Collison will “stay in until they kick me out”

by Bill Gates

    Kristen Collison wasn’t getting what she wanted out of college and wasn’t satisfied with the work she found after graduating from Sparrows Point High in 2007.
    “I wanted to be something more; something I could be proud of,” she said.
    So, “on kind of a whim,” Collison walked into a U.S. Army recruiting center one day in 2008.
    She hasn’t looked back. Not when she fell one pull-up short of qualifying for her desired specialization. Not while hugging the ground during mortar attacks in Afghanistan. And not while dealing with prisoners’ requests in Guantanamo Bay.
    “I love the Army; it feels great,” Collison said. “You know how it is when you get that job that just feels natural? This is it.”
    Collison, who was promoted to sergeant rank E5 in September, was home on leave last week.
    She’s been deployed at the Guantanamo Bay (nicknamed “Gitmo”) base in Cuba since April.
   

The base has gained notoriety in recent years as the location of a detention camp for prisoners classified as “enemy combatants.”
    As an engineer attached to a miltary police battalion, Collison said her main job in Gitmo is to keep the air conditioning units operating.
    “The only time I interact with the prisoners is when I’m asking them what [maintenance] problems they’re having,” she said.
    The Gitmo deployment has been routine compared to the year she spent in Afghanistan from March 2010 to March 2011.
    One of the first things she noticed upon arriving in Kandahar was the smell.
    The second thing she noticed was that the smell wouldn’t be a concern.
    “We were always being hit by mortar fire. The alarms were going off constantly,” she said. “The mortars were the worst; you never knew where they were going to hit. You just hugged the ground and made for the nearest bunker.”
    Collison’s company spent most of its time on the road, building command outposts and checkpoints for other American units.
    They were a welcome sight for soldiers who were usually living out of their vehicles before the engineers arrived.
    “They would say, ‘Oh my God, engineers, we’re so glad you’re here,’” Collison said. “It was a very rewarding job.”
    Collison’s unit built perimeter fortifications, tent floors, tents and dining faciltities and installed air conditioners.
    Best of all, from the soldiers’ point of view, were the Morale, Welfare and Recreation facilties.
    “I’d set up computers, telephones,” Collison said. “That was great. Soldiers were able to talk with their families after having been out of touch for a long time. They’d get out of their trucks, get into the air conditioning, grab footballs and start throwing them around.”
    During travel, Collison was a gunner on an MRAP, a mine-resistant armored vehicle designed to withstand explosions from IEDs (improvised explosive devices — what an earlier generation would have called ‘booby traps’).
    The IEDs were a constant danger on the road, Collison said, although none of her convoy vehicles ever struck one.
    Instead, one day while returning to base, mortar shells started landing in the distance and gradually crept closer to the convoy with each ensuing shot.
    “At first we were told to ignore them, because they were so far off,” Collison said. “When they got closer, we took off.”
    One night, Collison’s unit couldn’t return to base because a dust storm grounded the helicopters, and Army doctrine was that vehicles didn’t travel if air support was unavailable.
    (Staying at an outpost, behind fortifications, is considered less vulnerable than driving in the open.)
    The outpost was attacked overnight.
    “Someone started taking shots at us,” Collison said. “I was told not to return fire, because I was too close to a mosque. One of our other [vehicles] let loose, and the firing stopped.”
    Collison never did have to fire her machine gun in combat. Nor did she dwell much on the possibility of being wounded or killed.
    “You don’t realize you’re under fire, at first,” she said. “You hear a little ‘pop’, turn around, see we’re taking fire, then ask if you can return fire.
    “When you’re thinking about what you should be doing at the moment, you don’t have a chance to think ahead and think about getting hit.”
    Collison didn’t intend to be an engineer. When she enlisted in the Army, she wanted to be a diver.
    “Being from Edgemere, living on the water, I love being in the water and I wanted to get into underwater welding,” she said. “And Army divers are legitimate; it’s the hardest AIT (advanced individual training) in the Army.”
    So hard, Collison wasn’t able to meet the physical requirements.
    Applicants had to do a 500-meter swim, 42 chest-to-ground pushups, 50 situps, six dead-hang pullups and a mile-and-a-half run.
    Collison did five pullups, and there was no fudging the results.
    “Believe me, it was really upsetting,” she said. “When I couldn’t make the sixth pullup, they put me in electrical training.”
    Collison intended to give diving another shot, but her unit was deployed to Afghanistan. When they returned, there were no slots available for diver training.
    Eventually, there were available slots, but by then she had been promoted to sergeant and was no longer eligible (only specialists could be accepted into diver training).
    “I’ve gotten past it,” she said. “My job as an engineer has been a lot more rewarding.”
    A former Eagle Athlete of the Season for soccer (Fall 2006), Collison also played basketball and softball at Sparrows Point.
    Called “the best soccer player I ever coached” by former Pointer coach Conrad Snyder, Collison still plays soccer in military rec leagues and is in a softball league in Cuba.
    When she returns from Gitmo, Collison will be assigned to Fort Benning in Georgia.
    Eventually, she’ll see other overseas deployments.
    “Engineers right now are focusing on humanitarian work,” she said. “The unit I was with in Afghanistan went to Thailand to build a school.”
    Collison should have several chances for future deployments, as she intends to make the Army her career.
    “I’m staying in until they kick me out,” she said. “I’ll retire at 38 years old, come back to Edgemere and open my own bar and grill.”