By Beckett Howe
Many people go into the military for the honor of defending the country. Retired Staff Sergeant Dennis Moore joined to serve because he wanted a change in life.
“I was 29; I wasn’t married; I didn’t have anything going on except my career as a teacher,” said Moore. “It was not quite two years after 9/11, and my family always served in war-time. My dad was in Vietnam; my grandfather was in World War II as well as Korea; we had a relative in the Civil War, so it was one of those things that I thought was the appropriate thing to do, serving the country in the time of need,” said Moore.
Along with those reasons, Moore said: “I was also very interested in the military, and I got to the point where I can either not join and never have any experience about it, or I could jump right in and do something good,” said Moore.
“I was a Staff Sergeant in the army reserves as a Military Police, or MP for short, in Iraq and basically, I was a prison guard. I was trained a lot like a police officer would be, like the whole law and order kinds of things,” said Moore. “Military Police were also trained to escort convoys, as well as do detainee operations. There were also protective services, but that was a rare job to get,” said Moore.
“The most interesting job that I’ve been on was a protective services mission. We were protecting the commanding general and members of the command group of Army Central Command, which was in charge of logistics and movement patterns of troops and gear. We were deployed in Kuwait and some of us traveled,” said Moore.
“I traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq. That mission was interesting, like I said, because it was a rare mission to get, and we had to go through protective services training school, which was the most intense training I’ve ever been in because it was like secret service-type training,” said Moore.
Many people who come out of the military had to struggle with finding a job because they had difficulty adjusting to the common “civilian life”. Moore, however, was one of the lucky few who did not have to struggle.
“First off, I chose to go into the reserves for that reason, so I could hold a civilian career as well as help the country,” said Moore. “Not only that, but I like history, so it was a win-win when I was offered to teach here.”