Student veteran finds his place after combat
Jeffrey Horgan has a taste for adventure — he said that’s what drew him to the U.S. Army in the first place.
“I get to travel all over the U.S. for work, meet some interesting people,” Horgan said. “(Joining the Army) was a personal goal and I would have kicked myself if I didn’t do it — and of course serving my country was a big one.”
Horgan, a first-year geography student at the University of Idaho, recently finished a tour in Afghanistan as an explosive ordnance disposal technician. When an improvised explosive device, bomb, rocket or mortar was found, it was his team’s job to take care of it, he said.
“I just picked it out of a list of jobs,” he said. “It sounded interesting to me.”
Horgan said training to become an EOD specialist was rigorous with a high turnover rate, but once completed, he had a very specialized set of skills. After that, his work was done mostly in a three-man team. He said one team leader would focus on the explosive while the other two manned the truck and the machine gun.
In Horgan’s experience, the job was mostly slow, interjected with brief periods of excitement as well as long hours spent cooped up in a truck with the two other men. Luckily, though, he said they were able to get along, for the most part.
“Occasionally I’d get frustrated with Jeff, or Jeff would get frustrated with me,” Horgan said. “But you’re stuck in a truck with two other people for hours. You’re stressed, you’re hungry, you’re 10,000 miles from home and you have to keep it in perspective — you’re not necessarily angry at Jeff, you’re just stressed or tired. For the most part, our team worked pretty smoothly.”
Jeff was a member of Horgan’s team. Horgan said they grew close because they were the same age and shared the same name. Jeff was a New Yorker with a penchant for cigars. He was well-read, well-traveled and good for conversation — something Horgan said was valuable in such close quarters.
His team leader, Drew, was older — Horgan said he thought he was in his mid-30s — and had a family back home. Horgan said Drew served two previous tours in Iraq, and he and Jeff often picked his brain about the experience.
“He was very quiet,” Horgan said. “He said a lot of funny stuff with a straight face, and kept us in line and laughing at whatever we were doing. He was always very relaxed — even if I was panicking, I’d see that he was relaxed and I’d think, well, it must not be that bad.”
According to Horgan, Drew was the one who taught him to keep a sense of humor in the face of adversity — which he said is important to do overseas in wartime.
“If you get too high strung, you start to lose your focus, which is not a good thing to do,” Horgan said. “If something bad happened, we’d make a joke about it to alleviate the stress of the situation.”
He said since coming back to Moscow, he’s learned to become a little less intense in daily interactions.
“You always have to be polite, and afford people common courtesy,” Horgan said. “But here, you have to be a little bit nicer with your tone. In the military, you have to be a little more forceful and very forward, like, ‘I need this kind of information, and I need it now,’ and there’s no time to mess around because people’s lives are on the line. Here, sometimes people mistake my sternness for being angry.”
Today, Jeff is stationed in Germany and Drew is at home with his family. Horgan said he still contacts them once in a while to see how the two are doing, but now that they’re not in the military together, he finds there’s not much to say.
“I enjoy being a civilian,” Horgan said. “I can grow a beard, and not get a haircut and I have a little more freedom to wear what I want to wear and go where I want to go. There are things I like and dislike about both, but at this point of my life, while I’m glad I did it, I enjoy being out of the Army.”
Horgan said he has found a pleasant change of pace in studying geography.
“I like maps,” Horgan said. “The skills are somewhat similar. Maybe not the tangible skills — obviously I’m not getting rid of bombs — but I think EOD is big on problem solving and autonomy and is very pragmatic in its approach.”
He said he sees Geographic Information Systems, the system used to manage geographical data, being used everywhere, from government agencies, to non-governmental organizations to private corporations. He said he likes the broad range of options he’ll have after he graduates and at this point, he’s trying to keep his options open.
Going forward, Horgan said he’s not sure whether he wants security more than adventure.
“I like traveling,” Horgan said. “I like going to new places and experiencing new things. I also like to sit at home, read books, drink coffee … I like a bit of both. I like to be adventurous and I also like quiet activities, like fishing or camping.”
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected]