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I stood in a large, open concept studio in downtown Laramie with the setting sun pouring in through the massive, paned window, viewing the mountains of the Snowy Range in the distance with a train …
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I stood in a large, open concept studio in downtown Laramie with the setting sun pouring in through the massive, paned window, viewing the mountains of the Snowy Range in the distance with a train pulling through the Union Pacific rail yard that separates town in the foreground. There was a gathering of roughly two dozen people being held at the apartment of one of my department’s associate professors above the cupcake shop my then-girlfriend worked at.
In the late spring, I was selected to partake in a trip to the Middle East, specifically to Israel, the Palestinian West Bank and Jordan, through an educational nonprofit dedicated to developing immersive international travel programs in conflict-ravaged parts of the world. As a University of Wyoming student, I had dedicated a great deal of effort into studying the area, having been the host of the Arabic and Middle East Studies Program’s podcast on regional affairs and working as an intern under a Jordanian businesswoman and entrepreneur.
The Middle East had always been fascinating to me given the contemporary military history of my family. When I was 6, my father was deployed to Iraq as a noncommissioned officer with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Second Squadron based out of Fort Irwin, California, from December 2004 to January 2006. His deployment was one of the most consequential events of my early life.
He wasn’t the only one close to home who was sent to Iraq. My father served as my aunt’s recruiter in 2003 just for her Army Reserve unit, the 379th Engineer Battalion out of Missoula, to be deployed at the same time as my dad. She served as the primary Tactical Minefield Database operator from a boathouse in one of palaces owned by then-recently deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein outside of Baghdad. There is a picture of the two of them that was taken on a disposable camera from when my dad went to visit her at Camp Victory South after taking a spot on a refueling mission from FOB Kalsu. My grandparents still keep that image.
It wasn’t just one war in Iraq people around me had exposure to either, as a close family friend of mine was a combat engineer who saw action against the Iraqi Army in 1990 during Operation Desert Shield, the defense phase and precursor of the more famous Operation Desert Storm.
While my father might not have been the only one who I knew sent to war, he was the most deeply affected by it of the people I knew. Although I was 7 years old at the time of his return, I still saw the shift in him when he got back. Like many men, he never spoke about it, became more distant and, after compounding with other issues, culminated in a failed marriage where full custody over his only son went to his ex-wife, before his parents had to step in and raise him.
Without the chance to be directly involved, he did what he could from the periphery, like paying for my first trip abroad in high school and transferring his post-9/11 GI bill to me so I could afford to go to college. While the war and life took its toll, I never doubted that he loved me and was proud of me, though he only seldom said it.
Living in Alabama while I was growing up in our shared hometown of Meeteetse, it was hard for him to be present and he still struggles with it. The last time we saw each other was when I was working the gun counter at the Laramie Walmart during the depths of the pandemic. He wanted to surprise me before continuing to the Big Horn Basin to go meet up with his old commanding officer from Iraq who he had somehow convinced to move from California to Powell. We spent the next day and a half together and for the first time in a long time, it felt like some of that distance had closed.
It was three years later, in the late spring of 2023, when I stood in that studio apartment mingling with fellow members of the trip. One I recognized was a classmate in my Government and Politics of the Middle East class who delivered a presentation earlier that day, postulating a hypothetical, independent Kurdish state as his final project. He was a tall, young man with a tight crew cut who usually remained quiet but always contributed meaningfully to discussions.
I approached him, congratulating him on his work and talking with him about his project as a mutual friend of ours joined. As our conversation wound down, our friend observed that the classmate always wore camouflaged pants to class and asked if he was with the university’s ROTC chapter or if he had other reasons. He chuckled and admitted that he was just frugal and wore his father’s old surplus from when he was in the Army stationed out in California.
I related to him, saying that my father was also in the Army, joking that I too was cheap and how I also spent time in California when my dad was stationed there. I mentioned specifically being from Fort Irwin and he immediately registered it and knew where I was talking about. Then the clarifying questions started.
What unit was your father in? The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, you say?
When was he stationed in Fort Irwin? Throughout the early 2000s?
Was he part of the Iraq rotation in late 2004? He was and he was there as a low grade officer?
As the pieces clicked into place, I thought to myself that there was no way that I was standing in front of the son of my dad’s commanding officer who my dad had visited three years prior in his commanding officer's Powell home.
“Do you mind if I go call my dad really fast?” he asked me, followed by me excitedly encouraging him to do so.
I went to grab a drink while he moved to a quieter side of the studio and I watched his expression when he asked his father about my father. Then I saw a tremendous smile race across his face as he looked back up at me and nodded in confirmation.
Out of all the people I could have met in all the classes I took, here we were, rekindling probably the most extraordinary relationship to possibly have and how miraculously ironic of circumstances we found ourselves in as we prepared to go to the Middle East like our fathers had nearly two decades prior, albeit as scholars instead of soldiers.
Three years after that experience and expedition, I was offered a position as a writer for the Tribune. My new friend's father was the second person I called right after my wife to rejoice that I would be returning to the area. To my total surprise, he offered my wife and I his home to establish ourselves just outside of Powell without worry as his duty to what I can only describe as a Klingon-level sense of honor.
This experience and others like it frequently remind me of the words of a sweater my great friend Abdalrahim from Gaza wore frequently when I still lived in Laramie: Train your mind to see the good in every situation.
The incredibly long shadow cast by war has consequences that no one can foresee. On one hand, it shattered my family as it had so many others by replacing their sons and daughters with hollow men and women who have had to claw back for the normalcy that once came so naturally to them. On the other, it also forged the one connection that would give my wife and I the chance to return to the Basin and plan for the beginning of our own family. What’s done is done and today is a new day, it’s up to us to make it what we will.
