“Ma, I have good news and bad news, which do you want first?
“Bad news, let’s get it over with.”
“I’m failing all of my classes.”
“So what’s the good news?”
“I joined the Army.”
“You mean you want to join the Army. No, you may not.”
“No, I mean I joined the Army and my MOS is Infantry.”
“Please tell me MOS means you’ll be doing anything but Infantry.”
But I knew full well what MOS meant. Military Occupational Specialty. My son was going to be trained to fight in war. I would be sending my only child, my baby, off to fight, to kill, and to possibly be killed. I had no idea how to process this. After all at the time he was twenty-years old, not even old enough to legally drink alcohol but old enough to make the decision to fight for his country.
My son did not go into the Army for political or patriotic reasons; he just figured he had nowhere else to go. He had been accepted into a great college but majored in partying for the first year. His father and I decided we could pay for that major at a much cheaper premium at Community College. After flunking out of Community College, he was on his own. In my wildest dreams I never thought he would enlist in the Army.
The day I put him on the bus to go to Fort Benning, GA, was one of the most difficult days of my life. I had never been away from my child for this long period of time and besides, what if they were mean to him? I hated the idea of him suffering, in pain or humiliated. I cried when he was sworn in. He was so young and had a pretty sheltered life, how would he stay safe. And everyone there looked like a kid, even the higher ranking officers. How could they protect him? My husband was excited for him, calling it the “coolest club in the world.” Yeah, I wasn’t quite that enthusiastic.
“Dear Ma,
I am the sorriest I have ever been. I should have listened to you and Dad and tried harder in school. But I’ll get through this. Don’t kiss the envelope anymore, I get smoked for it. Also, just send like two letters a week. Every time I get a letter I have to do ten push-ups.”
I missed him and looked forward to his letters. I admit, I did go overboard with the letters, but I was afraid that he wouldn’t get any from anyone except me and I didn’t want him to be bored. Turns out he wasn’t so bored. I joined the Fort Benning FaceBook page and tracked anything and everything about his training class and the recruits were certainly kept busy from 5 am until 8 pm.
One of his Drill Sergeants was on the FB page often. In one of his posts he raised a point that resonated within me. Not only were the recruits learning how to be soldiers, but we as loved ones were in Basic Training to learn how to be the parents, spouses and significant others to a soldier. Which isn’t easy. There are a lot on unknowns in military life and we as a family were at the mercy of the Army. The Army was now the parental unit to my kid, it is the Army who is telling my son what he could and couldn’t do. There were going to be times when I wouldn’t know where he was or what he was doing. There were going to be long periods of not speaking and he wouldn’t be home for holidays or his birthday.
Graduation came and he was fit as ever. He always had been a spindly kid, but now he had muscles in places I didn’t think there were muscles. I have to admit he looked spiffy in his uniform and I was quite proud of him for seeing this through. I actually had chills during the ceremony when he and his unit were all standing in formation for inspection by the commanding officer, following through with the Drill Sergeant’s commands in sync.
While he was home before he shipped out to his permanent base for the next few years, he confided that he missed his Drill Sergeants. Stockholm Syndrome I figured. Yet they did accomplish what they set out to do. They tore him down so they could build him to be what the Army wanted. I do admit when he came home he did seem calmer and more focused. He woke up early and actually kept his room neat. He still waited until the last minute to pack to go to his base.
His home base is Schoefield Barracks, home of the 25th Infantry Division, otherwise known as Tropic Lightening, in Hawaii. Yeah, that Hawaii. My son’s unit would be the 27th Infantry Regiment or the Wolfhounds. Needless to say, my son was definitely excited to go to Hawaii.
“Good news and bad news Ma.”
“Bad news please.”
“I’m going to be training in the Mojave desert on my twenty-first birthday.”
“Aww, that sucks. Oh well you can celebrate when you get back. Okay good news.”
“We got our deployment date. It’s in February. I’m going to Afghanistan. Kunar Provence. I’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t so sure I would be however.
His company would be stationed on a COP, or Command Observation Post. Only he wasn’t there to observe, or translate or even launch rockets. He was there to fight and protect his brothers in arms. Yeah, yeah, the Army will tell you they are there to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, shooting at each other is just an inconvenient side effect of their mission.
I began to watch Restrepo over and over, wanting to capture every nuance of what my son would be experiencing in Afghanistan. I also read Sebastian Junger’s, War. War delves into the psychology of combat soldiers and explores what gives them the bravery or gumption to enter a battle field. Junger determined that it came from a need to protect the men in their unit. In this type of extreme environment, the bond the men share is like no other.
My son’s team leader happened to have been featured in Restrepo. Because this was his second tour, the men on his team looked up to him like a father figure. They even called him “Dad”, even though he was just a few years older than most of his men. These soldiers are driven by the need to not let their brothers down. They would sooner be injured or killed themselves then let anything happen to their fellow soldiers. This bond and attitude is what keeps them alive and one I am grateful for.
Surprisingly enough, he was able to contact us via Face Book. I constantly looked for his ball to turn green, signaling he was on line and safe. When they would have a “black out”, meaning someone had been killed and there would be no communications going out of the company until the next of kin had been notified, I would panic.What if it was my son? I would picture in my head the scene of the military officers and a priest coming to my house and delivering the news, then of the military funeral and I would cry at the thought of taps playing and being handed the folded flag. Ridiculously dramatic and torturous thinking. But soon the green light would come on and relief would come until the next time.
Christmas was the hardest. It was difficult to get into the spirit knowing that his post was being mortared on a daily basis. He was able to call on Christmas, which was the best present of all. Fighting season had ended so now he was mostly bored. His photos on FB reflected this and they also showed the strong camaraderie amongst him and his fellow soldiers.
Because there are no women on the post, the men often become hypersexual and act out on each other, mostly in jest, vulgar gestures and speak in innuendo. In some extreme cases rape has occurred, but it rarely happens. Their world is centered on staying alive in this dusty unknown land and doing what their told in order to stay alive. It is inevitable that it becomes a microcosm of the real world. They had their dad figure and the mom figure, an officer who was nurturing to his soldiers. The female presence were the Afghan soldiers who the men say have a feminine quality. They were all brothers at times, enemies another time and someone to flirt with at yet another time.
“Ma I’m coming home in a month for R&R” read his IM
It was nearly the end of his tour, but he was allowed two weeks of R&R. And he rested… a lot. Obviously it was much needed. He also drank one beer after another.
There was a study conducted where pictures were taken of combat soldiers before they went off to war and then after they redeployed home. What they found is war ages these young men. My son had a baby face when he left. When he came home I saw a man who looked weary, concerned and pissed off. War had aged him, baby face was gone.
His features were angular and serious. He was pensive and quiet for most of the stay. He seemed to sleep okay, but chaos unnerved him. We were gathered at a family get together before he was to go back to Afghanistan and his younger brothers started to act rambunctiously. The other kids joined in and doing as kids do, shrieking and making a lot of noise in delight. Suddenly my son snapped, “Enough!” He was bothered because when things become loud and frantic at the post it meant that something bad was about to happen. That signaled his fragility at the time and the toll combat was taking on him.
Soon it would be time for his unit to redeploy. My boy would be coming back to the US. I would finally be able to get a peaceful night’s sleep. But the relief I was feeling would be short lived.
“Ma, I’m not in a good place right now. Everything and everybody is getting on my nerves. I have so much anxiety. I don’t know what to do.” He texted to me at two am his time.
Transitioning to normal life proved to be a difficult task. My son had become an adrenaline junky in Afghanistan. Everything had been done for him over there. He didn’t have to think about laundry or what was for dinner. This was being done for him. All he had to do was carry out missions. Everyone around him had a purpose. But at home he was back to having to take care of the humdrum things in life.
On top of that he was getting mortared or shot at every day, which became a way of life for him and gave him a daily dose of adrenaline, sometimes more than a couple times a day. But now his adrenaline fix had been cut off and doing laundry wasn’t cutting it. Sebastian Junger writes of this transition and the difficulty most combat soldiers have in readapting to life in the United States. If most soldiers have this amount of difficulty coming back to every-day life, why doesn’t the military do a better job in preparing them for what emotions they should expect and how they deal with them?
My son had no idea if what he was feeling was normal or if he was permanently damaged. Upon my encouragement he saw a military therapist, who he says was no help and told him to stop drinking so much. I didn’t hear much from him for a few months after he came home. I began to worry again for his safety or if he would do something to get himself in trouble. War doesn’t end when they come home. As long as it is with them, a piece of them is still fighting over there.
Eventually he did become more at peace with himself and life returned to a somewhat normal existence. I know that he will never be the same innocent kid any longer. He is now a team leader himself and training the new guys the Wolfhound way. He will be attending a training to qualify for Ranger school. His contract is set to end in 2013 and he will qualify for the GI Bill. He says he wants to go back to school, I think this time he means it.
“I have good news and bad news Ma.”
“I don’t know if I can take any more bad news, good first.”
“I’ll be home for Christmas.”
“Hurray! Okay, bad news.”
“My unit is set to deploy again in the beginning of next year.”
Photo curtesy of Flicker.
