War veteran Eryn Sanders enrolled in the “Boots to Bruins” program at UCLA to ease back into college life.
Eryn Sanders hands out food to children in Iraq. (ERYN SANDERS)
Correction: The original version of this article published on Nov. 12 contained several errors. Eryn Sanders was deployed for the first time in 2007. She completed basic training in 2005. Sgt. Michael Sturdivant was killed on Jan. 22, 2008, not Feb. 22, 2008.
Ten days.
Ten days to pack belongings into storage. To decide whether to sell the car. To say good-bye to family and friends.
To make funeral arrangements.
Before her first deployment to Iraq in 2007, Eryn Sanders was reeling.
“Ten days, at 21 years old, to process that I am going to a combat zone was not nearly enough time to prepare myself mentally and emotionally,” said Sanders, now 26, a sergeant in the Army Reserve and a junior transfer at UCLA.
That year was tense. Her superiors kept warning that deployment could happen at any moment.
After civil affairs specialist training in Fort Bragg, N.C., Sanders returned to her hometown of Los Angeles to wait for orders. She felt aimless.
“I felt in this freeze where anything I did on the civilian side didn’t matter very much,” Sanders said.
She took a job as a subprime mortgage auditor just to pass the time. She enrolled in classes at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, but her mind was on deployment.
All the while, she was not scared. Apprehensive, maybe.
“It’s very hard to be afraid of the total unknown,” Sanders said.
When people asked her mom, Gail McFarland, if she worried for her daughter’s safety, McFarland had a prepared response. In her home hangs the image of a ship at sea, with the quote, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
“To do something significant in this world, you might also have do something dangerous,” McFarland said.
Iraq
Arriving at a holding station in Kuwait, Sanders still had no idea where she was headed. Then, at the American base in the Iraqi province of Kirkuk, her superiors approached her.
“Sanders, we’ve got a special mission for you. You’re going on a detachment.”
She and a team of six others were sent to a South Korean base two hours north. From there, they visited shelters for women running away from their families ““ bad situations, abusive husbands or arranged marriages.
The shelters were illegal. If the women were found, they would be killed, Sanders said.
The soldiers delivered essentials. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, socks, toys for kids.
Sanders thought the women were brave. They thought the same of her.
“It was really a chance to connect with women who didn’t know that they could be this powerful, this independent,” Sanders said. “And wear pants, too.”
In the war zone, inspiration went hand in hand with trauma. With about five weeks left in her deployment, Sanders was on a convoy transporting luggage back to the Kirkuk base.
At the base the soldiers would begin preparations to go home.
But on this trip, the driver of one of the Humvees veered off the road into a steep embankment.
When it rolled over it killed Sgt. Michael Sturdivant, a turret gunner. His teammates called him “Sturdy.”
Sanders had worked with him for 11 months, sharing meals and rooms.
“Until then I really didn’t know what true loss felt like,” she said. “Someone who’s become your best friend, and all of a sudden they’re gone.”
It was the team’s first casualty. Sanders remembers the exact date: Jan. 22, 2008, the same day that actor Heath Ledger died.
The base was also abuzz with news of Ledger. But Sanders did not want to hear it. A civilian later wrote an article asking, “So Heath Ledger died; do you know which soldier died in Iraq today?” The rest of the article was homage to Sturdivent.
“It wasn’t just the day Heath Ledger died,” Sanders said. “It’s the day my best friend died.”
Homecoming
Sanders spent three months living in Kansas, in bad weather, watching “Flavor of Love: Season 3″ and episodes of “America’s Next Top Model.” Grieving.
Then she went to the Dodge dealership. She paid cash for a Dodge Caliber.
The drive back to California took three days.
“I was driving through the highways, the 210, the 118, to the 405,” Sanders said with a smile. “And I knew I was home.”
In Los Angeles, Sanders entered the support network of her family and began to think seriously about her education. She went back to Pierce College, but it was different than before. The war had aged her.
“As much as I wanted to go to football games and join a sorority, I felt like I couldn’t do that because of what I went through,” Sanders said.
But she wanted to pursue higher education, and now she had a way to pay for it. When she saw her UCLA acceptance message online while at a two-week training program in Utah, Sanders jumped around the barracks, screaming with joy.
She took a summer class at UCLA to ease into campus life. Once fall quarter started, she enrolled in the “Boots to Bruins” class and became active with the veteran’s organization.
Veterans Coordinator Kyler Richie said Sanders has been “instrumental” in helping out with activities such as an appearance at Paramount Studios.
But Sanders has one thing left to do. In about five months, Sanders and her unit will be leaving for Afghanistan to work on a women’s empowerment team.
“I don’t feel I can fully let myself fully integrate into college life until I get home from that experience,” Sanders said.
Even with her imminent departure, Sanders said she is more directed than ever before. Her classes at UCLA, from coping mechanisms to geographical knowledge of Afghanistan, will travel with her to her team at the 425th Civil Affairs Battalion in Encino.
In the young faces of her team, she sees herself.
“I want to get them more ready than I was before I was deployed the first time,” Sanders said.