After graduating from West Point, Sparks native Caleb Cage was a fresh 24-year-old being deployed to Iraq.
Today, he is the Governor’s Homeland Security Advisor. He is also the author of a new book, "Desert Mementos: Stories of Iraq and Nevada."
Cage conveys the gut-check fears, as well as the hopes and love for his fellow combatants, as they struggle to survive in the desert.
DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS:
How did serving in Iraq change you?
In reality, it is still something I’m searching for. In fact, writing this book was something that was an opportunity to access some of the feelings and thoughts of the experiences that I had while I was there.
I think there are some very simple ways that it changed me. I think that I’m much more direct right now. I’m kind of always on a mission in my life. Sometimes to the detriment of my family and otherwise.
But, I think it has also given me a sense of purpose and given me a sense I really need to do things and contribute to Nevada and the state and my community in ways that really matter.
Does writing a book help you reintegrate back into civilian life?
I have a way of talking about some of the stories and experiences in very clinical, just-the-facts terms. It allows you to keep some distance from it. It allows you to see things in a binary, black-and-white way. Where this fiction book, really allowed me to dig into what those feelings were and examine how those experiences contributed to the experiences I would have later.
Does the objective of a war impact how a soldier does his or her day-to-day job?
One of the things I tried to do in this book is write the stories over the course of an entire year-long deployment. So, the stories are connected very loosely. So the second story starts on the first patrol and the last story happens when a soldier has come home. I think at different periods… for the time you’re there, you’re really seeking that mission, ‘what are we trying to do here?’ Then when you get towards the end there is always this balance between accomplishing the mission and taking care of your troops. That’s what I, as a young platoon leader, really focused on. Survival.
Part of that is just being human, but the other part is the mission vacuum. In 2004, this idea of ‘what does success look like? How do we accomplish that?’
What were your emotions like returning home?
I seemed to transition pretty quickly but I found myself to be very different. Where I had been very happy-go-lucky before I was very anxious all the time. I had found quite a few differences in my daily life, hypervigilance, and somethings that I later learned to be associated with post-traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress disorder. And since have worked to deal with, but that first year was very difficult.
I had come out of the military. I had gone to a military school before every day of my life since I was 18 I had a mission. I knew where I needed to be and what I needed to do. I knew how to measure success. And I came into a world where none of that was true anymore. I think it left me for about year floating and wondering the big questions of life: what was the purpose of it all?
Luckily, I had a great network who helped me. Very quickly I got a job in the field I wanted to be in and was able to start finding that purpose and that direction again. Mostly by helping by helping other veterans reintegrate back into the community.
A memento can be seen as a reminder but also as a warning. Are you warning us about something in this book?
I don’t know if I would say ‘warn’ but I definitely want to open a conversation. I certainly want to be part of a larger conversation about literature that allows people who maybe didn’t have experiences like I experienced to have what I think are fairly real feelings and access to fairly real feelings, emotions and experiences associated with war. I personally think we could have more wars like this in the future. I think we ought to have a real conversation about what our goals are. What are missions are? What we’re using the military for and how. And that would be as close to a warning as I would come.
Caleb S. Cage, author, "Desert Mementos: Stories of Iraq and Nevada"; State of Nevada's Chief of the Division of Emergency Management, and Governor Brian Sandoval's Homeland Security Advisor.
