Most people haphazardly learned about the recent United States invasion of Iran on our phones. We collectively sighed, perhaps shared the news with a loved one nearby and then preceded to continue scrolling and ingesting trending content from a popular influencer or celebrity.
Some of us might have dug deeper and investigated how this latest conflict impacts us locally: from how we travel (Should that birthday trip to Dubai get postposed?), the rapid increase gas prices and grocery costs or the growing number of stateside protests.
But there is little to no conversation en masse about the impact this conflict has on the dedicated members of the armed forces among us, particularly those who are Black women. How does all of this affect them and their loved ones?
We spoke to Keri Daniel, a proud Army veteran, entrepreneur and Black woman, about what led her to join the Armed Forces, her time in Kuwait and Afghanistan and balancing family and life outside of the military. Below are her words on her personal and professional experiences.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I joined the military in 1993 when I was 17 years old. I had to have my parent’s permission. I have an older cousin who joined a year before I did, and she was a big inspiration for me wanting to join. I was also heavily influenced by television at the time. There was a popular commercial featuring the jingle, “Be all that you can be/In the Arrrr-my!”. I used to love to sing along when it came on TV. I was also a big fan of the show, M*A*S*H. As a child, I thought to myself, I want to be a nurse, but I want to do it in the Army [as witnessed on M*A*S*H]. I kind of put those together, and that I think is what shaped my decision to join the Army. Even though I didn’t do nursing right away, that came a bit later.
I had to wait until the summer after I graduated from high school, in 1994, to be officially enlisted. At that time, I went to Basic Combat Training in Ft. Jackson, South Carolina. It was over the course of 4 months. After that, I returned home to California.
Because I was in the Reserves, my obligation was to perform what we called an assignment or a drill. Every month and then two weeks in the summer was the Reserves obligation. It gave me time to attend school as a full-time student. I enrolled at a community college in my (Los Angeles) area. After two years, I transferred to California State University in Long Beach, California. That was where I completed my health sciences degree, and within health sciences, I focused on community and education.
I taught seventh grade for a year, and then I switched over to the community health and worked for the Women Infants and Children program (WIC). I was a supervisor with WIC for about 6 years. Later, in 2007, I decided to go to the East Coast for a job in patient safety at Walter Reed (National Military Medical Center) in the DMV area.
In between that time, and after September 11th, 2001, I had my first deployment in 2003. Even though I was in the Reserves, the active-duty forces needed additional support. My reserve unit was activated, and I was deployed for 15 months in Kuwait. We supported the war effort for the soldiers going north into Iraq. We created their flight manifests; we were tracking people and equipment as they moved north into the actual war zone.
So, I did that for 15 months and returned home where I had to reacclimate and get into back into my civilian life. I did a 5-month residency course in 2005 at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina to train as an officer for the Army. In 2009 another deployment came up, this time to Afghanistan for 3 months.
Following the second deployment is when the nursing career started to take shape. I pursued a master’s level nursing program. After completing that, I started working as a nurse. A few years later I decided to do another master’s program in nursing. Because that would then create the nurse practitioner role that I’m presently working in.
It was difficult leaving home for those deployments. What got me through was my faith and my family. It was particularly difficult because my Dad was battling cancer during that time. I had to leave not only fearing for my life in a deployed environment but also being worried about him. I am grateful for technology because we had cell phones. My fellow soldiers and I spent money putting minutes on our phones. I would always start my day with calling him.
We both looked forward to those calls. He always wrote me and sent me care packages. For Christmas, he sent me a miniature tree and small ornaments to decorate it. Those little things are what kept me during that period.
I made it home when his cancer was in remission. But then, it returned very aggressively. He passed away in 2006. I was just glad that I was back home to be with my family when all of that came about.
When I first heard about the U.S. attacking Iran a few weeks ago, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, here we go again!’ Because I had to live and serve through Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought immediately about the men and women in uniform and how it impacts them and their families. I’ve lived through that, and I just thought, ‘Wow, we’re back at this with a war.’
If I could share any wisdom with soldiers who are concerned about going to Iran, it would be this: Your family is stronger than you realize. It will be harder if they relied heavily on you in their daily lives, but they will get through and because of the technology. It will be so much easier on everyone because you will stay connected, you’ll be able to see each other on FaceTime, send text messages or phone calls and that will make it tremendously easier. You will even get an opportunity to see them halfway through your tour. It ends up being it’s doable and it’s not easy. It will be hard, but they will be okay. They have more resiliency than we think that they do.
Today I work for myself full-time as a nurse practitioner and owner of Good Shots Med Spa. We have two locations: one in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia and a second one in Clinton, Maryland. I am grateful for the opportunities the military gave me and the flexibility I had to continue my education and retire early. I retired as a Captain in January 2017, when President Obama was ending his second term. I do wish more people understood the sacrifices that soldiers make, especially Black women. It isn’t easy. I think in the end, any service member just wants to make sure that their hard work was recognized and acknowledged. We want to make sure that what we did doesn’t go unnoticed.
It is difficult to navigate the challenges of race in the military. As a Black woman, you have an added awareness of needing to prove yourself. We’ve got to work a little bit harder to be believed, or to feel that we measure up, that we’re just as good. And then we have that also the expectation to represent our race and our gender and represent our community. I might not be active duty right now, but I will also think about my sisters who are deployed and leaving behind their loved ones. They are sheroes who too often go unnoticed.