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Show Tyler Jewke 14 D mb r 2009 JCW: While you were there, did you feel like you were missing out or that you were letting people down or anything like that? Did you feel like that at all? TJ: No, in honesty I was a little relieved. I kind of knew in the back of my mind that a deployment was always going to be there, that there was always going to be that possibility. But the other part inside of me was saying, I don't want to get deployed. I don't want to leave home. I'd just rather stay here, especially when I'm going to a war zone where I could possibly die. I'm only twenty-one, twenty-two years old. I have so much more that I want to do. So there was a lot of fear with me in being deployed, in going to Iraq, going to another county, especially for war purposes, so, yeah. JCW: You hadn't drilled very much before you went on your mission, right? TJ: Yeah, just a few times. JCW: So did you already meet people that you were good friends with in the unit? Did you have a rapport with people, like you probably do now because you've been with them for so long? TJ: No, none whatsoever. I maybe knew two people. I had my best friend that had joined at the same time as me, but by the time I got back from my mission, I didn't know anybody. My best friend that had joined with me, he had been released from the military. He'd been even discharged, so as a result of that, there wasn't a whole of people left that I knew inside of that unit. I had my friends from high school that were still there, but there were a lot of differences with it, especially the fact that most of them had advanced to specialist, they'd advanced in rank a little bit. Then you get placed inside of sections that you don't know the people that are inside it anyway. So it just got to the point where I didn't know a whole lot of people. Then on top of that, that is when I really felt like I 16 |
