By Derek Turner

Army Specialist Anais Moise is a truck driver and a soldier, and for her first four months in Afghanistan she loved nothing more than getting behind the wheel and outside the wire.

Each convoy security mission or supply run to some remote outpost brought a welcome respite from the endless hours of boredom in the motor pool. Each mile on the dusty, rutted roads brought her just a little closer to the end of her first deployment.

Army Specialist Anais Moise looked to Bagram Air Base’s Warfighter Restoration Center to learn, or relearn, skills to help her cope with the anxiety that gripped her after her fiance, a member of her unit, was injured in an IED explosion. | Photo credit USO photo by Samantha L. Quigley

Now there is no peace in the driver’s seat.

A single explosion changed everything for her. That blast sent her reeling. It rearranged her world and it landed her in a place called the Warfighter Restoration Center, to learn how to get her life back on track.

No, Moise wasn’t injured in the explosion. She wasn’t even there.

She heard about it when she returned to Bagram Air Base after a late-night mission several months ago. An improvised explosive device hit her fiancé’s truck.

The couple deployed to Afghanistan with the 110th Transportation Company and had hoped to return home together at the end of the nine-month deployment.

The blast shattered her fiancé’s left leg, fracturing his tibia and his ankle and ravaging the ligaments around his knee. He returned to Bagram only briefly before he was medevaced to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and eventually back to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

“We left the same night on different convoys,” Moise said. “I did get to see him … before he left for Germany.”

In those brief moments, he assured Moise he would be fine. He told her not to worry about him, to focus on doing her job and completing the deployment.

It was easier said than done.

He was in good hands at Walter Reed, and his family was with him. But the stress wore on Moise. She still worried about him. And she also worried about herself.

“I don’t want to think about what could happen, what had happened and what might happen,” she said.

The leaders of Moise’s unit noticed the change in her and knew that she was grappling with something beneath the surface.

They sent her to the combat stress unit at the base hospital and supported her when doctors there referred her to the Bagram Warfighter Restoration Center, a facility that offers a range of services for troops dealing with emotional turmoil.

During her three-day stay at the center, Moise took time to unwind in the relaxation room, a designated area where troops can watch movies, read and decompress. While there, she opened up about the experience that brought her to the center and the lessons she’d learned.

“Everyone goes through stress, but it’s the people who admit it, and want to take care of it. That’s what matters,” she said. “Even though it’s crazy out here … the people who keep it together, those are the ones I look up to.”

The program offered Moise the opportunity to take courses on coping with stress and goal setting. She has chosen to focus on her goal of getting back to school and eventually studying social work. Having that to look forward to helped her maintain focus during the remaining five months of her deployment.

She’s realistic, though, and admits there is no magic cure.

The Warfighter Restoration Center has given her tools to take with her, but getting back behind the wheel would not be easy.

“The road is very scary for me now,” she said. “It’s going to take some time to get back out there.”

But she said she has plenty to be thankful for. She’s thankful that her fiancé is alive, that he will recover and she’ll be reunited with him soon. And she’s thankful her chain of command is able to see beyond the old stigma attached to seeking behavioral health care enough to send her to a place where behavioral health professionals can help her see things clearly so she can complete the deployment.

“It’s all right for any soldier to say they can’t handle this combat environment,” Moise said. “So I would recommend them coming here to just get away because I think as soldiers we’re just so caught up in the soldier life that maybe we do need to relax for a couple of days and then get back on our feet.”

–Derek Turner is a freelance writer and a former senior editor of On Patrol. Editor in Chief Samantha L. Quigley contributed to this report.