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thedrifter
11-21-07, 08:14 AM
Columnist
True Bonds Are Forged, Not Found

Over the course of my life, I have discovered that there are different kinds of friendship. Here at Georgetown, most of our friends are people who enjoy similar academic or recreational pursuits. But these friendships, while valuable, tend not to be as deeply-rooted and long-lasting as we would like them to be. In order to find those that do, it is often necessary to share an intense experience, and unfortunately, we must venture beyond Healy Gates into a turbulent and often dangerous world to build these types of bonds with other people.

In the summer of 2000, I was 18 and preparing for my first attempt at college. I had saved up a few thousand dollars by working odd jobs over the previous two years and decided to spend most of it in a whirlwind backpacking tour of Europe during July and August. I stayed in hostels, enjoying a bohemian existence during those two months. I did not really discover myself or find life-long friends on my European adventure. I did, however, meet a young woman who had just graduated from the Air Force Academy and was on vacation in Rome before her first assignment as a second lieutenant. At the time, I was adamantly opposed to even the remote possibility of my becoming a member of the armed forces. Like many people my age, I thought military service was for close-minded, rigid, conservative types and those with nowhere else to go. It wasn’t the place for bright, free spirits like me.

But six months later, I found myself in basic training. What brought about the change? The biggest motivator was frustration with myself. I felt that I was not doing anything to contribute to society, and I saw the army as a remedy for that frustration.

Bohemian fantasies died quickly, and I spent the first couple of years of my military service regretting my decision to enlist. I often found army life boring, with its own sub-culture that sometimes holds values different from the rest of the country.

After spending two years in Korea, I was deployed to Iraq. My time in Baghdad had as much impact on me as all of my years of scholastic education. I came to know myself through war. I learned how tightly the chords of my heart are stretched between goodness and brutality.

And I was lucky. I spent very little time in actual combat, unlike most infantrymen who go on regular patrols looking for insurgents. I would estimate that I spent less than 24 hours of my year in Iraq engaged in combat operations. My war was mostly a mental exercise. Fortunately, my experience after leaving Iraq has been a favorable one.

There are not many veterans who have the opportunity to attend a school like Georgetown, surrounded by bright, ambitious students and distinguished professors.

Despite my good fortune, I am humbled by the e-mails I have received in response to this column and the articles I have written for other newspapers. Military officers, enlisted service members, veterans and members of military families have sent me dozens of heartfelt messages of gratitude and encouragement. These are the people who make military service so rewarding.

One veteran Marine Corps pilot told me not to overanalyze my time in combat. “I flew 326 missions in Vietnam during a 12-month tour, but if you add up the actual time I was going one-on-one with the bad guys on bombing or rocket runs, it probably did not add up to 15 minutes,” the pilot wrote. “So long as you performed your job as you were trained, despite a healthy dose of fear, there are no reasons for self-doubt after the fact.”

An army veteran described, “I am now 63 years old. I still am the same grunt who served in the 25th Division in late ’67 to July ’68 within my heart and mind. … In more ways than I can count, I never left South Vietnam.”

Another Vietnam veteran wrote of the proud brotherhood forged in war. “We’re all part of the greatest fraternity on earth,” he wrote.

Many struggle to adjust after they return home. And not only soldiers. One woman wrote, “My own experience is very different, having been a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa 20 years ago, but I found the coming home was actually harder than going. And I was forever changed by that experience.”

Finally, this came from the grandmother of a Navy corpsman who shared my battleground: “My grandson was seriously wounded on April 2nd [2005] in that raid at Abu Ghraib. He was a Navy medic and pulled some of those wounded Marines out of the towers before being wounded himself. He had five gunshot wounds in the back and, while attending to one of the Marines, discovered he was bleeding out from the back wounds. He pulled up his vest to put on a morphine patch so he could continue working when a grenade was tossed into the area. Next thing he knew, he was in a field hospital.”

That same night, I was in that very field hospital, and though I didn’t know her grandson or the Marines he was trying to save, I do remember seeing their blood on the floor before it was mopped up by an orderly. That medic’s grandmother told me that he has healed, and, like many veterans of combat, he is eager to return to the fray his military brethren are facing.

We are a band of brothers and sisters, stretching across generations, ethnicities, religions, social classes and every other factor that seems to divide much of America.

This may sound like the kind of statement a brainwashed soldier would say in defense of his actions. But I am proud to be a soldier, despite all the difficulties and controversies of war. Most people will never understand — and I hope they never have to. I don’t wish war on anyone, but having faced it, I’m glad that I was not alone.

William Quinn is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service and a former staff sergeant in the United States Army. He can be reached at quinn@thehoya.com Aimless Feet appears every other Tuesday.

Ellie