Interview of an American Soldier

My name is Bruce Lemyre. I am a junior here at Rutgers and I am pursuing a degree in Information Technology and Informatics. I am in the NROTC program, set to commission into the Navy after graduation.

Before getting into this, I would like to state that any political or other views expressed here are not necessarily the views of the United States Navy or any military organization.

The attached audio interview is an interview of Lieutenant Lt Colonel Shane Wehunt. Lt Col Wehunt was my neighbor around 2010 when he was stationed at McGuire Air Force Base and during this time our families grew very close, to the point where I view him more as an uncle then an ex-neighbor. While stationed at McGuire he was deployed to Afghanistan.

In my experience, Lt Col Wehunt has a unique view of his time spent overseas. I know a lot of people in the military and I know many people who deployed, and I do not think I have ever come across someone with the same disposition as he has. Sometimes when I talk to military members I get the sense they have a dislike of Muslims. As the current political climate in America shows many American citizens have a negative view of the Muslim community. Even though I believe this is wrong, I think it is sometimes physiologically justifiable. Some of the military members who have been deployed have had to engage with hostile forces, maybe even killed people, and for these actions to make sense they need to blame someone. As for American citizens, I cannot think of a justifiable reason to be bigoted towards Muslims. I find that if someone hates Muslims it is out of ignorance, or sometimes it is a hatred on religious bases. I have met more than one devout Christian say bigoted things about Muslims. Either way, Lt Col Wehunt does not begin to touch either of these categories, which is interesting to me because not only has he been deployed but he is a very devoted Christian. In the interview he touches upon how he, as an American and a Christian, dealt with working closely to people of such a culture and religion. By focusing on the mission of helping the Afghan people, he and his team were able to integrate with Afghan forces both professionally and socially. During his time there he approached the job at hand with an open mind and learned a lot about the Muslim faith to better enable cooperation between forces. Not only did he and his team embrace the differences of culture to work together, but they continued to educate themselves on culture. At one point he describes two members of the Afghan team as “brothers” to him, who he still communicates with today. “Brothers in arms” is a term that I have heard used to describe the people in the unit that one is deployed with, but I have never known someone to associate themselves that closely with a person outside of their unit, which truly shows the extent of their affability.

Towards the end of the interview, I asked him how he would describe his time overseas, and again his response was abnormal. Of all the military members I have talked to, no one except Lt Col Wehunt has ever used the word “rewarding” to describe their deployment. In fact most of them say it sucks. Lt Col Wehunt repeats some of the obvious reasons the deployment can be challenging. Time away from family, the combat environment, and the hours operation are all common complaints I have heard. As for the benefits, knowing he was playing a pivotal role in helping train the Afghan forces to stand on their own feet was enough to say that the experience was more rewarding than challenging for him.

Finally, his take away from deployment is more insightful than I have heard from many other veterans who have deployed. Because of his extensive interactions with the Afghan unit he was training, his views of Muslims in general seem more informed then a majority of Americans. When asked if he had anything left to add about his experiences with the Muslim people he expressed that even though people tend to define Muslims a certain way, they are just like Americans in that they are a diverse community of people. There are many different people in the Muslim communities and many people forget this and tend to group all Muslims together, or as he calls it, assigning a “bumper sticker” to their culture.

In this assignment we were told to avoid rampant sentimentality, but honestly the reason I choose to interview Lt Col Wehunt because I admire him and the people he was teamed with. In America today there are many people who judge based on race and religion, and the more people willing to overcome a cultural barrier in the interest of progress is never a bad thing in my opinion.