"This is just ridiculous,’I don’t understand what we’re doing over there"

This Is Just Ridiculous

I Don’t Understand What We’re Doing Over There

Milton Soldier Upset Army Won’t Let Him Out

July 10, 2005 By Marcia Nelesen, Gazette Staff,Janesville, WI

MILTON-Ryan Nofsinger figures he held up his end of the bargain.

But Uncle Sam didn’t.

The 22-year-old Milton resident served four years in the Army, including 14 months in Iraq.

His discharge date was July 27. The paperwork was done. His family was counting the days on a calendar.

And then Ryan got the heart-stopping, breath-sucking news.

His active-duty status had been extended for a year.

But that wasn’t all.

He will go back to Iraq in October.

The Nofsingers are devastated.

"He got away (from Iraq),’’ said his stepmother, Shelley Nofsinger of Milton. "Nothing happened. It’s kind of like playing Russian roulette. Every time you go back, you’re playing the odds.’’

The Nofsingers have no military background and never really wanted Ryan to join.

It bewilders them that the law allows the Army to put Ryan back in harm’s way.

Ryan joined the Army while in high school. He wanted to test his new freedom as a young adult and thought the Army was a good way to see the world.

"I wanted to live a little first,’’ Ryan wrote on Memorial Day 2004. "Too many movies and books shot me into the idea that the Army was glamorous, so I joined.’’

The recruiter told Ryan he was agreeing to four years of active duty and four years of nonactive status. He would finish his hitch in the National Guard. The recruiter told Ryan he could be called back to active duty from the Guard-if a bomb dropped on Washington, D.C., for instance.

Ryan left for basic training in 2001-two weeks before the planes hit the twin towers and the Pentagon. The bomb had dropped.

The military uses the term "stop loss’’ to describe the process that forces troops to stay in active service even though they are scheduled to get out.

"I never heard about stop loss until I got to my first duty station,’’ Ryan said.

He was sent to Iraq in April 2003, where he drove an ambulance.

He doesn’t like Iraq. The heat is difficult. He discovered he doesn’t much like the military.

"You’re always thinking about home,’’ Ryan said. "It seems like the days go by fast and the day you’re supposed to go home keeps getting farther and farther away.’’

This isn’t the first time the Army has snatched away one of those all-important dates.

On his 21st birthday, a week before leaving for Kuwait after serving 10 months in Iraq, Ryan’s unit was extended another four months. The troops had been packed and ready to go, a chore in the heat.

"That’s not just another four months,’’ he said. "That’s over the summer, when it’s 140 degrees, and you have to wear a flack vest.

"That was one of the most defining moments in my life because I was just so ready. I had my hopes up. I couldn’t wait to see my family, and they threw it all away down the drain. And now they’re doing it again’’

In July 2004, Ryan was stationed with a new unit in Fort Benning, Ga.

He was alive. He had made it back to American soil.

His release date-July 27, 2005-was a beacon, the thing that kept him going.

He signed his discharge papers. He was excited to start a new life. He was thinking about buying a place in Madison and going back to school. His service in Iraq had soured ambitions of a career in medicine. Instead, he would explore music.

When his mom died unexpectedly on Mother’s Day, Ryan came home for only four days. He didn’t want an extended leave to mess up his paperwork and discharge date.

But shortly after he returned, Ryan was told his new unit is being sent to Iraq in October. And so is Ryan.

His stepmom, Shelley, is worried. Ryan’s had a lot to deal with, especially with the death of his mom, she said.

He’s only 22 years old. He’s been to Iraq. He’s done his time. Now, he needs to move on and start something new, she said.

The whole family is reeling. Shelly delayed telling Ryan’s younger siblings until after school ended. When Ryan was in Iraq, the children were stressed.

"They’re old enough to know what’s going on,’’ Shelley said. "They see the fallen heroes every day.

"Many a time at night they start to cry.’’

His dad, David, gets up every morning at 5 to watch the news.

Shelley remembers the awful call from Ryan telling them he was going back.

"You know how they try to hide it, that they’ve been crying, but you can kind of tell,’’ she said. "He said, "I just can’t do it.’

"What scares me, if you’re going over there, you gotta be pretty pumped up, on top of things, very alert. He’s not thinking positive at all. If you’re not 100 percent, you’re in danger.’’

Shelley has no complaints about what the Army has done for her son up to this point.

"It’s not that we’re not proud,’’ she said. "But if you keep him in the Army and send him back, are these good things going to be buried? He’s served his time and was in Iraq. People can’t say he’s taking the easy way out.

"A lot of people do the four years and never see wartime. He saw wartime. He’s done more than his fair share for his country.’’

Ryan is angry and filled with foreboding.

"When I was there, every day was like, you never knew. Every convoy you go on was, ’This could be the one. And you can’t think of it like that. You can’t be afraid. If you’re afraid to die, it’s just going to make it worse.’’

Ryan doesn’t want to seem like a rebel.

It isn’t fair, however, that they make up the rules as they go along, he said.

"How can they make me stay another four years?’’ he asked.

It’s a volunteer force, but this feels like a draft to him.

"I fulfilled my obligation,’’ Ryan said.

"Why can’t I go home?’’

Ryan, who drove an ambulance in Iraq, writes about the dead. At the time of his e-mail, the number of U.S. soldiers who died was at 800. That count today is 1,750.

"Imagine your father going to a climate comparable to the Sahara, only to be brutally murdered by a roadside bomb. Imagine your first-born son, sleeping peacefully at night dreaming of someday finally getting home and having a mortar round land on his head’’

"These 800 people I hope are in a better place, but their last memory of home will not be their loved ones gathered around a bed. It is of their vehicle overturning onto the frying-pan hot Iraqi highway, or watching a mortar round land near them and not being able to do anything about it. I don’t understand how the defense secretary sleeps

"So, I guess Memorial Day is about remembering the ones that have sacrificed for the good of the group. Some of these sacrifices have passed in our aid station. You try not to make it personal, but when you see his daughter’s picture in his helmet, it leans towards the personal side.

"This holiday is all very different for me because I have seen a lot of those sacrifices up close and personal’’

"I love this country. There’s no other country in the world (where) you can go and have as much fun as in the United States. But to go over there and not really know what we’re fighting for The Iraqi people don’t know what they want. They’re killing each other for whatever reason. It’s total confusion every day.

"It is just so exhausting to have to get up every day and tell yourself, every day, ’come on, another day of heat.’ It’s just so exhausting. It totally wears on your head.

"It changed my entire life because everything that you take for granted, everything in the world, doesn’t mean anything when you know that your life could end at any minute.’’

"This is just ridiculous,’’ he said in a recent interview. "I don’t understand what we’re doing over there.

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