Love Is a Battlefield

Staff Sgt. Shaun McBride would rather be in a war zone than at home. He likes the adrenaline, he says, even the "fear someone can shoot you." He hates the petty responsibilities of home life, the bills and family issues.

He's clocked 43 months in Afghanistan and Iraq. His first wife of three years sent him divorce papers while he was fighting Taliban militants—she wanted to marry a friend of his. (She couldn't be reached for comment.) "Whatever," says McBride, 32, with a shrug. Now he's remarried—to Evangeline (Star) McBride, a 27-year-old divorced mother of one—and getting ready for his fifth deployment with the Third Brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne Division.

 

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When asked in front of Star what he misses most when he's overseas, he doesn't hesitate: his souped-up Mustang. He likes to drive it fast, and "show what's what" when another flashy car pulls up next to him at a stoplight. But even the driving is better in Iraq. There, you "do whatever you want on the road. You own the road … You can go into people's houses without being invited in. It's like you own their house."

Sergeant McBride is a soldier's soldier. He knows his job, and loves it above all else. At a time when the military desperately needs trained fighting men and women, he's always ready to go. But there's also something disturbing about a young man who thrives on conflict and doesn't really feel at ease with his family. Asked the hardest part of coming home, he responds: "Having to live with other people. Having to deal." He doesn't like having to rush to pick up his stepdaughter from day care, or to get the groceries. Where is the line between the highly valued fighting man and the guy who's loving it too much, and been too long in the war zone?

A tiny fraction of Americans are doing the bulk of the country's fighting and policing in far-off lands. Less than 5 percent of Americans are in the active military at any time. Of those, a much smaller number of officers and enlisted men have done multiple tours. Most are in the Army, and less than 15 percent of Army soldiers have done three or more deployments.

Some of those men and women answer the call because they think it's their duty, whether they like it or not. Some go because it's a good way to advance their careers, or because they like the extra money they get with combat duty. Others just like it. "Soldiers want to fight," says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was the youngest and most decorated Army general when he retired in 1996. "That's why they signed up."

First Sgt. Jason Dodge is that kind of soldier, an extreme guy in every respect. He gets to his office between 0425 and 0428. A few hours later, he's on his morning run—usually 10 to 15 miles. He can climb a 30-foot rope using just his arms in 10 seconds. He works best in a room without direct sunlight, he says, and doesn't like to eat more than one meal a day—"and that's dinner with my wife, but only because she makes me." His job: to engineer explosives to blow down doors and walls.

It doesn't seem to really bother Sergeant Dodge, 36, that most of his Army buddies have moved on, either transferring to a nondeploying base or leaving the military altogether. He'll miss the old tradition of going to an Outback Steakhouse with his Army friends and their wives before and after each deployment. ("No one was authorized to go while we were gone," he says.) But the way he sees it, he's got a job to do, and it's in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Dodge's wife, Dana, 31, says he's always himself when he gets back from a deployment, but she does handle him carefully at first. "Maybe his temper is a bit short when he first comes home," she says. "If he gets that look, I can just tell and walk away for a while." She's learned not to call him and make one request, then tack on others. She also knows he doesn't like crowds.