Innocence lost by Clint Robus I remember sitting on that balmy, sun-baked beach in Panama City, Fla., mid-March 2003. Holed-up in a two-bed hotel room with eight (that’s right, eight) other 20-year-old males, I was experiencing an annual rite of passage for most college students: spring break. Sure we had fun, like so many other college students across the country. We hit the clubs, partied on the beach and chased women. But one day during that whirlwind week of crazy late nights stands out. No beach party, wet t-shirt contest or offer of free beer could pry our butts off the beds and chairs. All eight of us sat glued to the television screen as we watched American military forces bombard Baghdad, Iraq. We were at war. Later, I tried to push the thought to the back of my mind. International matters were of little consequence. Which club to attend that night was the most important decision I had to make. I did not want to think about what this war meant. College years are spent in carefree self-discovery. The real world is so close, yet kept at bay by the moments of immaturity and youthful revelry. True, one grows and finds a certain personal identity during college. But I do not believe any of us, myself included, realized there were college students just like us, entrenched half-a-world away in the middle of the desert in the middle of conflict. I certainly never thought that anyone close to me would be drawn into the conflict in the Middle East. Life has a funny way of throwing you a curveball when you least expect it. But as I was enjoying myself on that beach in Florida, two friends and high school classmates, Laura Schultz and Carlye Garcia, were reporting to Ft. McCoy for training and eventual deployment to Iraq. Laura and Carlye have been close friends since middle school. Together they signed up for the Army National Guard during our senior year of high school, mainly for the financial benefits. The National Guard is state-owned and mainly intended for homeland security and to help with natural disasters and riots. There was a chance they would be deployed in a time of emergency, but they never thought they would end up in Iraq by June 2003 and stay there for 13 months. “We didn’t find out we were going to Iraq until two days before we left,” Laura tells me after returning to the states last July. “It was a lot of not sleeping. Nobody knew what we were going to do. We would get up early, 6 a.m., and train all day, then do it all over again.” Once in Baghdad, Laura served as a National Guard specialist, teaching “police how to be police.” If a crime was committed, the Iraqi police “would arrest everyone and put them in jail,” Laura says. “We had to teach them what questions to ask to find out the whole story.” Lounging by the pool in Florida and getting fresh towels every morning, I learned, was a stark contrast to life in Baghdad. Amid the constant threat of bombings and attacks on American troops, Laura and fellow guard members “lived in a building that was bombed out,” she says. “We had to clear up the rubble and then set up the cots. There was a huge wall blown out, but it was a roof over our heads.” The desert heat was beastly. Working a 12-hour night shift, Laura avoided patrolling the police station during the 140-degree daytime hours; however, nights only dropped down to 120-degrees. After Laura completed her shift, she tried to sleep but notes, “you would wake up drowning in your sweat. It was insane how hot it was.” Laura and Carlye’s friendship was one thing that kept them going. “It helped a lot that we were such good friends,” Laura says. “We could tell each other anything. But I also worried about her a lot.” We all worry about our friends, but most of us do not have to worry about them being thrown into life-threatening situations every day. Laura and Caryle’s friendship would be tested in dramatic fashion on a quiet, routine day in May 2003. “We were driving back from the station and a roadside bomb hit her Humvee,” Laura recalls. “It was hard to keep calm and do what I’m supposed to do when all I wanted to do was check on Carlye.” The experience of being hit by that bomb will stay forever with Carlye. She received a Purple Heart for her bravery – and she will carry shrapnel in her arm for the rest of her life and her hearing is “pretty bad.” At night, Carlye says, she hears “sirens” in her head while she tries to sleep, a permanent effect from the explosion. “[The bomb] pretty much knocked me out,” she says. “It was a big one, we got lucky — no one was hurt really bad. I got hit and knocked out and then my drill sergeant was pulling me out of the truck and patching me up.” College students, myself included, complain about a hangover following a long night out drinking. But forget Jager-bombs; Carlye was dealing with real bombs. The event is always in the back of her mind. “I couldn’t do anything,” she says. “I couldn't go on missions for two months. I had one anxiety attack, but not when I was thinking about it. It happened when I was sleeping,” Yet Carlye adds, “I never thought, ‘Oh my god, I almost died.’ I got hit, everybody does.” It may be a little easier for people in the service to shrug off close calls like that: they are trained to follow orders and accept risk as part of the deal. For their family and friends, though, the fact everybody has close calls is never easy to accept. Coping with that knowledge is all mind games, hoping and praying, counting the days between conversations. Remembering how many service men and women the U.S. has lost since we have entered Iraq makes me think about the seriousness of combat. My friend was lucky; others have not had that luxury. It has been even harder to contemplate the possibility of tragedy since my own little brother enlisted in the Navy in December 2002. I have often kidded him that he picked a hell of a time to join active duty. In February 2004, Brady’s ship, the U.S.S. WASP, left dock from Norfolk, Virginia, for a six-month mission in Pakistan. The war had officially hit home. Brady, an aviation ordinanceman, did not face the highest threat level. Still, when his ship entered the Persian Gulf through the Straight of Hormuz, Brady and other crewmembers had to man the guns, in case Iran launched an attack. Waiting for whomever or whatever the Marines drove out of Afghanistan, Brady verified serial numbers on 500 illegal AK-47s confiscated at sea and turned the weapons over to the gunner chief, one-by-one. While I was collecting clips for my résumé and verifying serial numbers on Dell computers at my campus job, my little brother was handling assault rifles. As I listen to him talk now about his time at sea, I can’t help thinking that college is a very small place. “We met a Yemen boat in the middle of the ocean and handed [the AK-47s] over to the army,” Brady says. “It was kind of cool; there were coast guard boats circling and helicopters overhead.” My brother, Laura and Carlye sacrificed the life I’ve been living. All three could have and probably should have been enjoying their college years. Brady would have been in his sophomore year of college right now, close to all of friends from home. But instead he’s back in Virginia, eager to finish his required service. “You leave for so long and it’s the same thing every day,” Brady says. “You leave everything and then you don’t leave the ship for around six months. You come back and pick up where you left off. It felt like nothing changed.” Laura and Carlye, in an ideal world, would be finishing up their senior year in college, and like I am, hunting for a job. But they are essentially starting their college educations over. Forced to drop out of school upon deployment. Laura returned to UW-La Crosse, and Carlye, who started at UW-Milwaukee, is now at UW-Eau Claire. Both are concentrating on finishing school as soon as possible, in case they are called back to the Middle East. The National Guard requires six years of active duty and two of inactive, so for the moment Laura and Carlye will not have to return, but the chance is still there. “I’m basically a freshman again and I’m not going to graduate until I’m 25 or 26 [years old],” says Carlye, who also broke up with her boyfriend upon returning from Iraq. “It changed me a lot. It changed my outlook on things.” Laura says she is trying to forget everything about her time in Iraq, but she adds, quietly, “I won’t forget the people who said ‘Thank you, America!’ The majority were happy we were there and it was good to see change. [Iraqis] went from being afraid to seeing they can make a difference.” Because of her experience in Iraq, Laura wants to get a job helping people and learn about different cultures of the world, as well as spend time with family and friends. Carlye admits to mixed feelings. She regrets not signing up for regular active-duty service, “two to three years [in active duty] and I would’ve saved enough money for school and been done,” Carlye says. But, she adds, “The thing I tell people is, if I never joined the National Guard, I never would’ve been able to go to school. It was helpful for my education, because I never would have had the money for it. I have a better life path, I learned a lot about responsibility and I'm a stronger-minded person with more confidence.” I believe how tough it was for Laura and Carlye. Patrolling an Iraqi police station with a machine gun, while knowing many of their friends from school were enjoying the simple life of college, could not have been easy. Now the same goes for my brother. He knows his buddies are tearing around without a care in the world, while he wonders if and when he may go out to sea again. I consider myself to be a pretty well-rounded and down-to-earth guy. I’m a simple kid from the Wisconsin country, who has had his fair share of experiences. But thinking about my brother, Laura and Carlye and hearing their stories brings life into perspective. I am struck by how much life has to offer. I mean, I haven’t even been out of North America, for crying out loud. My brother and two friends have seen the world. “It made me grow up faster,” Laura says, looking back on the time she spent in Baghdad. “Most people are going crazy in college; there is so much to do in life. It makes you want to do more with your life. You look at what you have and what you’ve been given. You don’t take anything for granted.” You know, she may be right. The things Laura, Carlye and Brady have seen and done cannot compare to those I boast of. I’m graduating in May, excited to get going in life; yet I’m scared silly about what the future holds. It’s funny when you think about it, actually. Here I am dying to get into the real world, where my friends and brother have experienced reality in one of it’s harshest forms, and are dying to get back home, to normalcy. But I think they are a better equipped for almost anything. The lessons they learned during the last few years while serving our country will help them with any curveball life throws. Very soon, when I get started with the rest of my life, I hope I take as much from my experiences as Laura, Carlye and Brady took from theirs. If I don’t, I would not be respecting my friends or my brother for the sacrifices they’ve made for our country. Every member of the military deserves that sign of respect from civilians.
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