A Guest Blogger: Jared "Numbnuts" Burgan

Jared Burgan is my brother. He will graduate from the University of Delaware on May 10, 2010 with a BM in Music Education. He can be reached at jaredburgan@gmail.com.

This is my most recent photograph of Jared. Looking good as always:




Without further adieu:

When I Go- Ask Me When I Get Back
Jared Burgan

In December of 2005 I enlisted in the US Army Reservist as a 42R- Army Bandsman (we can save the band jokes for later). It was to this day the most brash and least thought out decision I’ve made in my life; when people ask me why I enlisted I really don’t have an answer. My initial experiences with being in the military (MEPS and Basic Training) were awful just as they are for most people. That with the close proximity of my mother’s death made my first few years in the Army terrible. I wanted nothing more than serve my time and be out.

As my enlistment progressed the Army began to grow on me. That coupled with a diminishing interest in my collegiate studies (music education) I saw the possibility of me making a career out of the military a more likely path I’d be taking. As such I am currently to re-class my MOS to 19D- Cavalry Scout. I’ve gotten used to surprised comments and disappointed looks as I tell this to my friends and family as I field the standard questions of, “Why would you want to do this now?” to less frequent but more sincere, “Why do you want to be part of the war machine?” Not all of the feedback has been negative though. “This is something you’d be good at” or “I can see you doing this” are the most common responses from these people. It hasn’t been an easy decision and it’ll take me a while to follow through with it as I get other things in order.

What I really want to talk about though is the ever-pervading question of “Why? Why would you want to join the Army, especially during a war?” And for me, where I am in my life, it is hard to explain to people that it is something I feel like I need to do. Part of it is legacy. My cousin has been in since the late 1980’s and is currently serving as a company first sergeant. Both of my grandfathers served during World War II. One of them was awarded two Silver Stars, a Purple Heart, and aided in the liberation of a concentration camp. Another part of it is a sense of service. This part is hard for people to understand, especially in an era of American society where any sense of service of any kind is lost in an elitist sense of “that isn’t for me”. That leads me to my third reason. I was fortunate enough to have the option of enlisting. Other people due to their own circumstances are left with the military as their only option for a successful future. This doesn’t demean their commitment but it does put into perspective a dangerously growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

The last eight years have a put a serious strain on the public’s opinion of the military and those who serve. We are caught in an occupation in one country and an increasingly violent insurgency in another. And amidst this we’ve turned military service into political leanings- in efforts to point blame on a particular party we’ve neglected and abandoned the men and women who serve our country. We’ve turned “Why do you serve?” into “How could you possibly do this now?” We’ve written off a sense of service simply as necessity- someone just trying to scrape by. We’ve turned the efforts of men and women overseas into fodder for a left-wing/ right-wing argument over who is right or should we even keep bothering in these countries? Soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen have volunteer for a job that has people with little to no military experience directing the course of their lives. So as civilians and politicians argue over policy we’ve abandoned men and women over seas to fight wars with no support.

The last eight years have made it very easy for a lot of people in this country to judge the actions of men and women over seas, and worse to pass judgment on why these people chose to do what they do. Asking soldiers why they serve is trying to understand why they volunteer for months over seas away from families, why they put themselves in a firefight, or why they risk their lives for the men and women next to them. The truth is though that if it is something someone never experiences, it is something that can never be understood.