Aneta M., 40 - Iraq War (03-04)
“I joined for money for college. So I went for the highest bonus at the time and that was being a driver. They needed women in that role. They had to fill so many numbers. So as a reservist I thought, Oh, who cares what the job is? I'm here for money for college. And so, I wanted to do something outside. They offered me some jobs that were indoors or being an MP and I was like, Oh no, I'm not interested in that and I'll be a driver. It's fine. I like traveling. So that's why I ended up in the job I was in. I was deployed from 2003 through 2004. We were at Fort Knox for a while and then we went to Iraq. When I was deployed, we had an incident where we were stopped on the road. We were in a convoy and an EOD explosive ordnance unit had to come and diffuse a IED on the side of the road. It was kind of the slums outside of Baghdad. There was garbage everywhere and people. We sat there for hours. It's not an ideal situation. But it was interesting to see the EOD crew come in. They came in their armored vehicles, they had the armor suits on, everything. We watched the EOD guy walk up to it in the big suit that he wears and he picked it up and he walked away with it. We were like, Oh my gosh, what's going on? We watched him put it outside their armored vehicle and they exploded it by the vehicle. Then they drove off. It was that simple. And then we continued on with our convoy. So it was really exciting. Another situation that sticks out to me is in 2004 over Easter Sunday we were in Baghdad overnight. We started to get attacked at the base right on the other side of the wall where the staging area for all the parked vehicles were. We were only supposed to be there overnight, but ended up being there for 21 days. Those nights you sleep with your flex vest on and with your weapon. One day we were sitting in the chow hall eating, so happy to have a hot meal and not MRAs, and they started sending mortars in. You don't know where it's coming from. You just hear it and you just take cover. There must've been 150 people in a chow hall and everybody stopped, looked up, jumped up, grabbed their weapons and ran outside. You couldn't have choreographed it better. We went back to our vehicles and took cover. When the wounded came in, I was treating wounded and then sent them off to where the medics were. The first 30 days, 60 days, anything that moves you jump. After a couple of months, it just feels like work. You just go to work every day and you don't really think about it. It's just everyday life. It wasn't this big dramatic thing everyday. I was in a leadership role. I was promoted to Sergeant while I was there. I led convoys, that kind of thing. That was not well received by locals. They would approach the male unit members and talk to them, interact with them. But they would just stand away from me. The problem was with the women. I had a lady look at me, spit at the at me, looked right at me, not anybody else. And then covered her face back up. It was an older lady. The was the first time that as a soldier, as an American, I ever felt someone's hatred towards me, that I didn't do anything to encourage it. I was with a really good unit. I was with the seven 62nd transportation unit out of Akron. Very good people, very good crew. I was in second platoon, we were family like, you love each other, you hate each other, you fight, you get along, all that. There was six females in our platoon and the leadership gave us the option to either be segregated in our own living area or we could stay with our squad. They left it up to us. We chose to stay with our squad. When I got out I wanted nothing to do with anything military, I was burned out. When I came home I wanted to get back to my civilian life. I wanted to finish my degree. I wanted to get back and make some money. I was getting married, I was buying a home. I was doing all those life kind of things that was put on hold for the 16 months that I was gone. I will say the only thing I ever miss about the army are my friends that I made. I came across Medina County, women in the military. It's a women's veterans group. And I was like, Oh, there's a women's veterans group in Medina, I didn't know that. So I reached out and I started hanging out with them and it’s more of a social thing. We get together, we talk, we reminisce, talk about current life, you know, support each other friends. By the end of the year, they elected me president, and I've been president since, so I'm president of the group currently and I mean it's been probably eight or nine years now. They're my friends and they really helped me with my kids. Now that I'm out, I really see the value in what I learned and when they talk about having it be a mandatory service of one or two years when someone's 18, I mean we're in America, so you do what you want to do. I'm not going to say it should be mandatory, but I definitely think that the population would benefit from those experiences. I do. So that's the biggest thing I think I take away from the military experience. I didn't really, I don't wanna say I didn't appreciate it, but I didn't understand the weight it would have in my life for the rest of my life. So overall I think it was a positive experience and I would do it again, maybe a little wiser in my contract choices.”