The Mission 
The Unknown Soldier
A year ago, newspapers reported that a 40-year-old staff sergeant from Corpus Christi had died in Iraq, the 239th U.S. fatality since the war began. But the story of Hector Perez doesn’t end there.
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But five months after Hector’s death, Elisa and Rosa Anna both carried the sour aftertaste of their experience with the Army. Although they supported the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, they also wondered whether the military had been prepared for the high number of bodies it was going to have to bring back home. Elisa was surprised that despite all the paperwork she and Hector had filled out before his deployments, the Army had asked that she make so many decisions upon his death, when she did not feel emotionally capable. Rosa Anna bristled at the fact that the government’s resistance to flying Hector’s body to both Corpus Christi and Brownsville was an issue of money. Eventually the subject turned to Jessica Lynch, whose homecoming had seemed so celebrated in contrast to Hector’s return. “I’m very, very happy that Miss Lynch came back alive,” Rosa Anna said, “because I wouldn’t wish what we went through on anybody. But there’s a better way to do things—not for us, because what happened to us already happened—but for everyone else. Those are the last little things that we’re doing for our soldiers.”
Maybe the fifth month is just the most difficult stage of the grieving process, because among those who were closest to Hector Perez, an echo of disillusionment prevailed. When I visited with Hector’s siblings and father in Corpus Christi, his sister Sandra Vasquez questioned the purpose of the war and mocked the extra money her brother received in Iraq as “hazardous duty incentive pay.” “Their life is at stake every single minute,” she said, sitting with the others under a carport that was draped with plastic American flags. “For five dollars a day? It’s not worth it at all.” Her father, wheelchair-bound at 77 years of age, peered through his large bifocals and listened to the debate. Last July he received the news of his son’s death just two days after his birthday. And when Hector’s body was driven to Brownsville following the services in Corpus Christi, the local congressman had to foot the bill for a handicap bus for him to ride in, because the military would not exceed its budget. “When you have a family member, you want the best for them, and the military’s not the best,” he said in his raspy voice. “The infantry is on the front line. They should be paid more than the ones pushing a pencil in the back. They should have a little more respect.”
A few days later, I spoke with Shaka by phone. He was stationed at Fort Benning, in Georgia, and had spent several months home from Iraq training to be a drill sergeant. He wasn’t sure if he’d have to go back, but it seemed as though witnessing his friend’s death had changed his views on fighting for good. He told me that he was just going to put in his twenty years of military service and retire as soon as he was eligible. “One man’s life affected four,” he said. “Those girls will forever grow without a dad. Somebody tell me the true reason why we’re fighting. At some point you start questioning, Was it even worth it? Do people really understand what we’re going through for this so-called war? How many politicians have their kids out there?”
He recalled the way he had been transformed last July: “Once you realize a person’s not coming back, everything about you changes. It’s not about a cause anymore. It’s about you. It’s about everyone around you. War is ugly, for the bad guys and for us. I don’t even think the politicians grasp the concept of battle. I don’t think they considered every last means known to mankind before going to war.” Then, maybe remembering the feeling he’d shared with Hector of duty to his country, he softened up. “We’re not doing it for the money, because all we’re getting is a bunch of pennies,” he said. “We are born and bred to be warriors, and every warrior searches for a good death. But maybe this is not the war in which we should find that death.”
Hector, fitted handsomely in his Army uniform, was grinning at Elisa from the dashboard of her white Villager minivan, his light-brown eyes almost sparkling through the photo paper. It was April, and Elisa and Lilli, a coquettish six-year-old with eyes like almonds, were on their way to pick up Lisa and Marla from school. Now that the girls were living in Brownsville, getting used to their father’s absence was only one of the adjustments they were having to make. They were also settling into a new city, making new friends, and growing up—all at the same time.
Elisa was talking about her continued anxiety attacks, the ongoing depression that makes her break down unpredictably. “They tell me, ‘You’re so strong. You’re so strong,’” she said, “but inside I’m all messed up.” She wondered about the toll this was taking on her daughters and recalled the day when the four of them were preparing to go for a drive and the girls were bickering over who was going to ride shotgun. Lisa accidentally smashed little Lilli’s hand with the sliding door, and in an inexplicable fit of frustration, Elisa struck her daughter and then plopped down on the ground and began to cry. Lisa uttered a sarcastic remark that cut like paper: “There she goes again. She needs to be put on medication.”
We pulled into Cummings Middle School, a low-slung brick building in the center of Brownsville. Lisa, who would be turning fourteen soon, rose from a cement bench and strode over to the car in tight capri jeans and a red T-shirt, her pink skin and glittery eye shadow giving her a sweet, gorgeous look. She is a female incarnation of her dad, tall and athletic, and she is at that age when girls suddenly turn beautiful. But even this makes her mom a little sad: Elisa wishes Hector could see them now. She knows exactly what he would say.
I asked Elisa if she was receiving any benefits or support from the government. She said that she and the girls will get three years of medical insurance and that they receive a monthly $1,600 check from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The four of them were still living with Elisa’s mother, but with the one-time $250,000 life insurance check she had received, Elisa had paid off some bills and was building a four-bedroom house in Brownsville. Every now and then a former friend of Hector’s or a military wife will call her, to see how she’s doing. But Elisa knows that from now on, she’s mostly alone. She’ll have to find a paying job someday if she wants to live comfortably. These days, she spends her time volunteering at Lilli’s elementary school, where her sister Erendira is the parent liaison, and the two spend the day cracking jokes as they work together.
Fifteen-year-old Marla was waiting for us at Porter High School. Candid and good-natured, she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and decorated in charm bracelets and a plastic choker. If Lisa likes sports and makeup, Marla prefers sketching intricate drawings and painting her fingernails with black polish. Her mother said she’s still processing her father’s death; one day Marla said she hated the Army, but another day she asked the school’s recruiter what it would take to join Junior ROTC. It was also Marla who declared to her mother recently that she and Lisa didn’t want to attend any more military ceremonies or memorials, because all Elisa did was cry, and this made them hurt.
We arrived at Elisa’s mother’s house and settled into some couches in the living room. That afternoon marked the third week of April—the deadliest month since the invasion of Iraq, with 137 lives lost. Throughout the country, dozens of families were just beginning the process that Elisa knew all too well. She was beginning to realize how difficult it might be for her family to heal. Every day, there was another dead soldier on the news, another reminder that the pain doesn’t stop when a president declares an end to war. “What if it doesn’t go away?” Elisa worried out loud. “Here I am, messed up for life.” While just a few months ago she had staunchly supported the government’s intervention in Iraq, now she wondered if it was carried out for the wrong reasons. “It feels like the ultimate betrayal from our president, because Hector went out there thinking he was fighting for freedom,” she said. “It’s become a senseless war. We’re losing more soldiers all the time. And you can’t just be playing with lives. Not only did you take his life, but look at me—I’m on medication. And then it gets passed on to the kids because I’m not all there.”
The girls, who had been chatty and engaging in the car, had little to say now. Marla told me that she had written a letter to CosmoGirl describing the way that her dad’s death had changed her life, and Lilli remembered the way he used to wake her up every morning when he was home. But mostly they were tired of the subject. Elisa tried to stay upbeat. She talked about the new house, told me about the way she was going to hang Hector’s clothes in her closet as if he were still alive, and how she would place his beloved stereo in the living room, as he would have done. With any death, in every grieving process, there is a point of resignation and acceptance. But Elisa isn’t ready yet. For a little longer, she is going to imagine that Hector is overseas again. And that one day he’ll walk back through the door, and the five of them will crowd onto one bed and laugh at silly things, and it will be like it always was.
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