With his athletic build and boyish face—aside from mild stubble for “no shave” November—David Sutton, a finance major, blends in with his fellow USF St. Petersburg students. So when people realize that he is a 25-year-old undergrad, they usually have questions.
Sutton welcomes these inquiries, explaining that he “took a detour” and served in the army for four-and-a-half years before moving to St. Petersburg to finish school.
Sutton knew he wanted to join the military since his senior year of high school in Indiana, but ended up receiving an academic scholarship he could not pass up. After partying away his scholarship and growing bored with community college, he decided it was time to enlist.
In 2007, Sutton entered basic training and was stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Later that year, he was deployed to Iraq.
“It hits you when you’re getting on the plane,” Sutton said, recalling saying goodbye to his mother and his dog, Baze, before heading off to war in very a foreign place.
“It’s hard to explain a year of your life at war,” he said. “It’s describing more of a mentality than an experience.”
The first three months in Iraq were the most shocking as Sutton adjusted to life in a developing nation, learning a completely new culture. He saw his friends being put in harm’s way and sometimes, being killed.
After a while, things got easier. “It’s called desensitizing,” Sutton said. “Eventually you get used to it.”
Sutton explained that although he didn’t quite know what he was getting into at first, the Army taught him how to take it one step at time and to be prepared for anything.
Being deployed is “kind of like you’re a rubber band,” he said. “You get stretched out too far.”
After serving in Iraq for a year, Sutton returned to Fort Campbell to train new recruits. Although coming home to the U.S. may seem like it would be a relief, Sutton would have rather been deployed. Being on base means strict policies and procedures whereas overseas, there is “time for self-evaluation and time to think about your future.”
In 2010, Sutton was deployed for another two years, this time, to Afghanistan. By June 2011 he had completed active duty.
If you ask 24-year-old accounting student Matt Garrison what he did before coming to USFSP in August 2011, he might joke he used to be a mailman. Garrison, however, spent four years in the United States Marine Corps.
Garrison enlisted the summer after his junior year at St. Petersburg High School. With everyone he knew going to college, he decided he wanted to do something different. Three weeks after graduating, in 2007, Garrison found himself in boot camp. In 2008, he was stationed in Hawaii and deployed to Iraq that same year.
“How the f*** am I going to stay here for seven months?” was Garrison’s initial thought when he landed in Iraq. He described it as being like the movies where a guy is fresh off the plane, mind-boggled and scared.
He remembers flying over Kuwait and Baghdad and everyone thinking it was so cool because those places were all over the news at the time. “And then you get to where you’re staying and you’re like, this sucks,” he said.
The first half of Garrison’s deployment in Iraq was spent at an observation post, in the middle of a desert, consisting of three tents, two Humvees and a couple of machine guns.
“It was cold in Iraq,” Garrison said. So cold that if he didn’t keep his water bottle inside his sleeping bag at night, he’d wake up with one big ice cube in the morning. The second half of Garrison’s time in Iraq was a little better, as he spent most of it in helicopters and cargo aircrafts.
In late 2009, when it was time to return to Hawaii, Garrison also admits to not wanting to leave. “In Oahu it was very ‘yes sir, no sir.’ In Iraq we had a lot more freedom.”
For first half of 2010 Garrison was back in Hawaii, stationed in Oahu but traveling to the Big Island for artillery shooting exercises. Later that year, he volunteered to go to Afghanistan for a Pre-Deployment Site Survey, getting the “lay of the land” for those about to be deployed.
He found it was nothing like Iraq.
“I would say [Afghanistan was like] camping, but camping would actually have more amenities,” Garrison said. “In Iraq they have Burger Kings and Cinnabons and in Afghanistan you get old men selling rugs in a bazaar. I couldn’t believe the lack of infrastructure.”
Lucky for Garrison, he only had to endure Afghanistan for three weeks before returning to Hawaii.
When the Tohoku Tsunami struck in 2011, Garrison was sent to Japan to complete his last mission on active duty.
“I was so happy when I got out…ecstatic,” he said. One of the last things he did in Hawaii was throw his boots over a telephone pole that had been adorned with lights—a ritual among those he was stationed with. He then plastered “I love Marine Corps” stickers all over his friend’s car. That was the last time Garrison ever openly expressed that he was a Marine without being asked.
Readjusting to life in the states proved to be trying for both Sutton and Garrison.
After two deployments and moving to St. Petersburg, a city he’d visited but never lived in, Sutton found it hard to get back into the swing of things. In attempt to assimilate back into society, he became involved at USFSP, participating in intramural sports and taking a sailing class.
Even for Garrison, who grew up in St. Petersburg, coming home was scary. He remembers seeing new roads running through the city, the places he used to eat lunch at every day demolished. While he had been so far away, St. Petersburg had gone on without him. But it wasn’t just his hometown that felt foreign.
“You spend all this time with these guys and really get to know everyone. Then your whole family feels like strangers,” he said.
Sutton and Garrison both use the G.I. bill, formerly called the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, to receive full payment of tuition and living expenses.
Although his veteran status has meant added respect from friends, Sutton likes to stay humble about his service. He said he’s not too different from the next person next to him in class.
“We’re just like you, we may have just been through a little more,” he said, adding, only half-jokingly, “and don’t make any loud, sudden noises next to us.”
Sutton is currently a volunteer in the army reserves and goes to base in Orlando once a month. He wants to use his military experience to work for the government or a military contracting company.
Garrison, who plans on returning to the military after completing school, doesn’t want to be judged as just “that military guy.” He claims most people who know him would never believe he was a Marine anyway, a statement made believable by his modest autobiography: “I’m just Matt. I go to USFSP and I like to eat ice cream…with brownies.”
