Ann and Jeremy Doesken of Cloquet following his return from a year serving his nation in Iraq.

By Al Zdon
Jeremy Doesken had a strong feeling in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attack that his future Army Reserve duties would include time in the active military.
"I told my wife, 'Plan for me to be gone at some point. There's no way that we're not going after whoever is responsible for this.'"
Doesken, who now lives in Cloquet, grew up in Coon Rapids and graduated from Coon Rapids High School. As a senior, he enlisted in the Army Reserve for several reasons, one being to get money for college.
Another reason was more personal. "It was something I could do to prove myself to my dad." A third factor was that several of his friends were taking the same route.
Doesken got his AA degree at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and he also met his future wife Ann there.
In 1994, all reserve infantry units were deactivated and turned over to the National Guard. Doesken first was a postal clerk at Ft. Snelling, and later changed over to work in a medical unit.
In 1997, he re-enlisted in the National Guard to take advantage of a better bonus. By this time, he and his wife were living in Duluth and Doesken was commuting to his Guard meetings. In March of 1999, he moved back to the Army Reserve and transferred to the 477th Ambulance Company out of Duluth.
After he earned his degree in elementary education from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, he was approached by people in the Guard to apply to be a commissioned officer, but his contract was coming to an end and he was unsure whether to stay in.
"I told Ann that we had three choices. I could try to get commissioned, and we could stay in for 20 years. Or, I could stay in as an NCO for 20 years. Or I could get out."
They decided to stay in and seek the officer position, and in the summer of 2000, he became a Medical Service Corps 2nd Lieutenant.
During those pre-9/11 years, Reserve call-ups were still something of a rarity. "There was nothing much going on in the world except for Bosnia."
Doesken remembers exactly where he was when the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. "I was at the Army Reserve Center on Park Point making up a drill. Somebody came in and said we should come down and look at what was happening on television. I told him no, that we were too busy, but he insisted. We got there just in time to see the second plane hit the building."
The Reserves immediately locked down the facility and nobody was permitted to leave. Later that day, Doesken was allowed to go home.
He discussed with Ann the likelihood of being called up, and the two began to get their finances in order and make other contingency plans.
Doesken had been hired in Carlton Schools as a Title 1 teacher, but he had been laid off when school budgets were cut. He decided to pursue his master's degree at Hamline University, and he was half-way through the program when he headed off for the 10-week Officer Basic Course at Ft. Sam Houston in Texas. He did the course and worked on his master's program at the same time.
By May of 2002 he had his masters, but soon found that it was more a detriment than a help in getting a teaching job. "It effectively made it so I couldn't get a teaching position. I couldn't even get an interview." His master's degree had put him up the pay scale where most schools were not hiring.
Fortunately, the Potlatch paper mill in Cloquet was reorganizing at that time, and Doesken was immediately hired. "As it turned out, I was making $15,000 more a year than I would have if I'd found a teaching job."
His Reserve career was also moving along, and in 2002 he became a first lieutenant and a platoon leader for an ambulance company.
The possibility of being called up always loomed, and in the spring of 2003, Doesken's unit was ordered to go through a Soldier Readiness Process, the first step before mobilization. The process includes getting all your military records in order.
There was no call up, but in the Fall of 2003, the unit went through the readiness process again. On the 11th of November, when Doesken was out deer hunting, the call came. In addition, the Doeskens were in the middle of remodeling their kitchen.
"We had heard inklings that we would mobilize. We watched on TV other units being called up, but it didn't happen to us. And then it was us."
Almost immediately, Doesken went to work full-time with his Reserve unit getting everything ready for the Dec. 7 call-up. His employer, Potlatch, was very good about the call-up. "They just asked me, 'What do you need?'"
He only worked a handful of hours at Potlatch the rest of the time and instead was putting in 12-14 hours a day preparing for his platoon to go.
"One of the hardest parts was coming home after a long day and saying goodnight to the kids." The Doeskens have three small children. "I had to act like dad was happy.
"But I wasn't that happy. There's a lot of anxiety before you go. I wasn't sleeping well and I wasn't eating well."
When the unit finally left for Fort McCoy, it actually got better. "As soon as I left I was fine. I didn't have to act any more."
The unit went into training, and they were given a four-day pass at Christmas and a weekend off before they left in late January. The training experience was well meant, but perhaps not that helpful.
"We are training people to go into desert warfare while we're in the middle of winter at a camp in Wisconsin. How realistic is that going to be? We'd try to simulate a convoy, but the dirt roads were all iced up."
The unit left for Kuwait on Jan. 25, 2004, and arrived the next day. They had to wait until their vehicles showed up, and they went through additional training – more realistic this time.
On Feb. 16, it was time to head for Baghdad. "We used our ambulances like U-hauls. We had everything in them, our equipment, our medical equipment our personal stuff. We were lucky to be in a convoy with a military police company. They had a lot more fire power that we did."
The six ambulances in Doesken's platoon were assigned to the 31st Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone of Iraq's capital. The hospital had previously been Saddam Hussein's personal hospital.
Their job initially was to transport patients from the hospital to the airport so they could be evacuated to hospitals in Germany. "After a while, though, they decided that was way too long a drive and way too dangerous."
Without as many ambulance runs, Doesken found other work for his men to do, mainly working shifts in the hospital. They continued to move patients, often to a helicopter landing zone.
At home, Ann became the leader of Family Readiness Support Group for the Duluth area. The husband-wife team worked together through computer communication to keep families as closely tied together as possible.
"I'd make sure that the soldier kept in contact with his family back home. Sometimes they don't do that," Jeremy said.
The greatest threat to the Minnesota Reservists was when they had to take to the roads in the city. In the Green Zone, the main danger came from mortar and rocket attacks, which were daily.
"The Green Zone is a big area, about three by five miles, and so it was unlikely a round would hit near you. After a while you get used to it. You don't even flinch or stop your conversation. If fact, you got so used to it that unless it rattled the windows, you didn't pay any attention to it.
"There's a difference between hearing a mortar or rocket, and feeling it. If you didn't feel it, you ignored it."
Doesken's most harrowing time in Iraq came when he was sent to be a medical liaison officer to the city of An Najaf. A Shiite pilgrimage from Karbala to An Najaf was planned, and it was feared there would attacks by the insurgents. Two ambulances from the Minnesota group were slated to be stationed in each of the towns, about 75 miles south of Baghdad.
Doesken's job was to work with the Iraqi civilian government and other international forces in Iraq — Polish, Spanish, El Salvadoran – on the evacuation of casualties if there were any.
Doesken traveled to Babylon, but was unable to go to his final destination at An Najaf because an insurgent force of about 300 was attacking the military bases there. "It was too hot, and they didn't want me down there."
Doesken, however, was determined to get to An Najaf. "That's where my mission was. I went to see about transportation and they told me, 'Listen, lieutenant, you'll go when we say you can go.'"
Doesken, however, finally wrangled a helicopter flight into An Najaf, but they dropped him at an El Salvadoran camp on the outskirts of town rather than at the base in the middle to the town.
In the morning, Doesken was able to make his way to the right camp, but when he got there he got a surprise. "I walked into the camp, which had been a college campus, and instead of all these other liaison officers and local officials, there were only about five officers."
Doesken asked where everybody was, and he was told that when the camp had been attacked everybody had departed. "I called the company headquarters, and they were not happy that I was in An Najaf. As soon as I hung up the phone, mortars started landing in the camp."
For the next five hours, on and off, the Spanish soldiers, El Salvadoran soldiers and a small band of Americans were in a fire fight with the insurgents. Doesken and others went to the top of the three-story building and faced the front gate of the small camp.
Doesken had his M-16. "I at least had some infantry training, but the officer who was with me was a psychiatrist and this was a whole new experience for him."
The insurgents would work their way in close behind abandoned cars or buildings and fire mortar rounds or small weapons and then dash for cover when the Americans returned fire. The attacks went on for several days.
Taking up arms against an enemy is a difficult rite of passage in anyone's life, Doesken said. "Most people never think they'll be in that position. What do you do? Well, you do what you have to do when you do it."
"As soon as you pull a trigger and try to take someone's life, you change. It's a huge decision you have to make. It's a life-changing experience.
"You'd like to think that you didn't hit anyone, that it was the guy next to you who shot the guy that went down. But that's just a rationalization so you don't have to deal with it. And at night, who knows what you hit. You're just shooting at muzzle flashes."
Another learning experience about combat in Iraq was how it blended in with normal life. "Here we were having a fire fight with these guys, and all of a sudden there would be three ladies walking down the street with their groceries. What were people thinking?
"Or we'd be on top of the building and in front of you people were firing mortars at you. You'd look in another direction and you'd see normal traffic and the hustle-bustle of the city. Life goes on."
The mortar rounds were rarely close, both because they were fired in haste and because the attackers obviously were not trained well in how to use the weapons. Also, their munitions were all basically left over from the first Persian Gulf war and often misfired. One round, however, landed about 25 meters in front of the building, sending a pretty good shock wave throughout.
Finally, two helicopters arrived to evacuate those in the camp. Doesken was the last one on the list to be evacuated, and he said that if there wasn't room, he would wait. It turned out that they were short one seat, and he stayed in the camp two more days.
They were attacked twice more during that time. In all, about 15 mortar rounds landed inside the compound, but none hit the college building.
Doesken was finally evacuated on a Polish helicopter. "I had taken a lot of Dramamine because I get motion sickness, but that helicopter was doing evasive action for about 25 minutes. That was tough."
In November of 2004, Doesken was part of a mission to Falujah, when the Americans finally decided to wipe out the hotbed of insurgents. He was in charge of a group of ambulances that might be needed for civilian casualties. Where Doesken was bivouacked was right under the American artillery, and the shells went right over his head.
"I think they fired 4,000 rounds in 48 hours. It was just barrage after barrage. It was like being down range at an artillery practice area."
In the end, the evacuation of the town had been taken seriously, and there were no civilian wounded.
The toughest part of being stationed in Baghdad, Doesken said, is being away from your family. "I got used to the heat, because most of the spaces are air conditioned, but I never got used to missing my wife and kids. The internet is a lifesaver."
Ann's job during that time was to keep in close contact with all the families and find out what they needed. "We try to take care of them so their soldier can focus on the mission," she said.
The Family Readiness Group would keep an eye out for a variety of potential problems from health care to taxes to leaky roofs. Fund raisers brought in needed money, and the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars helped out in this area.
Having Jeremy gone was tough at first. "For the first 24 hours, I'd cry at the drop of a hat. But then that was enough of that, I had to get on with life. I didn't want to mope around with three kids." Working with the other families helped pass the time and kept Ann busy.
The homecoming, after a year of separation, became a major project for the home group. There were dignitaries that had to be contacted and invited and many other preparations. The event was held at the DECC in Duluth on Jan. 29 this year.
The lineup of people welcoming the Minnesota Reservists home included Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Jim Oberstar, and the Sgt. Major of the Army, Kenneth Preston. Preston presented each of the homecoming soldiers with a medallion.
"There were 500 people there. It was so unbelievable," Ann said. "There were people lining the streets as they came through town. All the television stations were there."
Jeremy Doesken said the homecoming was essential for the returning troops. "It's huge, especially for the younger soldiers. Some of them didn't necessarily have a positive experience in the war, they didn't feel like they did a lot. They didn't understand that in the medical field, that's a good thing."
Doesken was kept very busy right up until the day he was deactivated.
The transition back to civilian life was dramatic, but not difficult. "It wasn't as bad as I imagined, and it was a relief that it wasn't. It took the kids a little while to get used to me again, especially the youngest, but after a week that was okay too."
"In fact, the transition went so well that I considered going back to work early," he said. "But then I came to my senses and I didn't."