Evan Reibsome

@misc{reibsomend,
  title = {Evan Reibsome},
  keywords = {13 Foxtrot, Abu Ghraib, Advanced Individual Training (AIT), Afghanistan, Alcohol, Baghdad, Basic Training, Camp Slayer, Civilian Life, Fallujah, Fort Still, Oklahoma, GI Bill, Green Zone, IED (Improvised Explosive Devise), Iraq, Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Operation Iraqi Freedom, Rules of Engagement, Saddam Hussein, September 11th, United States Army, United States Marine Corps, United States National Guard, Video games, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)},
  abstract = {Evan Reibsome (1982 - ) joined the National Guard as a means of paying for college. At the time of September 11, 2001, Reibsome was an undergraduate at Lock Haven University. He was part of the ISG (Iraq Survey Group) and he was charged with looking for chemical, biological, and the nuclear weapons. Reibsome believes that there is already a draft in place, a poverty draft that targets certain individuals.Interviewee Unit/Title109th of the Pennsylvania National GuardEnlistmentEvan Reibsome was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1982 and hails from a military family. His grandfather and his uncles were all Marines and he remembers seeing them in their uniforms and wanting to emulate that in his own life. Because they were in the military, they weren’t at home as much but Reibsome recalls those times they came home as very exciting. Describing his childhood as a happy one full of freedom and exploring, Reibsome was a hunter from around ages 12 or 13 until around 16. He doesn’t remember why he stopped hunting but expects that he just got busy with school and then never picked it back up. He was on the wrestling team, but I wasn’t that good of a wrestler. He was on the football team and enjoyed it but it was never something he actively pursued. Reibsome had a job and that took up a lot of his time. He attended Montoursville for his elementary and middle school years and then he moved to Montgomery, Pennsylvania. Reibsome graduated from Montgomery in 2000.TrainingReibsome had joined the military prior to graduation, so upon graduation he went off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training and after that, he stayed there for his AIT, which is the individual schooling. He was trained as a forward observer, 13 Foxtrot is the nomenclature or the term. He enjoyed MOS, especially navigating with maps and doing things outside. The training also included looking for targets with binoculars and calling in artillery. Electing to join the Army National Guard, Reibsome decided against being a Marine for practical reasons. He wanted an exchange for his service and the National Guard offered him the opportunity to continue to go to school while he went and served in the military. Reibsome liked that he could do his studies concurrently and that was appealing to him. Another big draw was that the funding was really lucrative, at least for an 18 year old. He didn’t have a way to pay for college, so the GI Bill and different tuition payment options made it affordable. The National Guard was just one weekend a month, then two weeks in the summer, maybe three weeks, depending where you were placed. One time Reibsome went to Fort Drum, New York. Another time, he went out to the National Training Center out in California. Basically it was one weekend a month and then some kind of two-week course or activity in the summer. It was an eight-year agreement, what was considered six and two, six years having to actively show up one weekend a month and then two years being inactive. Reibsome no longer has to show up but imagines that he could be recalled in a stop-loss type of situation. Reibsome assumed that if activated it would be for something domestically related, perhaps for a riot or flooding situation. He was shocked when he was activated for the Operation Iraqi Freedom. He assumed it would be the Marines who would be going and thought of his brother who was more a prototypical kind of military person. DeploymentAt the time of September 11, 2001, Reibsome was an undergraduate at Lock Haven University. He found out what happened when his mother called him and told him to turn on the news. At first he thought it was a terrible accident and he wasn’t sure what was happening. Over the course of the next few weeks, it impacted his unit. Reibsome hesitates to use the word excited, but he notes that their was a sense of urgency in the unit, an almost desire to be called up to serve. But his unit was not called up for Afghanistan. However, he does remember that there was a need to be in a constant state of readiness. In the meantime, Reibsome was continuing with his studies at Lock Haven by focusing on sociology and then criminal justice. Right before he ended up going to Iraq, Reibsome switched to an English degree. Sometime before Thanksgiving of 2003, Reibsome was told that his unit was being activated and to prepare form deployment. It was a somber time but also an exciting one. In early 2004, Reibsome’s unit was activated and sent to Fort Dix to start training to mobilize and then they were deployed in March of ’04 into Kuwait. In terms of training, Reibsome was a forward observer and, during an occupation, you don’t need forward observers anymore. They retrained him to be a military police officer using input from the people who had come back from the war. The name of Reibsome’s unit was the 109th of the Pennsylvania National Guard. They were attached to a unit called Bravo 203rd and they were part of the 89th Brigade. Ultimately, they were stationed in Western Baghdad for approximately one year. Reibsome was able to go on leave after six months and he was deployed one time. Reibsome was at Camp Slayer, which is part of the BIOP, the Baghdad International Airport. It was maybe five miles outside of Baghdad and Camp Victory was across the street. When Reibsome was there, he was part of the ISG (Iraq Survey Group) and he was charged with looking for chemical, biological, and the nuclear weapons. At the time, the idea was that there were facilities that Saddam Hussein had that were dual-purpose so that they could be used for military purposes but then they also had a civilian front. Reibsome thought this was an important mission because it meant justifying the war and legitimizing the invasion. He says that as the mission continued, there was a little bit of disillusionment that they didn’t have these resources. Although the intelligence branch was saying these weapons were there, he saw nothing to indicate that there was an even a capability to produce such sophisticated weaponry. Reibsome says that after three months into the tour to suddenly realize that the reason why he was fighting fighting, the cause for it, was maybe not quite as accurate as he initially thought. He notes that he didn’t have that much access to other information, outside of what the military was saying. He had letters home but nothing that could possibly undermine his mission was ever mentioned. There were newspapers available but not that much Internet. His preference was to stay focused on the mission and he didn’t seek out too many dissenting voices. One of Reibsome’s functions was to take convoys to Abu Ghraib and he was aware of the publicized incidents. He would take people from Abu Ghraib to medical communities if they had to go to the hospital, so he was transporting individuals or taking mail to them. Everyone was pretty upset about what was happening and the release of the photos made everything that much more difficult because it meant making more enemies which meant more danger. Camp Slayer seemed very secure. Occasionally he would have to stand guard with night vision looking for mortar attacks. But for the most part, the camp was really secure. The camp had air conditioning and running water to take showers. Reibsome recognizes that his experience with these amenities is very different from the experiences of those in the field. There was also a gym and people had access to television and video games for entertainment. And for those without their own gaming or entertainment devices, there was an adjacent recreation center where people would have Madden tournaments. Reibsome also notes that the food at Camp Slayer was great and says that the men enjoyed comparing chow halls at each place they were stationed. He feels very lucky that was experiences because once he was outside of Fallujah and saw how difficult the living conditions were for the Marines. There was no alcohol allowed on the base but an exception was made on Superbowl Sunday when the men were each allowed two beers apiece. Halfway through though they got orders to cease and that was the end of the beer. Reibsome didn’t interact with too many women during his deployment. His MOS initially was a 13 Foxtrot, which was a combat MOS and he believes that not too many women were involved in those positions at that time. Reibsome says that there were no women at basic training or in his unit but that he saw women doing the same jobs his unit was doing, whether it was turret gunners, drivers, what not. So women were in the same combat roles, if not more exposed. Reibsome drove a Humvee in his missions. The military did try and replace what he first drove with better models as the frequency of IEDs increased. He primarily used a 50-caliber machine gun but they also had the SOL with them as well. The 50-caliber has a large intimidation factor, which is half the reason that they used it. His Humvee suffered attack four times, with four explosions of different types. Other teams or other individuals in his platoon were engaged with small arm fire and more coordinated attacks. The biggest threat faced by units at this time was IEDs. Reibsome recounts that one time he was driving back from Abu Ghraib and he passed the explosive ordinance team as they were investigating what looked to be a suspicious object that was underneath an overpass. The decision was made to turn around and go back to Abu Ghraib. There was a median with a path through it and Reibsome was able to cross without incident. But the Humvee behind him took another path and tripped a landmine that blew up the front of their vehicle. The Humvee that sustained the damage was lucky because it was an upper armor model and the explosion went directly upward and no one was injured. In another incident Reibsome and his unit were lost in a neighborhood and that circling around was extremely dangerous because it made them a sitting target. A small IED went off but no one was injured. The scarier part was after the fact when the men got out and were sandwiched between large buildings. The third incident Reibsome recounts wasn’t the result of an IED but was a building explosion. After securing a paint factory in Baghdad, something ignited, possibly from the fumes, and all of a sudden there were orders to run. Everyone scrambled out of the building just before it exploded. Three people died and others were wounded. The incident happened on April 26 and they ultimately lost a third of the 20 men on the site. Reibsome did not interact with the Iraqi people as much as other MOS’s, largely because he didn’t do many foot patrols in which you try and get information out of people. Because he was assigned to look for weapons, they tried to draw as little attention as possible. Reibsome remembers some Iraqis lining up on the roads leading into the base and begging for food. They would throw them water and MRE’s but didn’t really interact. In the Green Zone, there were a lot of kids selling things like DVDs and trinkets and it was common to interact with them. His impression was that the people in the Green Zones had monetary incentives to be friendly and came across as very Americanized. Reibsome didn’t know Arabic but tried very hard to communicate. He says that coming from a sheltered Pennsylvania background, it was a shock to see the poverty levels in Iraq. He was given some cultural information and basic command training for one month at Fort Dix but it was still a culture shock. Reibsome never saw the inside of a mosque but notes that they looked beautiful. Mosques were worrisome because they stand out as the taller buildings in the area. The concern was that an attack would come from a mosque but due to the Rules of Engagement, there would be no way to retaliate effectively. Reibsome was also responsible for escorting and transporting people to and from Abu Ghraib. The road going from the Baghdad International Airport to Iraq was especially dangerous. Attacks increased on that road as time went on, especially IED attacks. Eventually they bulldozed the road and repaved it so that there was concrete everywhere and that lowered the attacks. As Reibsome was preparing to leave, car bombs were becoming more prominent. There was an effort to put up barriers on on-ramps to prevent cars from speeding into convoys as easily. Coming HomeThe discharge process unfolds gradually. Reibsome flew first to Germany and then to the United States. They were set to go to Fort Dix but got rerouted to Philadelphia due to snow. They weren’t able to depart the plane because of the rifles in the belly of the plane, which seemed to the men strange because they were in uniform and were obviously a pretty safe bunch of people. The next phase was like a demobilization where he was questioned for a week as to how many explosions and casualties he saw and what his tour experience was like. Reibsome believes this was to document everything so that if any trauma or injuries reveal themselves down the line that there is a record. At this point, everyone just wanted to go home. Reibsome was released for six months and he went back to school and finished his enlistment with the National Guard. Because when you demobilize you go from federal to state, he was able to finish his enlistment in 2006 and was officially done with the six-year part of his contract. All that was left was to remain inactive for two years and the contract would be complete. Reibsome returned to Lock Haven and graduated in 2007 with his education English degree and then found a job teaching. Reibsome feels luck to have had an easy transition back to civilian life. His unit, as well as his university, was incredibly supportive. Once when he was on leave he went to a university function and they recognized his service and that was a great validation for the work that Reibsome was doing and he very much appreciated it. He now feels that he has been back for so long that he is removed from what is happening in Afghanistan. The disconnect that exists between the experiences of those at war and those on the home front is troubling. When President Bush told people to go shopping he meant to keep the economy going but it also shows a complete obliviousness to the wars. Reibsome believes that on whole, the national experience was very insulated and that cutting taxes during a time of war shows that disconnect. Afghanistan is the longest war in American history but it doesn’t affect people on a day-to-day basis. And there is a danger when the civilian population isn’t actively invested in what’s going on overseas and there is no check on foreign policy. Perhaps part of that is a willful ignorance that there’s a distrust or a lack of faith in overseas policy that is not for America’s interest, it’s for other interests, whether that’s corporate interests or oil interests, for instance, or geopolitical interest for Iraq. Reibsome believes that there is already a draft in place, a poverty draft that targets certain individuals. And while he doesn’t necessarily see anything wrong with that and notes that he benefitted from these programs, Reibsome thinks that there should still be an awareness of whom it is who is serving. He also believes that there should be a more direct link between funding and cavalier military expeditions. He is skeptical that if there were a full draft that people with connections would serve and points to Vietnam and the use of waivers to insulate certain people from service. He worries about the students he now teaches who were around five or six years old when the wars started. Because they are so insulated from it, the wars have become naturalized in a sense. Reibsome is now pursing a PhD at Lehigh in English literature with an emphasis on modern American literature. He has read significantly on war literature from this country and recommends Tim O’Brien as a conical text. Specifically, he enjoys The Things They Carried. He read it during his deployment and it speaks specifically about the moral courage in not going to war. O’Brien says we went to war because we were too cowardly not to go to war. Reibsome think that’s an important message, that we should be sharing with young individuals, that war is not courageous, maybe alternatives to war or preventing war is more courageous and more difficult. There’s a reason why we keep going to war and there’s a reason why we like war literature and we like the experience of war to some extent. When we watch war movies and we can see the genuine love it’s all simplified between soldiers, or the self-sacrifice for soldiers, all the noise kind of disappears and there’s something beautiful about that. Reibsome is proud of his experience, but thinks that there’s a danger to that and that we have a responsibility to caution against kind of recklessly engaging in military wars. He says that if civilians aren’t overseeing a war, if they’re removed from the experience, there’s nothing to prevent just blind duty and blind faith in the military mission. And that the Iraq War shows there is a danger to that approach.},
  language = {English},
}