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May 18, 2007 > News > Not your usual grunt

Not your usual grunt

After two tours of shaking things up in Iraq, Hanszen College senior Philip Wharton is finally able to graduate

By Evan Mintz | Thresher Editorial Staff

At the April 9 Student Association meeting, Hanszen College senior Phillip Wharton jazzed — or salsa’d — things up a bit by replacing the usual parliamentary motions with an 8-step beat and hip swings, demonstrating with his dance partner just why the SA should give the Rice Salseros official club status. Those dancing shoes are just a quick jump away from Wharton’s skateboard, where he replaces flair with air as he makes up moves in the made-up skate park outside South Servery. But most Hanszenites probably have not seen Wharton in his other footwear: combat boots. Wharton is a Sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve. And after seven years of college and two tours in Iraq, he finally took his steps across the graduation stage May 12. Wharton first deployed for Iraq in the early months of the war, setting out to Kuwait in the middle of 2003. While audiences at home saw the green-tinted, nighttime explosions of a planned decapitation strike, behind the scenes production is always less interesting. In fact, it took a month for Wharton just to leave Kuwait, where he and his group found themselves without any orders. While some soldiers had no problem sitting around and doing nothing except collecting paychecks, Wharton would have much rather had a job or just gone home. “We joined the Reserves to get called up and things like that,” he said. “But at the same time, when they call you up, you’re like, ‘There had better be a damned good reason for this.’” Rather than battle, boredom became the theme of Wharton’s tour. It gave him a chance to read, write and listen to music — not to mention watch Chapelle’s Show DVDs. Of course, the latter is obvious to anyone who has heard his Rick James-esque “I was in a war!” And with two poems published in the 2007 University Blue, Wharton’s literary interests have made their debut as well. But one would not really expect student with published poetry to enlist in the Army. Having signed up for the Reserve right after his high school graduation in 2000, Wharton points to his father’s own military career, recruiter calls and even 1980s Rambo and G.I. Joe culture. But he also offers another reason. “I joined the army because realized there weren’t a lot of people like me in the army, and thought there should be,” he said, lamenting the lack of open-minded, upper-middle-class, white guys in the armed forces. “I guess a lot of people have this perception of everybody in the army being all crazy hardcore, rigid minded, maybe conservative, militaristic people. I was like, ‘Ooh sweet, I’ll join and shake things up a bit.’” Wharton started shaking things up even before deploying, going to an anti-war rally just a week before he was set to depart. Even in his classes at Rice, Wharton faced attacks for expressing his opinion. “There was this one kid in one of my classes this semester, politically conservative,” he explained, stifling laughter. “When somebody would voice opinion contrary to the [Bush] administration, he would tell them to get out of the country and call them traitors. […] I fought for this country twice, don’t tell me to get out of the country.” But in the end, the armed forces turned out to be a much more diverse microcosm than he expected, and he found himself working alongside all types of people. “The first time I went to Iraq a guy who went with me was a grad student at Baylor in biochemistry working on Lou Gehrig’s disease,” he said. “When he came back, somebody had already done the research that he was going to do for his thesis.” Whether via Dailykos.com or Fox News, public perception of is that it is, as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart has put it, a flaming pile of crap. But for Wharton, this is a literal statement. One of his jobs during his first tour in was stirring burning fecal matter. “I did public health. It was a weird job because not many people in the military even know it exists. And then you work in small units that are very independent.” However, since no one knew Wharton’s group existed, no one gave them anything to do. And with his commanders not knowing what they were doing themselves, Wharton ended up doing odd sanitation jobs such as counting bugs, telling people to wash their hands and, yes, stirring flaming piles of fecal matter. Even living and working on a base, rocket attacks were a regular occurrence. Despite having spent months in a war zone, Wharton seems able just to joke off the danger. “Its like some terrible, horrible, god-awful game of minesweeper,” he said. “Maybe you do good and you go home, or maybe you drive down the wrong street at the wrong time and your vehicle blows up. You can’t really worry about it any more than you can living here in the states and finding out one day that you’ve got cancer. As long as it doesn’t happen to you or anyone around you, you just kind of forget about it.” However, Wharton’s first tour was cut short when his mother was severely injured and brother killed in a car accident. After fighting through the army bureaucracy, traveling back and forth to Iraq and a call from the White House to his superior, Wharton was able to get an extended stay to help take care of his mother and start his education back up. After only one semester, he was called back. With random call-ups and a life of uncertainty — even for soldiers who provide a support role — military life is hard. “When people are leaving, when people are coming back, help them out,” he explained as ways people can show appreciation for soldiers. “Instead of sticking a magnet to you car, send a letter to the people who are gone. Or support policies that will support those people. You really support the troops? Raise their pay!” However, not everything is as black and white as the popular anti-war slogan of, “Support the troops, bring them home.” “There are people over there that want to come home and there are people over there [who] want to be there,” he said. “think the best way to support the troops is to not use them lightly.” After graduation, Wharton will continue his career in service. However, he will trade out his flak jacket for a tweed one as he plans on becoming a teacher, having spent the last year volunteering at Wharton Elementary. going through a education and two tours in he may almost be ready for fourth graders.

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