What to pack?

The mother of a 19-year-old soldier (actually he’s indirectly referred to as both a Marine and a soldier, which are two different things) bound for Iraq writes about what he’ll be taking with him:

Each soldier is limited to a knapsack and two sea bags — what civilians would call duffels. Space is tight. Once Greg packed his firearms, there was hardly room for any of the other paraphernalia that might make seven months in Iraq bearable, assuming that such a thing is possible.

I am not there for the send-off, but confident that he made room for his iPod. “I would lose my mind without it,” he told me during his last visit home. “What makes you think you won’t lose your mind anyway?” I wanted to ask. But that is exactly the kind of thing I can never say.

My husband reports that Greg took a stack of DVDs to play on his laptop, another piece of electronic equipment that he presumably managed to cram into his bags. But I have few details. I do not know, for example, whether he chose comedies or combat films to while away the downtime, if such a thing exists.

Here’s the whole essay.