Shauna Berntsen was 17 in 2001. She spent that summer in basic training, just before beginning her senior year of high school. Within weeks, on Sept. 11, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Less than two years later, she was deployed to Iraq with the Army Reserves.
By that time, she was playing softball for Allen Community College and supporting herself by working at Pete’s Convenience Store. She was at work when she got a phone call at 6 a.m. on
Feb. 15, 2003, to learn she’d be sent overseas.
“I had a lot of friends who were Vietnam veterans, and they were with me when I got the news,” she said. “They told me what to pack. So that’s what I tell the young soldiers now. Listen to the old-timers. They’ve been there. They can prepare you.”
Still, it wasn’t easy. She got the call on a Saturday, and had to be with her unit on Monday.
“We had already said goodbye to quite a few soldiers who had deployed out of Iola, but I don’t think you can prepare for a call like that,” she said.
Berntsen served as an automated logistical specialist. Basically, she was in charge of purchasing equipment such as night vision goggles.
“In civilian talk, think AutoZone,” she said.
When she first joined the Army Reserves, she had hoped to attend college, earn a degree in education, join active duty and hopefully be stationed in Italy.
Her deployment has since changed all of those plans, including her desire to be an elementary school teacher.
Bernsten recalls how “the kids would swarm you,” in Iraq. “That’s why for a lot of us, we have such personal boundaries.”
And while being surrounded by children might not sound so bad, it was terrifying for Bernsten, knowing extremists were known to use children in their attacks.
“You always had a question if those kids were innocent. That was really hard.”
Also, an orphanage located not far from the airport came under fire not long into her deployment.
