Not many of you can relate

I was watching the news last night (shocking I know) and it was talking about men and women from the Air Force being deployed overseas to the war. This brought back some not so great memeories to me. I come from a military family (just in case you didn't know) and fortunately I have only had to witness one family member having to go and fight in the war. My brother Jr has gone over two times already and might have to go one more time.

When I was 10 years old Jr was in the Air Force and his unit was picked to go over to the first Desert Storm war. At this point the military wasn't his "job" and he had to leave college to go over to Saudi Arabia. Only being 10 years old I didn't really know what was going on. It wasn't until the day that we had to drive him to the Air Force base to fly overseas did I know how scary this really was. I was in my room and all of a sudden I heard my Dad sobbing. I have never, even to this day seen or heard my dad cry like this. Now I was scared. It was so hard to have to hug him good bye and then see him leave. If my memory is correct we even got to see his plane fly away. Luckily his job in the military wasn't too demanding and he was never in harms way. I think I heard him say that he was just hanging out w/ some guys from Italy.

Now comes the second war. This was right after Sept 11th. Jr had to go over again. He was over there before we "started" the war. This time I knew what was going on since I was older and this time there really was a reason to be scaried. Jr had now switched over to the Marines and was a Cobra helicopter fighter pilot. There are less then 200 Cobra pilots in the whole United States. And yes I said fighter pilot. That means that he was fighting (guns, bombs etc.) every time that he was in the air. We had so many scares when he was over there when we heard on the TV that a helicopter was shot down. There was even a time when it was a Cobra was shot down, being less then 200 in the whole US and not that many are over there at one time it was such a horrible long night until we knew that it wasn't him. I was in such a constant fear. I knew that my family was going through the same thing that I was feeling but I felt like the world was still doing on and so few had these worries like me. I was so jealous that I couldn't let one day go by and not think 'What if something happened today'. Thank God he was fine and didn't have to stay there long. After he came back to the states and soon after he flew out to Chicago and we had a surprise "Welcome Home" party for him. He wasn't the brother that I had known. The war had messed w/ his mind a bit. I had asked him when he was home if he had killed people. He looked at me w/ a "Are you serious" look and was like "Yes". I then asked if he had killed a lot. I don't remember what his exact answer was but yeah it was a lot. He soon went back to the normal brother that I knew.

Jr had then been lucky to not have to go back and then got a job working at Annapolis Navel Academy teaching the students there. His three years are almost up and he will be returning to being a pilot. His wife told me that he might have to go over there again. I sure hope not b/c I don't want to have to go through that scaried feeling again.