I don't sit near the door of restaurants anymore. I don't open my door without looking through the peep hole and requesting identification first. I watch people like a hawk watching a mouse from the sky. No I am not a stalker, or even crazy. I am a soldier, just home from the war.
Many people think that women don't actually see combat. Women are not typically in combat situations. Women are not infantry, or even cavalry scouts. However, we are combat medics, route clearance, and various other professions within the Army that get us close enough to battle.
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The Army invests a lot into training soldiers. Nothing will prepare you for that first day that you step off of the plane and land in Iraq or Afghanistan. The first thing that hits you is the heat. It's a dry heat and your tan t-shirt will be soaked with sweat in minutes. You just spent three days on a plane the last thing you want to do is stand in line and get briefs, but that is exactly what happens.
You spend the next 12 months away from your family, home, and any sort of civilian life. No matter what job you do it's never easy. Your emotionally tired, tensions are high and the heat is killer. Nights were always the worst for me. I would look up at the moon and know that half way around the world my kids were under that same moon.
We are told to embrace the people, but never fully trust them. Some locals will work on the base with you and the moment you almost get a little too friendly with them you hear about how some local soldiers on another base attacked our guys. Granted it was not the same locals you work with, but human nature keeps that wedge in between you and them. You just can't help but wonder how fast your workers would turn on you, or what kind of information they might be selling to someone else.
If you have a job where you get to stay on a well maintained base while deployed that's good. You probably won't earn any Purple Hearts but that also means you have less of a chance of dying or burying your buddy next to you. Now here is where it gets tricky; this does not in any way mean that you WONT die or get injured. I was in country less than three months and some insurgents tried to attack and overrun the base. Again though it was always the nights that were the worst. Bases are great targets for mortars, suicide bombers, and bombs in vehicles; most of the mortars came at night.
Every soldier loves to hear that they are coming home. I noticed though that I look at people differently. I don't approach cars I don't know, I don't sit where it's easy for someone to get behind me. I always do a quick check over on the people around me, and I stare even harder at the trash on the ground looking for any indication that it may be more than trash. So don't think for one moment that women in the military can't be just as affected as men about the war, or that we don't see combat or destruction. This is not a contest.