I always believed that when I got the deployment call I would welcome the challenge and accept it with no reservations. After ten years in the Army Guard, the last few spent watching my family and friends leave for war, one would think that the call couldn’t have been a surprise. But, it was and it was not welcomed as I thought it would be. I was angry. I was angry to have to leave law school when I finally worked up the courage to start. I was angry to leave the best group of friends and colleagues I have ever encountered in my life.
It was somewhat easy to watch others leave, not easy in a cold sense, but easy is the comfort of it not being me. It was “easy” to live vicariously through family or friends serving over there. Now it’s my turn and it won’t be easy.
I was alerted for mobilization 28 June 2005. I was angry until today.
Someone once asked me to explain how a soldier could possibly be excited to deploy for war. How could a soldier want to fight for a cause that might not be politically correct? How could a soldier want to leave their family and put themselves in danger each and every day? As hard as I tried to find the right words to explain soldiers and this phenomenon, I couldn’t. I couldn’t make him see how soldiers feel or feel what soldiers see. The answer is simply stated, “If you have to ask why, you’ll never understand.”
I’ve been hanging around town with my law school classmates trying to have a good time before deploying. None of them are military and they all were able to return to classes this Fall as 2L’s to continue in their legal education. They will graduate with Juris Doctor degrees in Law only months after I return in 2007 and months before I will be able to begin my 2L education. Today, I am one-third lawyer; one year down, two to go, and now it’s going to take me four years to get it done.
Being here with my friends has actually become much harder than I expected it to be. I was looking for fun and parties, like last year, and good times together like we have had so many times before. What I found was awkwardness. I feel out of place. I feel out of place with my friends and it is not easy. As much as I belong to them, I am not one of them anymore. I won’t experience what they will this year, nor will they experience what I will. We will not share mutual stories or laugh about what happened during the day. It’s not easy and I was beginning to feel that I would be lost without them. That is until tonight.
I met a soldier today that will deploy with me on our upcoming mission to Afghanistan. He’s a young soldier, maybe 22 or 23. Today he found out that he will be deploying with our mission which means he will leave two months earlier than he previously was told.
Tonight I joined my law school friends at a local bar to socialize as we often do. I watched them drink beer and play games and listen to music just as we have always done. The difference is that I don’t talk much with them. I feel out of place and it is hard. I suppose we had been at the bar for a couple hours or so when I saw the young soldier I met today walk by. Jokingly, I tapped him and asked him what he was doing out so late when he had to be up so early. We began to talk about the day, the long Guard Drill day, the monotonous paperwork of the Army and we kept talking. He told me about calling his mother and telling her he will have to leave two months earlier than expected. He told me about how nervous he is to leave his family, about how he wishes he could just go now. He told me about how his family is crushed and he spends his energy comforting them when he really needs them to comfort him right now.
We talked about how we both love music and that we will find a way to get some guitars in country so we can make a band. We have already recruited another guitar player and a singer who are also deploying with us. We talked about dune buggies and 50-Cal machine guns and Blackhawk helicopter insertions to our radar tower sites. We talked about what our lives will be for at the least the next year and some odd months.
We talked for nearly thirty minutes.
I went back to my friends and we talked more about nothing with occasional boring law talk. I watched them drink beer while I made small talk with them. My best friend reminisced about once comparing me to his mother and predicted that many soldiers might look at me as their mother when I am over there. I laughed because it was funny when he first told me I was too much like his mother and it was still funny tonight.
A couple hours passed and that same young soldier passed me again, stopping to put his arm around me and talk again about the band. We laughed and joked about how hungover he will be at formation tomorrow morning, but it will have been well worth it for the fun he had tonight. And then he looked at me as serious as can be and said, “You know, you are going to take care of me like a mom over there.” I smiled, turned and asked my friend to come over from the group of law students. I asked the soldier to tell him what he just told me. He said, “You know, she and I are going to go over there together. She is going to be like my mom when I am there.” To which my friend gave him a high-five and replied that it was true, and I would be a good mom.
I was angry until tonight.
And if someone has to ask why soldiers do what they do, they will never understand. It’s not about the big mission, it’s not about the politics, it’s not even about the war. It’s about the soldiers you go with and the mission you have to complete so you and those soldiers can do their job and come home to their families. It’s about the guy next to you, nothing more and nothing less. And if you can’t understand that from this story, then you won’t ever understand it.
Hell, you might have to be a soldier to understand a soldier. I am a soldier and I truly understand it now. I am not angry anymore. I am sure I will be frustrated at times and unhappy because it will not always go well and it will be hard at times. I am scared of the unknown and afraid of what might happen, but I am ready and I am excited.
I met thirty-eight wonderful soldiers today that I will deploy with. They will be my co-workers and colleagues, my family and my life for the next eighteen months. I am honored to serve with them and to serve our country. I am looking forward to doing what so many will never understand.
