Oral History Conversation

I interviewed or more accurately had a conversation with Maritza Rodriguez. She started out conversation by telling me that she had an interesting experience for what she was doing on September 11th. She told me that she was a Sargent in the army at the time. She was 27 at the time and had been in the army for five years. She was in Fort Hood, Texas at the time and she said that she remembered thinking like 'this is what you trained for' and she said that she remembered feeling like she would hope that her training would help her when she would need it. She joked that you could not really say no if you were told that you were going to war. The feeling at Fort Hood went from 'chilly to hot' as in there was now a lot of tension that was arising and America was ready to go to war. She said that the security was heighten immensely; she said that even for her, being a soldier, it was difficult to get onto base because they began checking every vehicle. Her unit went to Iraq two years later but she wound up going to Korea.