Today the Bad Guys Won

Four years after enlisting, my son made staff sergeant in the army. According to him, that puts him in the top three percent. I don’t advocate war; politics sicken me, but my son is a soldier, and I’m proud of him.

It’s so hard to write this; so I’m venting, more so than creating.

Today, I found a huge placard stuck to my Jeep windshield. I knew it was trouble before I tried to remove it. A picture of a soldier and bible scripture looked like a dangerous potion to me.  When I tried to remove it, the thing clung to the glass. I peeled off the top layer, leaving a six inch patch of white backing. From inside the Jeep, somehow the picture was still readable, like it was double-printed or something. I felt violated.

I talked to my daughter and her husband, and they came to the same conclusion. I have a large sticker on my back window declaring my son is in The United States Army. Today, after I scraped the propaganda sticker off with goo-gone and a razor blade, I removed the army sticker. I was targeted. No one else in the complex had a similar sticker placed on their windshield.

My son turns twenty-six this August. He’s already damaged equipment, according to army standards. Eight mile runs with sixty pound packs-that’s army physical training. Standing sentry for six hours in the 120 degree Iraqi desert wearing one-hundred pounds of gears; that’s military duty. Getting shredded by shrapnel and feeling both grateful and sickened because the tank in front of you, not yours,  hit an I.E.D. (improvised explosive device) and disappeared; that’s war.

He suffered brain damage, has P.T.S.D. (don’t they all?) and endures flashbacks. He’s not proud of the orders he’s followed.

My son’s neck requires surgical intervention, because he was top-dog military, just not anymore. They want to “med-board” him out-retiring him with a percentage of disability-rather than fix him. It’s not looking all that great for my son. He’s everything a mom could ever ask for, and he’s ashamed in front of his men, because he can’t perform at his usual level of intensity. Fine, that’s life. I’ve seen him pull success out of an empty bag more than a few times.

But please, no matter what you think, don’t deface a soldier’s mom’s Jeep with a disgraceful action. There’s nothing brave in cruelty. The bad guys won today. I hope they weren’t watching while I scraped off my army sticker with tears blurring my vision. I’m an army mom, and today, someone made me a victim.