Soldiers are fascinating

When my parents got married my father wore his Army uniform to the wedding. He volunteered to serve his adopted country. It was the early 1970s and the war in Vietnam was sending young men back injured or worse. My mom thought he was crazy for volunteering to join while others ran for the border to avoid the draft. He did not make a career out of it. As it turns out, the Army was not for him. He went to Vietnam and later Korea before satisfying his commitment and returning to the US.

Because of my Dad's experience or perhaps in spite of it, I held on to a latent fascination with the armed forces, and the need to serve one's country. Army brats seemed to have mysterious backgrounds that they never wanted to talk about with any detail. As if the whole thing was too painfully tedious to relive.

It is to my utter surprise that I work on an Army base and live with a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). I found a pair of Ryan's black, cotton, tattered, athletic shorts a few weeks ago. I suggested he throw them out. He stared at the shorts and then at me, and then at the shorts again, "Those are my Operation Enduring Freedom shorts." Yep, the Army is a BIG part of my life.

Soldiers are fascinating, especially the guys that are here. They are recently returned from year-long deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan risking their lives for their country. Most of them are young guys in their early to mid-20s (yes,many of them are single.) They each have a story about why they chose the Army. Some did not have better options, others are following the family tradition. My days are filled with talking to them or about them. Now that they are back from the front line how will they cope? Many of them are thrill seekers looking for the next adrenaline rush, others want nothing more than to play the latest simulated war game on their brand new XBOX.

The life of a soldier is foreign to me. I'm a former corporate suit. I didn't wear a suit everyday, but had the the occasion to at least a few times a week. I don't know anything about daily PT (physical training so intense that it doesn't end until someone vomits), pulling guard duty (somebody has to keep an eye on things) or getting jump pay (extra pay for jumping out of planes). It's an entirely new world for me and these young men and women have so many stories to tell about why they joined. I look forward to getting to know them better.