When I signed my paperwork to join, I picked CONUS so I could stay in the States. My recruiters told me that in my MOS, Chemical Operations, I would most likely be used for Homeland Security. And I believed every word of it. I joined the Army to find some direction in my life, to figure out who I was, where I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do. In the last three and half years I had every opportunity available to sit and dream about the future, but never a moment to do anything about it.


























I wasn't in my unit a month, before we started heading to the field, NTC rotations, and then to Iraq for the beginning of the war. My entire company was in Kuwait, and I remember the whole thing being surreal. My platoon started to move to further and further North and I never questioned why, until I was sleeping in my truck, my M16 in my arms and my protective mask as my pillow.

When the air campaign against Iraq started, we were behind the ground troops crossing the berm into Iraq. The mission that my platoon received was for a Decontamination Platoon if Weapons of Mass Destruction happened to be found or used. I spent the next two and a half months on an abandoned air base 60 miles within the border of Iraq. I had to hoard forgotten drinking water just to wash my hair and my body. My platoon along with another from Louisiana, were our sole security, both taking turns around the clock to protect what little we had out there.

We over took a building believed to have been occupied hours before by the very people we were fighting against. That building was all we had for shelter and security. A week before we left they had finally came up with some makeshift porta potties, and showers supplied through a tent.

When I came home, a little over four months after we deployed, no more than two weeks after my 21st birthday, I might add, there were rumors that we would deploy again. I was under the impression that we weren't going to be needed, since there were no WMDs found. 1 st Cavalry Division (my division) was deploying beginning of the year, and the only justification for taking us, was that they wanted to deploy as a complete division. Meaning we were heading right back.

I came home and had just enough time for the PTSD to settle in before I realized I was back on a plane to the Middle East. If I had thought it was surreal the first time; stepping off that plane into the same place we staged a year ago, was the worst feeling in the world. And every day after that came with more.

There is no front lines in war anymore. And as a female I did everything the male soldiers were doing. I kicked in doors, searched people and cars, and patrolled our sectors which included Route Irish, dubbed the worst stretch of highway in Iraq. I watched soldiers around me disappear as well as the morale of every soldier around me as the days continued. I spent a little over a year of my service in Iraq, and surprisingly, I've found that I am more scared now, than I had ever been while I was there. The IEDs and mortars were almost daily, yet I pushed all my fears to the back of my mind while I was out on missions and the entire time I was in Iraq. I think back now and realize I had no choice but to be there and to just take it day by day no matter what that entailed.

After pulling together and leaning on each other for a year, our tour was over and we were sent home. I was on my way back to Michigan finally a civilian again, only to get home and realize that I was more screwed up in the head than when this whole thing started. Now I'm just a 23-year-old girl, with nothing to show for my time, but a head full of nightmares, and no one to lean on. I no longer see any of those people I spent an entire year living and working with. Sure I talk to them once in awhile, but the people I see here, will never know what my life has been like the last year. I see things on TV or online about the war, movies and books keep coming out about war, and I feel like shit because I'd give anything to be back there with everyone, but I'd give everything to take it back, never had went, and be safe and stayed home. There is a contradiction within myself, and it is a constant war in my own head. To be back where I had everyone around me that knew what was going on inside, or to stay home where I know the box on the side of the road isn't going to blow up when I drive past it.

So why do I still get scared that it will?

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