General David Petraeus’ call to sustain high troop levels in Iraq is raising new concerns about the effects of recurring deployments on military personnel. The toll is particularly acute for soldiers serving back-to-back tours with little time at home to regroup. Youth Radio’s Kevin Walters served as an infantryman in Afghanistan and Iraq. When he came home from his second tour, Kevin faced the possibility of a redeployment, even after his contract was supposed to expire.
The night I returned from Iraq, I sat at the kitchen table with my dad, drinking beer. He said something I never expected to hear. If I wanted, he said he’d help me get to Canada as soon as my enlistment ended, as it was supposed to. I could go to school there and not have to worry about being recalled and sent back to Iraq.
I am my father’s only son. My dad was a Vietnam vet, former Marine who bled red, white, and blue. He thought McCarthy sure would have been nice to have around nowadays and that we weren’t fighting this war as viciously as we should.
I know my almost two years away at war weighed heavily upon him. For much of my first tour in Afghanistan, he was in a V.A. hospital having his foot and then his leg amputated—results of his diabetes worsened by Agent Orange exposure in the jungles of Vietnam. Maybe my father began to feel he and his family had already given enough.
Like my dad, when faced with the possibility of a stop-loss, or recall, I had to ask myself: When have I given all this war deserves? If I went back to Iraq and died, I’d let down my family and lose my own dreams of a happy life. If I left the country, I’d be only a ghost of who I once was. I’d never be able to come back with honor. That, to me, is almost a death sentence in and of itself.
Of course I laughed when my father said I could go to Canada to avoid ever going back to Iraq. I told him I would do whatever the Army ordered me to do, because that’s what I had promised when I signed on the dotted line from the safety of a recruitment center so many years ago. It is this commitment that separates those who serve from those who do not.
My father passed away six months ago, after his long struggle with diabetes. He lived his entire life loving his country and his family. Like many military families that have sacrificed so greatly for this war, we, my father and I, had to decide where our duty lay at that moment: with country or family. For me, right then, they were one and the same.
