10 Questions for My Husband

Every so often I chat with Sam about random things…sometimes his military time comes up in those chats. Have you ever heard the phrase or perhaps played the game “20 Questions?” Well, we are going to shorten that version and just do half.

*Disclaimer: These are actual responses from my husband…who has a “military sense of humor” at times.*

10. How old were you when you enlisted?

Sam: “20. I already had a year and a half in college.”

9. Where was your first tour?

Sam: “Iraq. I was there seven months. I was a replacement, in other words, our company had lost people and needed to bring in people to fill in the gaps.”

8. What is one of your best memories about deployment?

Sam: “Do I have to name one? I mean, I walked on a bridge that Moses had supposedly walked over. I saw Abraham’s tomb, the birthplace of Abraham. I sat on Saddam’s throne, went to his palaces, not while he was there of course. I am part of history, which is hard to fathom because I was in Baghdad the night he was hung. It was a terrible night for us, but it is history. I went to a village and I have pictures of myself with my pinky up drinking tea—having delivered soccer balls and water and water to villages. I was invited into a house (which is a big deal) and as I was walking out a guy was holding a baby. He asked me to hold his baby in Arabic. Thank god I had my gloves on because that baby peed all over me!”

7. What is one of your tougher memories about deployment?

Sam: “Standing in what is called the last call formation. You know, the boots, the gun, and the helmet? You go into an area and you have those up there with a picture and you have some people speak, maybe a commander, battalion commander, and they do roll call. The roll call is the platoon that the person was in, they will say like 6 or 7 names, those people will yell out, “here first sergeant” and then the one that the KIA gets their name said three times and a 21 gun salute is fired. One by one you walk up to the boots, helmet, and rifle, and you salute and walk out.”

6. Which country was more tolerable at the time? Iraq or Afghanistan?

Sam: “Believe it or not, there’s no comparison. Afghanistan was mountains and the mountains we went through were very dangerous. The northern part of Iraq was mountainous–Mosul north of it was mountains, but everything else was pretty flat. In Afghanistan, if you went 50 miles it took 8 hours because you are going through a mountain pass. In Iraq, uh, depending on where you are going in Iraq, because it was so open there were areas where we had direct orders that said “you will not drive faster than thirty miles an hour” due to the IED alley. Getting into Tikrit was a miracle, especially if you didn’t get hit. So, they put restrictions on speed. Afghanistan didn’t have that.”

5. How many times did you start and stop school—you mentioned that you were in your first year in college…was that tough?

Sam: “I stopped school to go to Basic, then started. Stopped school to do my first tour, then picked it back up. Did one semester, and finals week of that one semester got deployment orders to head back. Came back and started my design program and made it until my senior thesis and got deployed again. It was hard. Lots of my friends graduated and when I would come back there were strangers. No one was with me, I had to start over again. Especially after my last tour. The people that I graduated with they would have been in a sophomore class if I would have kept going and I knew of them, but I didn’t really know them. It was hard.”

4. What is something crazy, odd, or gross that happened while you were deployed, you know, shenanigans?

Sam: “I think you need to call Pete on that one. Hahaha. He can explain that one. We’d been out for two weeks on mission, it was the rainy season or winter–like February or March, rainy season. We pull into Talafar (40 miles from the Syrian border), we’d been up all night, and we got there around 8 in the morning or something. Most of us decided to bed down. Steve and some other people decided they were going to the wash racks. Apparently, it was a long line and me and Pete took about a four-hour nap or so. We were going to get up at noon and go to lunch. Well, as we are coming out of transit housing (if you don’t live on base you live in a conex since you’ve been on a mission), and Steve is just pulling in. He was in a freshly washed truck. Gleaming, so pretty. We have a small conversation with him. *Sidenote, Sgt. Manning and myself are E5 Sergeants at the time. Steve is maybe an E3 or E4 (private or specialist).* So Pete and I pick up a handful of mud and throw it against his truck. It was so much fun watching this mud splatter on his truck that we didn’t stop. Pete took mud and climbed up on the truck and smashed the mud on the windshield. I think we did this because we were immature. This was my second tour.”

3. What happened with the truck?

Sam: “We go about our business after the mud. We probably laid down again, you know, nap and all. Later on, we had to be out at trucks because we were leaving for a mission and Scheckel comes out. He sees his truck and loses all military bearing, and proceeds to go off on Sgt. Hoe and Sgt. Manning. It didn’t do any good. Because you can’t go off on people who outrank you, who don’t care, and who are immature.”

2. Best meal you had overseas?

Sam: “Camp Wolverine in Afghanistan. Their spread for Thanksgiving and Christmas, like it had ice sculptures, that’s no joke. After being out on mission both holidays we ended up at Camp Wolverine. We missed the lunch meal. But we made it for dinner (both holidays). You know, there was watermelon with all these unique designs, and cake, it was a good meal.”

And the final question of the night…what’s one thing you would like civilians to know about deployment that they can’t read about or see on the news?

Sam: “Exactly that. Deployment is something you can’t read in a book or experience from a movie.”

Sam Hoekstra and Pete Manning in a gun truck somewhere around Baghdad.

Sam, pinky up, enjoying tea (probably before that baby peed on him).