WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE:Amy Epley
INTERVIEWER:Kimberly Mozingo
DATE:21 October 2019
[Begin Interview]
KM:Today is October 21, 2019. My name is Kimberly Mozingo and I'm at the China
Grove Library [China Grove, North Carolina] to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. If you would state your name the way you would like it to read on your collection.AE:Amy Epley.
KM:Tell me about where and when you were born, and about your family.
AE:I was born [1969] in Creighton, Nebraska, and my mother was Lavonne Kay Block
and my father, Dennis Lee Hintz, and he was in the military before I was born.KM:What branch?
AE:He was army.
KM:Did he serve during Korea; Vietnam?
AE:It was before Vietnam. He volunteered to go into the army, and he did two
years of service in 1964 and '65.KM:What was it like growing up in Nebraska?
AE:I lived on a farm. We had a hundred and sixty acres, and I had to work on the
farm. I didn't have to work before school, thankfully, but I did work after school doing chores. We had cattle to take care of and we had pigs to take care of.KM:Did you have brothers and sisters growing up?
AE:Yes.
KM:How many of each?
AE:I have one brother and one sister. I was the oldest, my brother was a year
younger than me, and my sister is three years younger than me.KM: Do they still live in Nebraska?
AE:Yes.
KM:They still live on the farm and take care of the farm?
AE:Well, my brother lives out in the country on an acreage, and my sister lives
on a little acreage out by Norfolk, Nebraska. My brother lives by Plainview, Nebraska, my dad lives in Norfolk, Nebraska. Because we didn't do so well farming with all the hailstorms and different sicknesses that would hit the animals and everything, my dad ended up losing the farm in 1983, and he got a job working for farmers for several years, and so we moved a little bit then and ended up in Norfolk, and he worked for a veteran's home for twenty-five years in the housekeeping division.KM:Okay, fabulous. Where did you go to high school?
AE:I went to four different high schools. I went to Logan View Junior/Senior
High School in Hooper, Nebraska; then I went to Axtell [Junior/Senior High School] in tenth grade, then for eleventh grade I was in Bertrand, Nebraska, I went to high school [Bertrand High School] there, then my senior year was at Norfolk Senior High School.KM:From the moving around on the farms, you went to different places?
AE:Yes, because another--one of the farmers that my dad worked for after we lost
our farm, he got in trouble and my dad had to find another job.KM:What was your favorite subject in school?
AE:I loved algebra.
KM:Math was a favorite subject.
AE:Yes.
KM:Fabulous. When did you graduate?
AE:Nineteen eighty-seven.
KM:What did you do after you graduated high school?
AE:While I was in high school, I got a job working at Hy-Vee West; it's a
grocery store chain in Nebraska, so I worked there. I worked--I volunteered to go work a summer at--it was called Texoma Lutheran Camp, I signed up through my church, and they sent me down to Texas, and I spent the summer working at a summer camp doing whatever needed to be done, and I loved it so much that I went there for another five summers, so I spent six summers working at that summer camp.KM:And did you go to college when you got out of high school?
AE:Yes. When I came back--After high school, that first summer I went and worked
at the summer camp and I was registered to go to the technical college in Norfolk [Northeast Technical Community College]. I lived with my grandma because she lived right in town real close to the college. And so, I would work at Hy-Vee and I'd go to school, and I got my associate's degree and graduated in 1989 from Norfolk Community College. Then I went to Concordia Seward [Concordia University, Steward, Nebraska] for college there after that.KM:What did you do after college?
AE:I joined the army.
KM:You joined the army. Why did you decide to join the military?
AE:Well, there were several reasons. One reason, I wanted to serve my country.
Another reason, I wanted to travel; and another reason, I had college loans that needed to be paid off and the army offered a college loan repayment program. I signed up, got all of that in my contract--and I wanted to go Airborne, so I got that in my contract too--and I was able to get my college loans paid off while I was in my first enlistment, and it was twelve thousand dollars.KM:That is amazing. Did you think of any other job offers that you could have
done right out of college that you thought about besides the military, or was that your one option?AE:That was my one option at that time; to be able to pay off my loans, and not
have to go home and live with my parents, and to be on my own.KM:Did anyone influence you about joining the military? Your father, a family member?
AE:Well, because my dad had been in the military, I wanted to be in the
military, too, but all my friends, everybody was shocked. They thought, "You're too nice to be in the military." [both chuckle] They just couldn't believe that I was going to join the military. I was a little naïve and thought it would be more like camp, because I had been a camp counselor for six summers and I thought it would be a little more like that. And thinking of Airborne, I was thinking of sky-diving, that it would be more like that. The army wasn't like camp [chuckles] and jumping out of airplanes was not like sky-diving.KM:Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you went in the military, like
physical training?AE:I was very physically fit because I was on the indoor/outdoor track teams at
Concordia, and I ran cross-country, so my running was not a problem, and my PT [physical training] test, I always got a hundred percent on my running because I always maxed out the running part of it. And the push-ups, I could max out the push-ups. But my sit-ups were always the one that pulled my score down a little bit. I wouldn't quite get a hundred on that. I'd get a high score but not quite a hundred. I wasn't fast enough in two minutes to get the hundred percent on the sit-ups.KM:What about emotionally? How did you prepare yourself for basic training?
AE:My mom yelled at me a lot when I was a kid [chuckles], so I think I was
pretty tough, and working on the farm, and growing up on a farm, I was pretty tough. I didn't get a lot of sleep working at camp, so basic training--KM:You were already prepared.
AE:Yes.
KM:What about recruiting posters or commercials? Did any of that have any kind
of influence on your decision to join?AE:No.
KM:How do you think women were perceived by the general public when you joined
the military?AE:They didn't see a lot of women in the army or in the military, and even now,
any time that I go to any kind of veterans' function, no one thinks I'm the person who is in the military. They say, "Oh, where's your old man?" This one guy said just a few weeks ago, "Where's your old man?" [chuckles]I said, "I don't have an old man."
KM:So you think it's still that way today; that people don't have that presence
that women are serving in the military?AE:I think so. I find that a lot. Any time I go to a veterans' function, no one
ever thinks that I was the person that was in the military.KM:How did your friends and family react when you joined?
AE:They were just shocked. They couldn't believe it. I think they were worried
about me, because they thought, "There's no way you can do that." They didn't think I was tough enough. They thought I was too nice.KM:When you enlisted, did you enlist for a certain duration?
AE:For four years.
KM:Four years. And what was the date that you joined?
AE:I was in active Ready Reserve for a short period of time in October of 1992,
and then it was November of 1992 when I went to basic training.[The Ready Reserve is a U.S. Department of Defense program which maintains a
pool of trained service members that may be recalled to active duty should the need arise]KM:Where did you go to basic?
AE:Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
KM:What was that experience like?
AE:It was very, very cold. My feet and fingers really suffered a lot because it
was so cold. We were qualifying on the range in snow and ice and rain, it was doing all of those things at one time, and it was miserable. And it was very hard to qualify on the range because you were so cold, and your socks were wet and there was no way to change your socks, and everybody was just suffering, and it was slippery and muddy and wet, and snow coming down. And all the formations, it was always so cold. I was just there at the wrong time of year, and I didn't know that ahead of time that it was going to be so rough. Because I was used to working on the farm, but you can go in and get warm. When you're out waiting in formation, you can't go in and go get warm somewhere.KM:Was this your first time being away from your family for a long duration?
AE:No, because I went to Texas for the summers--for six summers--and while I was
in college I went on a mission trip down to Mexico, so I was used to being away from my family.KM:Tell me about what you remember about your first days at basic training?
AE:We did not get very much sleep, and we had to work really hard to shine our
boots, and we had to work really hard to learn how to make our beds, and try to work together, and people helping each other; the ones that weren't able to quite get it just right so that we all wouldn't get punished.KM:Tell me about a typical day. When did you get up, what did you do, kind of
progression through your day?AE: We got up at 4:00 a.m. and we had to do PT, and then go and shower, then
we'd go eat, and then we would go to our classes--whatever we were learning that day, if it was about the rifle, or we had to go do grenades and go to the range, and whatever we were learning in our little smart books that we had to carry in our pockets and we had to be reading that at all times when we weren't doing something else, and we'd get questioned about the facts that were in that little book that we had to carry with us. We had to be ready for inspections all the time; have everything perfect in our little wardrobe thing.KM:Where did you go after basic training?
AE:Well, I have a little more to tell about basic training.
KM:Oh! Continue.
AE:Because I was going to be a 96 Bravo [Intelligence Analyst], I had to have a
Top Secret security clearance. Well, by the time that I graduated my basic training, my security clearance had not been worked on, or to the point where they could send me to Fort Huachuca [Arizona] yet, and it turned out that there were thirteen other people in the same situation, men and women, and a lot of them were 96 Bravo, some of them were 97 Bravos, Counter-Intelligence Agents, and a lot of Intelligence MOSs [Military Occupational Specialty]KM:What is 96 Bravo?
AE:96 Bravo is Intelligence Analyst, and the 97 Bravo, they were going to Fort
Huachuca, too, but they had counterintelligence agents, is what their definition of 96 Bravo was. So the thirteen of us became holdovers. We could not be sent to Fort Huachuca because we--there was--something happened to our security clearances. We found out--by the time we left in May, several months later--that somebody had all of our files and they put them up on a filing cabinet and forgot about them. So that's why we had to be holdovers, and we were holdovers at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and they said, "Well, we can make you truck drivers while you're waiting for your security clearances, because if your security clearance does not go through, then you at least have a job to do in the army."None of us were excited to become truck drivers because we didn't sign up to be
truck drivers, and none of us wanted to be stuck being a truck driver when we thought we were going to be an intelligence analyst, or something like that. So it didn't work out for us to be 88 Mikes [Motor Transport Operator, MOS 88M; "Mike" is the code word for "M" in the military alphabet], the truck drivers.They said, "We'll make you 51 Bravos."
So we all took the 51 Bravo class together, which is carpentry and masonry, so
we--and some people, their security clearance came through before they got to graduate from the 51 Bravo class. Mine, I was there much longer. There were a handful of us that got to finish the 51 Bravo and we were still there. We could have done another one [chuckles]; we could have done 88 Mike. So some of us got our secondary MOS before our primary MOS. I was certified as a 51 Bravo, and by the time I left in May--We got dropped all the time, so we were getting dropped and we were doing side
straddle hops, which are jumping jacks. We had to do two hundred and fifty of those one time, in flip-flops, upstairs, because the new kids--the new recruits came in for the new class, for the AIT [Advanced Individual Training is where enlisted soldiers go after basic/boot camp to learn the skills for their MOS], and they did something that caused them to get dropped to do push-ups or side-straddle hops, and we had to do them every single time. Every single week a new class would come in, we had to get dropped, and that really wasn't fair [chuckles].KM:Wow. So that was your first experience in the military, being bounced around.
AE:Yes. When I went to Fort Huachuca for my AIT, it was so nice. We were treated
like prior service, like we were reclass [MOS reclassification], is the--where we fell into the designations. We got some more privileges than the recruits that were coming straight from AIT, since we had been--I had already been in the army from November until May, and my basic training had ended long before that.KM:Wow, okay. Once you got to your AIT school, what was that like for you?
AE:It was very nice. We were treated a lot better. You could--In basic training,
you got treated really bad at the beginning because they had to break you down and tear you apart to build you back up, so it started--You were treated a little nicer by the end of basic training. Then it started over again when you got to AI--when I got to the reclass AIT--or the--when I was in Fort Leonard Wood as a holdover, they tore us down, too, and we didn't have any privileges until towards the end. Then when we got to Fort Huachuca it was a lot better. We were treated so nice, and we were there to learn our jobs, and it was just like another world.KM:How long were you there?
AE:I was there from May--the end of May 1993 until I went to Fort Benning
[Georgia]for jump school in November 1993, but I had to--in July, I had to stop where I was at and restart when I got back because my mother passed away while I was there. I got called to the company commander's office, and I didn't know what I had done wrong because I knew I didn't do anything wrong; I couldn't understand why they would call me to his office. I went in there and they just said, "Your mother died," and said, "You can fly home." I had to get a loan from the Red Cross that I had to pay back every month, and I got to go home for my mom's funeral and to be with my family for two weeks.I didn't have enough leave days saved up, so I was in the hole--what they called
it on leave days--so it took me a long time to build those leave days up after I got back. But they didn't have a chaplain in there or anybody. When somebody's going to tell you your family member's dead, I think they should have had a chaplain in there, but they did not.KM:When you came back, were you in a totally different class with new people?
AE:I was with some new people. I had to start over because I had missed--so I
couldn't be with the people I was with, and they graduated sooner than I did, and it was fine because I still knew some people, but I had to--and I'm just glad they allowed me to do that; to start with another class and just miss that little bit that I missed.KM:Okay. Tell me about any other job assignments; any special duty or temporary
duty that you had when you were in. You went to Bosnia.AE:Yes, I went to Bosnia for seven months, and worked at Camp Comanche, and
lived in--it was like a temporary building, it did have walls and everything, and we had--I don't know how many of us in there--fifteen or twenty of us in there--and we had beds with mattresses. At the time, I was dating Jason Epley, and he wanted to find a way to send me flowers, so he bought me some flower bed sheets and pillowcases and sent those over. He sent me letters almost every day, so the people in the mailroom knew who I was because I would get mail or packages often. We would send each other--because we didn't have cellphones back then [chuckles], and we didn't have a way to really communicate except through the mail, so you had to wait till it got there. I had a little tape recorder, and I would make tapes and he would make tapes and we'd send the tapes back and forth, so I'd get to listen to his voice when I'd get the tape and he'd get to listen to my voice when he got the tape.KM:Alright. After AIT, where did you go?
AE:I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, and went to jump school for four weeks.
KM:What was that experience like?
AE:I was one of few females. There were just a few females, and they really
didn't think females could handle it, but the running really was what got a lot of people out of there, even the men. The running would get some of them kicked out of jump school, because they did a lot of running. And the running was easy for me. I could--It was the easiest part of the whole thing.There was one time in a class, they were teaching how to do toggles and I didn't
understand how to do it, and the instructor got in my face and yelled at me for ten minutes, and that did not help on teaching me how to do it; he didn't show me how to do it. And I ended up crying, and I was so mad at myself for crying because that's what they all expected, was for me to be weak and to show weakness like that.One of my friends that I knew from Fort Leonard Wood happened to be at jump
school the same time I was, and after he saw all that happening and everything and we got back to our barracks, he explained how to do the toggles, and so I knew how to do that part then after that. But the instructor did not. [chuckles] It was probably one of the worst experiences I had up to that point, was him embarrassing me like that and yelling at me the way he did and not explaining how to do it.KM:You were jumping out of airplanes?
AE:This was training on the ground, learning how to handle different types of
parachutes, and these are the kind where you had to pull it to turn, you had to do certain things to manipulate the parachute, and I didn't understand how to do it and I was doing it wrong, and it didn't help for him to be yelling at me as loud as he did right in my face and embarrassing me in front of everybody.KM:My goodness. What was your favorite assignment that you had while you were in
the military?AE:I loved being in Germany.
KM:Where were you stationed in Germany?
AE:Bad Kreuznach, Germany; that was my first duty station. There are vineyards.
If you go out of the post, you go running up the hill, and you're running out into the vineyards, and then there's a little trail you can run as far as this castle--it's in ruins, there's just a little bit left of the castle--and then the town was really nice, Bad Kreuznach; so much to see and do and restaurants. There was a group in Germany called Kontakt, it was a German-American friendship group, and I joined that and I got to know some of the local Germans that were involved because they wanted to be in there to meet Americans. So we got to go on trips together, I did lots of volksmarches [German, meaning "people's" march; a form of non-competitive fitness walking]. And there was an American high school in Bad Kreuznach, and one of the ladies who had joined Kontakt, her name was [Carol Ann Shubeck?], and she and I became friends. And since my mother had passed away, she was about the age of my mother and she had a daughter and she was over there by herself, and so we ended up going on trips together, going to Paris together, and we kept in touch. She did a lot for the mental health; she was a counselor for the American high school there.[Kontakt was a program developed in 1969 "by the U.S. Army Europe and the
Federal Ministry for Youth, Family, Women, and Health to provide German and American young people a framework to start jointly their own self-governed free-time programming;" source: http://outreach-kontakt.com/history]KM:How long were you in Germany?
AE:I was there for two years, minus the four months that I got sent to Turkey at
the end of my time in Germany. And right at the end of my time in Germany, the sergeant major of the division asked me, "Do you want to extend and stay a little longer and go to Bosnia with us?" Because I was less than thirty days left in country, so I didn't have to go to Bosnia, but if I wanted to I could have extended, but I had planned on getting out of the military and I had already extended my contract three months so that I'd have a whole year to be deployed back to the States, and be stationed in the States, and transition out of the military while I was in the United States instead of overseas, because I thought that might be easier. So I told Sergeant Major [ Jack L.--AE added later] Tilley, "No, thank you. I'll go to Fort Bragg [North Carolina] where I'm supposed to go at this time." And that was the first time that troops were going into Bosnia, was in 1995, in December.KM:Which assignment did you dislike?
AE:Well, there were parts that I disliked; like doing the guard duty at night,
if we had to do that in Bosnia. But there was always something good about each place I got sent. The bad thing about Turkey, my first week in Turkey--I was assaulted by a Turkish soldier my first week there, and the colonel that I was working for--because I was put to help a Special Forces unit--I was the only person from my unit in Germany that got sent down to Turkey to help; they needed a 96 Bravo.I was out running on the perimeter road, because I was a good distance runner
and I wanted to keep training, because I had qualified in Germany to run the army ten-miler for the--to represent the German team--the American Forces German team--and I got sent to Washington, D.C. to run that ten-mile race in 1994, and so I kept training. I did not get to go in 1995 because I was deployed to Turkey, so I was trying to keep in shape. When I got there, I was running and got attacked by a Turkish soldier, and I was able to get away from him after a struggle, and then I ran to the next building I could find that was American soldiers in it, and reported it, and they called the MPs [Military Police] and the MPs got me in the car, and we drove by and that soldier was already gone; he had already been picked up by the truck that picked up the Turkish soldiers to put them at different duty stations. They had--There was a little shack that he tried to pull me into when he assaulted me. I was going to identify him, but he was already gone, so when they took me back to the MP station the colonel came in and was yelling at me [chuckles]--my colonel that I had worked for--because I guess he didn't understand what had happened. He thought I did something wrong, and he did not get the full story, and so he was yelling at me for getting in trouble. Then somebody explained to him what had happened, and he never said he was sorry, but then he said, "Well, now we'll have other soldiers running with you." Well, that worked two days. The other soldiers couldn't keep up the pace that I had, they weren't as fast, so I never ran on that perimeter road ever again, because I had to run by myself because nobody could keep up with me. So I just ran through the base and found different routes.I found the American high school there had a cross-country team, and I got
permission from my command to be an assistant coach, because the coach said that he would love to have an assistant coach, so I got to do that. When I got off-duty I would go help with the practices and running with them and help the cross-country team.KM:They never found this guy, this Turkish soldier?
AE:No, that I know of. My dad said he got a letter, I don't know if it's from
the Turkish general or an American general, but he got an apology letter for the incident that had happened.KM:Was that your only experience with sexual harassment and assault in the military?
AE:No, because I got assaulted by U.S. army soldiers, too, in Germany and Fort Bragg.
KM:Do you have any notable stories, amusing stories, that you would like to
share about your time in the military?AE:Well, I did get out after my four years and three months, and I got out for
about seven months, and during that time I was in active Ready Reserve and I was able to go on a trip to Korea with the inactive Ready Reserve. We went down to Fort Hood, Texas, to prepare for that, and then I got to fly over and work in Korea for two weeks, and that was a great experience. We got to work inside of a mountain. You would think you were in a building, but it was inside of a mountain, and that was a pretty neat experience.KM:Describe your housing accommodations. Where did you live when you were in the military?
AE:The most unusual living circumstances were Incirlik [Air Base], Turkey, that
I lived in a tent.KM:That was a deployment?
AE:Yes. It was "Tent City" in Incirlik, Turkey.
KM:What was that experience like?
AE:It was an air force base, so it wasn't bad. [chuckles] It was a tent, and you
had a refrigerator in there, and a microwave, and we had these little compartments that a bed could be fit in, so you had a little bit of privacy that way. When you think "Tent City," you don't think you have--and we had air conditioning, too, because it was really hot in Turkey.KM:Okay. You were in Turkey, you were in Bosnia, you're in Germany. How did you
communicate with your family back here in the States while you were in these foreign countries?AE:Because we didn't have cellphones then; it was very expensive. I had to get
these little calling cards in Germany, and it cost a lot of money for my dad to call me, and I had to wait by the phone in the hall, and if you miss the call, you miss the call. Because of the time difference you had to plan that way, too, and it was very difficult. So I didn't get to talk to my dad very often, and the one time when I called him I was shocked to find out he got married. [chuckles] That's because I hadn't been able to call him or write him much because it takes longer. And I was shocked; he told me he got married. He met this woman that he knew for ten days and got married. Because my mom had passed away in July of 1993, and by February 1994, my dad got married.AE:What was that like for you, being away from home?
KM:Well, it was a shock because--and people were giving him a hard time on my
mom's side of the family. It was a woman that he only knew ten days, so he was lonely. He didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't seeing this woman ahead of time; he was happily married to my mother for twenty-five years; they celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in May; and nobody knew that she was sick. We found out--My dad did an autopsy--had an autopsy performed on her because he didn't know why she died, and we found out she had cancer after the autopsy was performed. We never would have known that she had cancer had he not requested an autopsy. Because he took her to the doctor the day before, the doctor said she had a kidney infection and gave her medicine to take, but when he came home from work at the veteran's home, he found her dead in the house and didn't know why, and he wondered, "Well, did she take all those pills and do an overdose?" And he could not find the pills, so he was worried that that's what had happened, and that's why he did the autopsy, and she hadn't taken any of the pills. Had he not had that autopsy done, we never would have known she had colon cancer, and I never would have got a early colonoscopy. And because of that, if I would have waited till I was fifty[-years-old] to get my colonoscopy, I wouldn't be here. So, thankfully, my dad spent that thousand dollars to get that autopsy done so that all of us could get screened, because now we had a family history of colon cancer. Because the doctor in Salisbury that I went to see to get it done said, "I'm so glad you came in," He was holding my hand, he said he found some polyps that were precancerous and had I waited till fifty I would not be here.AE:So you would go through the VA [Veterans Affairs] hospital in Salisbury?
KM:No, I don't qualify for health at the VA because my husband makes too much money.
AE:Okay. I did not know that.
KM:What did you do in your time off?
AE:I bought some rollerblades when I was in Germany, because I went on a ski
trip to the Black Forest and was not able to ski very well. All the little kids--three-year-old children were skiing like experts, and I was trying not to hit them, and I just wasn't doing very well skiing, so I just thought, "Well, if I buy some rollerblades maybe they'll help me with skiing," so I bought rollerblades and was rollerblading all the time in front of my barracks, in the parking lot, going out of the post on my rollerblades, and running. I spent a lot of my time running and doing volksmarches. I would run a lot of 5k races and take the train. Because it took me a long time to build up leave after my mother passed away, so I just went places on the holidays or weekends because I didn't have leave time to go home to the States.KM:Did you date when you were in the military?
AE:I had a boyfriend for a little while, and then when we got separated--he had
to be sent somewhere else--he found other girls to date, and so that kind of ended. Then I met a nice soldier down in Turkey and I dated him for a little while, but since I was only there four months that didn't last very long either.KM:Then you got stationed at Fort Bragg.
AE:Then I got stationed at Fort Bragg.
KM:You met your husband.
AE:I met my husband in December 1996.
KM:And he was not military.
AE:He is not military; he never was military; he was a city planner. His first
week in town we met at the bible study, then we were friends for two years, dated for two years, and now we've been married for nineteen years and have three children.KM:Fabulous. What was your highest rank when you were in the military?
AE:Sergeant E-5.
KM:Do you have a decoration or anything that's more memorable to you that you
got while you were in?AE:I got a really nice plaque when I was in Turkey. It's like a shield, and it's
painted and decorated and it was really nice.KM:Fabulous. What was your relationship like with your supervisors? Men, women.
AE:My first supervisor in Germany, she was really good at her job, and she
really took good care of me, and she was just a great example of a leader, and she knew her job very, very well.KM:Did you have other female supervisors when you were in?
AE:She was the only female supervisor I had.
KM:What about men supervisors; what were they like?
AE:One lieutenant that I had was not very nice. [chuckles] I had him at Fort
Bragg. He just--I think he felt intimidated sometimes and he wanted to be in charge, so he just--I had to work with him when I was in Bosnia.KM:What about with your peers, people of the same rank? What were your
relationships like with them?AE:Fine. One person that I met in basic training, she and I have kept in touch
all these years, we became friends in basic training and we're still friends, and her son just joined the military about two months ago, and she was putting his address for people to write him and tell him to write to his mother. So I wrote him and told him how I met his mother, and told him what a neat friendship that was that started in basic, since he's in basic now. Then I have another friend, I didn't know her while I was in the military, I knew her after the military, but she and her husband had both been in the military and we all went to church together. She had a daughter right before my son was born, and she just posted that her daughter's joining the military. And then I saw that her daughter was becoming an Intelligence Analyst and going Airborne, so then I told her that I had done that, and so she was asking me all kinds of questions: "Well, I don't understand the little paragraph that they have about the job. What did you really do?" So I got to tell her everything that I did, and tell her what I thought about it, and what it was like for me, and so she was telling her daughter, and her daughter's getting ready to go do all those same things.KM:What about relationships with subordinates? Were you a supervisor when you
were in?AE:Yes, I had soldiers under me. When I was in Turkey, when I would get assigned
to be in charge of helping someone get acclimated with the country and the job and everything, and when we were transitioning from one person to another, I took them--same in Germany when I got somebody that I had to be a sponsor for--I took them to all the places I like to go to. Because this one soldier in Germany, his wife--he had just gotten married and his wife was too scared to fly over, and too scared to leave home and everything, so I was helping him with all the things that he could tell her about and show her. And so, he had to go home, fly back with her, and then I didn't want her to be jealous of me or think there was something--I was just trying to get him acclimated to the country--I took him to all the restaurants I went to and introduced him to the German people that I knew and got him to like the sights, and he just loved it there. So when he flew home and got her to come over, I took her to all the same places with him and we all became friends and enjoyed it together.When I was in Turkey I got--my replacement came in and I took him to all the
restaurants, and this one restaurant right across from the base, they would play tricks on you, like they were going to spill the tea on you and do things, just silly little things. So I got to let him experience all those things. I took him to meet all the people at the different stores that would give you a good deal, so he got to know the right places to go, that were safe to go, that were not on the list of places not to go. Because you had to tell them where they couldn't go too.KM:Right.
AE:Because there were some off-limit places that people couldn't go because it
wasn't safe for soldiers to go there.KM:When you were deployed to Turkey and Bosnia, what was it like there versus
being at your permanent location. What were the differences?AE:Well, you had to wear a lot of extra gear, and you had to have your weapon
with you at all times at those places. You had to have your Kevlar [personal armor] on, you had to have your flak vest on, so that you wouldn't get hurt.One day in Bosnia, all the sirens were going off and we had to go in the bunkers
because an enemy aircraft was flying close to us and they didn't know what that enemy aircraft was going to do. So we all got in the bunkers and waited until we got the all clear to come out of there. The airplane got within six miles of us and they had to shoot it down.KM:Was there other cultural differences that you faced?
AE:Yes.
KM:What were those?
AE:We had to be very careful when we were in Turkey and Bosnia with the local
people, because they had vendors there and you had to be careful. Some people--It was against the law to spit on their statue in Turkey, and so people couldn't do those things where they could get in trouble and it could cause a big problem with the other country. So there were certain things you didn't say or do to offend.KM:What about as a female? Were there cultural things that you had to be aware
of, versus the men that you were stationed with?AE:I think that's why I got--that's why I never ran on that perimeter road
again; because I was a female and that was something that I don't think their females did in that culture. But, otherwise, I dressed just like the male soldiers, so there was nothing else that--Most of the time we didn't have civilian clothes to do things in when we were in Bosnia. In Turkey we did because it was a little different, it wasn't--I was on a peace-keeping mission and the threat level was a little higher in Bosnia. In Turkey I was there TDY--temporary duty station--and I got to do other things after my work hours.KM:You had to dress in appropriate clothing to go off-base when you weren't
dressed in uniform?AE:Yeah, you still had to--I just dressed in normal clothes to go off-base in
Turkey, but we only got to go off post one time in Bosnia. We were lucky that we got to go to Croatia on a trip.KM:What was that like?
AE:That was really nice, and I got to go scuba-diving for the first time. I
signed up and paid for a scuba-diving trip while I was in Croatia.KM:Did you receive any mentoring during your years in the service?
AE:Yes, I had, like I said, that one female soldier who was a E-5 when I went
over to Germany, I was assigned to her group, and she was a good mentor because she was so good at her job, and she really cared about teaching me how to do the job correctly.KM:Did you receive any advanced training or education as your career progressed?
AE:I went to lots of classes when I was in Germany. I got to go to a class in
Heidelberg to learn our computer system.KM:Was there any kind of school or training that you would have liked to have
attended that you didn't get to go to?AE:The one thing that I wished I could have done was get foreign jump wings. I
never got the opportunity to get foreign jump wings. I was in Germany, but I wasn't on jump status at that time, and when I went to Turkey with the Special Forces, and they were jumping and everything, but I wasn't on jump status so I couldn't do it. But when I got to Fort Bragg, they would only pick certain people to get the foreign jump wings, and I never was one of those lucky people to get picked to get foreign jump wings.[The Parachutist Badge, also commonly referred to as "Jump Wings" is a military
badge of the United States Armed Forces]KM:What about discrimination? Did you experience any of that, being a female
soldier, on any of your assignments?AE:I don't think I got discriminated against that much, but I know I got
harassed a lot.KM:Can you talk about that?
AE:Well, they would--I had to let my supervisor know that I was getting harassed
by another soldier who was going to be my supervisor and they took care of that. They counseled him, and they did not put me with him because of things that he had said to me that were of a sexual nature.KM:Did you have any other experiences like that, besides the one?
AE:There were a lot of them. There's just so many, and I just--I didn't even go
to the dining facility after a while. I just would buy food at the commissary--not commissary--at the little shop, the AAFES [The Army & Air Force Exchange Service] shop, and make my own food in my room--because there was a little kitchen that was down the hall when I was in Germany--to avoid being harassed. I got asked out a lot and stared at a lot, and so to avoid those things.And one person, he bought a pair of rollerblades just to rollerblade with me.
[chuckles] He probably used them one time because he just wanted to be with me, he didn't want to rollerblade. And a lot of them--This one sergeant, he asked me if he could run with me, and he could never keep up with me until he kept trying and trying, and then he got to a point where he could keep up with me, but he never told me he was married. We would go do things together, he never once told me he was married, until I got back from Washington, D.C. and he picked me up at the airport. And I was starting to like him, and then he said something about his wife; I never knew he was married. So I never did anything alone with him again after that, and he was an E-6 and I was a PFC [Private First Class, E-3] at the time. I never did anything alone with him again, and I got to meet his wife, and I said if we were ever going to do anything, go on volksmarches or anything, his wife had to be there too.KM:What about other female soldiers, did you talk to them about these
experiences you were having? Did they have any similar experiences?AE:We never talked about it.
KM:Did you see any changes toward women while you were in, for good or bad?
AE:Being in military intelligence, I think it was a lot better because we
were--the men and women were doing equal jobs there, and I thought I got treated a lot better when I was working in the G2 [U.S. Army military intelligence unit]. When I was with other soldiers and I was in the S2 [U.S. Army intelligence and security unit], that's when it was a little different, and treated different; when you were around other soldiers that weren't in your unit, in military intelligence.[Speaking Simultaneously]
KM:So just kind of walking around base, it was very different than when you were
on the job?AE:Yes. Yeah, like when we were working in the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmental
Information Facility], there was none of that, except for the one when I was going to be moved into his group.KM:How do you feel the military treated you regarding pay, promotions, different
assignments? Do you think you got equal treatment to men while you were in?AE:I think so.
KM:In recent years, reports about, and Congressional investigations into,
military sexual trauma and sexual harassment have increased awareness of these issues. What do you think about that?[Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is a term used by the Department of Veterans
Affairs to refer to experiences of sexual assault or repeated, threatening sexual harassment that a veteran experienced during his or her military service]AE:I know when I got out nobody said anything about reporting, and I don't even
know--when I was assaulted in Turkey, I don't know if that even got in my permanent record or if there's any record of it.KM:You think it got covered up or just didn't get reported?
AE:I have no idea. Because I told the MPs about it and my dad got sent a letter,
but I don't think I could find anything about it now. When I was assaulted by American soldiers, I didn't say anything to tell anybody because, first of all, this person invited me to go to his room to watch a movie, and I had invited him and he'd gone to church with me and everything, so I never thought there'd be anything bad. And I bought his old TV from him because he wanted to buy a new TV and PCS [Permanent Change of Station--official relocation of an active duty service member to a different duty location] with it, so when he assaulted me when I went over there, when I got away from him, the only thing I remember saying is, "I've got to call my dad. I've got to call my dad," just for an excuse to get out of there. What I did, I ran and went to the telephone booth and called my German friend, and she came and picked me up and I stayed at her place that night, because my room was very close to where his room was, and I was never able to go up that flight of stairs that went by his room the rest of the time that I lived in that barracks. And I never told anybody because I didn't think anybody would believe me and they'd say, "Well, what did you think was going to happen, if you're going to his room to watch a movie--"I know the next day when I finally did go back to my room, my German friend
dropped me off, there was a note under my door and he apologized for being such a pig, and I kept that note; that if he ever said or did anything again, then I would report him. But I should have reported him then, but I didn't think--I thought I'd be the one that would be blamed for it because I was a female and I went to his room.KM:Do you think that nowadays it's more reported than it had been in the past?
AE:I think so. I'm sure it is, because they talk about it a lot now, when you go
to the VA or when you see commercials. I think it's out in the open now and I don't think it's hidden like it used to be.KM:Like the good ol' boys network has kind of been dismantled a little bit, so
that it can be reported, and be believed after it's been reported.AE:Yes.
KM:Were you aware of any other abuse with other women or any of your
subordinates? Did they ever come to you with any kind of abuse?AE:No. See, I didn't even know about the military sexual trauma until this year.
I never heard of it. When I was in the military, or when I got out of the military, I never heard anything about that. I didn't find out about it till this year.KM:What is the hardest thing that you had to do when you were in the military, physically?
AE:We went on ruck marches [a relatively fast march over a distance while
carrying a load] and those weren't too hard.KM:You seemed to be very physically fit.
AE:The hardest thing was dealing with the elements of the weather when I was in
basic training, and your feet were so cold and your hands were so cold and you're trying to qualify on the weapons range, and you couldn't even see because it was raining and snowing so hard.KM:I was lucky, I went to Texas, so, yeah, it was pretty warm there. What about
emotionally, what was hard that you had to deal with?AE:I think at Fort Benning when he was yelling at me and embarrassing me in
front of everybody like that.KM:What is the most rewarding thing about your military experience?
AE:Being able to get promoted to E-5, and being able to go on the peace-keeping
missions, and go on the missions to Iraq, and being able to make a difference.When I was in Bosnia, I made friends with one of the ladies who sold things out
of a little booth, and we continued our friendship, and she ended up marrying a contractor in Bosnia. His family lived in North Carolina, so she came to my house when I was at Fort Bragg area, in Fayetteville, after I was married and had a child. She got to come to our house and visit with us and hold my baby. And then a few years later, that marriage didn't work out, she ended up getting out, and she joined the army--the United States Army--and she got stationed in Hawaii and met another soldier and got married, and now she is a warrant officer.KM:Fabulous. Okay.
AE:It's just an incredible story that this girl who was a Bosnian, she became an
American soldier.KM:You got married when you were at Fort Bragg?
AE:In Fayetteville.
KM:You were still in the military.
AE:Yes, I was on terminal leave. I had gotten on terminal leave and our wedding
was at Botanical Gardens in Fayetteville, in August.[Terminal leave is regular, chargeable leave used immediately prior to
separation or retirement from the military]KM:When you had your children, were you in the military?
AE:No.
KM:So you had your children when you got out of the military?
AE:Yes.
KM:Who were your heroes and heroines during this time? Were there certain people
that you admired, that you served with, or people that really impacted you?AE:One of my good friends, she just retired a few years ago as a lieutenant
colonel; she put twenty-three years in service. She was one of my heroes because she was in finance and she's just such a good soldier and took care of everybody under her. Just such a good role model.KM:What was your impression of the political leadership or military leadership
when you were in? Different presidents, that kind of thing. Did you have any impressions of them?AE:I felt like they cared about our service and were grateful for us to be in
there. I never had any negative things from the president.KM:Okay. I'm going to ask now about some different things that happened over the
years that have affected military life. What are your memories of 9/11? You got out the year before this happened; what are your thoughts on that?[The September 11, 2001 attacks, or 9/11, was a series of four coordinated
terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of 11 September 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 others]AE:It was terrible, because I was living in Fayetteville at the time, and my
husband worked in a building downtown that was a little taller. And so, that day that that was happening I was getting ready to go to work at Stony Point Elementary, because I worked for the after-school program at Stony Point--I was the director of their after-school program there--and I was getting the craft stuff ready for the crafts we were going to do that day, and then they called me and told me to come early. I went a couple hours early since school was going to get out early because of everything that was going on. I had the television on when I was getting ready and saw the horror of the things that were happening.KM:Did you think about how that was going to impact the military at all?
AE:Oh, yes. I knew that there was going to be a lot of deployments, there was
going to be a lot of alert--high alerts, and people being--and being in the 82nd, when I was there, we did not have cellphones, we had pagers, and we always had to have our pager, and we were ready to deploy when that pager went off. So I knew that the alert and the security was going to have to go way high.KM:You would have known some people that would have been sent to Iraq and places
like that.AE:Yes. Yes.
KM:What were your impressions when all of that started happening after 9/11?
What were your thoughts on that?AE:Well, I knew it was going to be tough on the soldiers, and scary, but I knew
that they all wanted to protect our country.KM:What about Fort Hood; the shooting down in Fort Hood?
[On 5 November 2009, Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally
shot thirteen people and injured more than thirty others during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, a military base near Killeen, Texas.][On 2 April 2014, U.S. Army Specialist Ivan Lopez went on a shooting spree at
several locations at Fort Hood, Texas, after his request for a ten-day leave to attend to family issues was denied. Four people, including the gunman, were killed, while fourteen others were injured; twelve by gunshot wounds]AE:I thought that was terrible. I just felt bad for all the people that were
involved; all the people that were injured or killed and had to see that happen.KM:Because that's on home turf.
AE:Right.
KM:Not something you would expect to happen on a home base.
AE:No.
KM:What about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell?" The repeal of that?
["Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the official U.S. policy on military service by
gays, bisexuals, and lesbians. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members, while barring openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from military service. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed 20 September 2011]AE:That didn't affect me, and I didn't have any friends that that affected.
KM:What about your thoughts about women serving on the front lines in the
infantry? Do you have any concerns about that?AE:I have no concerns about that.
KM:So women should be able to serve anywhere that they are qualified to serve?
AE:Yes.
KM:Fabulous. We're going to get out of that a little bit and get into some
personal stuff. What about music, what do you like to listen to?AE:I like Christian music.
KM:Okay. What about movies?
AE:I like the romantic comedies.
KM:What about TV shows?
AE:I like a lot of the Hallmark [Channel] shows. And Fuller House. [American
sitcom series; reboot of the 1987-1995 TV series Full House], those kind of television shows.KM:What do you do with your family on a typical weekend? How old are your children?
AE:My oldest son will be seventeen years old next month.
KM:Does he want to join the military?
AE:No, he does not. [chuckles] And then I have a son who just turned fifteen.
They're both in high school; eleventh grade and ninth grade. The older one, he's become so independent since he got his driver's license in January. It's almost like he's off at college because he will drive here and there, because he has swim practice every day after school, and he has Young Life [religious organization] that he likes to go to. A lot of times we don't even--"When is Matthew coming home? Where did Matthew go?"KM:What about your fifteen-year-old?
AE:He goes with his brother. They've become better friends since his brother can
drive him to school. [chuckles]KM:And you have a daughter; how old is she?
AE:She is ten years old and in fifth grade.
KM:What do you do on the weekends with your kids?
AE:Well, my husband's mother has not been doing very well so we spend a lot of
time with her, and then he has a brother who can't live on his own and they just moved into a retirement community in Salisbury, so now they're closer so we do a lot of things with them.KM:Do you talk to your children about your military experience?
AE:A little bit. They know some of it.
KM:What are their thoughts about "mommy" being a soldier?
AE:They don't--They just know that I did it, and I don't think it's real to them
because they weren't around when I was in it, so they're a little removed from it. But my friend Teri who was in for twenty-three years, her husband was air force and she was army. She went to [United States Military Academy] West Point [West Point, New York] and he went to the [United States] Air Force Academy, so he--we got to watch their children when they were both deployed. Their children came and stayed with us for a short period of time; they had a little boy and a little girl. The boy is my middle son's age, and the girl is a little older than my daughter.KM:At what point did you decide to leave the service?
AE:Well, because my husband had never been in the military and we went
through--we were dating when I was in Bosnian, so we were separated for those seven months. And I was older--I was thirty-one when I got married--and I wanted to have children someday, so that's why I decided it was time to get out, because I had been on deployments, and I did not want to get married and have to be deployed. So I got married while I was on terminal leave, and then I was done with my commitment to the military.KM:And you decided to stay in North Carolina.
AE:Yes, because my husband grew up in North Carolina and he had a job with the
county, and then he got a job with the state. He was working for the state when we got married.KM:What did your family in Nebraska think when you got out of the military and
you decided to stay in North Carolina?AE:Well, they were so used to me being gone since I was eighteen that it
wasn't--My dad was used to me being gone to Germany and Turkey and being in Fort Bragg. My dad did come down for my wedding, He was scared to death to fly on a plane, but we got him on a plane.KM:It was his first flight?
AE:Yes.
KM:Oh, my goodness.
AE:Well, I think he might have flown--I don't know if he flew to Florida or not.
I'm not sure.KM:Do you get back to Nebraska to visit your family very often?
AE:Not very often. All of us went last year for Thanksgiving. My dad, right now,
tomorrow he will find out the results of a bone marrow biopsy, so a little worried about that.KM:Hopefully everything will turn out great. What did you do when you left the service?
AE:I took a few months off. My husband said, "Take a break." [chuckles] Then I
found the job working for an after-school program.KM: Is that what you do now?
AE:No. My husband has his own company now, so I work part-time for him, and that
way I'm kind of flexible and I can work from the house or run--His office is in Charlotte, so I can run down and do things, or I can go to Salisbury and take care of something for him, whatever I can do from home. That way I'm flexible for the kids.KM:What about your adjustment to civilian life, was that difficult?
AE:It was not difficult.
KM:Did you use any of your veteran benefits, like, mortgage or GI Bill?
[The GI Bill provides educational assistance to servicemembers, veterans, and
their dependents]AE:We did get a VA loan for our first house.
KM:And you went through the Veterans Administration for that.
AE:Yes.
KM:What is your experience with the VA?
AE:That experience with the loan was fantastic, because we could not have done
it without the VA loan, and having to put less money down.KM:Due to the recent conflicts, the media has focused a lot on PTSD
[Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder]. Do you have any personal experience with that, or anyone that you know that you served with that you had to deal with directly?AE:I've suffered with it myself from experiences in the military in Turkey and Bosnia.
KM:So you were directly on the lines and you saw some action there?
AE:Well, being attacked by the Turkish soldier and some of the--
KM:MST is what you're talking about.
AE:Yes, yes.
KM:How do you cope with that on a daily basis?
AE:Well, I just recently found out about the counseling at the VA, and so I've
been going to that.KM:That's fabulous; absolutely fabulous. How has your life been different
because of your time in the military? How do you experience civilian life?AE:I think you see the world through a different lens after you've had those
experiences, and you can appreciate a lot more of our freedom. Because I've got to see other countries and see--go on peace-keeping missions, and flying down to Iraq and working, and knowing that whole situation and keeping track of that situation, it opens your eyes a lot more.KM:Your children are kind of young, and your son does not want to join the
military, but do you have any nieces or nephews or other close family and friends and their children that might want to join?AE:I have friends that have children that are joining. My friend from basic
training, her son is going to do what she did in the military. She was a helicopter mechanic.KM:Okay.
AE:And I did work in some aviation units, so I got to know some people that did
those jobs. So I'm excited for her and her son, that he gets to follow in her footsteps and go into the same job she had. And then it's exciting that my friend has a daughter that's going to be an Intelligence Analyst and go Airborne, just like I did.KM:You encourage men and women to join the military?
AE:Yes.
KM:You think it was a valuable experience for you?
AE:Yes.
KM:What does patriotism mean to you?
AE:It means a lot. I'm very proud of my country and very happy that I served my
country. I wish that a lot of people loved their country and honored the flag, because not everybody does. But they have that freedom not to.KM:Okay. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that a civilian may
not understand about what it was like serving as a female in the military, or just serving in the military?AE:I don't know. [chuckles]
KM:Alright. I don't have any more formal questions, is there anything else you
want to add?AE:I don't think so.
KM:Alright. Amy, thank you so much.
[End of Interview]
