A Soldier's Story

People | July 8, 2002 | Bryan Alexander , Michelle York

[Stand Watch Listen]

On July Fourth in Afghanistan, Sgt. Raymond Munden (and 7,000 other U.S. troops) will be homesick and hot--but ready to do battle

The sky above is pitch black as U.S. Army Sgt. Raymond Munden, an M4 assault rifle slung across his shoulder, gazes at a patch of stars, clustered thick and white. "With this wind," says Munden, 29, "with this big sky, I might be home right now."

But Munden is a long way from home. It is some 7,400 miles from Clarksville, Tenn., where he lives with his wife, Kelly, to Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, where Munden is serving with the Army's famed 101st Airborne Division. On an ordinary Independence Day he knows where he would be: grilling burgers at a family picnic, watching fireworks. Instead he'll spend it here, one of 7,000 U.S. ground troops waging the ongoing war against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. And like his fellow men and women in uniform, Munden will be fighting loneliness for the life he left behind.

Back home, less than two months after Munden shipped out in March, Kelly, 27, gave birth to a baby girl. It is their first child together (he has two sons from a previous marriage). "I just want to hold my wife and daughter," he says. "But I am here because I have a job to do."

That job is not exactly a nonstop Black Hawk Down. As team leader of a rifle platoon, Munden has spent much of his time in Afghanistan waiting. His squad frequently serves on the Quick Reaction Force, ready for combat at a moment's notice. At QRF's top level, soldiers may not stray far from the tent and must sleep in the summer heat with boots on and packs loaded. Strong winds kick up the desert sand, irritating Munden's sinuses. "I hate the dust," he says. "When I get home, it's going to take a week to get it out of my system."

To break the monotony, soldiers play cards and Game Boys, joke incessantly and sometimes wrestle. "Combat," says Lt. Col. Patrick Fetterman, 40, Munden's battalion commander, "is 98 percent boredom and 2 percent sheer terror." So far Munden's squad has experienced nothing close to terror, going on search missions or to secure positions but--like many U.S. troops--not yet seeing combat. They remain eager to come up close against the enemy they have traveled so far to fight. "There is frustration for sure," says Munden. "We just want to do the job we've been trained to do."

Munden, for one, has been preparing for most of his life. He was born in an Army hospital at Fort Hood, Texas, the second of two sons of Ralph, 58, a retired Army engineer who did two tours in Vietnam, and Billie, 53, now an eye-care-company administrator. (Brother Brad was in the Navy.) Though his parents divorced when he was 13 and Munden--who moved to Mesquite, Texas, with his mother--had only occasional contact with his father, "Family tradition has always been with the military," he says. Munden enlisted after high school graduation, serving for three months of 1992 in Somalia, where his truck came under heavy fire, though no one was injured.

Munden was working a security detail at New York's Fort Drum in 1994 when he met Stacy Young, whom he married two months later (he was only 20 and she just 18). Though they had two sons, Gaven, now 6, and Garrett, 5, the couple split up in 1998 and Stacy got custody. To stay close to the boys, Munden got work as an Army recruiter in suburban Buffalo, where he met Kelly Koshofer, a cashier. At first she hesitated to get involved because he had children. But when she went on a vacation she found herself calling him every day. "I just really missed him," she says. "That's when we told each other we loved each other." After they wed in 2000, Munden considered leaving the Army. But the following spring he decided to reenlist for four more years. "It makes him happy," says Kelly, "but I didn't want him to."

Kelly had just learned she was pregnant and Munden was still working at the recruiting station on the morning of Sept. 11. The terrorist attacks stirred him to anger. "I was thinking I want to pack up right now," he recalls, "and kick somebody's ass." On March 12, when his unit was sent to Afghanistan, he hoped he would get his chance. But saying goodbye to Kelly was hard. "She said, 'Bye, I love you, take care of yourself,'" says Munden. "We hugged, and she was gone."

To cope with separation, Kelly has been sending him letters almost daily, handwritten notes he stows in a plastic bag and rereads often. "You are my best friend," she wrote in one. "I'm so proud of who you are and what you stand for." There are also regular care packages loaded with sports magazines and Ding-Dongs. "She makes all the other wives look bad," jokes squad leader Sgt. Andres Loor, 23.

On May 6 Kelly gave birth to a 7-lb., 14-oz. girl they named Sydney Morgan. In close touch by telephone,

Munden called within minutes, and Kelly put the receiver to the baby's ear. "She was smiling, we couldn't believe it," says Kelly, who is living for now at her mother's home in Cheektowaga, N.Y. Munden would finally get a good look five weeks later, during a video conference the Army arranges between Bagram and Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. As Kelly holds up the baby for her husband, "Hi, munchkin," he coos. "Hi, little chub ball!" For nearly 30 minutes it's as if the family is together again. But then the call ends. "It makes you miss him all the more," Kelly says later. "You're so close, but not yet."

For Munden, seeing his daughter serves as a reminder of his reason for being halfway around the globe on an assignment that could last until September. "If I don't fight for my family's freedom," he says, "who's going to?"

That determination helps him brace for what's coming in the morning--more time on the QRF. As he leaves the command center where he saw baby Sydney on-camera, he grabs a bottle of water and watches the sun set in the dusty air behind the Afghan mountains. "Another day gone," he says, "another day closer to home."

Fighting Figures

U.S. troops overseas -- 255,065

In Afghanistan -- 7,000

Killed so far in war on terror -- 50

Number wounded -- 180

Letters received weekly -- 36,000

Packages weekly -- 1,500

-- Thomas Fields-Meyer

-- Bryan Alexander at Bagram Air Base and Michelle York in Cheektowaga