Army and my Experience

Moving to Austin, Texas I’ve met a lot of veterans compared to the small amount I met in Houston. In Houston, all the veterans that I met were at my previous job Panera Bread and they were mostly middle-aged. Here in Austin on the other hand, most of the friends I’ve made are veterans and they’re quite young. Jared, a guy I met in speech class last semester introduced himself as a veteran and he gave reasons as to why he joined the army.

Fast forward to this semester when we have another class together and he explains the reason he joined the army was to pay for college. According to Forbes, around 46% of high school students enlist in the army hoping when they get out, their college tuition will be paid for. Jared was no different.

Jared worked as an EMS in the army, he was stationed in Qatar for 7 months then was stationed in Kuwait for a year, and then the rest of his contract which was a year and five months he was stationed in Kabul.

He described his time in Kuwait as miserable because of the hot sandy wind. “You would hear an explosion, then an alarm would go off and everyone would put on their gas masks and move into protective bunkers.” When he would talk about his time in the army and all the horrific things he had seen, his face would look like he was in pain. He looked like he was uncomfortable talking about it, and was trying not to remember the things the army had made him do.

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I asked Jared what was the hardest thing he had to experience. “In November we had nine critically wounded soldiers that come to us and we were able to save five of them. They were on a ride in the area and they walked over to inspect something suspicious. It turned out to be an IED and it detonated. The first soldier I got my hands on, his body was destroyed. I could barely recognize him as a human being. When you would see your people with dismemberments and burns, it affects you differently. It was terrible because Cory, one of the first friends I made in the army was one of the people who we couldn’t save.” Jared described the scene like the movies, with critically injured men falling out with blood everywhere. “We train and train as nothing will ever happen, but when it does happen you don’t know what’s happening. Everything around you is moving you are moving but your mind can’t process anything that’s happening.”

Most of us do not know a single thing about what happens in a soldier’s day-to-day life. Brown’s University released a report earlier this year talking about how deadly the war in Afghanistan and Iraq had been. When Saddam Hussein refused to leave Iraq U.S. Allied forces launched an attack, and the US forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait. Around 400,000 US soldiers had died in the Afghan and Iraq war. America has poured billions of dollars into the war. Thousands of Americans have given up their life, with no political end game. “We were searching for Saddam, among other things. It took us a bit of time to build a relationship with the local Iraqui. At first, they didn’t want to help us and didn’t respect us. But they knew that they needed us as much as we need their help.” On December 13, 2003, the American army captured the dictator Saddam Hussein all thanks to Samir who was a military interpreter.