"Most of the kids I saw over there, most of the kids I worked with, were younger than my kids. And they had their body parts blown off and that bothered me." (Video Interview, 7:10)

Cookie Avvampato

Cookie Avvampato [detail from video] War: Persian Gulf War, 1991; Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, 2001-present Branch: Air Force Unit: 752nd ASES; 944th Aeromedical Staging Squadron (ASTS) Service Location: March Air Force Base (AFB), California; Carswell AFB, Texas; Luke AFB, Arizona; Kuwait; also: Kuwait; Iraq Rank: Major; Lieutenant Colonel Place of Birth: WA

Three months after Cookie Avvampato, a professional nurse with two late-teen children, joined the Air Force Reserves, she was called into active duty to serve in Desert Storm as a backfill medical specialist in Kuwait. Having grown up a self-described military brat, with her father an Air Force enlisted man she had little trouble adapting to life in the military. Some fourteen years later, she volunteered to go to Iraq to serve in that conflict. Daily life in the two wars was a study in contrasts; her medical facility in Kuwait had many amenities, with little sense of danger, while conditions as her base in Balad, Iraq, were very confining and dominated by the Big Voice, a public address announcer who warned of incoming mortar attacks usually after they had started.