[Editor's Note: Jennifer Huntsman is a US Army Reserve Signal Captain stationed at MacDill Air Force Base with Joint Communication Support Element (JCSE). She is currently deployed in Qatar. Jenny will be writing for The Daily Loaf about life in the military.]

After a year out of high school and not enjoying college class attendance I enlisted in the Army National Guard.  The military seemed like something for me to do.  When I was shipped off to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training I had a female Drill Sergeant.  This female Drill Sergeant did not enjoy privates (our rank when we are new to the military) getting too close to her.  When we stood near her or asked a question she would glare at us and yell in a thick Georgia accent, "Get out of my Kool-Aid!"  What exactly does that mean?  Where the heck did that statement come from?

I am deployed with more than a handful of outstanding soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen.  We all work very close together.  I cannot yawn with a very large stretch unless I want to smack my neighbor on the head.  Oh joy, the comfortable working conditions in a deployed environment.  Tolerance is a trait that I have picked up in the military.  

I am blessed to actually enjoy my coworker's existence in the world.  Each troop (personnel) has a significant role in our day to day operations.  Any mission is complete with ease because we all know who would succeed and who may fail due to the fact that we know each other very well. 

By being deployed we can not exactly leave work and have a separate life away from our job.  My job is my life, and our team falls under the word "family."  We all sleep in the same building.  We all work in the same small office space.  We eat together, workout together, and we take breaks together.  We get sick of each other, but we all still tolerate one another.  We don't have the luxury of being able to quit or decide not to speak to each other.  I know things about my coworkers that I wish I could erase from my head.  In spite of our proximity we are loyal to one another.  We will make fun of each other, but if someone else jokes about anyone of us we will look at the joker as if they were a freak.  Strangers beware!  You don't know us, you can't judge us. 

Not many people understand the brotherhood/sisterhood relationship that we have unless you spend every moment of the day together.  Firefighters may understand a small portion of this, but they get to go home after shift.  There is no such thing as a "shift" out in the desert.  We are always working, always being team players.  I am a soldier 24/7, Army Strong and stuff… I still get paid when I sleep.  Being deployed is like being part of a family I never really wanted to be part of, but still there is a love for one another.  We can tell if someone is having a problem with their family back home by a simple "good morning."  Spending over 12 hours every day together for months at a time in the same constricted place gives us insight to each other's strengths and weaknesses.  We are all, through my old Drill Sergeant's standards, in each other's Kool-Aid.

This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2009.