UNBREAKABLE

He hopes to impress his wife, Andrea, who is taking nighttime psychology classes at Richland College. “She is a phenomenal cook,” Lee raves. “I want to show her what I can do.”

Andrea wants to work with psychologically injured war veterans, he adds.

Today both Lee and Andrea serve in the National Guard, and live just outside Lake Highlands.

Lee was not one of those kids who wanted to fight a war, he says. “I thought it was all dumb.”

But as a student at Stephen F. Austin, he had a change of heart. He had an ROTC friend who introduced him to the adventures like learning rock climbing, rappelling and other skills —the armed forces might offer.

The next summer, he says, a recruiter captured his heart and mind. “He had me at ‘You get to blow things up.’”

It was the year 2000 and he had no idea it would mean going to war.

“I was coming up on the end of my contract when 9-11 happened,” he says. “I could have gotten out then. I had no orders yet, but I couldn’t live with myself if I left and my friends went to fight.”

Still, Lee was a reluctant soldier.

“I vividly remember being scared the day before getting on that plane. It was stressful. Luckily the camaraderie with fellow soldiers got me through.”

He remembers the first explosion outside his tent. “I panicked, but they said, ‘It’s no big deal. Happens everyday.’”

It was true, though it typically was from controlled detonations.

Just as his nerves began to settle, an enemy bomb nearly took him out.

“It was Feb. 15, 2005. On a convoy patrol, a humvee that was 15 feet from mine hit a landmine. Boom, there it goes. There were injuries, but no one died. I think at that point it fully sunk in. All the warnings became very real. From that point on, you become hypervigilant.”

After that first tour in Iraq, he returned to Afghanistan in 2009.

While he served the infantry in Iraq, he had a different job in Afghanistan. It involved communicating with the Afghani citizens.

“Basically I collected intelligence, worked with infantry forces, talked to people — trying to get the bigger picture.”

He started in Kandahar, moved up to

Ghazi and traveled to Gaza, collecting whatever intel he could.

A major quandary of the Middle East wars was distinguishing the good guys from the bad, and it was safest to assume everyone had nefarious intentions.

“Not everyone was bad, though. Many were just farmers, concerned with their farms and their families. I started to understand that. I gained a better understanding of their culture.”

The consistent violence and stress tore at Lee, but he suppressed it and did his job.

When he returned home, however, something arose inside him.

“I had some anger issues,” he says. “I went around like that for a couple months. At the time, post-traumatic stress wasn’t as recognized as it is now.”

Then he talked to a buddy who had the same problem. He found a therapist at the Veterans Assistance hospital. Lee did the same. “She was a nurse who worked in Vietnam, so she understood exactly,” he says. “Between her and the yoga classes I started, everything turned around.”

He says the military can always do a better job of assisting veterans, but he believes that if you reach out, there is help.

“What I would tell those hurting is that, you are not alone. When you get to the abyss, you have to look back and know there is a whole group of people in the same boat. And we are all equally important.”

LAKE HIGHLANDS’ MILITARY MOMS

Last fall, Lake Highlands families filled a hundred boxes with toiletries, clothing and other donated goodies. The event has been a feel-good holiday tradition for the past 10 years. In the last few, as the number of active Lake Highlands soldiers dwindled, the volunteers mailed the packages anyway. Recipients included any troops serving alongside a Lake Highlands soldier. Rhonda Russell launched Military Moms, the group that organizes the drive, in 2005 as a way to cope with her own son’s deployment to the war in the Middle East. She continued the project long after her son, Lee Russell, returned from Afghanistan. The group still meets once a month, sometimes inviting speakers to talk about issues facing veterans. “Our main objective for these meetings is to provide moral support to our families left at home,” Russell says. “At these meetings, we do still send care packages overseas every other month and particularly on holidays. We also participate at various events throughout the year to promote patriotism, as well as partner with schools to help them in their care-package events.”

“That was the 19 and 20 year olds, a lot of the time. I saw a few explosions and sniper fights. But they were in the middle of it everyday.”

The 1994 Lake Highlands High School graduate first deployed to Iraq in 2006, after finishing South Texas College of Law. Compared to his 2008 deployment, this was the more eventful. Just outside of Fallujah, in an area dubbed the “wild west” of the Middle East by the day’s media, King was stationed in Sadam Hussein’s abandoned vacation compound.

“It was not nice when we were there, but you could see the remains of a palace all around,” he says.

The lawless region was the epicenter of

Iraq’s deadly insurgency, according to reports from 2005. Here in this area — beleaguered by roadside bombs, regular firefights and insurgents who wouldn’t think twice about exploding themselves if it meant taking out their opponents too — King advised Marines about the rules of engagement and communicated with and compensated Iraqi civilians whose land and property were destroyed in battle.

“I actually attended town council meetings and listened to stories from the Iraqi citizens, and then and there, we would pay them accordingly, in cash, for damaged property. I actually had a guy with me who would carry a backpack of money,” King explains. “We were trying to win over the people, to do the right thing. Sometimes they would try to take advantage, but not typically.”

And his role meant dealing with devastation beyond the material.

When civilians were injured or killed, he had to address that as well. Such situations were tragic — for the victims and their families, of course, but to lesser extent, for the American soldiers involved. Some people think that our troops accept accidental casualties as a cost of war, King says. “But I’ll tell you, civilians were killed — I did not see a lot of these, but it happened. And when it did, these guys were torn up about it.”

Anytime a civilian casualty occurred, he says, “We had to conduct an investigation… in our battalion, all were eventually cleared.”

Insurgents’ deception made the war more difficult. Several veterans we interviewed recalled frustration over how easy it was for bad guys to impersonate good guys.

“You had people disguised as civilians who were car bombers, suicide bombers.

The Marines were highly trained to evaluate hostile intent they really wanted to do the right thing,” King says.

The violence was such during his eightmonth deployment that 24 Marines in his battalion of about 800 lost their lives.

After high school, King joined the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets but opted for law school over the military. When his passion for the military reignited a couple of years later, he says he investigated all branches. They all encouraged him, he says, except it was a little different with the Marine recruiter. “He told me to meet him the next morning at 0600 hours for a fitness test. That’s what I wanted.”

He attended officer training between his second and third year of law school. Shortly after that, the United States went to war and the “landscape of the military changed entirely it was an exciting time to be a Ma- rine,” he says.

Today, King works on the third floor of a stylishly remodeled West End loft, the walls peppered with military memorabilia (his dad’s decorations from Vietnam, his grandfather’s flag from WWII). He practices criminal defense and military law.

“I feel like I know my military clients when I am speaking with them. There’s a saying as a Marine judge advocate that you’re a Marine first and a lawyer second. I kind of take that attitude into the courtroom with me… I think people who might be going through the darkest period of their life need that.” in December 2013, King married his wife, Jaclyn, who he met after returning from his second deployment in 2010

A new rewarding yet challenging era of their lives began eight months ago when Jaclyn gave birth to their first child, Vivian.