Jeremy Pfistner crouches behind a truck. He peeks out and fires three shots at his enemy. Calling for backup, he tosses a grenade into the crossfire. Then he sees the enemy on top of a building. Looking carefully into the crosshairs, he lines up the shot and steadies his body. Suddenly, a bullet comes from his left and sends him falling to the ground, defeated. Pfistner gets up from his couch and turns off his Playstation. Today, the war zone was pretend. Three years ago, it was very much a reality.
Pfistner, a junior in English, has been on active duty for the Army the past eight years. He served in Afghanistan for seven months in 2001 and 2002 before going to Iraq for four months in 2003. Now that he is back in the United States, he decided to attend N.C. State.
Classes are a big change from life in the military, said the 30-year-old who is active in NCSU’s ROTC program. He said the experiences he gained in the Army have made him more mature and more able to focus on the classes in which he is enrolled.
Nathan Smith, a junior in industrial engineering, was deployed and “taken out of school” and has since returned to finish his studies. For Smith, the hardest part about the interruption was that many of his friends have already graduated and moved on. According to Smith, classes now seem less stressful because of his different outlook on life.
Phillip Yeakey, a junior in forest management, brought something besides a new outlook back from Iraq — a friend.
Yeakey, who also served in the Army in Iraq for the majority of 2003, said he met his roommate and best friend, Nick Geesy, in Fort Campbell before they were deployed together. Today, Yeakey said they are closer than ever. Yeakey plans on being the best man at Geesy’s wedding.
Yeakey spent much of his time in Iraq helping the civilians. His patrol rebuilt schools, handed out soccer balls to the children, fixed a water tower and restored order to the village they were stationed in, according to him.
The kids were the most touching part of the experience, according to Pfistner, who would give the children ice cream or other treats whenever possible.
“They were just so innocent,” he said.
According to Yeakey, the children’s respect and admiration for U.S. soldiers was a direct reflection of their parents. He said he gets mad at the common misconception that all Iraqis hate Americans, when he received handshakes and crowds clapped in response to the work done in their villages.
Yeakey said he feels in a world where media only seem interested in reporting the bad things like car bombs and soldier deaths, there should be more coverage of the positive aspects of the things troops are doing. “For every one combat mission there are 15 humanitarian missions,” Smith said. He watched a nonfunctional power plant become fully operational in less than three months. According to Smith, schools gave children, especially young girls, a chance to get an education they might not have received without U.S. support.
Pfistner said another common belief is that all soldiers are completely serious all the time.
“We feel just like everyone else,” said Pfistner about ways to pass the time.
He and his friends would do anything to keep morale high, such as playing cards, pulling practical jokes on each other and watching DVDs.
“Comedies,” he said, regarding his DVD choices. “Some of our favorites at the time were Orange County and Bruce Almighty.”
Pfistner said that comedies were a good distraction from the severity of the war.
Yeakey and Pfistner said they were surprised at the good food once they got in the city of Mosul.
According to Pfistner, there were small stands that sold food and other supplies, where he said he could get an entire rotisserie chicken and bread for about $2.00. Soldiers could even get an Iraqi version of a burger and fries: some type of meat and potatoes stuffed into a roll and eaten all at once.
For Yeakey and Pfistner, anything is a step up from an MRE — a meal ready to eat.
However, Iraq was not all DVDs and burgers. Besides the horrors associated with war, conditions were harsh at times. Yeakey said he wouldn’t be in contact with anyone back home for two months straight after he crossed over the border from Kuwait.
Pfistner, who mainly dealt with security, said the most disturbing thing about his experience was the differences in wealth. On a visit to one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces he saw marble walls, huge doors and a life-sized tree made of gold and crystal.
While the palaces were posh and lavish, the villages were quite the opposite, Pfistner said. People were living in huts, many with dirt floors and without roofs. Kids were shoeless. There was no running water. Seeing people living in such harsh conditions gave Pfistner a sense of shame, knowing the way that many people back home don’t even realize the privilege of a hot shower.
According to Pfistner, one of the scariest parts about the war was the raids on houses.
“You don’t know what’s in there,” he said. While he never had to pull a trigger inside, he talked of the hallways being the worst part of the houses. He said they were called “fatal funnels” because there was no way to escape them. Pfistner said his platoon was lucky to only receive one injury, when a grenade left shrapnel in a soldier’s leg. They were in Iraq guarding a tank on security when two grenades went off in the proximity, according to Pfistner. He could only describe the scene as “total chaos.” One thing Pfistner won’t talk about is having to kill another person. “We had to do what we had to do to ensure that our families would see us again,” Pfistner said.
Through the good memories and the bad, all three soldiers have one thing in common. All said, they have an accomplished sense of pride for their country.
“We’re just doing our job,” Pfistner said.