Iraq Veteran: A Woman's War Experience (Part 2)

Written by Kate Hoit Wednesday, March 03 2010

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Part 2 of a two-part series

The following two-part article originally was published Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 in the Albany Student Press and was updated Friday, Nov. 20, 2009. U.S. Army veteran Kate Hoit is a student at State University of New York Albany. [READ PART 1]

The editor of The Anaconda Times, the base newspaper, told me I’d be covering a grand opening of a water treatment facility the Army had installed in a nearby village.

To get there I rode in the “Batmobile” with a sergeant. This wasn’t a high-speed vehicle that could ward off improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades. It was a naked Humvee -- it wasn’t armored. It didn’t even have real windows or a roof. Its top was built almost entirely out of canvas. If we hit an IED, it would’ve blown us up into a million pieces.

I refused to get into the Humvee. I realized that I was just a warm body to the Army and apparently one that was replaceable. I thought about staying back and sitting at my desk the whole day, but I decided to go.

Before I got in, I figured one good thing might come out of it if I died: People back home would know we still didn’t have proper equipment.

When we got to the control point to leave our base, we locked and loaded our M-16s. I pulled my feet up and scrunched my head down. The driver asked me what I was doing. I told him I didn’t want my head to get shot at and I didn’t want to lose my legs if we hit an IED. I knew this wouldn’t really save me, but it made me feel better.

I thought about those emails I hadn’t responded to. I started to feel like I should have.

One night I called my mom, and I asked her to talk to my dad. She fumbled a few words before telling me that he was in the hospital.

Before I had left for Iraq, my then 71-year-old dad relapsed from 10 years of sobriety. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with him, and he managed to stop drinking for the last few weeks I was home. My mom told me he had stopped working and eating, locked himself in his room for three months, and started to drink again.

One day he wandered downstairs, sat on our living room floor, and uttered a few things about his dead mother. When he was admitted to the hospital, the doctors told my mom that if he hadn’t come out of his room, he would’ve died from dehydration and starvation.

Sometimes I wish he had.