After one year at the university, Dean Christmon’s restlessness got the better of him.
“I guess I had been reading too many old Army books and history books, and I saw the movie Patton too many times, so I got it in my head that I should serve,” he said.
Christmon enlisted in the Army in August 2001. He was 18. Now in his late twenties, but feeling much older, he looked back on six-and-a-half years in the Army yesterday, Veterans Day, with mixed feelings. The Army took him to Korea, Fort Hood, Texas and the battlefield in Iraq. The Army gave him life skills and the title of sergeant. But, wherever he goes, he says he’ll take scars from the war, too.
“My soldiers — a couple I had were kind of like me in some ways when they first came in. … They were very optimistic and idealistic about how the Army was and about how the world worked,” Christmon said, now a senior government and politics major. “Especially after Iraq, you come to realize that the world — no matter what you want it to be,and no matter what it can be — it is in fact not a very beautiful place and in fact kind of a dark place, in most instances.”
“I was impatient and I was naïve. … I wanted to be very much in control of myself, my finances, my life,” he said. “Of course, being in the Army, you’re not in control of your life. But I wanted to be in control. I wanted to be the one to call the shots. I wanted to grow up quickly and you will grow up quickly. You’ll move beyond your years very fast in the Army. … You have to, otherwise you’ll sink.”
That fast pace started immediately. A month after Christmon enlisted, the 9/11 attacks shook the country and heightened Christmon’s drive to serve.
“I was already patriotic as all get out. I had a flag over my bed, just up there. So when that happened I just, I was red-hot upset,” he said. “I was angry, and I just thought it was so cruel, it was petty. … I was ready to go.”
Christmon was deployed to Korea for a year, and then returned to his base at Fort Hood. In March 2004, he joined the then-fledgling war in Iraq and started a second tour in October 2006, spending a total of 27 months in the country.
He recalls the friends he made playing football and video games during much-needed down time but can’t shake the memory of a friend killed by an improvised explosive device.
There was also the time when, just minutes after returning from a cigarette break outside, a fellow soldier was killed in a mortar attack the night before she was due to return to the United States.
“You just learn to appreciate the good times a lot more and get through the bad times,” he said.
What lingers the most, he said, is the indelible transformation he underwent and witnessed in his fellow soldiers. While jarring, that loss of innocence left him with unique sensibilities and coping mechanisms.
“You learn to control yourself and to be very calm and watchful,” he said. “And you learn to maintain that discipline and integrate it into yourself in a way that, you know, wouldn’t be obvious to most people.”
The same impatience that drove Christmon to serve drove him back home. The return of his restlessness began during the 2004 presidential election as his resentment for the war grew.
“I started to discover that my ideals were more than just paper Democratic beliefs and paper liberalism. I really did believe these things, and so I was like, ‘I gotta get involved in this. I don’t want this kind of mistake to happen again,'” he said. “I was like, ‘I gotta get back home and get into college.'”
Christmon returned to the university for the spring semester of 2008. He hopes to graduate this spring and has had to take classes year-round to meet the goal. While he loves his laid-back schedule and living down the street from the campus, the difficulties of being a student veteran pervade his daily life.
“I feel that I can’t really relate to most of these people. Nothing against them, but they’ve never been through anything really tough by my reckoning,” he said. “And the things they … get upset about, I’m like, ‘Really? He hasn’t called you? She hasn’t called you? This professor doesn’t like you?’ It’s not that bad, you know?”
Christmon has found a home as marketing director for TerpVets, where the conversation flows more easily, he said.
“I don’t begrudge other students,” he said. “They can’t know. I don’t think ill of them — I’m just older and I’ve been through some things.”
While he values his time in the military and plans to take full advantage of the experience in the job market, the question of “What if?” occasionally still plagues him.
“Sometimes, when I’m by myself, I think sometimes of the cost of all that I’ve gained might have been too high,” he said. “I do regret time lost. … I’ve got friends my age now who are working on their doctorate.”
Still, Christmon looks forward to the future — finding work in government and perhaps attending law school.
“I got my 10-year high school reunion coming up,” he said. “At least I’ll have a degree under my belt by the time I get to it.”
aisaacs@umdbk.com
