Happy to Be Home from Iraq

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FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

Well, now, Allison, I want to move away from show business to something a little more personal.

Your cousin, Alexia Cain, is an army specialist who just returned last week from Iraq. Right now, she's stationed at Fort Hood, near Austin Texas. And we've got her on the phone to get or to tell us about her tour and her plans for the near future.

Now, Allison, thank you for staying with us and introducing us to Alexia. And, Alexia, thank you so much for coming on.

Private First Class ALEXIA CAIN (U.S. Army): Thank you for having me.

CHIDEYA: So what is the very first thing that happened when you knew that you were going to go back to the States? How did you feel?

Pfc. CAIN: Very excited, anxious get back to see families, see friends, get back to the normal way of life.

CHIDEYA: So you've got a situation where you were in one of the most troubled parts of the world. Tell me what was the scariest moment for you.

Pfc. CAIN: The scariest moment really is not knowing if you're going to wake up the next day. You hear gunshots. You hear things around you. You're constantly being warned to be careful and, you know, not to do certain things and not to say certain things. So it was just coming home in one piece, and that was my goal, was to make sure I came back in one piece. But other than that, that was basically it.

CHIDEYA: Now, you were stationed in a town not too far from Baghdad. What was it like? Was - and specifically, one thing I'm very curious about is did you interact at all with the Iraqi citizens?

Pfc. CAIN: Yes. We had duties where we would interact with the local nationals - we call them LNs - where they would clean up buildings, that we would have to interact with them. They were very nice people, very humble people. And they would always tell us, you know, how grateful that they are that we were there, and how much they like for us to stay.

So they were just very - you wouldn't expect them to be nice and you wouldn't expect them to be curious about who you are and where you come from but they want to know. They want to know more about you. And they want to know, you know, things about you. And they just want to know just the general things about you, the person, not you being in the military.

CHIDEYA: Now, Allison told me that working in the hospital and the morgue - one of your duties - was your nightmare. What did you think of that?

Pfc. CAIN: It was scary because you don't know what you're going to see. You don't know, you know, what actually happened to these people, what's the story behind their injuries. But once you see it and once you hear the story, it makes you mad that, yes, okay, this particular person was making an IED and it blew up in their face. But you hear that part and you're like, oh, you know, I'm sorry that happened. But then when you hear, okay, it was meant for a soldier, it just makes you mad. But then again, you have that humanitarian side of you that's like, you know what? Even though it was meant for a soldier, you still want that person to get better.

CHIDEYA: Now, Allison, to you, there has been this precipitous drop in black military enrollment and retention. Did your family tell Alexia, get the heck out of there? What are you doing? Are you crazy? And what about, you know, the general dialogue in your family?

Ms. SAMUELS: You know what? Because a lot of our family has been in military so it wasn't a situation where we said get out of there. But I think once she was assigned there, the reality hit that this is a dangerous situation. Something could really happen. And I think it was just a lot of concern and worry for the entire time that she was there. And when we got the news that she was coming back, it was just like the happiest day of, you know, that I can remember, because we just wanted her back home.

CHIDEYA: And Alexia, did you ever feel pressured by your family to take a different path in life? And you entered really when this was imminent. So did you ever feel like, uh-oh, this is bad timing to be in the military.

Pfc. CAIN: Actually, no. I was up for the challenge. It's like when you sign up for the military, you never really think that you're going to Iraq. You never really - you're just like, oh, this can't happen to me. I'm not going anytime soon. But when it happened, it was like, wow. It's really happening. And it really doesn't hit you until you actually land. It's like, wow, I'm actually here.

My family was very supportive. I got letters. I got e-mails, care packages, everything under the sun. And I talk to them as much as I could. But they were always, always very supportive, always there if I needed them no matter what time of day I called.

CHIDEYA: So why, specifically, did you enlist?

Pfc. CAIN: Honestly, to pay (unintelligible) loan.

CHIDEYA: Like a lot of folks.

Pfc. CAIN: So (unintelligible). You know, to pay most of your loans, and the curiosity. My mother was enlisted. My father was enlisted as well. So you now, just to see the world, just to see, you know, what the war actually has to offer before I could say, you know, I'll just try a civilian job.

CHIDEYA: When you talk to your friends in the military, do they ever say, as their contract expires, I'm never going to do anything like this again in my life or do some of them say I'm going to reenlist?

Pfc. CAIN: A lot of them reenlisted. Believe it or not. A lot of them reenlisted. So no one's ever been like, oh, I'm not going to do this anymore. Oh, I can't handle this. Everyone has always reenlisted.

CHIDEYA: Now, Allison, turning to you, you cover entertainment, generally. But you're also, you know, reporting for Newsweek. You get to see the broad picture of American life and even international life. Has there been anything in your opinion that's changed in the past couple of years about how Americans view the war or even how celebrities view the war?

Ms. SAMUELS: Well, I think Americans have become very disenchanted with the war. I think that's definitely happened over the last couple of years, and particularly in the last year, and definitely since the last election. I think celebrities have always been - the majority of celebrities, like the Dixie Chicks, and people like that, have always had this sort of anti-war, you know, mentality. And I think that's only increased with the lack of the perceived success of the war at this point.

I think that, you know, there's no visible change from the American perspective. If you're an average American, you don't really see where the progress has been made, but you see all these soldiers that have been injured and hurt. And I think as long as you see those soldiers being injured and hurt - and I think there was just a study that's saying that the suicides are going up for men in military, officers.

CHIDEYA: Absolutely.

Ms. SAMUELS: All those things just, you know, I think it's very hard to embrace and support something when you see the damage that it's doing to so many, sort of, young people. And that's the thing, you know, in seeing Alexia come home and seeing all the young people that, you know, that were over there with her -it's like these people - they're changed forever, you know?

CHIDEYA: Yeah. And Alexia, we just talked earlier today that so many of the people who have committed suicide through, you know, or during military service, they're under 25, half of them are 25 or under. And it makes me wonder, coming back to the U.S., do you feel the need to decompress, to talk through what you're doing, you know, or what you've done, to talk about what you've seen, and who do you talk to?

Pfc. CAIN: I talk to family. Talk to family. Talk to friends. They also provide counseling sessions just in case we need it. There are also chaplaincy that are always say, you know, we're here for you. We're here for you. If you don't reach out to someone else, well, if you don't reach out to them, reach out to someone else. If - you just really need to have someone listen. You know, you have people that you talk to and say, okay, well, I did this. I did that. You just really just need to say to someone out there, look, I just need you to listen. I just needed to vent.

So when I needed to vent, I would call my mom. I'd also called Allison and say, hey, look, this is what's going on and this was how I feel. And nine times out of ten that really, really helps. That really, really helps. And then, if not, you know, write it down or as long as you get those thoughts out, and as long as you, you know, express how your feeling, it's really no need to take the ultimate, the ultimate decision for the suicide.

CHIDEYA: Now, Allison, before we let you go, final question. Do you think that your family is going - with your long history of military service - is going to continue that tradition?

Ms. SAMUELS: I think that, you know, it depends on how this war shapes up because I think the military has changed a great deal even, you know, since the '70s and the '80s, I think it's a different military. And I think a lot of it, you know, depends on how this war turns out and basically, how the military handles it as the soldiers continue to come home and how they're taken care of.

CHIDEYA: All right. Well, Alexia, we're hoping you can stay with us a little bit longer. Allison, thank you so much for, you know, bringing Alexia on. Thank you both so much.

Ms. SAMUELS: Thank you.

Pfc. CAIN: Thank you.

CHIDEYA: We're been talking to U.S. Army Specialist Alexia Cain, who just returned from a year in Iraq, currently stationed at Fort Hood near Austin, Texas. And her cousin, Allison Samuels, is an entertainment writer for Newsweek.

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