Lehi Veterans Voice: What the holidays feel like for soldiers: a note on duty, distance, and little rituals

Lehi Veterans Voice: What the holidays feel like for soldiers: a note on duty, distance, and little rituals

Matthew M. Milicich, U.S. Army (Ret.) | Guest Writer Most holiday movies promise a warm kitchen, a crowded table, and a last-minute dash to make it home. In a military deployment, the dash points in the opposite direction. The calendar says December, but the rhythm is mission, shift change, comms window, sleep. If you’re lucky, there’s a plywood Christmas tree someone cut with a jigsaw, a strand of lights that only blinks when the generator coop…