Not Just One of the Boys in Iraq

By: Editor's Note: We first wrote about Chantal Escoto, a five-year Army veteran, in April when she was embedded with the 101st Airborne in Iraq as a reporter for The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tenn. Now back home, she reflects on her weeks in the war in one of several dozen oral histories in a book published this week called Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson (The Lyons Press). An excerpt follows:

Once we left Camp Pennsylvania and entered Iraq, I was the only woman among 700 guys. You don't want to seem like what they expect to find in the typical woman -- you know, to be whiny and complaining. I would do what I have to do, especially like personal hygiene stuff. If I had to go to the bathroom, they would be respectful of that. That still got tough, because there aren't too many trees in the desert.

They didn't treat me any different, but in a way they did. One thing that bothered me was when they would start talking about nasty things or pornography. They'd be watching pornography on DVDs or looking at pictures, and I'd say, "If you guys are going to watch this, just let me know beforehand so I can leave."

I'm a little bit older than these guys. I'm 40 years old. Some of them would call me mom. So I became a mother figure to some. I'd go up to them and ask, "Are you eating enough, dear?" Trying to play up the mom thing. Some of them even confided in me because with guys in the infantry, it's hard to talk if you are scared. So some guys would come see me and talk about their wives or talk about all the little sweet things that they'd do for their wives. If they said that in front of their peers they would be called wimps.

But as far as them trying to make passes, no, there was nothing like that. My husband was worried about that but there was nothing going on like that.

We saw a lot of fighting. We had taken over an agricultural complex where a huge weapons cache was stored. And then there was a military compound where there was some heavy fighting. But miraculously, my battalion didn't take any casualties. Some guys got shrapnel wounds, but they pretty much kicked butt. I was pretty close to the fighting when they took over the agricultural complex.

There was another time when we had just left the city of Amarah. The people in the streets were cheering when we got ambushed. There was no safe place for me to go. I stood in the back of the Humvee, just praying to God that nothing hit me.

It was really pretty scary. I was a non-combatant but I told them I'd be ready to pick up a gun if I had to. Earlier in the war, I got these guys to show me how the big weapons work.

When I came back home on April 27, I didn't want to talk about the war. I didn't want to be around people. I just wanted to be a recluse and stay in and not talk to anybody. I wasn't hurt physically but I was going through something psychologically or emotionally or mentally or whatever. I wanted to go back to work but I missed my family.

Some people said it was post-traumatic stress disorder. I still get jumpy around loud noises. I didn't want to read or see stuff about Iraq. There were things that I had seen at that agricultural compound which really affected me.

All these dead Iraqi guys just laying around the compound. They didn't move the bodies. There were flies all over them, and then the flies got on you. That freaked me out. And then I saw children half-burned by bombs.

I am now going through counseling, which I'd never done before, but I figure I don't need to try to win this war on my own. I also have been talking to the soldiers' wives, telling them, "Look, you know, your men have probably seen a lot more than I have, and I was affected by all this." I am not sorry I went through this experience in Iraq. It's just that I didn't expect to have the emotional damage that it did. I thought I could handle it. It messed me up.

I started smoking again when I was over there. I hadn't smoked for over ten years, but it was the only thing that would keep away the flies. My stress was magnified because my husband didn't understand what I had been through and I didn't want to talk about it. It put a real strain on our marriage. My 14-year old son probably just wanted his mom back. We're going to California for a couple of weeks and hang out with family and stuff, so it's getting better.
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