Kathryn Stansfield grew up in Bradford and calls Newbury home. She joined the National Guard in 2003 at age 19. Recently she re-enlisted for another six years. The following is an edited interview.

It's almost like an out-of-body experience. You're there taking it all in but it's almost like you're not there. There was this constant joke that it couldn't be real, like we were in Arizona on some bad reality show. It was surreal.

There was a lot of one-on-one with prisoners. You had to be stern to let them know that you couldn't be walked over but you had to be sympathetic to their needs as well. I mean, you're trying to win hearts and minds. You're not going to get respect if you're just a real hard-ass all the time. But if you show weakness they'll jump all over you. It's a hard balance, harder as a woman because they automatically think you're weak.

I didn't really get to see Iraq. It was basically a military installation I got to see. I guess you would say we were fobbits, people who didn't go outside the wire. I was deployed with a lot of people who wanted to be outside the wire, so every day we felt we were babysitting, not doing the stuff that we should be.

My dad was there in 2004, I went there a little while later. My Dad wasn't a prison guard, he was one of those out on the streets everyday seeing what Iraq really was. In a way I felt inferior to him because I didn't know what it was like to really be deployed the way he did. That was the card I was dealt.

I felt homesick all the time. I had never been away from my family like that before and I had just left my brand-new husband. Sometimes the stress would get to me and it started to show physically. I ended up dropping weight because of it. The heat, the stress, being homesick, it gets to you after a while every day like that. It's not exactly your dream job.

Reconnecting with my family was hard. You know, how do you pick up again? Where do you start? When I first came home, my husband and I didn't live together right away. I lived with my parents as we got to know each other again.

It's been two years that I've been back and here I am still in limbo. After experiencing Iraq, everyday life is a little dull. I want to go back to school, but where, when, for what? My whole life was put on hold and I lost a huge chunk of who I was. Now I have to take a step back and rethink everything I want in life.

I want people to understand it's not my political belief what I'm doing. It's not something I think is right or wrong. It's something I do because I'm asked to do it. That's my job. My personal views or political views have nothing to do with anything. In the military, you go where you're told, you do what you have to do, and you don't ask questions. In the uniform, I don't have an opinion.

I kind of laugh to myself about people who go about their daily business like they don't have a care in the world. People have no idea. It's one thing to say you're patriotic and put a little bumper sticker on your car. It's another thing to do what you have to do.