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Question: Why did you join the armed forces?
Like many of my peers, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I wanted to do after high school. I hadn’t applied to schools outside of the state and wasn’t very happy about the prospect of living in my parents’ home and going to the University of Iowa. The recruiter called after I was already enrolled at university, and it sounded like such a great opportunity. I could get outta town, earn money for school and get some real world experience and training. I could become a man. I heard exactly what I wanted to and went in head first. I remember feeling guilty about telling my friends and family. I grew up in the military but my father never pushed it on us, just sort of left it out there as an option. He was able to get through college and provide for us because of the military but he didn’t see it necessary that either my brother or I serve. My friends were totally floored. I had long hair and rode skateboards and the last thing they expected was for me to become part of the machine that we were so disillusioned with. So the answer is, its complicated. Part tradition, part uncertainty in my life, part great timing on the recruiters phone calls, and part desperate need to do something that few others ever do, and to be a part of something greater than myself...to serve.
Question: How would you have described yourself the day before you went to war?
I had already distanced myself from what was coming. I had requested that my parents not come to the departure. I watched as my fellow soldiers spent every last second with their loved ones, the single guys like myself drank our last drops and smoked cigarettes. I had begun to put myself into a one day at a time mode. I didn’t think and day dream about our return, the battles that may come, who wouldn’t make it back…I just focused on whatever task there was in front of me and embraced an emotional numbness that I’m still trying to resurrect. I was excited at times as well, all the training would actually be put to the test. What occurred was far different, by the time we arrived they didn’t need our type of artillery and sent us north without the rocket launchers to do missions that we had never been trained for, it was learn as you go, adapt and overcome.
Question: What about you has changed the most since that day?
Some veterans say that they feel so old, and this is a demographic that is generally 18-24. The day I left I felt strong, capable, eager and excited. What I have learned is that humility and patience are critical to survival. I have become reluctant to allow myself to trust in others or to get into situations where I could lose control. I find dissatisfaction in things that I used to enjoy. My old friends don’t understand me and I can’t relate to them in the same way that I once could. I have more internal irritability that I channel in a very quiet and personal way and only feel comfortable exposing those through art. I still feel young, as though my early young life was taken or lost, and in many ways, I am learning to live all over again.
Question: What was the most defining moment of your time at war?
We would travel in convoys moving munitions to a demolition site and I would often stand on the passenger seat of my HEMMT, leaning out the hatch with the upper half of my body exposed and my rifle at the ready. When I first arrived, most of the country had fallen and the initial major battles had quelled. As the summer progressed, the violence began to increase in frequency and accuracy. At first it was random mortar attacks on base or quick cracks of rifle fire as we were driving through towns. Then IED’s started happening more on the roads we were using. The mortars were no longer erratic and other weapons were being employed.
We drove around with this eerie feeling of waiting, it was the eye of the hurricane. There was a sense that the people were waiting to see what our intentions were, and as we stayed on the resistance grew. It was on one of these convoys that I was riding out the hatch through southern Baghdad and the traffic was thick on the interstate. Civilian vehicles often would move much quicker and pass us so I would leer into every vehicle behind the tinted lenses of my sunglasses. Its interesting, I remember the placid expressions much more than I do the smiles and waves.
A white work truck sped up past my right and five young men, not much older than me, were standing in the back. They all stood still, not talking or moving and staring directly at me. My eyes were fixed and my mind was playing out different scenarios that might occur if they reacted aggressively. I felt as though they were judging me, sizing me up, waiting for a nod or a smurk, but I gave them the same blank stare. They were waiting for my response, it was my turn to act, to communicate, and I just stood there. What were they thinking? What things had we done to them? I so much want to go back there, lay my rifle down, reach out my hand to them and offer some gesture of how I now feel, share some empathy for the circumstances that had placed us in that space in those roles that we didn’t want...
Question: Now that you have returned, what does peace mean to you?
Studying ecology I have been awakened to an understanding that stirs in me a perspective that had been hidden through my life. Nothing exists independently and all the communities of the world are connected, however overtly or subtly. There is a cloud of energy of which we are a part and any reverberation affects us all. The most casual action can create a cascading rebound of reactions that we cannot control. Peace is living with the humble recognition of the inter-connectedness of our existence and the consciousness with which we participate within it.
Our country and our way of life are falling apart right beneath our feet. It is a dire realization and one not too hopeful if cynicism gets in the way. But we are awakening. Everyone has a skill, an energy to lend towards the change that they want to see in their community. I feel empowered to act, but only because of the thousands of other peacemakers pushing me on. Hope is beyond politics, it is an internal agitation of the emotional consciousness that grabs self determination and demands it from anyone opposed.
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