This regular feature will profile a soldier that is either currently serving or has recently served in the military to give you a closer look into the lives of the men and women that fight. They’re a lot more than just a potential casualty or statistic — they’re real live people just like you and me.

In this first installment, we speak with Supreme Allied Commander Jonathan Munson, a graduate from West Point that is currently stationed in Germany awaiting his platoon’s orders to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. His ETA in the Middle East is as soon as this summer.

Name: Jonathan Victor Munson
Age: 24
Birthday: September 20, 1983
Hometown: Cape Coral, Florida
Branch: Army
Rank: Supreme Allied Commander
Years in the Military: Two
Currently stationed: Grafenwöher, Germany

Your military experience starts with being in the National Guard when you were in high school — tell us about that.

Well I was 17 and I was a junior in high school, I thought I might join the army so I could someday go to college. I didn’t plan on getting a scholarship; I wasn’t exactly an academic stud. I figured I would join the army to pay for college. I joined the National Guard right before 9/11. The army has pretty much transformed since then. That was before joining the army meant you had to see any kind of warfare. I basically just did basic training and AIT (Advanced Individual Training - where you learn your specific job school) in the Guard and then got accepted to West Point.

How did you decide to go to West Point?

They had a really cool promotional video. (Laughs) That’s pretty much the bottom line. I didn’t realize it was also a college. I thought it was just all army stuff. It’s actually a pretty tough college.

Tell us about your time there.

Like I said didn’t expect it to be like a real college, I kind of decided in the beginning that I would stick with it until they kicked me out. I wasn’t going to quit. I’m just not the type of person that quits at anything. But they didn’t kick me out, and I didn’t fail out. I did fail some classes, but not enough for them to kick me out! I focused a lot more on the military aspect of things. There are a lot of different ways you can do that. Clubs for instance — [I was in] the Infantry Tactics Club. And every instructor is also an officer or NCO in the army, so you can always talk to them about military things to develop your knowledge just from their personal experiences. But yeah, I don’t like school. I love to learn. I just don’t like school.

What do you do now?

Now, I’m an Executive Officer [XO] for a Mechanized Infantry Company. I’m second in command to Company Commander. I take care of all the administrative stuff. Whenever the Commander is gone, I assume his duties. It’s a lot of work because I have to coordinate a lot of things and like make sure we have the right training areas at the same time with the right amount of ammo, food, water, trucks — all of that. A big part of my job is the maintenance of vehicles, I don’t physically turn screwdrivers, but its all paperwork and it’s crazy. The army has figured all sorts of ways to kill trees; it’s a lot of paper work. It’s off the wall.

What’s an average day like for you?

That’s something that I love about my job. No two days have been the same. The weirdest things will come up. A soldier will do something crazy that I’ll have to handle. The army is a different organization from any organization I’ve heard of. Here there are soldiers and we aren’t just responsible for their work, but their whole personal life too. Getting their finances straight, drinking problems, relationships — that can become something I have to get into if it’s affecting the soldier and how well they do their job. Everyday I’m just picking up where I left off the day before. Oh, we do always do physical training everyday — you have to be in shape.

What do you think the best thing is about military life?

Like I said what I love is that I don’t think this job will ever be monotonous. I don’t think there’s a parallel to this [job] in civilian life.

What do you miss about civilian life?

I’ll tell you what, living here in Germany I really do miss America. Nothing bad about Germany, but it’s not America. It’s not anything really specific, but I kind of like not being a tourist everywhere I go. I like paying in dollars and not Euros. The exchange rate is killing us. The army does compensate for the difference, but still the dollar isn’t really worth anything anymore. I don’t know if it’s mean to say this, but [I miss] the ability to live your life like there’s no war going on and if there wasn’t a war going on that would be cool. But there is and there are so many people that can focus on their life and their families and they don’t even have to think about the war unless they know someone in involved in the war. I haven’t been a civilian for a while now, so it’s hard to make that distinction.

Talk about the culture of cursing in the military?

It’s different depending on what part of the army you’re in. In my battalion I don’t think we have any girls; well I haven’t seen one. I don’t work with girls and it’s actually really weird for me. [When I do] they must think I’m a grumpy old man, because I’m not used to showing real emotion besides sarcasm. It’s just odd. [Pauses] I want to go back to what I miss about civilian life.

So you miss being around girls?

Yeah — American girls in particular. German girls are okay, but even though a lot of them speak English, it’s usually only very basic and I’d like to have a deeper conversation with a girl.

But back to swearing, there are about 130 dudes in my company. They all swear. The vast majority is not offended and don’t even register it has being offensive or potentially offensive. When solider are out in public and there are kids or women around, if they’re thinking about it they’ll watch their language.

Let’s talk about mullets.

Business in the front, party in rear — what the army is all about. You work hard and you play hard! [laughs] A big reason why people can’t have mullets — even females have hair standards with certain restrictions — is because of simple fact that if you have to wear a gas mask you have to have a proper seal. So that’s why you can’t have a beard in the army. I don’t think you’d have that problem with the mullet though. I’m sure it has something about looking professional and looking good for the rest of the world. They don’t want to run around with mullets. People would laugh. I think we could lead the way though. The army was the first to implement racial integration.

Wait — So you’re making an analogy with racial integration and bringing back the mullet?

[Laughs] The army leads the way in setting the standard for a lot of things! I think hair standards should be one of those.

How’s army food?

I like it. I’m not a discriminating person when it comes to food; army food is not bad. The thing that is still being worked on are the MREs [Meal Ready-to-Eat]. They’re’ not too bad, though. Some parts taste really good and some have to be changed. The army makes committees for everything and there’s actually a committee to improve the MREs. Recently I saw a schedule to improve MREs and they had a chart with ones staying, ones being kicked out of the inventory and new ones that will be coming out. It’s challenging because they have to be able to stay in a bag for a year or two or three. Some things can sound like a good idea and then turn out not good at all. The veggie and cheese omelet was a disaster. I took one bite and couldn’t eat anymore.

What’s your favorite MRE (Meal ready to eat)?

I don’t think I have a favorite. You kind of have to be your own cook and mix and match different pieces of different things. I really like the Jambalaya if you can mix it with a hot cheese packet. MREs come with pouch that you add water to and it heats up. I like fake cheese when it’s hot, but when it’s cool… it’s not really very cool.

Okay, you had to know this question was coming, what are your thoughts about the war?

I think it needs to be finished. But I will tell you, most everybody, the majority of the army anyway, signed up for the army knowing they were going to Iraq. As bad as it might sound, the priority shouldn’t be getting people back, but finishing the war in Iraq properly. What happened, happened. And I’m responsible for doing my part to make sure the right thing is done when we’re in Iraq. We can hopefully work ourselves out of a job, by training the Iraqi Army and police. Right now the Iraqi forces aren’t vetted properly and there are some bad people in their organizations that can’t be trusted in that’s crippling in some places. I think we’re coming to a point where we can say “you guys are in charge of Baghdad now.” They’ll be the ones finding the terrorists and insurgents. Train them well enough for them to do it. If we just hop out of there, it’s just going to be chaos.

So then the big question is why are you a soldier?

Somebody’s gotta do it and I think I can. First off, our country needs soldiers. It’s an exciting job and it’s a job that needs to be done and I think I can help get it done. Whether or not you believe in the politics of it or not, there is evil in the world that will affect our United States if we don’t confront it and I think I can contribute to that in a great way. Some people can do it on the home front, and that’s great. But I think I’m better at being a soldier than being anything else.

If you are in the military or know someone that is and would like to be featured in this regular column about the military and the war, please contact us at isgreaterthan@gmail.com