by Perry O'Brien

Common Dreams

02/08/05

I joined the Army on August 27th, 2001, just two weeks before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As naive as its sounds, I wasn't thinking about going to war when I signed up. I was thinking about jumping out of planes, learning medical skills, and getting a tangible experience that would be somehow more 'real' than the previous two years of college. Enlisting was totally spontaneous, and I never took time to sit down and consider how I really felt about war. A year and half later I found myself working in a field clinic in Kandahar, Afghanistan. As a company of medics, my unit saw the worst consequences of war: mutilated children, traumatized civilians, dead soldiers. Even then, at least for the first few months of my deployment, I didn't take time to consider the implications of what I was doing; I was too busy doing my job. It was the Afghani children that finally got me thinking...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0208-20.htm



Informant: Thomas L. Knapp