Veteran to veteran with Ron DeSantis
Trent Reedy
Last week, I spoke to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) about something a little different from what many journalists in America have discussed with him: the strange combination of nostalgia and pain veterans like us experience at remembering our times in wars in which we served. DeSantis’s military service is, or should be, more relevant as he campaigns to be elected the first commander in chief in over 30 years to have been deployed to war.
He took my call on a bus toward a campaign event in Iowa, and I asked him what I ask all veterans: What’s your best story from your time in the service?
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Having grown up in first-in-the-nation-caucus Iowa, I’d encountered presidential candidates before. I remember the fakeness of Mitt Romney in 2012. In contrast, Ron DeSantis sounded authentic, personal, like someone I might have served with in the war.
There aren’t many particularly appropriate situations for a veteran to discuss his military experience, something I personally understand and also know about from sharing the stories of so many veterans right here. Conversations among veterans are predicated upon a certain degree of trust in a shared experience and so are more relaxed than ordinary speech. Thus, speaking so openly with a fellow veteran who is also a prominent national politician was particularly remarkable. “I deployed to Iraq in ’07,” DeSantis said. “At that time, the technology … you couldn’t connect with people on the internet like we do now with … FaceTime or any of that stuff.” Back then, he explained, he was dating Casey Black, now his wife. “We would send emails back and forth,” he said.
I recognized a certain sadness in his voice and remembered the difficulty of staying in contact with my wife while I served in Afghanistan. DeSantis added, “Unclassified emails, obviously. I kept that right.”
I laughed. Serving as a Navy officer and legal adviser to a Navy SEAL team in Iraq, DeSantis would have encountered tons of classified material. But even the lowest privates are subjected to many briefings about the proper handling of classified information. That DeSantis was only sending unclassified emails to his girlfriend might have gone without saying. But then again, other recent presidential candidates have had terrible trouble understanding the rules regarding emailing classified information.
DeSantis continued, a happy energy coming into his voice, “One day, I was able to get [the] satellite phone.”
In Afghanistan in 2005, the satellite phone was a big treat. The chance to call home and hear a loved one’s voice with no delay! Its use was strictly rationed.
“At the time, [Casey] was a TV anchor for WJXT in northeast Florida. … On Valentine’s Day, I had arranged with her co-host that I would call in from Fallujah without [Casey] getting tipped off to it in the middle of their morning show. She was probably the most surprised that she’s ever been in her life,” DeSantis said.
“It [was] very heartwarming,” Casey DeSantis later said about her 2007 Valentine’s Day gift.
“We had been dating,” Ron DeSantis said. “I was just like, ‘Look, I gotta get through this Iraq stuff. But once I get back … I’m going to pop the question.’” Ron and Casey were married two years later.
Ron DeSantis knows he, as a military lawyer and an officer in the combat zone, had a hard gig for a time but was sensitive to the fact that others had it harder. “I was just there for one deployment,” he said. “But, you know, you had so many guys from the time the twin towers fell until I was there in ’07 — and obviously, it continued beyond that — who would spend more time in Afghanistan and Iraq than they had in the United States.” He spoke of those who served three or four deployments: “Such a burden was placed on such a small number of people.”
He spoke with a tone of respect but also almost of guilt, which I understand, that comes with the knowledge that whatever our hardships, other service members endured more. Maybe Ron DeSantis wishes he’d served in Iraq longer, but his one tour is still more wartime than was experienced by our past five presidents combined. He might have shared a cool story about helping to fight the enemy but instead told of the loneliness of war and a special sustaining connection with his wife in a way that makes it clear to me that the man understands, more than all other current presidential candidates, what war means.
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Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.