Oral History Interview with Samantha Downey

[Interview Ends]

SPRAGUE: Today is March 31st, 2023. This is an interview with Samantha Downey, who served in the United States Army from July 2009 to April 2016. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the Manitowoc Public Library for the I Am Not Invisible Project for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the interview room. Okay. Samantha, tell me a little bit about where you grew up, please.

DOWNEY: I grew up in Northern California in a medium sized town called Marysville, California. It's about halfway in between Sacramento and Chico.

SPRAGUE: And what what what did your family do there?

DOWNEY: So my father was a police officer. He was actually the sheriff of Sutter County, which was the county over from us. And my mother worked in banking.

SPRAGUE: And what schools did you attend?

DOWNEY: I when I was very young, I went to a private Christian school called Hall Street. And then elementary school I went to. That was a just a regular public school. And then Kinard two and a McKinney Middle School. And then I went to Marysville High School for high school.

SPRAGUE: And what really got you thinking initially about being in the military?

DOWNEY: So initially, what got me thinking about being in the military was actually a high school boyfriend of mine. He really didn't have a plan for what he was going to do after high school. And so he was thinking about the military. And so he got me thinking about the military. And once that idea was sparked it, I really kind of clung to it because I never really felt at home growing up. I always kind of felt a little bit as a black sheep. And so I felt that the military was a great way to kind of get out in the world and perhaps find myself.

SPRAGUE: And what what did your family say about your eventual intent to join the military?

DOWNEY: My dad, they were somewhat supportive, but they were very hesitant for their daughter to go and join the military. Initially, when I told my dad that I wanted to join the Army. He cried. I my father is a very stoic man. I think that was probably the only time I've ever seen my dad cry in his entire life. And so he was a little emotional about that.

SPRAGUE: Wow. Yeah. Parents crying, then that would have affected me.

DOWNEY: Yes.

SPRAGUE: What was your reaction to that?

DOWNEY: I was. I was and still am very close to my dad. I love my dad very much. And so that was that was painful for me to see him react like that. And now now that I'm a parent, I can only understand his his fear and his apprehension. And so, you know, it did break my heart to to see my dad react like that. Hmm.

SPRAGUE: So you decided to enlist anyways?

DOWNEY: I did decide to enlist. I like I said, I just I never felt at home in California. My mother and I, we weren't close. And I don't know, I just. I felt this need. I needed to find my tribe. I needed to find my people. I needed to find myself. And I just didn't feel like I was going to be able to do that at home.

SPRAGUE: Did you have any other family members who had served?

DOWNEY: Yes. My mother was an MP in the Army. Back in the eighties, my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, he was in the Air Force. And then I had a couple of very decent family members that also served. Mm hmm. And then my father was a police officer, but he never joined the military.

SPRAGUE: Right. Would you be okay with mentioning your parents names to tie them into the historical record?

DOWNEY: Sure. So my father is Jonathan Paul Parker or Jay? Paul Parker. But he goes by Paul, and my mom is Kate Parker.

SPRAGUE: Okay, great. Thank you. So tell me about your experience of going to boot camp or basic.

DOWNEY: Bowe Boot camp, You know, boot camps. Boot camp. You just you got to get through it. It's all a mental game of them trying to break you. I'm glad I did it when I was 18. There's no way I'd go back and do that stuff now. But yeah, you know, it was just really tough. That was my first time really away from home, you know, and to go into this very disciplined environment where you're constantly tired, you're constantly wore out. And so it was it was a challenge for me in many ways. You know, I wasn't a spoiled little California girl anymore. You know, people didn't jump to do things for me or anything. And so that was it was a very maturing experience for me. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Where did you go to Basic?

DOWNEY: I went to Fort Jackson for basic training.

SPRAGUE: And what was that like? I'm curious. Coming from North Central or Central California to South Carolina?

DOWNEY: Sure. It was very hot. I remember. So in California, it gets very hot. We get triple digits high. I'm very used to 103 degree summers, but it's all dry heat. I distinctly remember getting off the plane in Fort Jackson and thinking, I'm wet, why am I wet? And it was just so humid. It was so hot. There are days you just feel like you can't breathe. You feel like you're drowning in the air. And so that that was a a shock for me.

SPRAGUE: What are some of the experiences that you remember from basic that stick out in your head?

DOWNEY: I remember in basic. I just remember thinking that I had a few moments of, Oh, God, what did I. What have I done? You know, I've had I had a few moments of, you know, they were showing us videos of people being blown up and terrible things happening. And it really kind of dawned on me in that moment the responsibility and the risks that I had took on at the age of 17, 18 years old. And even though I had always known that those risks were there to actually see it, it was a different thing. And I remember towards the end just being proud of myself, that I was able to just kind of survive and make it through it. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: And what was it like having exposure to people from outside of California? What was that like? Was that different to, you know, sometimes when people come together and basically. What was your experience?

DOWNEY: I love meeting new people from different places, from different cultures. So that piece of it I loved, I love meeting people from all over the world. And we did you know, we had people that were my age. We had people that were in their twenties and thirties. And I really love hearing about other people's lives and their experiences. So that piece of basic training, I love that part. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: And did your family happen to make it for graduation or not?

DOWNEY: My parents did make it for my graduation. My father and my mother showed up. So I guess I fibbed a moment ago when I said there's only one time I saw my dad cry. The second time I saw him cry was when we found each other in the crowd at my graduation. So that was the second time I saw him cry.

SPRAGUE: Oh, okay. So. And after basic, did you go on to it right away or out in El Salvador?

DOWNEY: No, I went straight to L.A., so I got to 80 in September or October at Fort Sam. I loved Fort Sam in Texas. The actual area itself, I really enjoyed that and I enjoyed it. I had a great time.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. And what what did you what did you train for?

DOWNEY: So I was a combat medic. So we did all the combat medic training. I think it was five or six months was my age. And I say it was it was more of a learning process than I felt like basic was. I felt like basic was just a, you know, a mental process. Whereas I felt as it was more of a learning process. And I love going to school. I love learning new things. I'm in school right now, and so I enjoyed that.

SPRAGUE: And was that to Combat Medic? That's a 68 whiskey.

DOWNEY: 68 whiskey. I think that's what it's still called is 68 whiskey. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I've heard a lot of different things about the 68 whiskey training. Sure. Tell me, give me some of the highlights. I know some of it's pretty tough. I know it's lengthy.

DOWNEY: It is lengthy. So the first half of the actual training is the EMT side of it, and then the other half of it is the actual medic side of it because you have to have a civilian qualification. And so it's it was split up into what we would do on the civilian side as an EMT and then what we would do as a medic in the Army. And there were similarities, but there were lots of differences. And I thoroughly enjoyed trauma training. I did have a few instructors that it was just their mission to make people cry and just try and humiliate you in front of people. So that wasn't pleasant. But overall, I have to say that I enjoyed it. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: What was the gender mix there at it like?

DOWNEY: I think the gender mix was a pretty solid 5050. I don't know what the actual numbers were, but it was it was a pretty even spread between males and females and.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. What when you decided when you initially enlisted, what was your thought process behind behind becoming a combat medic?

DOWNEY: I wanted to do something where I felt like I could help people and I just felt like being a medic sounded like something that I could do to to do that. And yeah, that was kind of my only thought process behind it. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Were you thinking maybe when I get out, I want to do something with that? Or just You were just thinking, I want to help people.

DOWNEY: I didn't think I wanted to do anything in the medical field outside of the military. I have always wanted to be a lawyer. That's what I'm going to school for right now. But to be quite frank, I just I had absolutely no self-confidence and I had no idea where to start as far as that process of becoming an attorney. And so I felt like this was an intermediary.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So what happens after eight? I assume you go to your first duty station or.

DOWNEY: Yeah. So I get the reality. I got three bullets. I got Lyme disease because I got bit by HITECH. That was an interesting experience. And then my very first duty station was in Yongsan, South Korea.

SPRAGUE: So if you could for the listeners, explain where Yongsan is, please.

DOWNEY: So Yongsan is in Seoul, South Korea.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And where what when did you arrive at Yongbyon?

DOWNEY: I believe the actual date, if I remember it correctly, was March 10th of let's see. That had to be 2010, 2010, March of 2010. And then I left in March of 2012. That sounds right.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And was that designated as a one year tour or a two year tour, or how was that set up? Or maybe not.

DOWNEY: Tell me. Originally, I was supposed to be there for one year, but then you could elect to stay for a second year. And I really enjoyed South Korea. I love the people, I love the food and I love the environment. And so I decided to stay.

SPRAGUE: Okay. I have some personal experience of Jang Song and Korea, so that's why I'm laughing and I'm thinking about all the experiences.

DOWNEY: Great. Great.

SPRAGUE: Exactly. So in that first segment or the initially, was that with that 121st?

DOWNEY: Yeah. So I was at the 1 to 1 cache. And I have to say that overall I had an amazing experience there. I got exposed to so much education by the doctors and the nurses that I worked for. My first nurse, I'll leave her her name Anonymous, let's just say. Luckily she was only there for the first three or so months of my stay in Korea. She just man, she just was a very unpleasant person to work for. There were days that I would wake up and just be like, Oh, man. But she she left shortly after and after she left, the experience completely changed. We got a new nurse and she was much more pleasant to work for. But I got to work in the acute care clinic. I got to work in the pediatric clinic, in the dermatology clinic, and I just loved it. And I had really amazing doctors that wanted to teach their medics. And I just remember really, really enjoying that. And that's also where I got my expert field medical badge. I was the honor graduate for my F and B cycles. That was really exciting. And then after F and B is when I was recruited to be a flight medic at Camp Humphreys.

SPRAGUE: So, wow, there's a lot to unpack there. Sure. So first, help me out with generally the docs teaching the combat medics or versus teaching them what what would your work load and what would it what would that entail every day.

DOWNEY: So initially when I got there and I was in the either acute care clinic or the pediatric clinic, my official duties was to screen patients and then help doctors with procedures. So that was our official duties that we would do. But then any time there was any downtime or things going on, the doctors really took it upon themselves to take us under their wing and do a lot of extra training, you know, learned how to remove toenails and how to extract different lesions off of people's bodies and do hair removal, things like that. So it was it was really laser hair removal. It was it was really fascinating stuff. And I enjoyed it. And I had some really great doctors.

SPRAGUE: I've heard from and this is scuttlebutt I've heard from other combat medics that if you have a dog within the unit and this may have been historical, that if they trained you on a skill, they might allow you to do that procedure within the unit, or maybe that's gone away or.

DOWNEY: So you're allowed to do. You are under your doctor's license, you're under their discretion. And especially when it comes to other service members, you know, as long as you have patient consent and as long as you are under the direction of your doctor and they were comfortable with you doing certain procedures, obviously there were limits to that know I'm not going to be doing open heart surgery just because I worked for, you know, a cardiologist or anything. But yeah, I would I would say depending on who your doctor was and how comfortable they were with you doing certain procedures, there might have been things that technically were a little bit out of someone's scope that some doctors would allow you to do with the patient's consent, of course.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. Any experiences that you'd care to share?

DOWNEY: Oh, sure. Oh, the dermatology clinic was wild, man. I thought. You know, I remember when I got. Assigned to the dermatology clinic and thinking I'm like, you know, what am I going to do? Am I going to help people with acne? And no. People would come in and I'll never forget a patient that we had that I got to help with his procedure. He came in. He had extremely bad acne all over his face, all over his body, to the point where it was very large, very painful. And I was like, Oh, no. And he came in civilians. He had a black hoodie on and he had his hood up like this. And I said something about a growth on the back of his neck. And I was screening him and I said, Why don't you go ahead and take your sweater off and we'll take a look. And the back of his neck, it looked as though someone had shoved a golf ball underneath his skin on the back, right at the base of his neck. And I said, oh, my goodness. And I remember when the doctor came in, he said, you know, how long have you had this? And the patient said he had it about ten years. So have you ever gone to the doctor and tried to have this removed? And he said he had tried to go on and go to several doctors and no one would ever touch it. And so he was trying again with with this doctor and we got to remove it. And it was fascinating. It stunk. But it was it was literally stunning. But it was fascinating. I loved it. It was it was great.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And you had mentioned the FMB. Mm hmm. If you could kind of explain to the civilians what that is.

DOWNEY: Sure. So the IFB is called the Expert Field Medical Badge. And it's it's a tough badge to get. It's anybody that's in the medical field, in the military, in the army, can try out for this badge. It's predominantly medics. And it's where you have to do day and night land navigation. You have to run trauma lanes. There's a written test, there's a 12 mile ruck march that you have to do in less than 3 hours, and just a bunch of skills testing that you need to do. You need to work radios. And I think we started out with somewhere in the number of 300, and I think we had somewhere between ten and 15 people graduated. Wow.

SPRAGUE: And that was held where.

DOWNEY: That was actually near the DMZ in South Korea.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember where by the DMZ?

DOWNEY: Oh, I can't remember. Okay. I don't I don't want to I don't say inaccurate information, but I remember it was close. Okay.

SPRAGUE: And you said in that class you had placed pretty high, it sounds like.

DOWNEY: Sure, I was honor graduate. So they had three different categories for honor graduate. They had the written test. They had the practical skills or the trauma lanes. And then they had an honor graduate for whoever had the fastest time on the 12 mile ruck march. And I was the honor graduate for the trauma lanes. I had the highest score out of all the graduates. I was told that I also had the highest score on the written exam, but they had someone that had tied with me and they said, Well, since you're already getting honor graduate for the trauma lanes, we'll just go ahead and allow them to have the honor graduate slot for the written exam, which doesn't bother me. I got my my coin and my handshake from the general. So that was fun. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: And what what were some of the things that happened at Yongsan while you were there? Maybe not inside the. Not inside the gates.

DOWNEY: Not inside the.

SPRAGUE: Gates outside of premises.

DOWNEY: Oh, sure. So, you know, Korea is a wild place, especially for young soldiers. I don't think that's a huge secret for anyone. But the fun nights, I've never been a huge partier or a huge drinker, and I've never extremely enjoyed going to clubs. But I did do some of that. And yeah, lots of lots of partying, lots of fun times, lots of interesting memories being made with friends. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I seem to remember an area called Itaewon. I don't know if it's still there.

DOWNEY: Ej1 Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did not partake in one.

SPRAGUE: So were there any protests outside the gates while you were there?

DOWNEY: I do not recall any protests. Okay. While I was there.

SPRAGUE: What? Do you remember The train system in Seoul?

DOWNEY: Oh, the train system's great. The public transportation in in South Korea is amazing. You could be pretty much anywhere in just a couple of hours. It's. It's very comfortable. I'm a very loud person. South Korea. And they're very they're very quiet, subtle people. And I remember I had a girlfriend and I we were speaking on the train just kind of in our normal voices. And we actually had one of the train workers come up to us was like, Ladies, you need to lower your voice. Okay. I'm very sorry. So it's just a different culture. But, you know, you have to be respectful.

SPRAGUE: And you had maybe mentioned in the pre-interview that you had met your husband there in Korea.

DOWNEY: Yes. So I met my husband in Jordan when I actually got to camp Humphreys. Okay.

SPRAGUE: So we'll get to that. Yes. Okay. So okay. So now, first of all, tell me the unit name that you went to on Camp Humphreys. I know you did that pre-interview, but if you could give us the full name, that would be helpful.

DOWNEY: Sure. Yeah. I went to Camp Humphreys, and then I went to the three to G SAB. What would you say? What does that stand for again? Garrison Support. Support. Major General Support. Aviation General support. Aviation Brigade. I believe that's what you step stands for. All the Army acronyms I've tried to flesh for my brain over the last few years. And yeah, so the the medevac company, Charlie Company, they were down on flight medics. And so they had recruited myself, my friend Danny, and a couple of other medics from the 1 to 1 Cash to come and be flight medics with them after we had graduated from F and B.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. And that you extended a year, you would have that would have been probably around March of 2011 that you entered that unit. Is that about right?

DOWNEY: I think it was closer to maybe April or May. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. Okay. But we're now in 2011, okay?

DOWNEY: Correct?

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. What was that like, being in Charlie Company and help me out. Help me paint a picture. Of what? That. What that is in a day. In a working day.

DOWNEY: So your days would be very different depending on what was happening that day. And if you were on what was known as first up or second up. So if you're on first up, that means you are tied to the actual base because you if you get a call, if you get a if you get a flight out, then then you're the one that's going to be go. So you have to actually stay at the company area. If you're second up, you need to come in while first up is out. And then if you're not on on call, you're either training or you're helping the mechanics fix helicopters or doing admin work, things like that. So it just kind of depend on what your day was like and if you what do you were assigned that day?

SPRAGUE: I was looking at some photographs from this unit and it seemed like there were some civilians in the photographs. Did you have any involvement with treating local Korean nationals or was it just service members?

DOWNEY: So we did some training with some of the civilians. I remember we actually had a training that didn't go very well with a Korean civilian firefighter unit. But no, we did we did do training with with civilians sometimes. So.

SPRAGUE: And did you have to SOS in your unit or was it just all American.

DOWNEY: Could to says, Oh, my sweet Gattuso's says, I can't believe you said that. I totally forgot all about that. So I don't think we had any Katyushas in our did we at the G-sap? I know for an absolute fact I had them in the cache and I loved Micah too. Says the Katyushas were just these just amazing, incredible people. And but no, we had Katyushas down in three two as well. I don't remember working a lot with them directly. I think they did more admin things than they did flying.

SPRAGUE: And what do you remember talking back to the one to UN cache that experience with the Katyushas? What what sticks out in your mind that makes it a fond memory.

DOWNEY: So the Katyushas. So Mike had to say his name was Jew and he he was just so kind. They're so smart. So the Katyushas. So in South Korea, all men by a certain age, I can't remember the exact age. I believe it's 32 or 30 or 28. They have to have two years of some sort of civil service. And most of them joined the army and they joined the Rock Army, the Republic of Korea Army, and the really, really intelligent ones that they can speak English and they have to meet all these criteria, take a test. They get to be chooses, which is Korean augmentation to the United States Army. And that's where they come in work with the American Army. And so they're all really intelligent. Most of them are very highly educated. I remember ju he was an actual pharmacist and I remember he was working with us in the pediatric clinic. And I said, you if, if you're an actual pharmacist, why aren't you in the pharmacy? And he said, I do not know why they put me here. No, I don't know. So but I just remember the Katyushas. They were always just so kind. Their culture in South Korea, everybody is just so helpful and and they're just such pleasant people. I really enjoyed them.

SPRAGUE: And let's see. Tell me about an experience that you remember while in that role in the juice lab that sticks out in your head. A good day or a bad day?

DOWNEY: Army wives are just army wives.

SPRAGUE: Our personal lives. That's okay, too. That's fair.

DOWNEY: I definitely think that the moment that definitely stuck out was the first time I ever saw my husband. That, for sure, is my number one memory from being in the G sub. Of course.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Any particular days, you just you'd like to forget that you were out in the field or, you know, it was cold or bad, or it was just a bad day in Korea that day.

DOWNEY: Yeah, there were there were actually quite a few. Our first sergeant, um, he just, you know, he was just a controlling prick. And to be quite frank, I can say that now. So, you know, and he was a very big micromanager. You know, if you didn't do every little tiny thing that he needed you or wanted you to do, he he just kind of made it his mission to make your life miserable. And he just wasn't a great leader. And a lot of people to include myself did not enjoy working for him. And I can think of a few times that he made it particularly unpleasant to be there, but I just tried to avoid him as much as possible.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Any in addition to your husband, any other special people that stick out in your head? And you. Friends, peers, mentors?

DOWNEY: Sure, Sure. Know. So my friend Danny, who came with me from 1 to 1, her name is now Danny Black. She's just a smart, kind person. She's Hawaiian. She grew up in Hawaii as well. And she just has this level of chill about her that is contagious. And it was a privilege to be her friend. And I have a lot of really great memories with her and a lot of people that we met. We're still very close to our friend. We call him Steve. His name is not really Steve, it's Chris Myrna, but I think I couldn't remember his name originally, and so I called him Steve and then it just stuck. He was actually my husband's roommate when we first started dating. And. Yeah, I know there's there's lots of people I look back on very fondly.

SPRAGUE: Did you have any Korean nationals that you worked on on a regular basis in your unit, in your barracks? Anybody like that?

DOWNEY: Oh, sure. I had a few of them that I worked with. They were either receptionists or nurses or anything. I remember Miss Kim, one of our nurses in the pediatric clinic, got 1 to 1 eye. She was gorgeous. A lot of Korean people are. They're gorgeous. They have gorgeous features. And I remember she said something about her granddaughter and I thought she was my age. I thought she was in her early twenties. And I said, Your granddaughter? And she said, Yeah, She showed me a picture. She said, This is my daughter, this is my granddaughter. And I couldn't believe it that she was in her sixties and I thought she was in her twenties. That's how youthful she looked. That's how a lot of youthful, a lot of Korean women look. So whatever they're doing with their skin care, they need to keep doing it.

SPRAGUE: What, uh, what was your sense of the the military situation in South Korea?

DOWNEY: So in talking to the two sons, I know they they were very grateful that America, American soldiers were there, a lot of them. They were taught by their grandparents about how a lot of the older generation felt, You know, America came in and kind of saved them. I didn't feel any hostilities as far as being an American soldier for being there from from anybody.

SPRAGUE: Flipping back to the cash in the FMB, when you were up north, what was your sense of when you were up there training and you were near the DMZ? What are your impressions?

DOWNEY: So I actually went to the DMZ and then also training up there, you know, tensions were high. You can cut the tension with a knife up there. And if you actually ever have the privilege of going to the DMZ, I don't know what it's like now ever since what happened with President Trump. But I know when I went back in 2000, ten or 2011, it just you know, when you have a South Korean soldier standing right here and a North Korean soldier just staring each other down and just it was it was very tense. And, you know, the sense that I get from all South Korean people, from the nurses and the coaches, is that I work with is they didn't hate North Koreans. They just felt very sad for them. And it was a very sad situation.

SPRAGUE: Did you while you were at at Humphreys, did you get any sense of any gender discrimination, perhaps?

DOWNEY: I think that there was a little bit of that. The first sergeant that I had reference to, it seemed a lot of the people that he wanted to micro-manage were women, particularly. They were young, attractive women. And it was just weird, you know. And I'll never forget, one time they did a surprise room inspection at about four in the morning. And I remember he didn't like me. He didn't like my friend Danny that I had mentioned. He didn't like a girl that I had known. Her name was Hooper. And then there were a couple of other we were all young, early twenties, you know, good looking females. And we could tell that he was really trying to catch us doing something wrong, whatever that is. And Hooper, that night, the night before, had actually fallen asleep in another room, and one of her friends, nothing inappropriate was happening. She I think her and the friend had just been watching movies and they fell asleep. There was another female soldier and he they came up. It was four in the morning. They had everybody go to the day room and they were checking people's rooms and know where was so-and-so and where so and so. And he really keyed in when he realized that Hooper wasn't there and what's going on. And but they never noticed that there was this other female soldier that he kind of didn't have his eye on. She was sleeping underneath the bed in a male soldier's room, but he didn't even notice that she was missing. He only noticed that Hooper was missing and everybody in the day room knew what was going on and, you know, and knew that she shouldn't have been in that other soldiers room. And, you know, and he tried to get Hooper in trouble, even though there's really nothing he could do about it. But everybody in the company was just laughing behind his back because, you know, it's like, oh, why is it that you noticed that Hooper wasn't in her room, but you didn't notice this other female soldier that you don't care about wasn't in her room. And so it just it just goes to show you I don't know if it was so much sexism as it was. He had very targeted, you know, people that he was looking after and strange.

SPRAGUE: And you finish your tour up at Camp Humphries. Is there anything else there you'd like to share about your tour camp? Humphreys Hmm.

DOWNEY: No, I married my husband. We only data for six months and we've been together for 11 years now. And I mean, other than that.

SPRAGUE: Did you get married in Korea?

DOWNEY: We got married in Korea.

SPRAGUE: Where? Whereabouts? What? How did that happen? Mean? I'm curious.

DOWNEY: No, we. So, yeah, we only dated for about six months and we decided we wanted to get married. And we told both of our platoon sergeants, hey, we, we need to go up to Seoul because we have to go to the embassy and do all these things. And apparently our platoon sergeant is did not tell the first sergeant that we had planned to go and get married. And the day after we got married, he found out we got married and he was absolutely livid that we had gotten married, even though my husband, I we weren't in the same platoon. He was in the mechanical side of the company. I was in the medical side of the company. We never, ever directly work together because our jobs had nothing to do with each other. He I remember the next day he he called us into his office and he looked me in the eye and he said, Why didn't you ask me for my permission to get married? And he said, You're not my dad, so I don't need to ask you for your permission. And he was he was upset with me for saying that.

SPRAGUE: Yeah, I'm not sure what legal there is.

DOWNEY: No, he had no legal right. He just it just goes to show you. He was just very controlling, very manipulative. He didn't like people doing things that he didn't personally approve of. And to be quite frank, it was none of his business. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So how much time did you have left in your tour at Camp Humphreys following your marriage?

DOWNEY: Oh, no. We were both leaving very soon. I was leaving in a couple of weeks. My husband was leaving in a couple of months after that and. Yeah, yeah.

SPRAGUE: And. Okay, so coming back to the States from Korea, what was that experience like for you?

DOWNEY: It was very different. So I went from Korea to Fort Drum where, you know, in Korea everything's crammed, everything's small, and everything in Fort Drum is vast. I remember thinking it was like, there's no mountains and I'm in the 10th Mountain Division. And then I realized that it was the history of the 10th Mountain Division of where they got. The 10th Mountain theme from. And so, yeah, it was just really interesting, you know, after you live overseas for two years and coming back to the States, it's just, you know, a little bit of a culture shock and an adjustment. I remember I got to Fort Drum, so I had to shut off my phone and everything in Korea because it was a Korean phone. I didn't have an American phone. I got to Fort Drum on a Friday and I they put me in these temporary barracks. I didn't have a phone. I didn't have a car. I didn't have anybody to contact. I luckily packed a couple of protein bars and a couple of bottles of water because no one came to check on me until Monday morning. So I went from Friday really, really late at night, Friday, like into Saturday morning, all the way through the weekend. And I didn't know where any of the dining facilities were. I didn't have any way to contact anybody or call a cab or anything. And I afterwards was told that that was actually a pretty common thing for the junior enlisted because I was still a specialist that, yeah, they would just kind of dump you in the next working day. They would get a hold of you. But especially for me, I don't have any way of contacting people. So I just went a whole weekend and I survived off on protein bars.

SPRAGUE: To help me out here. So how did you get me? I'm assuming you flew back from Korea. Was it a Mach flight? Was it a civilian flight? And did they take you right to Fort Drum or help me out with the sequence of training?

DOWNEY: So you either you get to the to the airport, right, that you fly over and I was in the Watertown the or did I go Yeah, I went to I flown to Syracuse and at Syracuse they have a little oh, what are they called the law hubs or military hubs. And they got me a ride back to Fort Drum because I had to call the CQ desk and they came down, pick me up, brought me back. I did the initial processing. They said, okay, these are the barracks where you're going to stay in until your unit comes to pick you up. So, okay, you know, and I mean, perhaps I should have put two and two together and should have said, Hey, look, I don't have a phone. I don't know anybody here. I don't know where anything is. But they just kind of dropped me off there. And yeah, that's where I stayed until someone came and picked me up.

SPRAGUE: MM What, so your unit came and picked you up.

DOWNEY: Yeah. On Monday. On Monday morning, Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about the unit you were in and the, the 10th Mountain.

DOWNEY: So initially I was in First Brigade. I was only there for a few short months because shortly after I transferred over to the aviation brigade so I could be in the same brigade as Jordan when he came to Fort Drum. And I got there in March and he got there in May. So he was there shortly after I was.

SPRAGUE: So that would have been March of 2012. That's correct. Okay. And then you transferred over to the Aviation Brigade and around May of 2000 to over a little later.

DOWNEY: Maybe a little later, maybe closer. I think it was maybe the summer time in June or July, maybe. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And what was your occupation, for lack of a better term, in the aviation brigade?

DOWNEY: So initially, I, I went to the 110, I went to 110, which was so there was 110 to 10, three, ten. Now. Am I making this up? No. I was in 110. Yeah. Yeah, there is 110 to 10, three, ten. And then six. Six. And I was in 110. And then I was just one of the medical soldiers for the medical platoon.

SPRAGUE: And help me out here. What does a medical platoon do within that? That aviation unit?

DOWNEY: Sure. So we ran the the aviation aid station, and and we were would be the medics for that actual unit.

SPRAGUE: And to the forgive me for not knowing this to the medics fly in the aircraft. Are they like an aid station that's back or or both.

DOWNEY: No, we were the aid station that was back. So I was no longer a flight medic when I was in South Korea. That first sergeant that I didn't like before I got married, he had said, Hey, I will send you to Flight medic school so you can actually be schoolhouse train and be a designated flight medic. But if I do that for you, you're going to come back here and you're going to work for me for another year. And I said, Absolutely not. And so I decided not to do that. I wanted to go back to being just a regular grunt medic. And that's what I did. No, we were not flight medics. We were we worked in support of the aviation brigade. That's not to say that sometimes we didn't help with flight missions because we did, but that was not our primary mission at all.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And so 2012, mid to late 2012, you're in the which which which aviation brigade.

DOWNEY: Remind me again, it's the 10th Aviation Brigade, and I was in the 110 battalion.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And battalion. First Battalion of the 10th Aviation Brigade, maybe.

DOWNEY: Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, I'm just curious. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay, So what happened next?

DOWNEY: So I got there, and shortly after we deployed, we deployed. When did we leave? We left in April of 2013. Yeah. April 2013 is when we. Right. Because. Yeah, because April of 2013 is when we get deployed to Afghanistan. First we went to Salerno.

SPRAGUE: What were your thoughts when you first found out you were going to get deployed?

DOWNEY: You know, it was mixed feelings. I would be lying if I said that there wasn't a part of me that was a little scared, that was a little hesitant. But then there was also this part of me that I felt like I needed to prove myself. So being really young, being a female, being junior enlisted, having no deployments, you know, people don't really take you very seriously. And partially that's for good reason, right? Because you don't have a lot of experience and you're young and you're uneducated and everything. But, you know, I felt this need to prove myself. And a lot of people, you know, if you didn't have a deployment patch on, they didn't even look at you as a person. Right. And so, you know, my husband had deployed a few times to Iraq, and I was very proud of his service and doing that. And I and I wanted to be able to have some of those experiences that a lot of my friends and my husband had had.

SPRAGUE: Did your husband relating experiences to you helped prepare you at all for that experience?

DOWNEY: Yes. So my husband had some pretty extreme experiences in Iraq. And another piece of where I was really eager to deploy is I really felt like there were things that I just couldn't connect with him on some of the horrific things he had to see and do. I just I couldn't understand, you know, and I wanted to be able to better understand him.

SPRAGUE: And you were, if I understand you correctly, from the pre-interview, you were stationed together at Salerno. We were told me about. Tell me a little more about that place.

DOWNEY: So we had an amazing colonel. Colonel Ward was our battalion commander and. He he said, Hey, look, if I was deployed with my wife, I would want to be able to be stationed in the same room. So he let us do that. We were told, Hey, you guys don't get any special privileges or anything like that. You're not going to get anything that anybody else doesn't, but you're allowed to stay with each other. So we had a very organized room and everything had a certain place. But to be honest with you, even then, even living together very rarely, especially in the first part of the deployment, did we see each other. I worked days, he worked nights, and so it was a lot of. As soon as he was getting up and getting ready for work, I was coming home and going to sleep and vice versa. I will I will say that deploying with my spouse was a huge blessing, but it was also a huge burden in some ways. I'll never forget that. It was the first couple of days that we were in country and I was Jordan was out. He was out on a night flight. He was he's a 15 tango door gunner and mechanic. And so he would regularly go out on flights and there was a knock on my door and it was my medical section sergeant, Sergeant Page and RPA. And I opened the door and I could tell she was, you know, kind of upset. And I said, What's wrong? And she said, We need to do 100% accountability. And I said, Oh, yeah, I'm here. Why? What's up? And before she realized, I think what she realized that she was saying, she said, we lost an aircraft. And and I just said, What? And I think she realized then that my husband was out on a flight. And I remember I was in my T-shirt, I was in my shorts, and I had flip flops on. And I immediately just pushed past her. And I ran to my husband's C.P., where his company area was. And I just, like, flew open the door and his commander was in there and she just looked at me and she said, it wasn't him. I said, okay. And I didn't sleep for four straight days after that. And what had happened was at Bagram, they had lost an aircraft and the crew members had died, unfortunately. But I don't know, like just in that moment thinking that, you know, I lost my husband. And it was it was just I don't know, it was a very surreal experience to have.

SPRAGUE: What where did in terms of I had never heard about both the husband and wife team deploying before. Was that was that a common thing that occurred in the Army at that time, or is it a pretty rare experience in your judgment or.

DOWNEY: I think overall it's a rare experience. I actually think for our unit, we actually had quite a few married couples that were there. I know my husband, one of his soldiers, she was also there with her husband. They got to stay in the same room. There were two pilots that were husband and wife. They got to stay in the same room. So I think there was maybe four or five married couples that they let us stay in the same lodging. So I don't know how common that is. Throughout, I have heard of other couples being able to be deployed at the same time, but their chain of command did not let them stay in the same lodging for their own personal reasons. Reasons or I've heard of married couples being deployed at the same time, but at different bases. And there was a couple of times when their chain of command would allow them to visit one another if if it was mission capable. But I don't know how common it was for married couples to be able to sleep in the same room. And I think to looking back on it, I don't think any of the married couples had biological children together. I know there was a couple of flights that my husband and I we were able to make together. I remember I flew around with him on Christmas Day, but they had to confirm with us that we didn't have any biological children together because if we did, they wouldn't let us fly together for obvious reasons.

SPRAGUE: Where did you fly on Christmas Day? Salerno.

DOWNEY: We flew all over. I can't remember the names of the places, but we went fob hopping and they were delivering different supplies and things all over. I remember. I don't know who this Sergeant major was, but some sergeant major. It was Christmas, and I think he was trying to be nice. He came up and he was he was hugging everybody and giving us candy canes. And I remember I was like, oh, this is very unnatural. And I just I don't know, it didn't make me uncomfortable, but it was just weird. You know, it's, you know, his our major and probably shouldn't be hugging sergeants. So but that was an interesting experience. I was like, hey, this is in the Air Force. Just calm down, you know? So but yeah, we flew all over together and it was a lot of fun.

SPRAGUE: If you could. What is it like being deployed during Christmas time?

DOWNEY: It's when you're deployed, the people that you're with, they very much become your family. And so I never felt alone. But it is weird when you look on social media and things and you see your friends or your family members back home and, you know, it's just you know, life is just just continues to go and you're you're there and it's this weird feeling of, you know, these people back home, they just they don't you know, they don't care that I'm gone. They know or not even just just me that we're gone. And they don't care about these awful things that are happening here. And, you know, if you allow it to take you over, it can really make you very resentful because you're envious of that. Right? You're envious that they get to go and have all those freedoms and do all those things. But then you have to remind yourself, that's the whole point of you being there. So yeah.

SPRAGUE: So you had mentioned pre-interview that you were helping close out like Bobby Salerno, and then you tell me tell me about that a little bit and then where you went next.

DOWNEY: So yeah, so we shut down FOB Salerno, which that was a trip, man. It's, you know, just towards the end you have no supplies, you have no nothing. Everything's being taken away. You know, you're trying to kind of scavenge messes and stuff and I don't know, it was it was just weird. And then you and then after that, we went to Jalalabad for the last three or four months of the deployment.

SPRAGUE: And the deployment was how long?

DOWNEY: Nine months. We went from April of 2013 to January 2014. Okay.

SPRAGUE: While you were there any experiences with under fire being shot at or mortared or shelled or your husband returning fire from a ship?

DOWNEY: We so, yeah, we took indirect fire. And that's kind of a creepy feeling, right? And, you know, you just wonder if you're going to get blown up. Luckily, our unit was never hit. We had sister units that we were with that they took casualties and they lost casualties. My husband not on that deployment, but in some of his Iraq deployments, he was shot upon and he got his cab. And I know his I don't I don't think the pilot died, but I know he was severely injured. My husband actually, for a long time, he held on to this bullet that was lodged into the seat in the Blackhawk he was in. So if you ever go into the backseat of Blackhawks, where they're the two crew members, the two door gunner said they're just these nylon or fabric seats with poles in them. And behind where someone's head goes, there's a metal pole. And there was a bullet lodged right into that. Paul And I would have just gone straight through the back of Jordan's head if, you know, the Pole had not been there. And so he kept that bullet for a long time. But I we weren't actually being fired upon, thank God. But there was one time on a flight where we were flying and all of a sudden all of our flares started going off and I thought we were being fired upon, but we weren't. It was actually we had flown over a river and the reflection of the light off the river had made the flares go off. And so that was a small panicking moment. And I just remember I wasn't scared. I was pissed. I was thinking to myself, Are you fucking kidding me? Like, we are just on a fob hopping flight. We're just checking to make sure everybody has good medical supplies. We're not even doing anything extremely important. And this is the mission I die on. And I just remember being upset about that. I was just angry. But then once the pilots realized what was going on, we I just kind of laughed at myself. So.

SPRAGUE: Wow. So you thought you were going to die and you were upset that.

DOWNEY: I was just angry. I was like, we're not doing anything really important. There is no cool story I get to tell anyone on the other side. And I was just I just remember being angry.

SPRAGUE: Uh, what, uh, how are the conditions or the conditions different from Salerno to Jalalabad, or what were the living conditions like?

DOWNEY: So the living conditions were, I mean, not great. I mean, we had air conditioning, so that is something to be thankful for. I will never forget in Salerno, from where the hospital was that I worked in to where the dining facility was, it was a quarter of a mile. So to get a meal, you had to walk a half a mile just there and back, right? I think by the end of my deployment, I weighed £123. I weigh about 150 now. I was very I would work out for 4 hours a day because there's nothing else to do. Right. And then I had to walk everywhere and it's hot. But I remember walking out of the cache in July, I was going to walk out of the dining facility to go get food. It was so hot outside, but I was like, Never mind, I'm not even that hungry. And I just turned around and I walked back in. You know, it's not the most comfortable. You, you know, you have to walk somewhere to go take a shower or use the bathroom. And it's just I don't know, it's a different way to live.

SPRAGUE: What, uh, speaking about were there were there tents, hard shells? What was the. The living space? Arconic says.

DOWNEY: So we had we had, like wooden structures is what we lived in.

SPRAGUE: So. And you had air conditioning. Did you have what did you do in your spare time or your downtime other than working out?

DOWNEY: A lot of working out. But as of working out, everybody gets deployment. But for I like I said, that was it was around £123 and I was and it was a solid muscle and other than that I would journal a little bit. I don't know what happened to any of those journals. Um, just a lot of time. Any time that my husband, I were off, uh, every now and then we would smoke cigars, just try and spend time with the people we were there with. But other than that.

SPRAGUE: What? Did you have any experiences outside the wire while you were at Salerno or Jalalabad or.

DOWNEY: I never had foot missions, thank God. But all of my outside of the wire experience was from flying over the wire. No. All of our casualties were brought to us from outside the wire.

SPRAGUE: And how did that what was your experience with training in bound casualties or not so much? Or how is that about?

DOWNEY: So we would get all the mass casualty situations in the area, whether it was American soldiers, Afghani soldiers, hostile soldiers. And I remember in particular, we had to mass casualty situations back to back. The first one was we had Afghani soldiers come in. They had been ambushed in a particular spot and we were helping them. And then the very next day, this American unit decided that they were going to go to the exact spot that the Afghani soldiers had just been attacked and see what was going on or what had happened. And they got ambushed in the exact same spot that the Afghani soldiers had been attacked in. And that was the first time I ever watched someone die. And that was very life changing for me.

SPRAGUE: How did you deal with that? The following day? The next day?

DOWNEY: I think in the immediate following days, I became very recluse. I became very angry. I remember there were three doctors that were working on this alter that had passed, and they were all arguing amongst one another of how they felt was appropriate to treat this patient. And I remember thinking to myself that you guys are wasting time and we need to do something, anything. I remember they had to crack open his sternum. And one of the doctors was actually manually pumping his heart for him. And then they got his labs back. And the the main doctor on this particular soldier said, stop the blood bank, because we were asking other soldiers to donate blood. We didn't have any blood on hand. And, you know, he was essentially saying, just stop, he's not going to make it. And just watching them crack open his chest and just everything he was it was he was bleeding from everywhere. It was absolutely horrific and just just kind of watching the light leave someone's eyes. It's you know, it's so life changing moment, you know, in a lot of bad ways, but also in a lot of good ways. I think it took years of therapy to truly be able to process. How I felt about that situation.

SPRAGUE: What were what was probably the best day you had in your deployment?

DOWNEY: The best day. The best to. You know, I don't know if I can. Maybe the best day was that Christmas Day flying around with my husband. That was just a lot of fun. I just had a great time. We had a great crew. We just had a lot of good laughs together. But I don't know if I can remember a best day, but I remember a lot of just great moments. And you know, you really do become like a family. Your family really doesn't give it justice. It it's something deeper than family with the the people that you deploy with. And I just remember going to dinner and all the guys razzing on each other and picking on each other and, you know, and it just I can't think of a particular day, but I can think of particular moments and they just make me very happy.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Um, tell me about what what, what was required to You said you were winding down these F B's. What what did that entail? I mean, I'm assuming boxing things up, putting them in a Tell me. Tell me what that entails.

DOWNEY: It was. It was like a foreclosure sale, right? Everything has got to go. All of that. All the supplies, everything, all the weapons, all the medical supplies, everything just has to go. And so but, you know, you still have people there that need to eat. We still have patients to take care of. But so you just learn how skinny you can get with the supplies before you know you up and move. And so it's, um, it really makes you appreciate even the smallest, you know, commodities.

SPRAGUE: Uh, did you have any dealings with Afghan nationals on base?

DOWNEY: Sure. We had translators, and, um, we had one casualty that was actually a hostile casualty. Um, he wouldn't make eye contact with me, obviously, because I was a woman and I didn't have my head covered and everything like that, so.

SPRAGUE: What was your impression of about that in country, about gender issues in the way men would or males would react to you?

DOWNEY: You know, I, I don't think that things are perfect here in America, but I really do wish that people could take an appreciation for. You know, I think I really have it really great here. And we are we had one casualty that was a little girl. She was nine years old and she had suffered multiple amputations because she had picked up what she thought was a toy, which was actually a placed bomb by terrorists. And her father came with her and saw that she was missing limbs and that she was really, you know, severely injured. But the doctors had told him, you know, she can live, though, we can save her. And he just kind of looked her up and down and said, well, you know, I can't do anything with her. So just, you know, you can let her go, you know, And I don't think my husband would ever say to a doctor, if I can't use my child, if I can't marry them off, if they can't do things for me, you can just go ahead and let them die. I don't think that would ever happen here. And so I think people don't realize that women really are viewed as commodities. They're they're viewed as property and they have nothing. So I think people need to appreciate the things that we have here.

SPRAGUE: Any other experiences that you'd like to share with while in Afghanistan? Hmm. No. Okay. So tell me about the day before you left Afghanistan was. What was that like?

DOWNEY: Everybody excited to go back home? Everybody's anxious. You know, I was blessed and I was there with my husband. But a lot of people are anxious to see their spouses and they want to see their kids and can't wait to use, you know, indoor bathrooms. And that was the number one thing I was excited about. I was excited that I wouldn't have to put on shoes and go outside to go find a bathroom. I would just be able to get up in the middle of the night and walk to the bathroom in my pajamas and not have to get rained on or anything. So. So that was really nice. So it's really exciting coming back home.

SPRAGUE: And thinking about bathrooms. I'm thinking about burn pits. Any dealings with that in Afghanistan or not?

DOWNEY: I do not deal over pets. No call.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So tell me about coming back to the states and what that was like for you.

DOWNEY: Initially, it was really great and we're excited to get back to normal life and everything. But then I found after a while things you know, I remember being in Starbucks and a woman complaining about her coffee not being made correctly and me just thinking, oh my God, you know, mean just the tiny things that we complain about here that just, you know, I always constantly remind myself when I'm complaining about something, I remind myself, hey, this is a first world problem that you're complaining about. So you just you need to be grateful that you have the problem at all. So.

SPRAGUE: And you go back to Fort Drum and.

DOWNEY: Go back to Fort Drum.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did your husband return at the same time you did, or were you different times or how did that work?

DOWNEY: No, we came back. We came back together. That's true. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And were you still in that same unit? The first of the 10th?

DOWNEY: Yes. Yes, we were in the same unit. Okay.

SPRAGUE: So tell me a little bit more about what happened at Fort Drum after you got back.

DOWNEY: So we got back from Fort Drum and we got back from deployment. And it was actually really sad. We lost a lot of our friends. Not lost as in they died as a PC or a lot of them got out of the military. And so, you know, we lost a lot of our friends that way. And so that wasn't fun. And yeah, and it just I don't know, it coming back on employment, it's just weird and losing a lot of those people that you were with. And but then you're still in the same place and then, you know, you have new people to replace them and it's just not the same. So I remember that feeling very strange. My husband and I, he and I, together, we were doing well, but there was a lot of outside circumstances that was putting a lot of pressure on our marriage and our lives individually. And so that wasn't fun. But yeah, it was it was a it was a weird, weird time.

SPRAGUE: Do you want to talk at all about what happened in 2015?

DOWNEY: Sure.

SPRAGUE: So how that ties into this?

DOWNEY: Sure. So as soon as we got back from deployment, our RPA left. He went to 310. He and my doctor, they didn't get along well, so my pay went to a different unit. And so we had an open slot. And in November we were assigned a new P.A. And we can call on know Captain Smith. That wasn't his name, but Captain Smith came to us, and I think sometime in November it could have been December, but I'm pretty sure it was November. And he had come over from Maine Post from from Fort Drum, and he had previously been enlisted. He was either an infantryman or a medic. And then he did the Green and Gold program, went and got his degree and became a pay. And and he let us know that he was very shortly after going to be retiring. And and I remember specifically thinking to myself, why did they move you to our unit if you're retiring in a couple of months? I don't understand. But hindsight being 2020, it was painfully obvious that he had gotten in trouble at his previous unit for some sort of sexual misconduct. To this day, I don't know exactly what that was. I've had some people tell me that he got caught having affairs. I've had people tell me that he was harassing people. I still to this day, don't know exactly what happened, but he had received a gomer he was under some sort of investigation and to remove him from that situation, they had moved him to our unit, which was the only unit that had a female OIC and female NCO. And we were about to go to the field for 30 days for POG. So he got to our unit and initially I had no issues with him. I thought he was a nice guy. He seemed to be very knowledgeable. He seemed very eager to do training with his soldiers. And so I didn't I didn't have any issues with him. I remember our doctor asking him, you know, are you going to be going to the field with us because you're going to be retiring so soon? He said, Oh, yeah, no, I'll go to the field with you guys. I'll go too far. Okay, great. And we get down to Four Park and he started just making kind of off the wall comments to me and just just inappropriate things, just but nothing that teetered to the point to where I was extremely concerned. You know, he would always make sure that we were by ourselves and that anybody else was out of earshot. He would say random things, you know, Oh, I think you're really pretty or, you know, things like that. And so we had to sit cause that would run one in the morning and one in the evening. Our doctor, she wanted to take care of all the admin things. She wanted to take care of all the. Meetings. She wanted to take care of the brigade level things or battalion level things, excuse me. And so she did all that. And our people, the Captain Smith. He was the one that did all patient care and training with soldiers. That was how they kind of divvied up their their tasks. And at this point, I was in Essex. I was no longer just one of the medics. I was actually the NCIC, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the clinic. And so and then I had my soldiers underneath me. And so two of my soldiers would run to call in the morning. And then every night I would run the nighttime cycle, because every night I believe it was either at 8:00 or 9:00 at night, I had a first sergeant and commander meeting with all the NCO cases from all the other sections and platoons. And so it just made more sense for me to run the night cycle and then go straight to my meeting. And then I would go to bed and then the other people would wake up early in the morning and do the morning cycle. And my pay, he would be at both the morning and the evening cycle because you need to have a medical provider there. And every night nighttime cycle was typically slower than morning cycle was. And so we would either, you know, do paperwork or if there was nothing else to do, we'd play cards. And this night was no different. We were playing cards. And I remember we were playing Crazy Eights and we had used a Pelican case as our makeshift table, and he was sitting in a folding chair across from me and I was sitting in a chair, as I am now, and. And I was. And so and I don't know, this was three months, two or three months after I had met him and we're playing cards. And it was my turn to deal. And I was looking down at the cards and I went to go and throw him a card and just completely out of the blue, he said, You know, what would you do if I tried to kiss you right now? And I remember I was throwing the card and I just froze with the card in between my fingers and thinking to myself, I couldn't have heard him correctly. Right. I just no one would say that. And I looked up at him and I said, Excuse me. And he said, I said, What would you do if I tried to kiss you right now? And I said, You know, sir, why don't we just leave that Pandora's box closed? And he just persisted. He said, No, come on and tell me, what would you do if I tried to if I tried to kiss you? And I said, Sir, I don't know what I would do if you tried to do that. And in my mind, what I was trying to convey to him is, I don't know if I'd slap you. I don't know if I'd punch you, if I would kick you. And that's what I kind of meant when I when I said that. And then he didn't really say anything. He was just kind of smiling at me and he didn't say anything. And so it just it kind of felt like a moment of awkwardness and just kind of like, Oh, okay. And I and I was trying to think of anything to leave. And I said, Well, you know, I better get going to my meeting. My meeting didn't start for another 30 minutes. And it was, you know, two, three minute walk down the down the path to get to where our CP was. And he knew that he was my boss, He knew what time I had to leave every night. And I said, well, I'm going to get going to my meeting or I'm going to be late, you know, just because I was trying to think of anything to leave. And I stood up and when I stood up, he stood up with me. And I distinctly remember that that was the first moment that I felt afraid and I knew something was really wrong. I went from feeling awkward and weird to I was scared. And I remember I just kind of looked at him with the, you know, like, what do you do in kind of a look? And we so we had a there was a eight long tent and we had two litters that ran the length of the tent. And then we had our supplies and our tables at the end of the tent. And anytime I'd walk in the aid station, we were there in February. And so it was, you know, it wasn't super, it wasn't super cold, but it was cold. And so I had a a light jacket that I had. I had my weapon and my hat and everything that I would just set on the litter. And I went over to get my stuff from the litter. And he came around the Pelican case and he was walking towards me and I just look at him and he's closing the distance between us. And I put my hand up and I lost my arm out and I put my hand right on his chest, right where his rank was. And I said, What are you doing? And he grabbed me by both of my arms and he pulled me close to him and I just completely froze. And I remember for a long time after what had happened to me happened that I thought for a long time that maybe God was punishing me as if it was some sort of karma, because I always had extreme reservations of other females that came forward with sexual assault, saying that they froze or that they didn't fight or that they didn't do do anything. And I remember I would always be one of those females that would say things like, I would never let someone do that to me or I would fight him or I would punishment or I would do something. And then here I froze, just like all those other girls did. And so I remember for a long time thinking that maybe that was some sort of karma or a punishment for thinking that about them.

SPRAGUE: Do you want to take a break? Yeah. Okay. Okay. You want to share some more? Are you good.

DOWNEY: At whatever you need? No, I can.

SPRAGUE: It's really about what you're willing able to share and what you want to share.

DOWNEY: Sure. No.

SPRAGUE: Any more than.

DOWNEY: That? No, I can. Yeah. So sorry. So. Yeah. So he grabbed me by my arms, I guess. Hold me by both my arms. And so I'm kind of in this weird position where he has me pressed up against him, and he bends down and he tries to kiss me. And I stuck my head to my chin because I didn't want him to kiss me. And just to give a little bit of a reference, I'm I was, what, 22 about to turn 23. And I don't know exactly how old he was, but he was getting ready to retire, so he had to have at least 20 years in. So he had to be in his, I don't know, late forties or or at least late thirties. Right. If he joined at 18 and he served his 20 years, that means he's at least 38. And I think I don't know. And I talk my head to my chin and so when he goes down, kiss me and start kissing my mouth here, kiss my forehead, and I pulled my face away from him because I didn't want him to kiss me. And he started kissing and licking my neck. I remember I said, Please stop. And he let go of my left arm and he reached around and he started groping me on my backside and fondling me and he's passing me on to him. I can feel that he has an erection. And he said something along the lines of, you know, is this one of those no, no zones? And he was referring to the sharp no no zones. And I said something along the lines of, you know, I need to get out of here. I need to get to my my meeting. Someone's going to realize I'm missing, you know, I'm trying to, like, get out of this. And he said to me, he said, Well, at least let me make it even. I didn't know what he meant by that. But he reached up and he grabbed me by my jaw and he pushed my head to the other side and he started licking and kissing the other side of my neck. And I don't know how long all this was happening. It felt like forever, but it could have only been for a couple of minutes. And finally I just kind of snap out of this and I just I violently push him away from him as I need to leave. And I literally just scooped up all my stuff in my arms and I just walk out of his and I remember walking to my commander's tent and just thinking what happened? You know, I just I couldn't believe it. I'm like ten, ten, 15 minutes ago. Everything was fine. Everything was normal. I don't know what's happening. And then this happened. And I remember I got to my commander's tent and he even said he like, Oh, wow, you're here really early, because it was, you know, 20 minutes before the meeting was supposed to be going on. And he could tell that I was upset. I'm normally a pretty bubbly, talkative person, and I don't think I was. And he said something along the lines of, you know, are you okay? And I was about to tell him what had happened. But then another soldier had walked in and I didn't want to tell with everybody in the room. And so I kind of didn't know what to do. I really didn't sleep all that night. I remember talking to my husband on the phone and even he said something like, Hey, are you okay? Like, you seem kind of quiet and short tonight and know I said, No, I'm just tired and I just yeah. And the next day. So every morning we would have a team meeting with my doctor, my, my pay, the pay that assaulted me, me and then our soldiers just to kind of go over what we were going to do for the day, what the training was going to be. And we had the the meeting I sent my soldiers out. They were going to start prepping some of our equipment for some training. And so then it was just me, the P.A., and then my doctor. And then my doctor was said something, Oh, I have a meeting with one of the commanders and I got to go and she just walked out of the tent. And it was it was just very awkward. And neither of us said anything for a second. And I said, okay, well, I'm going to go help the guys, go prep the equipment. And as I was about to walk out, he said, Oh, so you're going to make this all awkward now? And I said, Oh, I am. I am making this awkward. And he said, Yeah, I thought last night. It was something that we both wanted. I don't understand what your problem is. And I said, okay, clearly you and I have had a miscommunication. And I said, Look, I don't know what I did or what I said to you to make you think that last night was something that I wanted. But I'm telling you right now, it's not. I said, You have your wife and your family and your life. I have my husband and my family and my life. And I did not come down here for some 30 day JROTC fling. That is not. And I said, So I'm letting you know right now I do not want that with you. And he actually apologized. He said he was sorry. He said, okay, sorry. I must been reading some signals wrong. And I said, okay, I don't know what signals you're talking about, but I'm telling you, that's not what I want. And he apologized again and I want to go and walk out. And he said, So are you going to go and run and tell Sharp on me? And I looked at him and I said, No, I just told you, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to think about this. I wouldn't. I told him that I want to just pretend that this never happened and I'm going to go on the rest of my life just pretending it didn't happen. And he said, okay. And as far as I was concerned, the whole thing was over. And I really did just want to I was never going to say anything to anybody. And then the rest of that day was kind of normal. We train with our soldiers. I try to, for the most part, kind of keep my distance away from him. But then that night we had to call again, and that night we actually had a soldier come in. He came in for knee pain. I remember Captain Smith saw him, treated him, you know, and the good ole army, ibuprofen and water was what was prescribed. And so I go over to our medication table and I go to start putting some ibuprofen in one of our little baggies for the soldier to take. The soldier was sitting on the litter and he was facing the opposite direction of where I was standing. And Captain Smith comes up next to me and he grabs me and pinches me by my by my rear end. And I remember I was finishing up the baggy and I just I just froze for a second. And I just remember I wasn't I didn't feel awkward. I didn't feel scared. I was pissed. I was just I was like, okay. I clearly communicated to this man that I did not want this with him. And clearly he's not listening. And I look up at him and he's smiling down at me and I look over my shoulder at the soldier, and the soldier was tying his shoes, getting ready to leave. And so he wasn't facing us. And I look at him very briefly again and he just smiles at me and I finish and I just remember my is clenching, my face is getting red. I can feel myself getting flushed. I was just very upset. And I finished labeling the little baggie. I walk over to the soldier, I said, Hey, do you have any questions or anything? He said, No. And I said, okay. I was like, Here's your stuff. And I walked him out and I turned around and I walked up to Captain Smith and I smacked and right across his face and I just started screaming at him. And I was very angry. I just said, you know, what are you doing? You know, did we not just clearly have a communication earlier today that I told you that I don't want you to put your hands on me. And you know, you have your wife and you're down here trying to do this with me, like, what's wrong with you? And the entire time I'm screaming at him, he's just smiling at me. He has this nasty smirk on his face. And after a couple of minutes of yelling at him, I stop and I said, you know, what do you think is so funny? What are you smiling at? And he said, I don't think you meant it. I said, You don't think I'm that way. And he said, When you slap me, if you were really angry at me, you would have slapped me a lot harder than that. And I remember I don't know if I felt scared. I can't describe the feeling. But he he he really did look very scary, like there was nothing behind his eyes. And he just, you know, I remember thinking, my God, this guy is a psychopath, you know? And I remember just pausing and looking at him. I said, you know, and I wasn't screaming anymore. I was just talking. I said, Do you do you not hear me? Do you not hear what I'm saying to you? Like, I'm not joking with you. I'm not trying to play hard to get I'm not trying to tease you or whatever it is that you think that I'm doing. I'm being 100% serious with you. I want you to stop. I want you to leave me alone. And he just kind of scoffed, and he's like, Okay, fine, fine. All right. You know, I won't touch you any more, but just know it's going to be really hard for me not to think about some vulgar things that he could do to me on the letters. And here I had just said, You know what? You're just going to have to try really hard. And I walk out of the tent and the next day or the day after I reported what had happened and my unit was outstanding. They were very supportive of me. They immediately they actually sent me and him back home on different flights, and they were nothing but supportive of me. I remember my commander coming to me, being like, Hey, where was that that night that you showed up early to the meeting? And I said, Yeah. And he's like, I could tell something was wrong, you know? And everybody was just very kind, very supportive and. The next year. It was his his court martial. And he was actually convicted and sent to prison for sexual assault. Okay.

SPRAGUE: So by now we're up to 2016. Mm hmm. Now, tell me. I have to ask, was this part of your decision to get out of the military or not?

DOWNEY: Or help me out? So my husband and I, we had actually already, for the most part, had already decided that we wanted to get out of the military. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to kind of get on to the next part of our life. And so that was already pretty much decided. I'd be lying if I said that this maybe wasn't the last little nudge out the door. But yeah, I this helped the situation along, but I think we were already going in that direction.

SPRAGUE: And tell me a little bit about when you got out. What was that like initially when you left the military and left that family?

DOWNEY: It was petrifying. It's petrifying getting out of the military. You're leaving the security. You're leaving. My husband joined straight out of high school. I joined straight out of high school. So both of our entire adulthood were spent in the military. We don't know anything else. My husband joined back in 2003. He's a little older than I am. And I, you know, I joined in 2009. And so it's just it's petrifying. And to be quite frank with you, the whole age capping process when you're getting out of the military, they're just petrifying you. And if I had a dime for every time I heard just these horror stories of, you know, you're never going to survive another war, I know you think you're going to go out there and get a job and do all these things, but it's probably not going to happen for you and you're going to wish you had never gotten out and just all these things. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, doesn't 99% of the population survive outside of the military? But they just make it seem like we're all just going to be a bunch of homeless vets with nothing to contribute to society. And I said, you know, I don't know. I guess we'll see.

SPRAGUE: So a cab tell me remind me what a cab is again.

DOWNEY: A cab. It's the army completions. I don't it's the program that you have to do. I can't remember the acronym, what it stands for, but it's whenever anybody is getting out of the military, you have to go through a cab. And that's where, you know, you go over your finances. You try and establish some sort of plan. It's where you do all the clearing to get out of the military. Yeah. And it's a very lengthy process that can take some time.

SPRAGUE: So when you got out, where did you make your home? Where did you go to initially?

DOWNEY: So initially we actually went back to California, where my family was. We both promptly realized that that was not a great idea and we weren't even there for two years. And then we moved to Wisconsin. And when we were moved to Wisconsin, I finally told my husband, you know, we I need to stop making excuses. I need to go back, finish up my degree and go to law school. This has been my dream forever, and I can't keep holding myself back.

SPRAGUE: So tell me about that, that dream and the decision to do that.

DOWNEY: Sure. So I have wanted to be a lawyer ever since the first time I watched Judge Judy. I just loved her. She can be really sassy and teetering on mean sometimes, but I just remember. So I didn't have a lot of career female role models. I didn't have any career female role models growing up. I had no idea what I wanted to do. And like I said, I wasn't close with my mom at all. And I remember just watching Judge Judy and I was like, Wow, she's really intelligent and she's really eloquent. People listen to her. They have to listen to her. You know, she has a little bit of authority. And I was I just remember thinking, you know, I want to feel like that. I want to feel like I'm eloquent and powerful and I want to feel like I have some sort of authority and like I matter and that I could help change people's lives. I want to do that. And I was ten, and I remember looking up to my dad. I said, I want to do that. How do I be her? You know, she gets paid millions of dollars to try these cases, you know, And he said, well, she's a judge. And to be a judge, you have to be an attorney. So you have to go to law school. And I said, okay, that's it. That's what I'm going to do someday. And here I am.

SPRAGUE: And I think I remember reading something you tell me about law school.

DOWNEY: So I go to Notre Dame Law School. It's a great, wonderful program. I am right now. I'm finishing up my second year of law school. By school is three years altogether. And so I have one last year after after this year.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And one of the things that I've read about you is you were a proponent of creating a special victims counsel or something like that. Tell me about that. A little better.

DOWNEY: So I was assigned to Special Victims Counsel. So right, so in the military, if you are sexually assaulted, you are assigned what is. Known as a Special Victims counsel. So just like how defendants are assigned an attorney if they can't afford one in the military now the victim gets their own counsel, they get their own attorney. There's a huge misconception that military personnel and civilians alike don't quite understand. They think that the prosecutors work for victims and they don't. Prosecutors work for the government, and it is their job to get a conviction if they feel like one is warranted. But they just don't have time to explain what's going on to the victims and to call them at every step, a step of the prosecution and everything that special victims counsel does, all that. She's the one that explained everything to me. She was the one that was there for me. And when things were happening during the course, I'm like, well, you know, why can't we say this? But he can say that and why can't this evidence come in? But that evidence can't go. What's going on? And she was the one that explained all that stuff to me, because it can get very complicated very quickly. And that's actually what I want to do in the civilian world. I want to help victims that come forward. And the D.A. has decided that there's enough evidence to prosecute. I would volunteer to help the victims so that they could understand what's happening to them.

SPRAGUE: And is that part of your bringing service to the civilian side?

DOWNEY: Yeah. Yeah. So I how I'm going to be feeding my family is through family law. I love family law. I love helping people. And so that's that's what I plan to do with that. But then all my pro-bono services I plan to do with helping sexual assault victims or even victims of other violent crimes because they need help as well.

SPRAGUE: I've got to ask what, what what were your thoughts? Um, I've been to August to go with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. What was?

DOWNEY: That was a very to be frank, I felt the situation was handled very poorly. And I feel a lot of. I feel like there are a lot of missteps and I feel like that was not done very gracefully. I don't know what the right way would have looked like, but I for damn sure know what the wrong way looks like. And I felt like that did not go over well. You know, when you're leaving people behind, literally leaving people behind, you know you're doing the wrong thing.

SPRAGUE: We've got Memorial Day coming up. But what what do you do on Memorial Day?

DOWNEY: I spend time with my husband and my family, like most families do on Memorial Day. My husband and I, we will make a point to have, even if it's just 30 minutes of my time, where we crack open a beer and just kind of sit in silence. And, you know, my husband has unfortunately had lots of his comrades that have, you know, decided to take their lives or we think about the people that we saw lose their lives, or I think about the man that had to have his chest cracked open. And, you know, and it just gives you a moment to reflect and just feel, just feel blessed and just try to remember those people. But we try and that's what I do to honor them, to just take some quiet time and quietly reflect on them. And so to start.

SPRAGUE: How do you think your life would have been different if you had served?

DOWNEY: My whole life would have been different if I didn't deserve. That scares me to think of who I would be today if I didn't serve. People ask me about my time in the service or about deployments specifically, and I always tell people that deployment was the best and the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I think I have grown so much as a person. I matured so much as a person. You have to write. I don't think I would appreciate anything the way that I do now. If I didn't join, I wouldn't have met my husband. I wouldn't have my beautiful, amazing children. I wouldn't have any of the things that I have now. I am so happy I'm about to graduate from law school and I have no student debt, as you know, thanks to my GI Bill benefits. And I have friends that are getting out of law school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. And I just it makes me sick to think of that for them, you know? So I think of all the benefits that I have been able to take advantage of because of my service and how those have drastically changed my life. And so I am very glad that I joined the military. And it scares me to think of where I'd be if I hadn't joined the military.

SPRAGUE: And what motivated you to do this interview?

DOWNEY: This is cool. This is great. To do this, I wanted to do this because I think it's I am a huge history buff. I love history. And I think it's really important to see, you know, what people were doing 100 years ago, what they were really doing, not what people want us to think that they were doing, but what they were really doing. You need to hear about the good things, about the bad things, and and really know what went on. And I think things like this are important and it and you can't just look at, you know, what did the celebrities do or what did the politicians do or what did the big top winners do. Now, what is normal people do? Right? And, you know, I'm a slightly normal person that's here I am. I think.

SPRAGUE: If we missed anything that you'd like to cover.

DOWNEY: Something. I do like to make very clear because I think a lot of people ask me this question after I talk about my sexual assault experience. I have a lot of tons of people that have asked me, Were you angry at men? Do you hate men? Do you hate the military for what happened to you? I do not hate the military or for what happened to me. I think there are a lot of things that the military can improve on. But at the same time, I'm still very proud of the service that I had, and I'm very proud to have served with a lot of the people that I served with. And I want to make it very clear that one asshole sexually assaulted me and I could sit here for the next few days talking about all the incredible men that did nothing but try and help me, that did nothing but try and progress my career, that did nothing but love me and care about me. That would have never done anything like that. So I do not want someone to take my story of sexual assault and try and paint all male service members like that, because that's not fair. And I know for a fact that there have been some people that have tried to do that. And so I want to make it abundantly clear that that is not how I feel. And I do not think that I think that a small minority of male service members or even female service members that are sexually assaulting people do that. But the vast majority are really great people, and I was proud to serve with them.

SPRAGUE: Okay, Well, that concludes the interview. Wonderful. Thank you for your service.

DOWNEY: Thank you.

[Interview Ends]