Duty, honor, country

Just an hour’s drive from North Carolina’s capital, you’ll find Fort Bragg, the largest military installation in the world by population.

Located in Fayetteville, Fort Bragg extends through four different counties, taking up 161,000 acres.

Fort Bragg serves as its own city, housing soldiers and their families. Throughout the base, you’ll find everything from schools, to bowling alley’s and ice rinks, to convenience stores.

Established in 1918 as an artillery training ground, Fort Bragg is the home of America’s Contingency Corps. These soldiers train as crisis response forces who are able to deploy quickly by air, sea or land to any location in the world.

"Their mission is to have soldiers ready for whenever the country needs them. The soldiers should be able to travel and endure any condition, fight and win."

This particular base focuses on Airborne and Special Operations. The XVIII Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the U.S. Army Parachute Team, also known as the Golden Knights, are all part of Fort Bragg’s forces.

Something many people don’t realize is the base doesn’t house only military personnel. According to militarybases.us, a privately sponsored website, Fort Bragg has a population of 238,646 people. This number includes active duty soldiers, reserve components and temporary students, civilian employees, contractors, active duty family members, and army retirees and their family members. The base is currently the home of 52,280 active duty soldiers.

Sgt. Maj. Jason Baker, who lives on Fort Bragg, said that when he first arrived to the base the entrance was open to anyone, meaning people could enter without identifying themselves. But one week after he arrived on Sept. 11, 2001, it was closed and security intensified. At the time, Fort Bragg had already decided it was going to close the entrance, but due to the circumstances, the process was sped up. From that day on, Fort Bragg asks everyone who goes in to identify themselves.

Life for those 52,000 soldiers on base at Fort Bragg starts the same way every day.

Starting at 5 a.m. before the sun has fully risen, enlistees start preparing themselves for physical training, or PT. For an hour daily they run, do push ups and pull ups. Staff Sgt. Shawn Gregory said his favorite part is when they call cadences during their run.

“I enjoy it,” he said with a smile. “Some people think it’s foolish that I enjoy it.”

Once PT is complete, enlistees leave to shower, eat chow, and then head off to work around 9 a.m.

Enlistees have a variety of jobs paths they can pursue while living on the base including legal and law enforcement, journalism, special operations, mechanics, construction and engineering, just to name a few.

They are also able to take classes in their free time to learn additional skills and/or earn a degree.

For some enlistees, being in the army was a clear and ideal path to take. Special Operations Recruiter James Zadra was what he refers to as “a military brat” growing up. His father served for 26 years.

“It’s all I know,” Zadra said. “I’ve always had that drive to serve my country.”

For Baker, the Army was the perfect way to combine his ambition and his passion for photojournalism.

“I wanted to jump out of airplanes. It was a perfect match for me and what I wanted to do. I was able to be a soldier and I was also able to take photos. It was a perfect combination.”

— Sgt. Maj. Baker, soldier at Fort Bragg

Baker studied photojournalism while in college and was shocked to discover that the army had job opportunities for photojournalists. Baker said he was approached by an army recruiter in college who encouraged him to pursue photojournalism in the army.

Like Baker, Staff Sgt. Donald Braun doesn’t have the traditional job one might associate with being in the military.

Braun said the hardest part about his job is just being away from his wife and kids while he’s deployed.

“I wouldn’t mind still being over there working,” he said. “Life isn’t that much different than here.”

Braun said being deployed really tests your marriage.

“All of a sudden she’s taking care of two children by herself when she’s used to having me there to help with whatever just to manage the house,” he said. “It will strengthen if you’re able to get through it – your partnership with your spouse through a deployment.”

Trying to transition back into being a father and husband, Braun said, is difficult. Something Sgt. 1st Class Nathan A. Lawrence can identify with.

“You come back and now you’re trying to take care of homework, how the house needs to be straightened, who’s doing what chore and the spouse has been doing that for 12 months,” he said. But the time away is also difficult.

While some people grew up knowing they wanted to enlist, for others, the path wasn’t as clear. Gregory joined the Army in 2009 after working in construction for six years.

“I didn’t really see a future in that,” he said. “It was paying the bills, but it wasn’t long term.”

His mom and dad fully supported his decision to enlist in the army seeing as they both served.

“They knew that the life I was living, there wasn’t much of a future in it,” he said. “So they were 100 percent behind me joining.”

Gregory waited to start his basic training until he was 25-years-old, but the age difference did not slow him down as he advanced his way from being a private to a staff sergeant.

When an enlistee first starts out, they are referred to as privates. It is the lowest rank for them to have while they are in basic training. From being a private, enlistees can work their way up within the enlisted soldier rank. Those who attended military academies can work their ways up through officer positions.

While a day at Fort Bragg can feel like a 9-to-5 job, if a situation arises, enlistees can be deployed at any point regardless of their rank.

Gregory remembered his first time being deployed in Afghanistan. He remembered it consisted of long days and a lot of time away from his family. While deployed, Gregory said it’s easy to forget the day-to-day little chores such as laundry, or going grocery shopping.

“You miss it sometimes because you’re like I wish I didn’t have to deal with all these nitpicky things here,” Gregory said. “But at the same time it’s great to be home with family.”

For Baker, he has done five deployments and has found ways to stay in touch with his family while being away.

“It’s technology that’s helped us,” he said. “You stay connected through social media and now video chats and things like that.”

But for the troops and enlistees who are not deployed, and are still stationed on the base, there is one ceremony they partake in as their day comes to an end.

As 5 p.m. comes around, retreat is signaled and a group of enlistees march toward the flag pole to signal the end of the day. As the flag is being lowered, soldiers stand at attention to pay their respects to the flag and the country they serve.

For Baker, the Army means family.

“We all volunteered to do what we do, no matter what. There’s this commitment and camaraderie that you don’t see in the civilian sector that you’ll find in the military.”

— Sgt. Maj. Baker, soldier at Fort Bragg

“Even though we all have different skills, abilities, and attributes, the one thing that ties us together is we all took an oath,” Baker said.

Braun agrees and said he never knows how to answer when someone thanks him for his service. He said he’s just doing his job.

“I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing and I get paid to do what I do,” Braun said. “My family gets taken care of. So when somebody says that, I appreciate them thanking me for my service, but for me all I can really say is I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s my job, and I enjoy doing it, so that makes it easier.

While Fort Bragg is an Army base, there are four other branches of the military – the Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Cmdr. Jack Morris first joined the Navy when his marriage was new and he realized that he had no marketable skills to obtain a job that would support his family.

“When I first came into the Navy, the dirt town in Georgia I’m from didn’t have a lot of opportunity so the Navy provided me with all of these opportunities for me to progress from E-1 to commissioned officer,” Morris said.

This journey with the military brought him to the world's largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, as an air traffic controller.

Morris has been in the military for 30 years now, working his way up from an E-1 airman recruit to an executive officer at the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training in Norfolk, Va, gaining the necessary leadership to take on new responsibilities that came along with each promotion.

He first deployed on the USS Saratoga in Haifa, Israel, and his last deployment was to Afghanistan on a tour with the Army as an executive officer. Through it all, Morris said that he found deployment even more difficult once he had children.

“When kids are young it’s really hard for them to understand why dad or mom arent home, this whole freedom thing doesn’t mean a whole lot to them they just know it’s mom and dad who are supposed to take care of them, and dad wasn't here."

— Cmdr. Jack Morris, Executive Officer at the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training Norfolk, VA

Morris and his wife, Dawn, have two children. Brooke, 16, said whenever her dad was away, life got more chaotic but she and her brother Jackson, 14, have gotten used to his absence.

“As we got older, my dad being gone was less of a burden and more of a nuisance,” Brooke said. “His absence was just depressing and him not being able to come to our school or sports event was frustrating. Dad being gone forced us to be more independent, which is actually a good thing, however, we still missed him.”

While she misses her Dad when he’s deployed, Brooke said she will always be proud of him and the work he does.

“When I tell someone my dad is in the navy, it is always something I say with pride,” Brooke said. “My dad has spent decades protecting a country that I have always been taught to respect, and every time I talk about my dad’s job I’m bragging on him.”

In addition to deploying to Israel, Morris was also stationed in Afghanistan. After returning from Afghanistan, Morris took a position working for the Department of Defense at the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters in Washington D.C. His job was to help monitor all air traffic in United States air space.

“This position was exceptionally challenging and was very divergent from any other duties, in fact I wore suit and tie versus my uniform,” Morris said. ”This position required a great degree of understanding how to intermingle military and civilian policy.”

While working in D.C., Morris was screened for the position of commanding officer, a senior officer position, and was one of four officers selected to take command out of 75 soldiers.

At command school, Morris was taught the fundamental responsibilities of running a good command. Morris said he believes his decades of service in the military all came together in order for him to achieve this position.

“By the time you’ve been screened to make command they are convinced that you have leadership abilities, they just want you to be able to reflect and hone those abilities,” Morris said.

But above all, Morris said the purpose of the military is to provide freedom for the nation.

“It all fits together to make the United States the great country that we are.”