Carnivore by Dillard Johnson

two little kids. We weren’t getting any support from the Army whatsoever, as far as any of Jaycob’s issues were concerned. We had to take it all upon ourselves to get this treatment for him. I was getting ready to go and possibly fight on behalf of our government, but did we get any help with Jaycob? No.
    Amy actually left a week before I was deployed. It was around Christmastime. For me, it meant one more week without seeing them, and it was a pretty sad time. A trying time. I hadn’t told her I was going into combat. She had enough to worry about, being in another country by herself, in the winter, with two small children, one of them handicapped.
    W e finally went over to Kuwait in December 2002. The fact is, however, that I could have gotten out of it. I was on PCS orders and was supposed to be leaving Fort Stewart before we deployed. I had a sweet-ass gig lined up at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas. There I would be working with National Guard and Reserve people, completely low stress. I already had my reporting date and everything else.
    My Troop Commander at the time was Jeff McCoy. He had 21 years in the Army and was undoubtedly the best Commander I ever had. He was a stocky little barrel-chested Irish fireplug of a guy from the mountains of Colorado. I got lucky because toward the end of my career I had three really great Commanders.
    McCoy asked me, “Hey, I know you’ve got combat experience from the first war and you really know what you’re doing . . .” He hemmed and hawed for a little while, then said, “Is there any way that you can stay?”
    I’d already talked to the wife about the new orders. We had a house in Florida, but we were looking forward to going out to Austin. We had heard a lot about it, plus it was going to be a good career move for me. At that time I hadn’t really done much on the training side of things. I’d been straight combat arms all the way through, except for the gunnery training I did in Germany.
    This was a really tough decision to make. I remember talking to Jason Christner, my Platoon Sergeant, and he said, “Hey, I really want you to stay. We’re going need you here.” I respected his opinion—Christner was a true professional soldier and had been wounded in Somalia.
    After thinking about it, I decided to stay. So I called the DA (Department of the Army rep) and he said, “No can do. You know you can’t get out of your orders. You’re already on orders assignment to Mabry. Besides, your squadron doesn’t have orders to deploy yet, so you’re not Stop Lossed where you can’t go anywhere else.”
    I found out that the orders were coming, but they were two weeks away. So I called up the DA again and told him the orders were coming in. I said, “Hey, look. Here’s the day, the date, and I want to get a three-week extension before I leave out of here.”
    He said, “Absolutely not. You are not going to be able to do it.”
    Fine. I may be aggressive and bull-headed and have a bit of a temper, but at this point I’d been in the Army for 16 years and knew how to work the system. I told them, “Well, okay. But I’m going to take thirty days’ leave before my PCS.” And they said, “Okay, that’s good.” Because they had no reason to deny it.
    With that, I had 30 days before I had to go to my next duty station—but I never signed out on leave. I didn’t really clear and I didn’t sign out on leave, so I was still technically in the unit, just letting the days click down. I didn’t pack anything up. I didn’t ship anything. I was just sort of hoping that I would get the Stop Loss before I had to go. I had about four days left on my leave, four days before I would have had to report to my next duty station, when they hit us with Stop Loss.
    I didn’t have to go to Iraq again. I made a conscious decision to go with my Commander,