War and Me

War and Me
A Personal Essay by: AnnaBeth M. Fish

I had to write this for my Experience of Literature class. It focuses on the Literature of War.

In some ways, I have been around war my entire life, whether I was aware of it or not. I was born on December 7th, 1988, forty-seven years after “the date that will live in infamy” (FDR.) As a result, I always knew what the date meant, although I admittedly did not fully understand it until I was older.
Another reason I have been around and influenced by war my entire life is that my dad was in the United States Air Force when I was born. At the time, he was a young lieutenant. The day I was born, my dad was scheduled to give a very important brief. As the story goes, the brief was apparently not going to go well because everyone knew that the officer he was supposed to brief was not going to like what he would hear. My dad was very worried about missing this briefing, so he, according to my mom, made her sit facing away from a clock so she couldn’t “fake” her contractions. Well, in the end, my dad missed his briefing and I was born. Supposedly, the officer he was supposed to brief only had one question: “Is it a boy or a girl?”
That cute little anecdote leads into my childhood of moving from base to base as an Air Force brat. I remember being young and seeing my daddy in uniform. I don’t think I ever really understood what made his job so different from others, partially because most of the people I went to school with were AF brats. As I’ve gotten older, I understand more and more. With that understanding has come a lot more respect for my dad, and for the uncountable number of others who have also put on uniforms and served our country.
I was in seventh grade on September 11th, 2001. I remember the day pretty clearly. It was sunny and nice outside, warm. By lunch time, gossip was running rampant. Some of the rumors I heard ranged from everything from there were bombings, to an airplane crash. Finally, the school realized that they needed to tell everyone what was going on and we were all called into the auditorium where we watched the coverage of the carnage. I remember being confused, and not really understanding what was going on. My mom came to the school and picked up my brother and me. My dad came home from work early, and together, we went to church and then later listened to President Bush’s address to the nation. I think that may be one of the days where I grew up from being a child to an adult. Violence changes you. The impact of war is tremendous. I know it is bigger than I understand even today. But I know on that day, I realized for the first time that the United States is not perfect, and it is not a safe haven. We are just as vulnerable to violence as any other nation. It was a terrifying realization.
Today, I have many friends who are deployed or have been deployed. Every time I see a story of more casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, fear steeps into my stomach. I say a quick prayer, naming all of my friends by name, and then adding a general prayer for all soldiers. The fear sits heavy in my stomach until I hear the all-clear. Sometimes I am lucky, and I can talk to my friends on a daily basis. Sometimes I don’t hear from them for days or weeks. During that time I often try to comfort myself by reminding myself that bad news travels faster than good, that if something bad had happened, chances are I would have heard about it already.
The deployment is only half the battle for my friends. I have lost one friend permanently to the after affects of the war. He killed himself when he heard that he was going to get deployed again. He simply could not even handle the thought of going back to Iraq. Some wounds can’t be seen. Those may be the most dangerous. I have one friend, Aaron, who has been deployed three times. Every day I pray that he will never be deployed again, but I know the damage has been already done. Aaron can’t sleep most nights without sleeping pills. Even with the pills, sometimes he still can’t sleep, and when he can, his dreams are nightmares, plagued by the brutality he has seen. Aaron once was a quiet, sweet person. Sometimes he still is, but frequently, all I see now is the hardened, calloused Aaron who has violent thoughts and tendencies. He will never be the same again. It’s hard for me to know that. It is even harder for him. Aaron is not the only one. There are thousands of Aarons all over the United States, all over the world.
I have a friend named John. John graduated from high school a year before me. The summer before my senior year, right after John’s graduation, we, along with a few others, went on a mission trip. We went to Moss Point, MS, where we did Hurricane Katrina relief work. While we were in MS, John received his sign on bonus from the United States Army. On our last day of work, John wrote a check to the family we helped, telling them he wanted them to have it. We returned home on a Monday night. Three days later, John went to basic training.
The next year, fall of 2007, as I was packing to go to college, John was packing too. He was packing to go to Afghanistan. Over the next few months, John posted blog updates online for all of his anxious friends and family members. Sometimes, there were funny pictures. One picture in particular made me laugh when I saw it. That laugh had mixed emotions though. It was a picture of John holding some sort of missile. For a morale booster he and his buddies used to write “dedications” on the missiles. On one he wrote “To the Al-Qaida, from the Church of the Epiphany Youth group. Only God judges, but it’s our job to arrange your meeting.” I was shocked. This was not the John I knew. The John I knew gave a family he barely knew $2,000 so they would have a better life. This John seemed to be hardened, cruel and violent. I know that John always was and always will be a good man. I also know that that is his job. It is his job to arrange the meetings.
John was wounded in action in October, about a week before he was scheduled to come home. He is still recuperating, though he is now home instead of at Walter Reed Medical Center. He will be alright. But there are plenty of Johns who are not.
Those are the main ways war has affected me. I could probably keep writing for pages and pages about war and its affects on me, on my friends, on my family. I could write about my dad and his experience with the veteran health care system. I could write about my family heritage. I am a direct descendent of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. I could write about my visit to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I could write about my two cousins who are Marines. Some stories are too long for one single personal essay. War and its interactions with my life is one of those stories.