People join the United States military for many different reasons. They may want technical training, a paycheck, college money, or even simple travel and adventure. Others, like my new friend, former Navy Reserve Lt. Mary Kallen, join the military due to nothing more than a deep love of country and a desire to help America.
Kallen’s family legally came to America when she was 4. They settled in Florida. She eventually became a U.S. citizen and graduated high school in 1981. She wanted to enter one of America’s military academies, but her father objected. A brilliant young woman, she studied engineering in college and obtained a civilian job with the Army as a test engineer.
She told me there were very few female engineers in the ’80s. Some men accused her of being a DEI hire before there was such a thing as a DEI hire. She never let the naysayers or her own doubts affect her, nor did she become an angry man-hater, but she worked hard and did her job well.
Her job was fascinating. Her team had to continually answer the question: “What’s the most effective way to train 18-year-olds who know nothing about weapons systems, so they won’t kill us or each other?” Some military training is straightforward. The most efficient and effective way to train a soldier with an M4 rifle is to familiarize him with an unloaded weapon, making sure he understands its function and parts. Later, the soldier will master the weapon by firing live rounds at targets on a carefully controlled range.
Training for the FGM-148 Javelin missile system, for example, is more complex. Not only is a Javelin warhead more dangerous than a single M4 5.56 round, but each warhead costs more than $200,000. Kallen’s job was to help design safer, less expensive, but realistic ways to train soldiers on complex weapons systems.
Working as a civilian, helping the Army and later the Navy with weapons contracts, she had top secret security clearance and tremendous knowledge and experience in the military and the Defense Department. She wondered how those assets could benefit the military.
The problem? She was approaching age 35. Now I would pay good money to go back and be 35 again, but that is the cutoff age for joining the military. Plus she had children. Her husband at that time warned her against joining the military. Kallen’s friends said she was crazy. Even if the Navy Reserve would accept her as a direct commission to ensign, she still wouldn’t make much money.
“They paid [practically] nothing,” Kallen told me. “I’d do it for free.”
She succeeded and entered the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer. After her initial training, she served one weekend a month and two weeks each summer. For a long time, she spent her entire weekend drill check on child care.
I echoed her old colleagues, “Why would you do this?”
“It’s a calling for most people who join the military. … I’m a tool, a weapon, whatever you want to use.” She thought her education and work knowledge would be an asset to the military. “I’m prepared to die. They could put me where they needed me.”
TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY PICKS: LOYALTY, AMERICA FIRST, AND PRO-ISRAEL
Two years after Kallen was commissioned, America was attacked on 9/11, and everything in intelligence changed. She was disappointed that she wouldn’t be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or other forward areas, but she was proud to analyze intelligence data to produce the reports that were crucial to military efforts around the world. She served eight years, finally leaving the Navy Reserve after she had remarried and had another baby.
I admire Kallen for her love of America and for her desire to serve to help make America even better. “You only have one life,” she said, “and you have to find what is morally right to you, even when everyone is against you.”
Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.