Battleland

“My Daughter Was Scared of Me”

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Army Major Andrew March has pulled three combat tours – a pair in Iraq and his most recent, in 2010 and 2011, in Afghanistan. In this recently-posted June interview with the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, March details his role keeping aircraft flying – and spying – as part of Task Force Odin.

He took a break during that third tour to go home to Germany, to share with his wife the birth of their child. The part of the deployment that seemed to have the biggest impact on him didn’t occur until he got back home to reconnect with his 10-month old daughter:

The most difficult part is when I finally arrived home after fulfilling my tour, my daughter was scared of me and did not want me to hold her. I guess she thought that I was a stranger. She was at a young age and I understand that but really I didn’t want to be left alone with her because I wasn’t used to a crying child. It took about 45 days really for my daughter to really recognize who I was. It was very, very difficult for me, and as her Dad, even to hold her she would start crying. It was very, very difficult to get over that I missed a portion of her life.