In her choked voice, Paige assured me, “You have absolutely nothing to worry about over here, okay? You only worry about what you have to do.”
One last hug, one last kiss, one last “I love you,” and in an instant, I was at the complete disposal of the United States Army.
I plopped down on the bus that would take us to the airfield for our flight along with the rest of my platoon. The ride was dead silent. Not because people were sleeping. We were all wide-awake. I tried to take in the last bit of the United States that I would get to see, but my mind was sluggish and foggy. A clear thought finally broke through: I have never been scared like this. All the things that were meant to scare me up to that point only gave me the exact rush of adrenaline I needed to do it. Fear was the launch button for all the awesome things I had done in the Army so far. Jumping out of planes, surviving Special Forces Selection, and every other perceivably scary thing didn’t intimidate me. I was exhilarated by the risk. This fear was different. For the first time, I felt with absolute certainty that something was going to happen. It didn’t feel exhilarating; it felt ominous. Wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, I took a look around the bus at everyone else and found my only morsel of comfort for that day: If I have to do this, I am so thankful to do it with the bravest people I have ever met.
We flew from Seattle to Alaska to Kyrgyzstan to Kandahar, Afghanistan, known as the birthplace of the Taliban. It took us approximately five days. From Kandahar, we helicoptered to Command Outpost (COP) in Mushan, about thirty-five miles away. We circled for about an hour (who knows why) and finally landed. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. Would we hear bombs going off right next to our landing zone, or would this be like predators picking off a herd of sheep—stalking and waiting?
The minute my feet hit the ground, I was overwhelmed by the heat. I had lived in the humidity of Alabama and North Carolina, even in triple-digit weather in Texas when I was a kid. Afghanistan had its own way of microwaving you from the inside out. People have asked if I would prefer 100 degrees in the South or 100 degrees in Afghanistan. I once believed I was a “dry heat” kind of person, but this heat felt like a hair dryer blowing in your face at all times. Reaching 110 degrees or higher was going to be my daily normal for the next nine months.
I didn’t really have time to think about how hot it was because we were immediately instructed to unload the helicopter. This was when I got a good look at the guys we were replacing. They had come to the landing zone to help us unload, which I was thankful for, but something about them really bothered me. Their enthusiasm about helping us was weird. They were literally running toward us and unloading cargo like we had arrived at summer camp or something. Maybe their behavior wouldn’t have been so strange if they didn’t look so horrible. Their uniforms were torn and faded at the elbows and knees. A uniform in that condition would have been completely unacceptable on base back in the States. Even after a dozen trips to the field for training, I don’t think my uniform had ever looked as bad as theirs did. Their eagerness to get us on post kind of killed the “hooah” moment I thought I was going to have with my fellow soldiers.
We shuffled straight from unloading to a briefing about our new posting. I assumed we were going to be informed about the terrain and the latest missions. While that was part of it, there were some topics during the briefing that confused me. They talked a lot about IEDs. We were briefed on how we would be maneuvering behind a mine detector any time we were off post. In our predeployment training, we walked everywhere in a V formation to cover as much ground as possible at one time. Now we were being told we had to walk like ducks in a row because it was literally too dangerous to walk on your own. Immediately following that briefing, I knew that anytime I talked to Paige from then on, I couldn’t let her know what was really going on. I couldn’t have her worrying any more than she already was. So, I decided I would just tell her we were mostly doing humanitarian missions and that nobody was in any sort of danger, even though that was nowhere near the truth.
PAIGE
The day following his departure I literally woke up with a hangover from crying. My head was pounding and my whole body ached. I felt dehydrated and the minimal sunlight was still too bright and annoying to me. For
