Jose Quinones
24, Northeast Philly
Specialist, Army National Guard
Deployed to Iraq Spring 2005
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Jose Quinones
24, Northeast Philly
Specialist, Army National Guard
Deployed to Iraq Spring 2005
Jose Quinones' father walked him though a military base in Miami when Jose was 8 years old; he was in awe of the soldiers and machines there. He enlisted right out of high school, and was in Iraq within a year of graduation. The month between basic training and his deployment was an emotional time. "My grandfather passed away, so I buried him," says Quinones. "The same day, I found out I was being deployed." His high school girlfriend was there for him, and he hurried into a marriage with her. "I thought, 'She's there for me now and she is going to be there for me when I get back,'" Quinones explains.
Quinones' duties in the infantry varied, but his missions were consistently dangerous. At Camp Taji, "we did everything from convoy escorts to raiding houses," he says. "I would come back from missions all tired ... so I would call [my wife] ... and we would always come out fighting over the phone." He says there were many reasons for the arguments, including that the couple was just too young to deal with the stress. He came home and got an annulment — the disintegration of marriages, he says, is very common among his peers. "It's real common, fighting every day and then coming back and fighting over the phone with the person that you care about the most," he says. "It takes a toll, it sucks."
While still in Iraq, Quinones had begun a correspondence with another woman over MySpace, that, once home, led to a relationship and two weeks ago, his second marriage. The war still weighs on him, and even affected the wedding ceremony. "I don't like being around big crowds, especially when I'm in uniform," he says. "I started sweating, I felt like everyone was staring at me. I had to leave."
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