A ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ for war veteran Mike McEvilly
Released: December 1, 2005
Mike McEvilly
When Michael “Mike” McEvilly graduated from Madison’s La Follette High School in 1998, he had every intention of “going straight through” UW-Whitewater in the requisite four or five years. However, after “enjoying college a little too much” his freshman year and running out of money, he says his parents sat him down for the “Figure it out” talk – as in they were through paying for his folly. If he wanted a college degree, he had to foot the rest of the bill himself.
Hmm, what to do, what to do? McEvilly knew he wanted an education. He also knew that it was not going to be cheap – or easy. He remembered talking to army recruiters before college, and decided that joining the Army Reserves was the obvious solution to his dilemma. Serve his country and earn tuition money.
McEvilly signed on the dotted line and spent the summer of 1999 completing his basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C. and his advanced individual training at Redstone Arsenol in Huntsville, Ala. Knowing that there was a unit for the job of ammunition specialist on Madison’s East Side, he selected that as his role in the Army Reserve, so he could serve his initial time near home.
In fall 2000, McEvilly was back on campus playing rugby for UW-Whitewater and working toward a degree in public relations and advertising. He had his eye on a May or December 2004 graduation date. However, as the saying goes, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”
In November 2003, McEvilly was deer hunting in northern Wisconsin with his dad and brothers. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He says he “got bored” and decided to go back to the cabin and start cooking dinner. Finding that they were out of butter, he got into his truck to head to the store. He noticed that there were “twenty messages on my cell phone – which was sitting on the seat of my truck – and 12 of them were from my commander.”
The message? He had five days to report to Minneapolis for active duty. The commander didn’t say where.
“It was a huge shock,” Mike recalls noting that he had “less than a week” to tie things up – to put his life on hold. Aside from letting his landlord know, dealing with personal issues and finances, he also had to let the university know. He says he will be forever grateful for the assistance of Carol Miller in Financial Aid who “made it easy” to temporarily disentangle himself from college.
Reporting for duty, McEvilly still didn’t know where he was going. It wasn’t until he and his fellow reserve members boarded a plane on Dec. 6, 2003, that they were told they were going to Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, and from there they didn’t say.
It turns out the next stop, after weapons training in Puerto Rico and “sitting in limbo – people were getting really frustrated with the boredom and the unknown,” they got word they were being shipped out to Iraq, via Kuwait.
McEvilly says that he and the members of his unit still didn’t know what their mission was until they had been in Kuwait for a while – they had flown over, but all of their equipment was coming by ship. Finally, his Lieutenant “sat down and laid it all out.” His platoon - the 2nd Platoon or “the Big Deuce” as they were nicknamed - of 40 ammo specialists would be attached to eight combat brigades (about 32,000 troops) and would handle warehousing, transporting, distributing and disposing of ammunition for them – on the front lines.
And so was his world for the next year. While things were lively when they were involved in a mission, the specifics of which he can’t really talk about, or doing “side jobs” such as reconstructing base sites, the rest of the time, he says, was “sheer boredom.” Mail call, he says, is truly as important as the movies make it out to be.
“I was lucky,” he explains. “I got letters and packages (books, magazines, candy and snack foods are high up on any soldier’s list) all the time – I had lots of support (from friends and family at home). It helped out a lot.”
Enduring nearly constant sand storms and fluctuating temperatures (as high as in the 120°s in the summertime), McEvilly says, “there was way too much time to think.” And think he did.
“I thought about what I wanted to do the with rest of my life. The experience made me grow up a lot. It changed my priorities. I still like to have a good time, but I realized the only way you’re going to get anything done is to just do it. I’m only 25 – but I feel old.”
Reflecting on his time overseas, he says that while he participated in some things that he could never imagine, missed all of the holidays, and put up with mental, physical and emotional challenges on a daily basis, he tried to approach things “like a light switch. I’m not trying to downplay things, but it’s best if you can just turn it on and off.”
Of his time in Iraq he says that while there were obviously huge language and cultural barriers, that it is “just a very small minority of ‘bad’ people.” Most Iraqis, he says, are just like Americans in that “People are people. All everyone wants to do is just live their lives and take care of their families.”
How they live their lives, he notes, was perhaps the biggest surprise. “I was shocked at how people were able to live the way they live. It’s truly third world – primitive.” Without some of the bare necessities, life is a struggle – struggle, coupled with fear. “They’re so scared,” he says of the civilians he dealt with on a day-to-day basis.
When at long last their replacement unit finally came to relieve them in Taji (about 10 miles north of Baghdad and 40 miles east of Fallujah), McEvilly focused on getting home, which he did at “3:30 p.m. on March 15, 2005.” He says it took him “a good three weeks to a month before I realized I was really home.” Explaining that in the service “You’re so used to having everything laid out for you – and having to watch your back” even though you know you’re safe and at home, “It’s a weird adjustment.”
Fortunately, his girlfriend Katherine Passmore (whom he met at UW-Whitewater and who graduated in 2004) was still waiting for him, and his mother happily obliged his requests for all of his favorite foods. He went out and satisfied his “Friday fish fry” craving, and ate more ice cream than he had eaten in one sitting in his life.
He got reacquainted with his older sister and his younger twin brothers, one of whom was in the Air Force and Mike hadn’t seen in three years, and says that he now “Notices a lot more things” primarily about people, what makes a true friend, and the importance of relationships.
He headed back to UW-Whitewater to take some summer courses, and says he is taking a full load to make up for lost time. While he has enjoyed his somewhat extended stay in college, he says it’s now time to “get the heck out of here!”
He’s working toward graduating in May 2006 and then hopes to land a job in sports promotion or marketing in either Milwaukee of Madison. Right now, “getting my degree” is all that he’s focused on.
McEvilly has until January 21, 2007, in the service. Technically, he notes, anything can happen – including getting called back to active duty. But right now he says he is just taking things in stride, and no doubt focusing as well on the home cooked turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing that he missed out on last year. This Thanksgiving, UW-Whitewater senior Mike McEvilly had a lot to be thankful for.
- Barbro McGinn,mcginnb@uww.edu
