Duty "outside the wire"

There were no days off normally and the working hours seemed shockingly long. Sue found the concept of working as a civilian affairs officer a constructive element in the war. It involved building schools and helping locals. “We work with the civilian population and help them to stabilize. But it is a very slow process, because of the rotation of units.” 

But the duties involved chores that would stay in her thoughts for years. She became the pay agent, responsible for purchasing office supplies and paying local contractors and workers for their services. She would hide ten thousand dollars or more in her uniform and travel out of the compound to pay for purchases. Every trip made her anxious. “This was scary at times, because you are talking about large sums of money, all in cash. Sometimes we would have to go out and bring the person back or we would travel somewhere to pay them. The sheer amount of money on me made me a sure target, I guess,” she says.

One stressful trip reappeared in her dreams frequently after returning home. It represented the pressures the soldiers face when walking “outside the wire”, out of the base, exposed to random attacks in a hostile environment.  “We had to go out with a small team and pick up an Iraqi and bring him back inside. We were supposed to meet him at a crowded bus stop, but he wasn’t there. We had to go to the next one. Finally we got him. It was very frightening, but you can’t exhibit that. It is amazing how you get through the situation, but it lasted a very long time, four hours. And I had to carry all this money outside. We were targets. There was no question of that.”

Anxiety crept into everyday life. Soldiers in the compound lived under the constant threat of indirect fire.  “I don’t think I can impress upon you about what the indirect fire is like. You can’t predict where the rockets are going to hit. When? Where? No predictions. They try to warn you, but an incoming warning is nothing when the rocket decides to come your way,” Sue describes.

Rockets exploding in familiar places eat up the sense of security. One rocket landed in the place she had just moved from. “You deal with the area you are in and hope you don’t get killed,” she says. 

Sue laughs when she talks about the deployment and cracks jokes about her stamina. It is her way of lightening up the load of memories. “I don’t mean to laugh. It is not very funny, but your thought process is very strange when you go through these things,” she says.

She still remembers the weight of the uniform. The pain still stays in her hips and knees. “People don’t realize we wear the same stuff as guys do, and we carry the same guns. When I was out, I would typically carry one or two weapons and a full battle load, seven mags for your rifle, thirty rounds apiece. This is heavy and I am not big,” she describes. “I only weigh 105 pounds. The sheer weight of the protective vest, helmet and all the weapons. If you add a bag of money–a hundred thousand dollars weighs a little bit. It must have been amusing to watch me climbing on a Black Hawk.”

The pressure was amplified by loneliness. Sue saw many soldiers visiting the combat stress unit early on during the deployment. As a professional nurse, after years of drills in the reserves she believed she had coping skills to control her feelings. Soldiers tended to keep to themselves. “There is a sense of individual isolation. I observed that everybody protected themselves in their turfs. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to. I think I came home feeling lonely and still feel lonely.” 

Sue believes females experienced the alienation strongly. Male soldiers seemed to bond more with each other. The unit commander reached out to the male soldiers, taking them out for lunches. He took the females out for a lunch only once, all of them together. “Due to training, women were not allowed to be in combat, but in practice we were. There are no frontlines in wars. You have equal exposure,” Sue remarks. 

Sue was looking forward to the comfort of a home visit for Thanksgiving Day during her mid-deployment. Her grandson had learned to walk, and her husband had become more ill. She had a new granddaughter. Her daughter helped with cleaning and cooking. Surprisingly, she was looking at this world from a distance. And the changes seemed excessive to her. “I thought where do I fit in here? Also, you want to talk about your experience, but you are not sure if you can. Sometimes I felt I would get the rolling of the eye. I don’t think it was true, but I felt that way. I didn’t realize at the time I was exhibiting symptoms of PTSD,” Sue says. 

Sue thought she had coping skills to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, the serious anxiety disorder that can galvanize people who have experienced trauma or continuing anxiety. On the way back to Iraq, it seemed others had experienced similar feelings. The chaplain asked the crowd of three hundred people to raise their hands, if they had a good time on their leave. “Three people only raised their hands. People started to talk that it wasn’t a good experience to go home, because you need to reintegrate. Smart people were those who went to visit Europe and Australia. We all missed our families, but it was difficult,” Sue confesses. 

Leaving the deployment was suddenly not easy either. When Sue turned 60, she was sent home because of her age. She wanted to stay to see the completion of a vocational school she was involved with. Reluctantly, she headed back to Fort Bragg.