A Veterans Day Speech from Iraq
SGT Kevin Kosiak
SGT Kevin Kosiak is a member of the North Dakota Army National Guard who is currently deployed overseas in support of Operations Iraqui Freedom. He is serving currently with the 164th Engineer Battalion, which is stationed out of Minot, North Dakota. He is serving on a temporary basis with them during this deployment, is upon his return, he will return to the 188th Army Band in Fargo.
Kevin was asked to write a letter to be read at a Veteran's Day program in his hometown of Perham, Minnesota, where he has worked as a music educator for a number of years. This is his letter as it was read at the Veteran's Day Ceremony in Perham on November 12, 2007.
Dear PHS Students and Honored guests:
Greetings from Camp Slayer, Iraq! I wish I could be there in person to deliver my greetings, but circumstances being what they are, this letter must suffice. Thank you to Mrs. Wiezcorek and Ms. Wiesser-Matthews for inviting me to be a part of this Veterans Day observance.
Hopefully as you are hearing this letter, I am on my way out of Iraq and headed home for 15 days of leave. Every soldier in our task force is granted 15 days of leave during our year long deployment, and my leave is scheduled to begin on November 12th. Once home I plan to stop in and greet as many of you as I can in person.
Perhaps to begin a little bit of history, as some of you may still be wondering how a nice music teacher like me got himself into a mess like this. It’s a long ugly story, but I’ll make sure and leave in all the juicy parts.
On December 20th of 2006 I received a phone call telling me that I was being involuntarily transferred from the 188th Army Band to the 164th Engineer Battalion. The 164th had already been alerted that they were being deployed to Iraq and it seems they were in short supply of soldiers who were qualified in administrative skills. Administration is a secondary military occupational specialty that I carry in addition to the music position I hold as a guitar player and trombone player with the 188th Army Band out of Fargo, ND. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done any administration work for the Army for over 15 years, I was still qualified and the 164th was short, hence, nice military musician/music teacher gets all expenses paid trip to warm desert locale as an administrative specialist. In January of 2007 I began training with the 164th and deployed with them on June 4th. After spending just over 3 months at Camp Shelby, Mississippi preparing for our jobs in Iraq, we arrived here at Camp Slayer on September 6th. So… I have been on active duty for approximately 5 ½ months of which I have spent just over 9 weeks here in Iraq. The word on the street is that our deployment will last just 12 months, so if that is true, I should be on my way home, released from active duty, sometime around the 1st week of June of 2008.
I have had various questions asked regarding what was going thru my mind after being told I was being sent to Iraq. Several people have asked, “What did you do when they called you?”, Someone asked, “ Did you try to get out of it?”, and one person even asked me if I was considering going to Canada, ( I don’t think they were kidding).
Even though I didn’t volunteer for this deployment and if given the choice, I
would have chosen not to go to Iraq, I never once considered trying to, “get out of it”. I don’t consider myself to be a very brave person, nor do I even consider myself to be all that patriotic. If I could be so presumptuous as to give myself an accolade, I would say that I am a person of honor. I think that could be said of most if not all men and women who volunteer for military service. I hope that in my life that my word means something, whether it is a promise to my wife or children, to a student, or a colleague, or yes even to my government, I hope that people would say of me that I am a man that keeps his word.
I voluntarily rejoined the US Army in 2003 to be an Army musician, but I never once was naive enough to think that even an Army musician in our current world climate was exempt from a possible call to duty in a war zone. The phone call I received was unexpected, but not altogether a surprise. I knew when I took my oath in 2003 that even though the plan was for me to play music at military functions, if my government decided they needed me to do something else, they had the right to reassign me, and I had to obey. So when the call came for me to go to Iraq it wasn’t bravery or chivalry or even patriotism that compelled me to obey the order, I believed then, and I still believe that I was merely keeping the promise I had given to my government that if they needed me, I would go. Not the kind of stuff that hero’s are made of I’m afraid, I was just keeping my word.
If you were to ask me the overriding quality that I see in deployed soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, it wouldn’t be how tough they are or how brave or how strong or how fearless they are; it would be how they can be trusted to do what they have promised to do. Quite literally, our lives depend on our fellow soldier keeping his word. No matter how awful, how miserable, how uncomfortable, they must be trusted to keep their promises. This sense of honor, this idea of promises kept, is something that I have witnessed countless times since I have been on active duty. Men and women of all ages and in all branches of service answering a call to service not necessarily because they agree with the order or the cause , but answering the call because that is what they said they would do .
I came back into the military 5 years ago to finish my career and to do so in a relatively safe job as an Army musician. Lots of the young people in the 164 joined the Army for the education benefits. I don’t know of anyone in this unit that joined the National Guard because they had an overwhelming desire to go 7,000 miles from home to a place where people wanted to kill them. I don’t think any of us in this unit joined the Army with the hope that the phone would ring one day and we’d be asked to leave our families and our homes and our jobs and our lives. And yet an amazing thing happened on the day the 164 was to begin its yearlong deployment to Iraq. Everybody showed up. All the college kids, the police men, the geologist, the music teacher; they all showed up. No U.S. Marshals had to be called to hunt down any of the college kids who didn’t show up because they had just joined up to get the G.I. Bill. No one was A.W.O.L, no one was even late. On June 4th,, 2007, 119 soldiers showed up and flew to Mississippi to begin a 12 month deployment. On June 4th, 119 Americans kept a promise they had made.
That is what I think of when I think of Veterans Day. I think of all the men and women throughout our nation’s history who have made a promise and have kept that promise; they have made an oath and honored that oath. Veterans don’t get to choose where, or when, or who, or especially why. When the phone rings they go. I am honored that I can be counted amongst them. I am no hero, but I am a man like my grandfather in WWI, and my father and my uncles in WWII, and my brother and my nephews in Iraq. I am a veteran and I have kept my promise, and of that I am most proud.
Our world has gotten to be a very dangerous and complicated place since September 11th, 2001. It was probably just as dangerous and complicated before 9\11, I’m just not sure many of us were paying attention. I also know that the current policies our government has adopted to try and counter our difficult and dangerous world have created quite a division in our nation. I don’t pretend to know or understand much about foreign policy or foreign diplomacy( I’ll leave that to the Department of the Year to decipher); I only know that as an American soldier I have been asked to, in a sense, be the arms and the legs of some of that controversial foreign policy. What better way to lash out at an unpopular war precipitated by an unpopular foreign policy then by lashing out at the instrument of that unpopular war: the men and women of the armed forces? What I have experienced has been quite the contrary. Regardless of the disagreements and differences this country is voicing regarding the direction we ought to be taking in regard to the world we face, everywhere I have traveled across the United States since being placed on active duty, I have been treated with the utmost dignity, honor and respect. On a commercial flight into Atlanta the entire airplane burst into a round of applause when the pilot acknowledged the members of the armed forces on the plane. As we landed, everyone, even the first class passengers, remained in their seats to allow those of us in uniform to disembark first. I don’t know when I have been more proud to wear this uniform. To have an entire airplane of strangers extend such appreciation and respect to me was overwhelming. I’m certain many of the people on that plane don’t agree with our foreign policy or on how the Global War on Terror is being waged, but what I heard and saw that day was that although this nation may not agree on how to wage the war on terror, there is no hesitation in honoring the men and women who are the ones who must wage that war. In Bangor Maine while refueling before our jump across the pond, dozens of local citizens came out to the airport and served coffee and cake and shook each our hands as we entered the terminal. It was a “Gauntlet of Gratitude”. In the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, total strangers came up to me and shook my hand and thanked me for my service. That is really amazing because you know how hard it is for good Norwegian Lutherans to even shake hands with people they know. Good Midwestern, Norwegian Lutherans from a progressive, liberal, state like Minnesota walking up to a soldier they have never seen before and shaking his hand and thanking him for serving his country. I was overwhelmed and proud all over again.
I’d like to leave you with a quotation that has come to mean a great deal to me. I don’ even remember where I first read it; I think perhaps one of my children sent it to me. It is by Thomas Paine, a man I knew very little about before hearing this quote but of whom I am trying to learn a great deal more. This is what Thomas Paine said:
”If there is to be trouble, let it be in my time, that my children may live in peace.”
Thomas Paine wrote that over 200 years ago, but it couldn’t be more true if it had been written yesterday, it has almost become a daily mantra for me,
“If there is to be trouble. Let it be in my time, that my children may live in peace.”
Having now rubbed shoulders with soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, for the last 5 1\2 months it is my firm belief that all the men and women of our armed forces have no greater desire than to see the troubled world we live in today become a less troubled place for our children to live in tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Thank a veteran. Now get back to class and pay attention.
SGT Kevin Kosiak, HHC 164 EN BN, Camp Slayer, Iraq