Raleigh resident and Purple Heart veteran Tarsha Burroughs decided to join the Army Reserves after studying education. She was in the middle of teaching a high school math class when she got the call to prepare for deployment.

She spent 18 months in Iraq, working first as a tower guard in Baghdad then as a gate and convoy guard for Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"It made you pretty much a sitting duck," she recalled.

She got through it with a combination of prayer, faith, and a coping technique she called 鈥渁 lot of nothingness.鈥�

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 think about home, you don't think about people in your tent, you don鈥檛 even think about anyone outside that immediate area where you are, because the moment you allow yourself to feel, you become susceptible,鈥� said Burroughs. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 let your mind wander because that puts you at a decreased sense of awareness. That whole desensitizing is how you manage, but then it becomes a problem when you try to activate that part of yourself again. It鈥檚 easy to get there, it鈥檚 not easy to return.鈥�

In May 2004, toward the end of her deployment, Burroughs was wounded in a mortar attack.

鈥淎 mortar round, it sounds like sort of like you鈥檙e popping the top on a can of soda,鈥� said Burroughs. 鈥淭he next thing I saw was light, and the next thing I remember was waking up in Jerusalem, which is the makeshift hospital they medecvaced me to.鈥�

Burroughs spoke with her two friends, Chandel Boone and Chanda Littleton, about her military service and her path to recovery from her injuries.
This conversation was produced by North Carolina Public Radio/吉彩网网站 鈥� as part of StoryCorps鈥� Military Voices Initiative, and made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.