did not blame Hawkeye in the slightest for going a little crazy for a while. If it was him, he probably would not even have survived.
How could such a terrible place, such terrible circumstances, form such great bonds? They'd lived together, eaten together, shared everything. There had been so many annoyances, so many frustrations. And yet, he couldn't imagine that apart from maybe one or two, he would probably never see these people again. After sharing so many things, how could people just disappear from your life? How could two years of work, pain, comradery, love end in a few short moments?
Goodbyes.
He hated them.
...
Whichever way you look at it, I hope I'll find a place someday filled with some of those things I described here. (Minus the war, they can definitely keep that!)