Karen Zakrzewicz grew up on a dairy farm in Thorp, Wisconsin, with three older siblings. Her father was in the National Guard and the reserve, as a combat engineer and an officer, and her grandfather was a drill sergeant during World War II. She is a sergeant in the Army Reserve, and her job is 68 X-ray, behavioral health technician.
In February of 2016, I’m working as a DOD contractor in Milwaukee, going to school for behavioral health, and putting in my time in the reserves when I get a call from my first sergeant.
“Do you think your soldier wants to go overseas?” he asks.
He’s referring to Dan, the father of my daughter. I met him in 2013, and we had a kid. Our daughter was born in 2014. She’s coming up on two, and Dan and I are looking to do the whole marriage thing and have more kids down the line.
“Absolutely not,” I tell him. “I can almost 100 percent guarantee you he’ll say no. But I won’t speak for him, so give him a call.”
“Do you want to go overseas?”
“I sure do.”
Twenty minutes later, I get a call from the company commander for the deployment. He’s part of an MP unit heading to Camp Arifjan, in Kuwait, and he wants me to deploy as an augmentee to their prison staff. American soldiers, contractors—whoever it may be—that break the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) while deployed are confined there for up to thirty days. If their sentencing goes beyond that, we escort them back to the United States to carry out the rest of their sentence at Fort Leavenworth.
“Are you interested?” he asks.
“I don’t have any experience on the prison side. None whatsoever.”
“But you do have a lot of clinical training. You’ve done intake interviews and know how to properly prepare files and how to put information into the Army’s medical database.”
I’m up-to-date on health documentation, and I’ve been keeping up with my interview skills and all the new data that’s coming out on PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. I know the difference between chronic depression and major depressive disorder, as compared with transitionary issues when soldiers come home or are just getting to their duty stations.
“Don’t worry about the prison stuff,” the company commander says. “You can train with our unit at Fort Leavenworth, provided you’re interested.”
I tell him I am, and then in May, I’m off to Kansas.
Fort Leavenworth houses two prisons: the disciplinary barracks, or DB, where you stay if your sentence is ten years or longer, and the correctional facility, for those serving under ten years. For the next two and a half weeks during the month of June, I work with the prison’s behavioral health sergeants and technicians, learning how to do intake interviews and understand the paperwork, how it works. I also learn the necessary combative skills and protocols in case an inmate puts his hands on me or attacks.
It’s 2016. We get our orders to deploy in September. My daughter’s birthday is at the beginning of the month. Fortunately, I’m able to attend her party.
Saying good-bye to her is extremely hard. She’s two and really has no attention span—no concept that I’m going to be gone for nine months. She’s just kind of like, Oh, okay, whatever.
The Arifjan base is two to three miles wide. The prison facility is moderately large. It can hold up to 175 people. There’s literally no one there when we arrive—which means that our people are doing the right thing and following the laws of war and not violating the UCMJ.
Over the next few months, whenever an inmate trickles in—and it’s usually a fourteen-day stay for insubordination, some kid who told his first sergeant and company commander to fuck off directly to their faces—I do the initial intake and then coordinate with the behavioral health clinic to sign off on his treatment or care plan.
I arrange my life so I can talk to my daughter. I call and video chat with her all the time. I go to the gym every morning at 3:00 a.m., which is about 7:00 p.m. back home, right about the time she’s getting ready for bed. I’m starting my day and she’s winding down, and after we chat for a little bit, I read her Guess How Much I Love You in the Winter. I bought her a copy, and I brought one with me so I can read her a bedtime story every single night as she goes to sleep.
Christmas is tough. I’m watching her open presents over video chat. It’s late in the day for her, and she’s tired and grumpy and just wants to go to bed. She’s in a mood, and that’s hard for me to deal with because, since I can’t be there, all I want is to see her happy face as she opens the clothes and toys.
In the movies, when a soldier comes home, the family is waiting outside the plane and they come running up and everyone is in tears and you’re in tears watching it. In July of 2017, I call Dan and tell him I’m coming home and what time I think I’ll be arriving. He says he’ll meet me at his mom’s house.
Before I leave, I get dressed up and do my hair and makeup. Driving to his mom’s house, I’m super nervous—actually shaking, as though I’m about to go out on a stage and give a huge speech to thousands of people instead of going to see my two-year-old daughter.
When I walk into the house, they’re all inside—Dan and his mom and stepfather. All I can see is my daughter sitting on the floor, playing with her toys.
“Hey, baby.”
She turns her head and sees me.
“Hey, Mom.” She goes back to playing with her toys.
Which, in a way, makes sense. For her, I’ve gone from being a face on a screen to now being a face in person. The only change is that I’m here.
But I’ve changed. I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve come to value my time with my friends and family a lot more. I’m willing to drive two and a half hours to see my family for their birthdays. If my sister texts me and says she had a bad day, I’ll drive over just to sit and talk with her and share a bottle of wine. My time overseas makes me value my friendships and relationships with the people closest to me, and it makes me learn more about the people that I care about and the people I surround myself with.