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by Luther Dorr
Jenny Wunderlich knows her deployment to Iraq, four years after spending a year in Kosovo, will be far from a piece of cake.
And while she admitted to being nervous last Friday before leaving for training in Fort Lewis, Wash., she professed to be “more excited than nervous” about her second tour of duty in a foreign land as a member of the Minnesota National Guard.
Wunderlich, who has spent the last four years in the Mille Lacs County Attorney’s office as its victim assistance coordinator, was a truck driver in Kosovo from January 2004 to January 2005.
This time Staff Sgt. Wunderlich will be working at a job related to her eventual civilian occupation of being an attorney. She will be part of a military justice team as the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge), with responsibility for pretrial and posttrial work.
All this for someone who, when she graduated from Milaca High School in 2000, didn’t see the military as part of her future.
“Now I can’t imagine not being a part of the military,” she said last week before leaving for Fort Lewis.
She spent her senior year at Milaca attending St. Cloud State and then joined the Guard.
She went to basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and then took advanced training as a truck driver at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
“It was just kind of something that happened,” she said.
She finished college at St. Cloud State with a major in psychology and a minor in criminal justice before being deployed to Kosovo in 2004.
“That was just great,” she said about her time in Kosovo. “The people I was with in the civil affairs group there were great. It was really interesting. Those were some squared-up people.”
She said the deployment to Kosovo changed her from being a St. Cloud State student who wore a orange headband, with no interest in remaining in the military, to someone who feels strongly about the military.
The intensity in Kosovo during what she called “a rewarding experience” helped motivate her to make a decision to attend law school, something she has been doing at William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul while working in Mille Lacs County.
She’ll continue her studies while in Iraq, working with a fellow soldier who is a judge from Hennepin County (and an adjunct professor at William Mitchell) on an advanced evidence class, as well as writing two research papers.
“They [William Mitchell] have been good about setting up an independent externship,” she said.
On her third enlistment as a member of the 34th Infantry Division, or Red Bull as it is known, Wunderlich became a paralegal with the JAG section and trained with a trial defense team in St. Paul once a month.
She was put on alert for Iraq in 2008 and spent two weeks at Fort Ripley near Little Falls training for Iraq, and one week at the JAG school in the state of Virginia.
Wunderlich will work in the military justice system at Fort Lewis until April when she will leave for Iraq. She’ll be back in Minnesota next February or March.
“I think it will definitely help me out in the long run,” Wunderlich said about the Iraq experience with a prosecuting team. “I eventually want to get into criminal law.”
She’ll finish law school when she returns and expects to take the bar exam in February 2011. She eventually hopes to become a prosecutor.
Wunderlich also expects to return to her job in Mille Lacs County in 2010.
“I love it there,” she said. “The people I work with are great and it’s been rewarding.”
It’s been quite a trip for a small town girl from Milaca to St. Cloud State, then to Kosovo, back to a job in Milaca and now to a tour of duty in Iraq.
“I’ve followed my instincts,” Wunderlich said, “and it’s worked out so far. This should be a bonus for me.”
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