Reply #10: I'm going to have to dig up my separation papers [View All]

[whatever4]

So I can quote word for word what we sign when we separate. So I can illustrate just how far out of reach it was for so many of us to have possibly thought we'd be sent to Iraq. It was never an emergency. HAVE to dig up those papers.

You just wouldn't believe how many people practically LAUGHED at my concerns, when I refused to "take the easy money" and do the one weekend a month, one week a year. You have NO idea. I am not exaggertating. I was laughed at, for just the possibility. The possibility I saw enacted in real life just a few short years later.

But for one ounce less of stubborness on my part, I'd very likely be sent to Iraq too. And would I fight it? Would my family encourage me to go, or go to prison? A military prison? What would be my choice?? For me, I know, because I'm that way; headstrong. But for most people? Few and far between are those as skeptical and evil-minded as I. Very few. This fact hasn't always been pleasant to me, ususally being a detriment. It's no fun being the odd one out.

It isn't normal to be the odd man out. It isn't what we can expect from so very many soldiers being told "time to go". They will go. Our nation sends them into a meat grinder, and they will go. They, as did I, signed the paperwork. Most of them...listen to their families. Very few are as stubborn as I. I know. I was in.