In honor of our amazing, and brave soldiers, I wanted to share something this Veterans Day. It’s the first chapter of my book, a compelling fish-out-of-water memoir about my time at Fort Jackson, South Carolina when I was in the Army National Guard. I was able to learn, grow, and truly appreciate the men and women who serve our country and although my time in the Army was short, I have so much respect for this institution. Enjoy the chapter (book to follow sometime soon), and go and hug (or at least thank) a vet today!

1. Going In

June 13, 1997

I stood on the curb of the Salt Lake International Airport saying a quick goodbye, though this was unusual for a social butterfly, I needed to be alone while I made my body move to its destination.

“Love you Mom.” Though I meant it, my regular gushing sentiment lacked emotion. I leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and grabbed my luggage – a small, stale smelling, electric-blue duffle bag that my big brother used for junior high gym class. I found it where he had left it in the garage at least a decade before.

The bag only held a few things; my underwear, glasses case, a few toiletries and several books (my scriptures, two books in Bulgarian, and an extra copy of the Book of Mormon). I had the feeling that I wouldn’t need much more than that where I was headed.

Through the sliding glass doors and up the elevator, walking forward, trying to look calm, like I comprehended what I was doing.

Security.

Yes, only one smelly carry-on bag is all that is necessary, I thought as the agent eyed me.

Down the never-ending halls, breathing, sweating, trying to move forward without thinking as I drew ever closer to the airplane.

I felt like an awkward chameleon, trying to disappear into the walls, though I looked like a possessed zombie forcing myself to take each awkward step forward. Everything felt as gray as the shirt and jeans that I chose to wear that day. My friends at the guard unit had told me, “Wilhelm, don’t stick out. The drill sergeants are just looking for people to make examples of.”

I wanted to blend in so badly. Would my smiley, friendly nature – one that’s a little loud, sometimes obnoxious, and of course, intensely religious be able to be suppressed for ten weeks?  It would only be a matter of time before I was noticed, and then, how would I be made an example of?  I imagined punishments involving whips.

“Why did you just smile at me?” A raging, faceless drill sergeant would question, cracking his leather weapon, as I stood bound to a tree.

“I don’t know, I’m just a friendly person I guess,” I would whimper.

 His faceless mass turned crimson at my answer.

“Spare me!  This is the Army. There is no place for friendly. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”

CRAACK!! The whip sliced the air.

“YOU (crack)

CALL (crack)

YOURSELF (crack)

A SOLDIER (craaaaack, crack)?”

“N-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!” I screamed.

 I practiced squelching my normal behaviors and opted for those I picked up watching others on public busses – I didn’t talk much, didn’t catch anyone’s eye in a warm engaging smile, or even look around me. Numbly, I made my body walk to the gate, hand off my ticket, get on the airplane, and sit in the seat.

As I looked out the window at the beautiful green Wasatch mountains, the plane began to make its run, lurch, and then took its amazing jump into the sky which made my belly quiver and my soul shake with wonder. I love the moment of take-off. But the joy of the experience was fleeting and as I watched the world grow smaller and all I could think was, why am I doing this?

I sifted through memories and recalled the day at Southern Utah University (SUU) that started it all. After the last class, I trudged to my apartment feeling homesick for Bulgaria, a place that had been my home for the previous 18 months. My pining was suddenly cut short by an unexpected phone call.

“Hey,” my Dad said excitedly on the other end, “how would you like to join the Army?”

I laughed heartily, “Hi, Dad, how are you?”

“Fine, I’ve got to tell you what happened to me today,” he said.

“Just a moment,” I dropped my book bag on the kitchen floor, grabbed a bag of cookies off the pantry shelf and walked into the living room for a chat.

“Okay, what happened to you today?” I plopped down onto the nasty brown-and-orange plaid college apartment couch.

“Well, as fate would have it, Sergeant Dale Rasmussen walked into work and we began to chat about our children.”

“Who is Sergeant Rasmussen?” I said while swallowing a partially chewed mouthful of cookie that scratched my throat on the way down.

“He’s a recruiter for the Army National Guard who can probably get you in as an interrogator.”

“What?” I brushed the crumbs that littered my shirt, onto the brown carpet that hadn’t been replaced or shampooed since it was installed in the seventies.

“We were talking about our kids and their missions. I told him that you had just come back and he said that they need Bulgarian speakers.”

“For what?”

“For their Bulgarian language unit,” Dad said, as if it were a given that there would be a need for Bulgarian translators and interpreters.

“But Dad,” I said, picking a chunk of chocolate chip out from between my molars, “I speak gospel Bulgarian, not Army Bulgarian.”

“They’ll teach you what you need to know,” he said confidently.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking the bag and wondering who ate all the cookies.

“Ryss,” he said, “you need a job.”

“I have a new job,” I said. Then I remembered just how much I hated cleaning urinals at 4:30 in the morning. “But … exactly what would it entail?”

“Well,” I could hear the smile in his voice, “You would come up to Salt Lake and train one weekend a month with your unit…”

That didn’t sound too bad.

“And you could do basic training this summer.”

Gulp.

“Basic Training,” I tried to say it casually, but my voice cracked.

I always knew there was a date with boot camp in my future, that strong impression came when I was just eight years old – this knowledge that I would go to the Army’s Basic Training, but somehow, I wouldn’t be in the military. Though how that would be possible, my little mind could not figure out.

“Dad, seriously! I’m like a …” I scouted around the apartment and saw my roommate’s exercise ball, “… a giant yellow rubber ball, always bouncing up and down. I’m joyful! Happy! And people in the military are more like … heavy … metal … balls.”

“Like hand grenades?” My Dad offered with a smile in his voice.

“Yeah, and hand grenades don’t bounce, Dad!”

“No, they just explode!”

We laughed together, but my mind started to swirl thinking about grenades and strange childhood impressions, so I hurriedly tried to change the subject, “hey, wait till you hear about my Geology class.”

I successfully maneuvered the discussion to how much I was enjoying college at SUU and how strange it was to be home because I kept looking around for my missionary companion and I had to stop the urge to spit out random Bulgarian words to everyone who looked at me.

My sister, Fiona, walked in right as we were finishing up the conversation.

“Hey, Dad, Fi just came home, do you want to talk to her?”

“Well of course, but Ryss, I want you to think seriously about this opportunity,” he said in a way that only fathers can.

“Yeah, sure,” I blew it off on the outside and tried to push it off on the inside. But the inside is a lot harder to fool.

For the next few days, I struggled to put the conversation behind me. After all, I should be flirting and being courted, not trying on combat boots. Despite my mother’s warning that there were “no men” in Cedar City, Utah, the campus was swarming with them – so many wonderful candidates for my list of potential suitors!

But there’s something about impressions from the Holy Ghost.

 Once Dad presented the idea, a crowbar couldn’t get it out of my mind. The scriptures do say that the Holy Spirit will, “bring all things to your remembrance [1],” and, as silly as it seemed for me to go, it also felt right – as if it were a very important thing for me to do, whether or not I became Career Military.

After a few weeks, I broke down and decided to weigh out the pros and cons.

Pros:

1. Money (SUU wasn’t bereft of men, but small-town colleges are very limited as to job opportunities.)
2. I would get to use my Bulgarian language skills.
3. It would be an exciting adventure, and I’d learn a lot.
4. Maybe I would meet my future husband in the Army. As one of my roommates put it, “you never know when you’re going to meet your EC [Eternal Companion].”

Cons:

1. I’d be joining the ARMY.

I finally took the question to the temple, and asked Heavenly Father to really help me get an answer that I would understand, and please NOT just a warm fuzzy. When we were there, a man said a special prayer. In it, he asked a blessing on the youth and I thought, aww, I used to be part of that group.

Then he asked for the Lord to bless the missionaries, and I thought, that used to be me, too.

Finally, he asked for a blessing on the military men and women and at that moment, a thought (independent of my own) came into my mind, saying, that is where you belong now.

When that very powerful idea came, I knew that it was a good and right thing for me to do and those thoughts were coupled with a feeling of extreme peace.

Then I began to pray intensely.

“Please, I’ll go on this road, Heavenly Father. I’ll go wherever it leads me. Even if it means that I have to sign up for eight years and not just Basic Training. I’ll even go to war if that’s what you need me to do, but please make it so that I don’t have to kill anyone. Please give me a miracle so that I will never have to do that and I’ll join the Army.”

I felt like I had just made an acceptable agreement, and that somehow, I would never have to be in that situation.

As we left the temple, my dad was bouncing on his heels. “Well?”

“Call Sergeant Rasmussen,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Oh dear,” said my mom slowly, “you do realize, darling that you might end up being a secret weapon for the enemy.”

“Ha, ha,” I wriggled onto my seat in the car. “What are you saying, that I’m going to turn on my country?”

“No, my darling,” she still had a proper British accent after years of living in the States, “I mean that you haven’t had a lot of practice at athleticism. You can be rather clumsy, you know.”

The vision of a moment when I was seventeen came to mind. I just stood looking at the sky watching a softball as it kept falling and falling toward my face. I didn’t move, just watched it until I received my first black eye.

“Yeah, I guess clumsy is the right word,” I admitted freely.

 “Don’t worry,” said Dad, the military authority, “I made it through basic training just fine.”

“Oh, good, so they let you do ‘thinking’ stuff instead of all the running?” I joked.

“Well, let’s just say that the only thing that I had a problem with was throwing hand grenades.”

“You had to throw grenades? Seriously? That’s really cool!”

“Yes, but I couldn’t throw far enough. I suspect that they may have helped me out a little so that I could graduate and move on to advanced training.” There was a mysterious quality to his voice; I didn’t catch it at the time, too busy thinking about what sorts of training they might have in store for me. We began to drive away from the spirituality of the temple and into the reality of what I had just agreed to.

The plane jostled me back to the present, and I looked at the sky full of clouds, trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep my way on the flight across the country. Finally, we touched down, at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia. I grabbed my bag and followed the mindless train of people until I met up with trainees from all over the US.

“Army recruits this way,” someone called.

I began to walk toward the voice, but apparently, was the only one who heard it. From behind me two kids flirted through the mass of indistinguishable teenage adventure hubbub that echoed and mixed with airport noise.

“Oh my gosh, can you believe we can’t wear makeup? I’m gonna die!”

“You think that’s bad, they’re gonna shave your head just like the guys.”

“Nu-uh!” she was a ditz, playing right into his teasing. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes.

“Heck yeah!” Only, he didn’t say ‘heck.’

This would be the beginning of the assault of all swear words, great and small on my poor, innocent ears. Eventually, I learned that overworked swear words lose all power, like flat root beer, watered down, in a hot car.

“ALL ARMY RECRUITS THIS WAY!” His technique was improving.

Drivers, not Army drill sergeants, were trying to herd us onto the buses that would take us on the final part of our trip – the four-hour ride to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. It was like watching substitute teachers trying to round up elementary students on the day after Halloween.

Once aboard, the drivers tried to settle us down by putting on a comedic movie called In the Army Now. I was mildly interested in the movie, but couldn’t concentrate with all the chatter.

“I heard that if you’re out of line, your bunkmates beat you with soap stuffed in their socks!”

         “That’s in a movie!”

         “Oh yeah, it happened to my uncle.”

It was obnoxious, and I was anxious. Soon the movie was over and it was dark outside. People were settling down. The mood began to calm and the talking became quieter. During the third hour of our ride, the conversations became much sparser.

         “So, where ya from?” The ditzy flirt had her eye on a new target.

Her neighbor’s reply was gruff. “Did I look like I wanted to talk to you?”

         “Oh,” she whispered. I felt really bad for her, and yet, my secret joy was that she had finally stopped talking.

These attempts at discussion were usually short and toward the end of the hour, whispered. By the fourth and final hour, it got eerily quiet. Some pretended to be asleep, leaning back with their eyes closed. They weren’t. You could tell by the lack of sound. No snoring, no heavy breathing. Just quiet contemplation. They were finally getting it; we were about to enter the unknown where all the military stereotypes were going to come true.

What are you doing? I thought. Why are you doing this? What are the drill sergeants going to do to you? What if someone hurts you?  What if you go to war? You’ll die and never get married. Or you’ll be some weird returned missionary, Army soldier, old maid, that no one wants to marry! I was in a full-fledged, silent, mental panic attack.

I looked out the window and tried to surreptitiously breathe. It was so dark. We were going through a forest. Where are they taking us? Do these drivers even know where they’re going? Am I even on the right bus? What if we get into a wreck? Well, then… I wouldn’t have to go to basic training anymore and it wouldn’t be my fault. But then, what if I got hideously disfigured from the accident and then I never would get married…

I was driving myself crazy. So, I did the only thing that I could think of. Heavenly Father, what am I doing? Help me! I prayed.

As I prayed, my mind caught hold of a scripture that I had often thought about, Ether 2: 23-25. When the brother of Jared was asking the Lord what they should do for light in their ships, He countered by asking back, “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?”

I felt the impression of the Holy Ghost reminding me of the scripture, but making it personalized to my situation, I brought you here, and I will prepare a way for you. You cannot cross [the great deep of basic training], save I prepare you against the waves of the sea and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?”

To tell the truth, I really felt like I was about to be swallowed up in a deep ocean — push-ups, sweat, swear words and I could only imagine the other horrors. I realized that the Lord, through the Holy Ghost was asking me, just as He did for the brother of Jared, what I needed to get through this experience.

“What do you need me to give you so that you will have light in this place?”

Feeling miniscule and I cried out from the quiet part of my soul that prayer comes from, I need thee to be with me. Please don’t leave me alone here. Please, not for one moment – don’t leave me to do this alone. Let thy Holy Spirit be with me every second of my time here.

Then I felt different. My mind was quiet.

Thank you, Heavenly Father.

Soon after, I could see a pulsing, ugly orange glow from lights ahead of us. We pulled up to the reception station and the recruits began to file off the bus. I could hear some indistinct yelling from outside, but I felt calm, and even (could it be?) a little excited to be on an adventure.

---

[1] John 14:26