2-My second military assignment in Germany, I was promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant (E6) in a transportation battalion in charge of six motor vehicle transporters. Although, Staff Sergeants aren 't greater in authority per se than an E5 they do in fact oversee more troops. In fact, as a Staff Sergeant I had other Sergeants serving under me, but at this grade the difference in rank has to do more with years of experience. At this level I were more influential and significant in offering experience and counselorship to officers and others above and below me in rank. However, my day-to-day responsibilities consisted of supervising the operation of wheel and track vehicles to transport personnel and military cargo. Also, some of my other job
Late 2005 I was assigned to 2-35 Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, HI. I re-enlisted into the Army after almost a three year break in service. On my previous enlistment, I served in the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from the 82nd Airborne Division. All the new soldiers to include myself were standing in formation waiting on the Battalion Command Sergeant Major (CSM) to speak to us. I was the only Private First Class with a Combat Infantryman Badge, an Expert Infantryman Badge, and a combat deployment to Afghanistan.
The war had dragged on for longer than anyone could have imagined. Damage on the Western Front. Millions dead. Food rations significantly reduced. Again.
It was December 1st. My first day in the colonial army, it was horrible all i saw was snow and dead bodies the scene made me shake in the soles of my shoes. The estimated amount of people dead so far was about 1,800 to 2,500. It was absolutely freezing and i wanted to go home, i was confused and couldn’t think straight. Men were dropping like flies and the stench of death was all too real.
Loud noises seemed to scare me, I have no idea why but screeching tires, Revving engines, screaming children, and even the occasional barking dog will get me on edge and paranoid. In my younger years I joined the US Air Force as a way to get away from everyday life, I just wanted to get out of the everyday monotony of work, sleep, wake, repeat. The only thing that brought me any kind of variety was my sweetheart back home, Hazel. We met in high school when I was just 17 years of age, somehow we are still together today through the night terrors and struggles I constantly suffer.
The Chief of Staff at the Wiesbaden Community, Colonel Weafer, owned a lovely home in Leavenworth that he wanted to rent. He also had a connection with the housing office that could get us a statement of unavailability on the post so we could rent off the post. We arrived at a beautiful home and arranged for our household goods delivery. We had three shipments; one from Germany, whole baggage waiting for delivery, and a storage shipment from my mother’s house in Phoenix.
It took 250$ and good deeds to create some doctor like me. Growing up I was the kid who looked at the world with open optimistic eyes. I grew up in a small city called Dora located in Iraq, the middle of three girls. I was born in the late 90s, I have been told that I was born "at the end of the good days". That's when Iraq's political circumstances were not at peace at all, at 2003 another war broke in Iraq.
I believe in the act of paying it forward, and treating others the way you want to be treated in the midst of it. Ever since I was a little girl, I always had a heart to help anyone that I was able to. I hated seeing others down, making it seem as if I was higher than them when I had nothing. I believed that if I was in their shoes, I would want someone to help me. Seeing homeless people on the side of the streets sad, hungry, desperate for just a bite of a sandwich or even a couple dollars to get them by for the next few days, made me realize how much I want to help people who are in need.
I don’t really enjoy picking fights, or committing any acts of violence. Truthfully, if I got into any type of conflict, my lanky body would probably give up on me halfway. That’s what my wife told me after I said I was going to be joining the US armed forces. “Mark, are you an idiot? You can’t even walk without limping, how will you serve our country?!”
During the Civil many soldiers have been separated from their wives and children since they were compelled to join the Union and Confederate armies. 620,000 American casualties would never see their families since they were forced to join the Union and Confederate armies at a young age. This reminds me of the time my father was enforced to join the army during the Gulf War. During that time, the United States had the right to draft young men for the army. My father would tell me stories of how scared he was to leave his family and would never see them again in his life.
Serving in World War one was a life changing thing. I had become use to my everyday life as a citizen, living without and worry’s, not having to worry about getting bombed, or losing your friends. I would try not to male any friends, but it is just my personality I guess. I would try to be alone and not talk to anyone, I wish I would have stuck to that. One day everyone in my troupe woke up at 0500 for our morning routine; usually we would have a few practice rounds with our guns, run a few miles, eat breakfast, and sometimes they would issue us rum to not only drink, but to clean our guns as well.
From the moment I was born I was considered a military brat, I was born in Hawaii at tripler hospital because my mom was in the army and stationed there, my biological father was in the marines. When my mom remarried when I was 7, she married a man who was in the Navy. Everyone thinks being a Military brat just means you know more than other people because you 've been more places and seen more things and you get a lot of stuff you want. This is not true at all. Coming from a military background means you never have stability, you are held to a higher standard than all the other kids, and sometimes it makes you want to be in the military and only focus on that.
Do you remember a few months ago, that night where the whole family was sitting down for Easter dinner and I burst in? Do you remember my shaky fingers and my eyes that scanned the room over and over again nervously as I explained that I was to leave for war? I remember your face, the tears, the words, everything. Mom, you told me not to go, that in war there were no winners and that war would change my life. I was so against these words that I haven't talked to you since, but I want you to know that those words echoed through my head in the cold and sleepless nights and frightening days at war whether I wanted them to or not.
Well, I’ll start my story off the day I returned from Afghanistan in July 2013. The moment I stepped off the plane I knew that those longs days and nights in Afghanistan were finally over and I could relax again. Thats exactly what I tried to do for the next month or so but I was still having trouble.
My whole family is from Hungary. As it was mandatory for men to serve in the military before 2004, all my male relatives are veterans. Even my own father is a lieutenant. Unfortunately I can not choose my father for an interview as a veteran, as he did not serve in the United States military. Although Hungary is now part of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (or NATO) and ally with the United States of America, before 1990 Hungary was part of the Warsaw Pact and “enemy” of United States.
In Wartime Memoir, French Author Shares Family Challenges Jean Eugene Havel presents his family story as part of his country’s wartime narrative. As a young man in WWII France, Jean Eugene Havel faced not only family and socio-economic challenges but also violence and the horrors of war – experiences that the retired university professor had a hard time recalling and recounting in his memoir The Five Sisters: A Young Norman in the Second World War (Melrose Books, 2014). For most people, such memories are better left forgotten, but Havel felt he had to share them for the purpose of preserving history.