As You Were

The sign-up sheet for door gunners was posted in the hallway, much as if the 2-224th battalion were looking for volunteers for their softball team. The first time Miranda Summers saw it, the sheet was empty, and she passed by without adding her name. Not that she wasn't interested-in fact, she found herself intrigued by the prospect of riding shot-gun in a Black Hawk helicopter. She just didn't think that as a woman she was allowed to be a door gunner. Female soldiers were strictly forbidden from combat roles in the armed forces, and Miranda figured all the shots would be filled by the young, gung-ho guys in the unit, eager to get up in the air.But her hesitation also grew from the knowledge that by signing it, she'd guaranteed to see war unfiltered instead of from the safe distance her rear-echelon supply clerk job provided. No longer would she be the college sorority girl who sneaked off campus one weekend a month to drill with her National Guard unit. She'd be a full-fledged member of the U.S. Armed Forces in Ira, who might be fired upon and ordered to fire back. She wasn't sure if she was ready for that.In truth, none of her fellow soldiers could be fully prepared for what they were about to encounter in Iraq. In civilian life, they were plumbers, cops, college students, computer technicians-ordinary Americans. As the men and women of the Virginia Army National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 224th Aviation Regiment, they were helicopter pilots, gunners, mechanics, and medics. Like tens of thousands of other Guardsmen, these citizen-soldiers faced enormous challenges when their 'weekend warrior' commitments were transformed into tours of duty in Iraq.In "As You Were, Washington Post" reporter Christian Davenport follows members of the 2-224th from their sudden call-up and deployment, through a year of arduous and at times harrowing service in some of Iraq's hottest war zones, to their return home, where they fce new batles in the struggle to resume their lives after combat. In additian to Miranda, there's Ray, a grandfather and Vietnam veteran who must reconcile figting not one, but two wars his country has come to view as debacles; Kate, who as a medic sees more of war's horror than any man in the unit; Craig, who struggles to find a job, and a place where he fits in, when he returns; and Mark, who sacrifices almost everything-love, family, his career-for the war.What emerges most powerfully from these intimate portratis is the citizen-soldiers' clear awareness of their dual status and the tension between their love for teh military life and their desire to fit inot a society that has never been so divorced from its military-or the war it was fighting.