James Calvin Stee

During the height of the Global War on Terror, I'm not sure what the conventional path looked like. I know at Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training I was one of the old guys. I was 22 when I arrived at Fort Sill, Oklahoma for Basic. I was 23 when I arrived at AIT. This doesn't seem very old in hindsight. But when compared to the 18 and 19 year olds that came straight from high school I was treated like I knew it all. Teaching my Battle Buddies how to read the label on laundry detergent and tie a full Windsor on their Class A uniforms – I knew it all.

The 7 or 8 months I spent in my Initial Entry Training didn't prepare me for getting home to a National Guard unit that was mobilizing in a few weeks. Everyone remembers Stop-Loss as that thing that kept dudes from getting out after their contract ended. It was also the instrument they used to redirect the lives of many young women and men at the Army's behest throughout the War on Terror. So it was for me. In the Army National Guard you don't join "The Army" or "The Corps" you join a unit, a company usually where you know where you'll drill on the weekends, what their mission is, and who's assigned there. It was the last vestige of some hometown militia.

I arrived home from AIT to be processed from the unit I enlisted into and to be transferred to a unit immediately deploying to Iraq during the 5th phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the deadliest year of the deadliest campaign – which was honestly pretty cool. Mama didn't raise no bitch – and I enlisted to do the thing. I was happy with the way the Army fucked me the first time. Until I got to my new unit.

I was now attached to an Aviation Support Battalion. Aviation is a support element in the first place (it will never be combat arms). Finding out I was going to Iraq as part of a support the support battalion in a world where my dudes and I watched Black Hawk Down every weekend and did pushups every time an American got shot straight sucked. Add that to the fact that my new NCO was a 52-year-old fat dude that couldn't pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (with a walking profile) and couldn't pass the EMT test to even have my job in the army. You can imagine my culture shock.

I had just left AIT as the Company Leader of the Cycle and Combatives Champion (BJJ) out of 600 students. I had Drill Sergeants that shot 40 out of 40 targets with 30 bullets and ran 11-minute two miles, while singing the Army song: Those were the dudes teaching me how to be a Soldier.

Who the fuck was SSG Stee to be my leader in the craziest, most dangerous place in the world? He didn't know dick about Tactical Combat Casualty Care. He couldn't carry a stretcher off the objective empty.

What he did have was a winning attitude and the biggest balls of any human being on earth.

Things I didn't know about SSG Stee when I couldn't stand him - when I didn't understand why he thought he deserved to lead me.

Jim Stee was a year or two younger than me when he was deployed to Vietnam as part of the Fall of Saigon while communists killed and tortured thousands.

He didn't drink because his brother was a drunk, and he couldn't stand him.

He had a cat. That's still gay.

He didn't live with his mom. His mom lived with him. His Dad told him to take care of her.

He was a clown - Shriner I mean.

He had a subscription to Easy Rider, and every time they got delivered in country he'd just look at me and tell me that he liked the pictures of the custom bikes.

SSG Stee volunteered to go with us after the longest deployment of the Iraq War.

Every time I came back from a shitty run he'd give me Marb light and ask me if I wanted to talk.

He volunteered to go back months after he got done helping mechanics wash blood out of HMMWV and Bradleys after working his own mangled patients.

Jim Stee understood my bad days in Iraq more than any other human being on earth ever could.

Stee told me two things that hit hard after he died. The first was that he would never kill himself, it wouldn't be fair to his mother. The second was that he had no idea what to do with his life after we got home.

I talked some big trash to him the last time we were together. I had a new baby at home and was drilling in Texas chasing one of my dreams – he was being told to retire by our commander.

I wish he knew how much he mattered to me. I wish I could have articulated how wrong I was the first few months of our relationship.

I wish he could meet my wife and my children and I could just tell him how grateful I was that he did volunteer. Again and again and again. But most of all that he volunteered for that last deployment. I don't believe he was trying to change the world, or help American interest abroad. I believe he volunteered to take care of Soldiers. Even shit bags like me.