Brendan Duffy said he used sandbags to protect his little bunk from incoming rocket fire at night, which also happened to make a bookshelf for the math textbook, novels and magazines he read while stationed in Iraq, much to the amusement of his fellow soldiers.
Due to this constant reading, he said he returned home and tested out of a math class at MiraCosta College, helping him to transfer to UCLA.
Duffy, an economics transfer student, served in Iraq for six months and in the military for five years. On Wednesday he talked about his experiences to a group of students as part of Iraq Awareness Week, which was organized by the Bruin Democrats.
“We wanted to have a week dedicated to the Iraq war because it is a really important issue facing Americans and college students,” said Curtis Whatley, a spokesman for the Bruin Democrats.
“Students tend not to read headlines about Iraq because it is the same every day (with high death tolls) and we wanted to fix that and get students to pay attention,” Whatley said.
Though Duffy explained that serving in the military was beneficial to him, he said he does not think the U.S. is helping in Iraq, though many of the other soldiers disagreed with him.
“I think we are fomenting a lot of discontent and anti-American sentiment in Iraq,” he said.
Though Duffy earned the prestigious UCLA Transfer Alliance Program scholarship from UCLA, he did not always excel in school.
He was not a good student in high school and did not know what he wanted to do once he graduated, he said.
He said he did not think about joining the Marines until he got calls from a recruiter, and he enlisted in the fall of 1999 without the idea that the United States would go to war.
“When you enlist you do it with the understanding you might be called to go into combat, but I definitely did not envision the whole Iraq war,” he said.
After Sept. 11, he said he expected to be sent to Afghanistan, and said he was alright with that because he believed it was a just cause. However, he added that he did not believe Iraq would be a cause worth dying for.
Despite his opinions, he said he felt that serving anywhere was part of what he had signed up for, so he went. He said he was not doing any of the most dangerous things, like fighting in Fallujah, but his camp was still a dangerous place.
He said part of his duty was supervising the Iraqi workmen that came into the camp because they were not allowed to walk around camp with an escort. In addition, there were 12-hour patrol shifts and daily jobs he had to do, such as putting protective sandbags around the general’s lodging.
Duffy recalled the blazing heat of Iraq and the terrible food at his station.
While stationed in Iraq, Duffy said he wanted to make the most of his time, so he ended up reading. He said each soldier found his or her own way of filling their free time, whether it was going crazy at the gym, playing cards, working on a laptop or even playing Xbox video games.
Duffy said that when more people are connected to the war and personally feel the effects, they will be more likely to take action against it.