Print Issue: September 19, 2002

Fall Out From 9-11 Continues As Marietta Man Leaves Again For The Middle East

Lt. Col. Curt Schoeneman (Photo by Michael Balfour)

By Rebecca Rakoczy, Staff Writer

MARIETTA - Curt Schoeneman would still be plugging away at his degree in computer science right now at Kennesaw State University. On Sundays you might find him at St. Peter Chanel in Roswell.

Instead, as Lt. Col. Curt Schoeneman, he is on his way to the Middle East as a combat engineer.

The fallout from the terrorist attacks on the United States last September have stepped up his career in the military from reservist to active duty. He joins countless other individuals in the armed services who went from once-a-month weekend warriors with reservist duties to full-time since the attack of last Sept. 11. And now, as the nation turns its attention from Afghanistan's Al Qaeda, to Iraq, those duties have heated up again.

Schoeneman, who has a psychology degree, has been in the military for the past 26 years both on active duty and in the Army Reserve, and has also served during Desert Storm in the Gulf War as a combat engineer building fuel lines for U.S. Army, as well as POW camps.

That experience resulted in a New York City ticker tape parade with other members of the armed services when Desert Storm ended.

But despite that experience and his years in the military, he wasn't planning on it as a career, he said. "I was one of those people to get on the GI Bill to go to college, and had no intentions of making it a career," he said. Afer his stint in the Middle East in the early 1990s, he went back to school and was pursuing his degree in computer science, with once-a-month reservist training. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was in his database class when the television normally used for educational programming was switched to the news of the attacks.

His Army unit was mobilized Oct. 4, but it didn't go to Afghanistan; instead he went to Egypt as part of the Bright Star, an international initiative with the Egyptian government and several other countries started by the Carter administration as part of a continuing military training exercise to strengthen international relations. Then he spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in Kuwait before coming back to the states on July 4.

With additional attention on Saddam Hussein, Schoeneman said the classroom will have to wait another year; he volunteered for another stint, since he anticipated that he would soon get yanked out class anyway, he said. This time he will be part of an operations unit for the army.

As President George W. Bush continues to put pressure on Iraq to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, there is a lot of uncertainty about the future, Schoeneman said. But 9-11 or not, he thinks something would have happened in regards to Iraq and Hussein, he said. " I suspect that we would be in this situation even without 9-11," he said.

Being a part of the military is often full of uncertainties, he said.

" I don't know the future, it's frustrating to have a sense of uncertainty - and my college and all of that is on hold. I have no idea what's going to be happening next. So what you do is live life day by day and deal with the present moment and focus yourself. What you need to do today, you need to do well."