expressed scepticism about whether he’d succeed in the military, telling him he was too hardheaded and stubborn to experience real success. “I didn’t realise it at the time,” Eslinger says, “but he was just trying to light a fire under me and give me some drive. When I got those jump wings, it signified doing something extra and going a little bit further, so I could go back and tell everyone, ‘Look what I just did.’” When he enlisted, the extent of Eslinger’s Army knowledge centred around the 101st Airborne Division, the fabled Screaming Eagles of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, so that’s where he told his recruiter he needed to go. He wanted to be a paratrooper, and that’s precisely what he became, sandwiched around a 13-month deployment at the 38th Parallel—the historically tension-infused border between North and South Korea. “You have to be an elite solider to be on the DMZ [demilitarised zone],” he says. “You have to be a certain height and weight, because your purpose there is to look intimidating to the North Koreans. Physically, you have to play the role of the biggest, baddest soldier there is. You had to have a certain meanness. If you didn’t, you were gone—and you didn’t want that
to happen, because when you get turned away from a job in the military, your next job is going to be 50 times worse.”
SEISMIC SHIFT Eslinger was tending to his laundry on the morning of September 11, 2001, having just come off 24 straight hours of duty. He didn’t have anything clean to wear, but that was the least of his worries. Fort Campbell, where he’d returned to the 101st three months previously, was on lockdown and it was time to get back to work. One month later, the 101st was en route to Germany, waiting for deployment to Afghanistan. “It didn’t take long,” Eslinger says.
“From Germany we got orders to fly into Afghanistan, and it was guns blazing. The first two minutes of that was something Steven Spielberg couldn’t portray in a movie. For a 21-year-old at war for the first time, for anyone, there’s nothing that can compare to that intensity.” Two months into his first tour—which
lasted 191 days—Eslinger saw a close friend die for the first time. In contrast to what he’d imagined his school friends were doing at that point—drinking on some beach on the Florida coast—seeing death up close changed everything. “There’s just something about losing someone who fought for something just as hard as you,” he says. “To watch someone pass away wearing that uniform that says U.S. Army over the left breast, it’s not like watching someone die in a hospital bed. You can’t even take thirty seconds to reflect on it, because you could be next.”
Eslinger has put on nearly 90 pounds of muscle since his injury.
COMING HOME After the injuries he incurred in Iraq, several operations, and nine months of physiotherapy later, Eslinger came home to Florida after being discharged from the Army on February 19, 2006. He was back on home soil, but his career situation was a literal catch-22. He wanted to remain in the military, but the Army deemed him a physical liability to combat missions because he’d broken his neck. They also didn’t want someone with his combat training and experience
“FOR A 21-YEAR-OLD AT WAR FOR THE FIRST TIME, THERE'S NOTHING THAT CAN COMPARE TO THAT INTENSITY.”
sitting behind a desk in an administrative position.
“When I got home, I didn’t know how to get over the unanswered questions I had about Iraq and the things I saw in Afghanistan,” he says. “I didn’t know how to control my rage and fit into normal society. I hadn’t been in normal society since I was 17 and in school.” When the human body needs to adapt to the high-speed intensity of combat, it does so quickly. Winding down, however, is another story altogether. That’s harder to do, because the mind doesn’t let you forget. Eslinger saw two ways to unwind, and one—pill popping—wasn’t an option because of a family history of substance
MUSCLE&FITNESS 73
COURTESY OF ESLINGER
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