Walk in My Combat Boots Read online

  As the fighting continues, we get intel from the air that says there are a thousand Taliban in our area.

  And they’ve surrounded us.

  There’s so much gunfire going on, the noise so loud, I’m desensitized to it. It’s all the little noises that scare me: the sonic crack of a bullet going past me, rounds hitting my vehicle and the chicken plate on the fifth wheel.

  Fear makes you feel small. I’m scared, and there’s a moment when I have to wrestle with the frightened child inside me who keeps asking, Do we really have to do this? Why would they want me to die? Do I really have to kill somebody to stop that from happening? A part of me keeps wishing that we can all just sit down and talk. If we can do that, I know we can find stuff we have in common and not kill each other.

  On day five, we’re told we need to take the top of the hill.

  Ten guys start to fight their way up to the hilltop. When they get to the other side of it, one of our Afghani counterparts steps on a mine. It blows off one of his legs and puts some holes in his chest. As I work to get him packaged up to be evacuated—if and when the fighting slows down—I hear the voices in my headset growing more urgent.

  The gunfire suddenly gets even crazier. More intense. It seems as though our ten guys are about to be overrun. I’m ordered to get in the weapons truck, with its heavy machine gun, and drive it up to the top of the hill to provide covering fire so our guys can withdraw.

  I manage to get to the truck. I drive up the hill.

  There’s an explosion.

  I’m blown up, burned, and shot in a matter of moments. Yet I’m still conscious, so I can see what’s happened.

  I’ve lost half of my intestines. My right foot and ankle are missing, and I have major burns all over my body.

  A bunch of guys rush over to me. One of them is a medic—a guy I flunked in one of the courses I taught. His name is Riley Stevens, and he had to go all the way back through school a second time. I haven’t been face-to-face with him since flunking him way back when.

  “Hey,” I say, my voice weak. “No hard feelings, right?”

  I watch him go to work on me. “A remotely detonated IED got you,” he says. “I’ve called in a medevac.”

  Two choppers arrive to clear the area for medevac. They’re immediately attacked by RPGs. Luckily, they miss, but the choppers have to retreat because the fighting is too intense. It’s too risky for them to stay.

  An hour later, another pair of choppers—two Apaches—fly in and, like angry wasps, attack the bad guys. They work so hard—and risk so much—to kill them all. Later, I’ll be told that these two brave Apache pilots, upon hearing that a Green Beret was down, decided to do whatever it took to wipe out the enemy.

  Two hours from when I’m injured, I’m on a medevac. Behind the haze of morphine, before I go unconscious, my thoughts shift back to Riley Stevens, the man who just saved my life.

  When I lay wounded on the battlefield and my teammates approached me to help, my first thought was, There’s no way these chuckleheads can save my life. They have no idea how to deal with this kind of trauma. And whose fault was that? It was mine. I was the problem.

  I wasn’t able to see the greatness in Riley until there was something in it for me—and I’m tremendously disappointed in myself. That greatness was in him the whole time. I could have mentored him better. I could have brought him closer instead of stiff-arming him away, just allowing him to fail.

  Later on, he’ll be killed in Afghanistan.

  I’m unconscious when I arrive at Kandahar.

  Once the surgeons stabilize me, they spend eighteen hours doing vascular surgery to reattach my foot and ankle. Most of my intestines are already gone, but they manage to put my abdomen back together. I have to wear a colostomy bag.

  Thirty percent of my body, I’m told, is covered with third-degree burns.

  When the IED went off, the doctors explain, it pushed diesel fuel and rocket propellant and other stuff into me, and it just continued to burn, burn, burn. Because of the extensive damage from these full-thickness burns, I’m sent for treatment in Landstuhl, Germany.

  After a three-day stay, I’m taken to Fort Sam Houston in Texas to do the “head down, butt up, shut up” routine. Because of the intestinal loss, I can’t control my bowels. I have yellow diarrhea constantly running into my third-degree burns. Anywhere between fifteen to twenty times a day I have people I don’t know coming into the room to wipe my ass for me.

  This was never covered in my training. I’m not prepared for it.

  These people take care of me in ways I’ve never taken care of anyone else. They say it’s their job, but I can see the genuine love and compassion in their actions. These people teach me, on a daily basis, that true strength comes from this kind of love and compassion for others.

  I begin to form a new opinion about the definition of the term “service.”

  The one thing people always told me to do was never surrender. But surrender is the one thing I’ll have to do if I’m going to survive this. I have to surrender to this kind of service, to this kind of love and compassion, if I’m going to make it. Then I’m going to need to get to work developing the areas of my personality I know aren’t tough enough to get me through whatever else life has in store for me.

  When my recovery is complete, I fix up a uniform that I can close over my “wound vacuum”—the tubes, rods, and bars—and over the external fixation device I have on my bolted-together right leg.

  The commander of the United States Army Special Operations Command, Lieutenant General Wagner, has an open-door policy. I walk unassisted into his office.

  “Sir, I’m a patient at Brooke Army Medical Center. I know they’re processing me for medical retirement. Sir, please don’t let this happen to me. No disrespect, but there are people in this building who have never done as much as I can still do for this army.”

  He studies me for a moment.

  “It’s funny that you’re here,” he says, and picks up a folder. “This here’s a request for you to go on Headline News for an hour-long live interview. Tell you what: if you can do this and not embarrass us, I’ll give you a job in public affairs. How does that sound?”

  It sounds like a lot of pressure. “Thank you, sir.”

  I wind up sitting down for an interview with Glenn Beck. I think it goes well.

  Lieutenant General Wagner agrees and rewards me with a job as spokesman for USASOC.

  The CEO of Burger King sees the Glenn Beck interview and calls the Army. He gets transferred to USASOC and asks about me. “We want him to come to our corporate retreat in Puerto Rico next week and speak to us,” the CEO says.

  Everyone says no. The request makes its way to Lieutenant General Wagner for final disapproval.

  “Let him go,” he tells everyone.

  It’s my first official job as spokesman.

  What I was able to share with people was how I learned that we all need to serve something bigger than ourselves. And if we want to inspire, we need to make ourselves small, not large. Like mothers, for example. Moms can be exhausted and hungry, even injured, but they’re wiping our butts throughout the night. Her success, though, is also our success. If we can all be servant leaders, then our teams will thrive and prevail.

  None of us pictures the day when what we love to do suddenly ends, because we all see ourselves as being great. But it does end—a retirement that comes way too soon, maybe even a traumatic moment. Whether at home or at war, we soldiers need to be in the business of putting ourselves out of business. If the next generation isn’t better than us, they might not be able to save us.

  JENA STEWART

  Jena Stewart grew up in South Florida. She served in the Army National Guard. Her job was 14 Juliet, which is Sentinel radar. She got out in 2007.

  I want to drop out of high school,” I tell my father. “I want to get my GED and join the Army National Guard.”

  I have no reason to drop out. I have good grades. It’s not lik
e I can’t graduate. I’m just so done with high school. I don’t understand cliques—the whole society of it. I’ve always been mature for my age, which explains why I feel like an adult stuck in a teenager’s body.

  My father shifts in his chair. He’s a very, very tough and hardworking person. That’s the way he raised me. He never questions whatever it is I want to do as long as I have a plan. If you have a plan and know what you’re doing, he always tells me, I’ll back you up.

  I glance at my stepmother. She’s a public school teacher. I know it’s going to be hard to convince her that I should drop out of high school.

  I look back to my father, sitting next to the Army recruiter, and I tell him why I want to join the military.

  I was at Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida, when 9/11 happened. President Bush was at Booker Elementary. We all watched his plane take off from Sarasota International Airport because it was the only plane in the sky at the time. Some of us were crying hysterically and others, like me, were simply overwhelmed. I called my mother to let her know I was okay, and later, as I was walking home, I had this eureka moment—one that felt like someone had just hit me across the face with a brick.

  For the past sixteen years, I’d been thinking only about myself—about how I felt out of place in high school, how I was convinced something was wrong with me, yada yada yada. It was all me, me, me, I, I, I. For the first time in my life, I realized there was a world out there way bigger than me. When the school had a job fair, I talked to a recruiter at the Army table, and suddenly my life made sense. I had a direction. A purpose.

  My father leans forward in his chair. Because I’m under seventeen, I need him to sign the paperwork.

  To my surprise, my stepmother says, “No one really cares about a high school diploma. All they care about is a college diploma.”

  My father’s gaze is pinned on me. “Do you really feel like you’re done with high school?”

  “I really want to do this.”

  “Then you have my blessing.”

  I drop out of high school and get my GED. The day I turn seventeen, I head to the local Military Entrance Processing Station and take the ASVAB—the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test. Afterward, I take myself to dinner. I order myself a dessert with a single candle, knowing where my life is going.

  Basic is tough. They wake you up in the middle of the night and they’re smoking you physically and mentally—they’re doing anything they can to break you.

  Everyone is freaking out, but I love it. I love the push of it all. Yes, it’s physically and mentally exhausting, but I have this thought that gets me through it—one that I share with other soldiers who look like they’re getting to the point of breaking.

  “This is their job,” I tell them. “These men go home and kiss their daughters and tuck them in bed. They go out to dinner with their wives. They’re not monsters. They need to break us down to build us up.”

  It’s the summer of 2002 and hot as hell. Midway through basic, I decide to shave my head. I don’t want to fiddle with my hair, wash it, make sure I have shampoo. I’m not here to look pretty. I’m here for one reason, and one reason only: get through this as easily as possible.

  The day we march to the range, I have my battle gear on, Kevlar, everything. We’re standing in formation when the drill sergeant screams my name and says, “Get the fuck up here.”

  I walk up to him, wondering what I did wrong.

  “Take off your fucking Kevlar.”

  I pull it off and then I’m standing there, in front of a ton of people, wondering what’s going to happen to me.

  “Now this—this,” the drill sergeant hollers. “This is what I’m talking about. This right here—this is a motherfucking soldier. All you other chicks out there—‘I’ve got to do my hair’ and all that bullshit—take a good look at this…”

  As he goes off, I can’t hold back the smile. Oh, yeah, I just scored major brownie points today.

  The US hasn’t declared war yet, but we know we’re going. The instructors keep telling us. I go to El Paso, Texas, to learn the specifics of my MOS training—14 Juliet, which is manning actual physical radar machines, identifying any unknown aircraft, and, if they’re not friendly, calling up the Stinger missile boys to shoot them out of the sky. When I return home to Daytona, I’m told I’m going to deploy—and I’ll be shipping out immediately.

  I head to New Mexico for training. They stick us out in the middle of the desert and make us do everything we’ll be doing overseas. We train hard for months.

  The unit I’m attached to is terrible.

  I’m young, pretty, and naive—and surrounded by men, most of whom are teenagers, too. The handful of women here are all spread out in different platoons. I’m the sole female in the unit, and the men delight in tormenting me—catcalls, sexually derogatory names, even spreading rumors like how I’m screwing guys in the maintenance room. It gets so bad, I’m not allowed to be within three hundred feet of a male barracks—because the men ganged up and said that I’m the problem.

  A week before we’re about to deploy, the US declares war. That same day, my unit is pulled out of formation.

  To be honest, I’m relieved.

  Happy.

  Deep down, I know if I go over there, I won’t be coming back home alive. I know this because not a single guy in my unit has my back. They’ve made that clear over these past few months. If we go over there, I’m certain they’d throw me under the bus any chance they got.

  In 2003, around Christmastime, I’m told I’m going overseas on the first of the year. I know now not to get too overwhelmed because things can change—and they do. I’m not going overseas. I’m going to Washington, DC, to essentially make sure there isn’t another 9/11.

  There are roughly five Sentinel radars spread out all over DC. Our job is to watch the skies 24/7. For the next year, we work in shifts, checking for bad guys. I have to take different routes each day to make sure people aren’t following me. I carry a weapon with me everywhere—not for self-protection, but to protect our equipment.

  I love the work. And I feel such pride wearing the uniform. Every day, when I put it on, I feel a sense of purpose.

  In 2005, when I return from DC, I start working hurricane relief. I’m sent to Florida to drive a convoy, through a hurricane, to Tallahassee.

  We travel in Humvees with canvas tops and doors—and no AC. It’s the middle of the night and raining like crazy—so incredibly loud—and the Humvees’ headlights are terrible. We can’t see shit.

  We arrive in Tallahassee—and it’s still raining like crazy. We unload at our quarters—a barn at a fairground—in calf-deep water. There’s cow shit and cockroaches all over the barn floor, but we grab a couple of hours of sleep.

  The next morning, we distribute clean water and ice. We drive all over the place, in five or six trucks. During a ride in what feels like the middle of nowhere, I see a really old man trying to clean up his property.

  The entire convoy pulls over. We clean up his yard in fifteen minutes.

  The old man is in tears. His wife is crying.

  “Thank you,” she says to us. “I thought my husband was going to die out here.”

  I know my job isn’t huge—I’m not overseas and doing something that has a big global impact—but I’m still doing something important for the United States, and it gives me pride. I’m a soldier. This is what I was meant to do.

  MIKE HANSEN

  Mike Hansen joined the Army in 1993 as an officer. He got his commission in 1995, took the Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, and then went on to the Army’s Ranger school.

  The most important day of my life is when I was eleven. I’m sitting on my dad’s ugly green-and-black plaid couch, and I ask him about the big paratrooper tattoo covering his bicep and tricep. He tells me how he used to jump out of gliders back in Vietnam, how he was a cavalry scout and not a Ranger, and right then I decide I’m going to join the Army. I’m going to do what
he did.

  But I’m going to go a little further. I’m going to go to the infantry school and then Airborne School and then become a Ranger.

  In high school, I’m the guy who shows up to class, barely pays attention, never studies or does homework, and still manages to get As and Bs. I carry this old recruiting manual that has a picture of a Ranger in green camo and a rolled patrol cap, and I flip through it every day, just staring at the picture, telling myself, This is what I’m going to do. This is who I’m gonna be. There is nothing I want more in life than this.

  I want to go into the Army as an officer, so I decide to attend college at Marion Military Institute in Marion, Alabama. I was born in Chicago and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and now here I am in the Deep South. Marion is this tiny little town near Selma, where Martin Luther King started his march. It’s a culture shock, but I quickly fall in love with the South and the people.

  The school structure is regimented—they have hall monitors and guards walking up and down the barracks to make sure every student is studying—and the academics are hard-core. I can’t slack off anymore.

  I go to Ranger school. It’s pretty tough, but I love it. I love being out in the field. I’m assigned to an infantry unit in the Florida National Guard and attend Florida State. I start talking to the contacts I need to get where I want to go—the 82nd Airborne Division. That’s my shot into a Ranger battalion. All I want to do is deploy, be an actual wartime officer. It’s my life’s dream.

  And then here comes this girl from Florida State. I have zero plans to get married—but lo and behold, that’s exactly what happens. She makes it crystal clear she’s not going to be a military wife living either in Stewart or Benning—or, God forbid, Fort Lewis. I change my path to law enforcement and join the National Guard.