Correspondent photo / Nancilynn Gatta Dustin Carvin, 38, scrolls through photos on his cellphone from his time in the Army serving in Afghanistan. He joined the Army in 2008 and was discharged in 2012 as an E4 Specialist.

HOWLAND — Just because he served in the Army, which included a year in Afghanistan, Dustin Carvin does not see himself as a hero.

“It’s weird being a veteran. I get uncomfortable when people say, ‘Thank you for your service.’ I got paid. I was doing my job. I understand when they say it, but it’s just uncomfortable,” Carvin said.

Typically, other recruits, like Carvin’s younger brother, Shawn, join the military right out of high school, but that was not the path he followed.

“I was 22 in 2008 when I joined, and I was working as a landscape artist. My primary reason for joining the Army was my new family. I wanted to build myself up and provide a stable future for them,” he said.

With sibling rivalry in mind, he chose to join the Army.

“My brother had joined the Air Force, and I wanted to one up him. I should have joined the Air Force. At one point, when (the Army) was given leftover chairs from the Air Force, I thought, ‘Why do we get the leftovers? I should have joined the Air Force,'” Carvin said.

Following 10 weeks of basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, he wasn’t sure what he was getting into since he had only heard of military life from his brother.

“When you first go in, they give you a list of jobs and descriptions. It was a whole new world. I had no idea what I was actually signing up for. They pushed me toward military intelligence since not too many people qualify for it,” Carvin said.

He tested high in certain aspects of the military, so his superiors pulled him out of basic training to go through security clearance.

“I did the medical stuff and all the normal training but halfway through it, I got pulled out for two days. They were pretty sure at that point that I was going to graduate, so they started doing all the top secret stuff. I had to fill out this 300-page questionnaire. I was really nervous. It was intense. They had to do this before I left for AIT (Advanced Individual Training),” he said.

He was vetted before he started his training.

“It was a full-blown FBI investigation. They talked to my family. They talked to my middle school principal. They talked to my neighbors. They talked to people I hadn’t talked to in years, and I had no clue how to contact them,” Carvin said.

He did further training in Arizona.

“I went to Fort Huachuca. It was near the Mexican border, deep in the mountains. I was trained to be an imagery analyst. My job training was one of the longest in the Army. It was 34 weeks. They didn’t have a class starting when I got there in November, so I just had little tasks to do and guard duty for three months,” he said.

Because of the top secret clearance he received during additional training, he was not allowed to bring the material home or take photos of it with his phone.

“Couple of the guys in my unit got kicked out because they tried to take the documentation home to study. It was like a movie. You had to badge in and fingerprint to get into the area where you worked,” Carvin said.

His family joined him a couple of months after he arrived.

“It is one of the few trainings where you can live off base if you are married. I got an apartment and probably paid too much for it, but it had grass. I was really excited about that. There was so much desert, it was depressing,” he said.

After he completed his additional training, he was sent to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. From there, he went with an advance party to Afghanistan. He traveled with about 50 other soldiers.

“My flight departed from Fort Bragg to Maine then Germany to Uzbekistan and then Kandahar in Afghanistan,” Carvin said.

Going in advance of the other soldiers assigned at his camp helped him adjust to the new locale.

“I was on a really small base, maybe a mile long and a couple hundred yards across. We were in a valley between the mountains. I could see Pakistan from there. It was on the Pakistani border. It was desert and the sand was like baby powder. It was nothing like I had ever seen before,” Carvin recalled.

The first time he heard sirens going off signaling an incoming rocket attack, he had a different reaction than he did after being stationed there for some time.

“I hurried up and put on all my protective gear. Later, I didn’t even react or thought ‘if I get hit at least I’ll get to go home’,” he said.

Normally, Carvin’s job in the Army is a desk job, but he decided to change that somewhat in Afghanistan.

“We would do supply convoys twice a week to Kandahar. So, I volunteered because once I got over there, I decided that I didn’t travel 3,000 miles to sit in an office and do what I normally did. I got to experience the people, do the more infantry side of things without actually being an infantryman,” he said, noting he was the gunner on the back of the Jeep.

His red hair and blue eyes were intriguing to the people of Afghanistan who have dark hair and dark eyes.

“No one in Afghanistan had red hair. You definitely knew I was an American. When I went to a nearby town, I remember a man looking at me as if he would kill me if he could get away with it. I had never been looked at that way,” Carvin said.

He recalled some Afghanistan people were against Americans being there while others told him that the Americans were keeping the Taliban from taking over.

Because of the advancement in technology, he could Skype with his family back in the United States.

“It made being away from my family much easier because we could do that,” he said.

He was in Afghanistan on the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

“I was there for about a week or two and we had this big ceremony. My sergeant gave a speech. It was one of the best speeches I have ever heard. At the end of it, I was ready to go fight. I knew what happened on 9/11 and now we were there. It changed your view of what you were doing. I could not have been more patriotic at that moment,” Carvin said.

After he completed his yearlong tour of duty in Afghanistan, Carvin returned to Fort Bragg. In 2011, his second daughter, Anya, was born at the base.

After four years in the military, he left in 2012. Transitioning to civilian life took a little time.

“I had problems driving around here,” Carvin said, noting he had been used to driving in the middle of a desert or on base. He had to adjust to busy traffic again.

When he returned to the area, he worked seven years at the jail in Trumbull County. When he left there, he became employed at TJX in North Jackson, where he was promoted to transportation supervisor.

Carvin believes he grew as a person from his time in the Army.

“I learned discipline, resilience and adaptability. These are all skills that I use today. The military helped me mature by teaching me responsibility for myself and others, shaping both my professional and personal life,” Carvin said.

If he had been at a different stage in his life, Carvin thinks he would have made the military a career. Through social media, he stays in touch with fellow soldiers and some of his superiors, and tells them about the positive influence they had on his life.

Dustin Carvin

AGE: 38

RESIDENCE: Howland

SERVICE BRANCH: U.S. Army

MILITARY HONORS: Nine medals, including Army Commendation Medal, Good Conduct Medal and Army Achievement Medal

OCCUPATION: Transportation

supervisor at TJX

FAMILY: Two daughters