JENA STEWART

Jena Stewart grew up in South Florida. She served in the Army National Guard. Her job was 14 Juliet, which is Sentinel radar. She got out in 2007.

I want to drop out of high school,” I tell my father. “I want to get my GED and join the Army National Guard.”

I have no reason to drop out. I have good grades. It’s not like I can’t graduate. I’m just so done with high school. I don’t understand cliques—the whole society of it. I’ve always been mature for my age, which explains why I feel like an adult stuck in a teenager’s body.

My father shifts in his chair. He’s a very, very tough and hardworking person. That’s the way he raised me. He never questions whatever it is I want to do as long as I have a plan. If you have a plan and know what you’re doing, he always tells me, I’ll back you up.

I glance at my stepmother. She’s a public school teacher. I know it’s going to be hard to convince her that I should drop out of high school.

I look back to my father, sitting next to the Army recruiter, and I tell him why I want to join the military.

I was at Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida, when 9/11 happened. President Bush was at Booker Elementary. We all watched his plane take off from Sarasota International Airport because it was the only plane in the sky at the time. Some of us were crying hysterically and others, like me, were simply overwhelmed. I called my mother to let her know I was okay, and later, as I was walking home, I had this eureka moment—one that felt like someone had just hit me across the face with a brick.

For the past sixteen years, I’d been thinking only about myself—about how I felt out of place in high school, how I was convinced something was wrong with me, yada yada yada. It was all me, me, me, I, I, I. For the first time in my life, I realized there was a world out there way bigger than me. When the school had a job fair, I talked to a recruiter at the Army table, and suddenly my life made sense. I had a direction. A purpose.

My father leans forward in his chair. Because I’m under seventeen, I need him to sign the paperwork.

To my surprise, my stepmother says, “No one really cares about a high school diploma. All they care about is a college diploma.”

My father’s gaze is pinned on me. “Do you really feel like you’re done with high school?”

“I really want to do this.”

“Then you have my blessing.”

I drop out of high school and get my GED. The day I turn seventeen, I head to the local Military Entrance Processing Station and take the ASVAB—the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test. Afterward, I take myself to dinner. I order myself a dessert with a single candle, knowing where my life is going.

  

Basic is tough. They wake you up in the middle of the night and they’re smoking you physically and mentally—they’re doing anything they can to break you.

Everyone is freaking out, but I love it. I love the push of it all. Yes, it’s physically and mentally exhausting, but I have this thought that gets me through it—one that I share with other soldiers who look like they’re getting to the point of breaking.

“This is their job,” I tell them. “These men go home and kiss their daughters and tuck them in bed. They go out to dinner with their wives. They’re not monsters. They need to break us down to build us up.”

It’s the summer of 2002 and hot as hell. Midway through basic, I decide to shave my head. I don’t want to fiddle with my hair, wash it, make sure I have shampoo. I’m not here to look pretty. I’m here for one reason, and one reason only: get through this as easily as possible.

The day we march to the range, I have my battle gear on, Kevlar, everything. We’re standing in formation when the drill sergeant screams my name and says, “Get the fuck up here.”

I walk up to him, wondering what I did wrong.

“Take off your fucking Kevlar.”

I pull it off and then I’m standing there, in front of a ton of people, wondering what’s going to happen to me.

“Now this—this,” the drill sergeant hollers. “This is what I’m talking about. This right here—this is a motherfucking soldier. All you other chicks out there—‘I’ve got to do my hair’ and all that bullshit—take a good look at this…”

As he goes off, I can’t hold back the smile. Oh, yeah, I just scored major brownie points today.

The US hasn’t declared war yet, but we know we’re going. The instructors keep telling us. I go to El Paso, Texas, to learn the specifics of my MOS training—14 Juliet, which is manning actual physical radar machines, identifying any unknown aircraft, and, if they’re not friendly, calling up the Stinger missile boys to shoot them out of the sky. When I return home to Daytona, I’m told I’m going to deploy—and I’ll be shipping out immediately.

I head to New Mexico for training. They stick us out in the middle of the desert and make us do everything we’ll be doing overseas. We train hard for months.

The unit I’m attached to is terrible.

I’m young, pretty, and naive—and surrounded by men, most of whom are teenagers, too. The handful of women here are all spread out in different platoons. I’m the sole female in the unit, and the men delight in tormenting me—catcalls, sexually derogatory names, even spreading rumors like how I’m screwing guys in the maintenance room. It gets so bad, I’m not allowed to be within three hundred feet of a male barracks—because the men ganged up and said that I’m the problem.

A week before we’re about to deploy, the US declares war. That same day, my unit is pulled out of formation.

To be honest, I’m relieved.

Happy.

Deep down, I know if I go over there, I won’t be coming back home alive. I know this because not a single guy in my unit has my back. They’ve made that clear over these past few months. If we go over there, I’m certain they’d throw me under the bus any chance they got.

In 2003, around Christmastime, I’m told I’m going overseas on the first of the year. I know now not to get too overwhelmed because things can change—and they do. I’m not going overseas. I’m going to Washington, DC, to essentially make sure there isn’t another 9/11.

There are roughly five Sentinel radars spread out all over DC. Our job is to watch the skies 24/7. For the next year, we work in shifts, checking for bad guys. I have to take different routes each day to make sure people aren’t following me. I carry a weapon with me everywhere—not for self-protection, but to protect our equipment.

I love the work. And I feel such pride wearing the uniform. Every day, when I put it on, I feel a sense of purpose.

In 2005, when I return from DC, I start working hurricane relief. I’m sent to Florida to drive a convoy, through a hurricane, to Tallahassee.

We travel in Humvees with canvas tops and doors—and no AC. It’s the middle of the night and raining like crazy—so incredibly loud—and the Humvees’ headlights are terrible. We can’t see shit.

We arrive in Tallahassee—and it’s still raining like crazy. We unload at our quarters—a barn at a fairground—in calf-deep water. There’s cow shit and cockroaches all over the barn floor, but we grab a couple of hours of sleep.

The next morning, we distribute clean water and ice. We drive all over the place, in five or six trucks. During a ride in what feels like the middle of nowhere, I see a really old man trying to clean up his property.

The entire convoy pulls over. We clean up his yard in fifteen minutes.

The old man is in tears. His wife is crying.

“Thank you,” she says to us. “I thought my husband was going to die out here.”

I know my job isn’t huge—I’m not overseas and doing something that has a big global impact—but I’m still doing something important for the United States, and it gives me pride. I’m a soldier. This is what I was meant to do.