Rodney

I don't actually know what this story is about, except that when people talk about supporting our troops and "they knew what they signed on for"... well, sometimes they didn't.

I know a woman who five years ago was in her mid-20s and drifting. She had a good education that she'd never quite finished. She was married but unemployed, but while she could help her husband in his business, she was basically just doing scutwork.

So she decided to find herself in the Army Reserve. Do something, accomplish something, get her life going. She signed up for -- I forget what it's called, but they're the community relations people who come in after an area's been occupied and work with the locals. And she got the assignment, and went through her six-months training and got out. Started to go back to normal life.

Two months later, they call her back. Somebody realized that she has a certain interesting skill and so they 1) transfer her to another branch of the military which will remain nameless and 2) put her on active duty for 13 months to do, uh, certain things and learn yet more interesting skills.

So, 13 months go by, and she's out again. And this is all _before_ 9/11. She tries to settle into school or a job, but 2-3 times a year the military pulls her out for a month's duty overseas, then sends her home. So she's _still_ got no life.

Then 9/11 hits. Didn't affect her immediately, but the military keeps calling her for random months three times a year. One day she comes back from a month overseas and finds that the rest of her unit was transferred to a war zone while she was gone, where they stayed for over a year.

So now Iraq happens, and the occupation of Iraq happens, and her unit (not that long back from overseas) is getting ready to go over....

Then she gets pregnant. Lucky for her: doesn't get her out of the military, but it does get her out of overseas duty. Should keep her out of it until early next year, by which time things will change radically if they're going to change at all.

Don't know how I feel about all this. Yes, she should have read the fine print, but I'm sure the recruiting officer didn't urge her to. (And of course the thing that exempted her from going overseas is only open to women.) Found herself in a place she didn't expect to be in. If there's a moral to the story, I guess it's "read the fine print," and "When you join the military in any way, you surrender your will to its will."