After Combat, A Veteran Finds Solace In Sheep Farming

Army veteran Sgt. Mickey Willenbring has always been a fighter. She grew up shuffling between homes — with her parents on the West Coast, with family on Native American reservations in the upper Midwest and within the foster care system across the country — during an adolescence she describes as sometimes violent.

But the military struck Willenbring as a way to channel the aggression she says built up during an unstable upbringing. In 1998, Willenbring, then 20, enlisted in the Army and deployed to Iraq five years later.

At StoryCorps, Willenbring remembers how her biggest fight would lie not on the battlefield, but in coming home. She returned from war with post-traumatic stress disorder, and has found calm as a sheep farmer in rural Oregon.

In Iraq, she worked as a construction equipment mechanic. She earned certification to operate weapons mounted on vehicles on left-behind convoys.