Before the anger and the divorce, before four tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, before the explosions and the pain, Staff Sgt. Daedan Jackson had been just a kid planning to go to school.
t just sort of happened,” said Jackson, now 34, on joining the Army. His girlfriend at the time was in ROTC, and the plan was that she would join while he went to school. “The next thing I knew, I was the one at the MEPS [military entrance processing station] taking the oath.” That was in August 1999. “I didn’t think it would be a good career choice. I didn’t like people telling me what to do, but when you have one child and another on the way, you figure it out,” Jackson said.