My ALLi author guest this episode is Darnnell Reese, a Desert Storm combat veteran and former Military Intelligence analyst. During her service, she experienced trauma both on the battlefield and within her own unit, which she kept silent about for decades. With the encouragement and help of her daughter, she finally put that story into writing. Her work also draws on faith and focuses on confronting bullies in all forms.
Listen to the Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Darnnell Reese
About the Host
Howard Lovy is an author, developmental editor, and writing coach with a long career in journalism and publishing. He works with writers at many stages of their careers, with a focus on helping them develop their ideas and strengthen their work while preserving their unique voices. He lives in Northern Michigan.
About the Guest
Darnnell Reese is an author, Gulf War veteran, and retired federal IT professional. She is the founder of the Victorious With God imprint and the author of Blanket Party in Desert Storm: From Beatdown and Spiritually Broken to Eternally Blessed, a mother-daughter memoir co-authored with her daughter Deidra Wilson, along with Victorious! Defeating Bullies and Giants God's Way, In All Seriousness… Totally Funny Bible Stories, and the companion Defeating Bullies and Giants Coloring Book. She writes from a place of faith and lived experience, with a focus on confronting bullies and telling hard truths. You can find Reese on her website, on Amazon and on her ALLi author profile.
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Read the Transcript
Darnnell Reese: Hi, I'm Darnnell Reese. First and foremost, I'm a child of the most high God, a devoted wife to my husband Terrance, and mother to my beloved adult daughter Deidra. I'm an author, a Gulf War veteran, and I just retired from the federal government as an IT professional — I was a 2210, that was my career series. And I'm a woman who spent most of her life surviving things that she then had to write about.
Howard Lovy: It sounds like you've had a fascinating life so far. Let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up, and was reading and writing always a part of your life?
Growing Up in Washington, D.C.
Darnnell Reese: I grew up in Washington, D.C. Early on I wasn't really a reader — I was more just a child who wanted to go outside and have fun like everybody else. We grew up in the Brookland neighborhood in Washington, D.C., which is very quaint, near Catholic University. When I was about eight or nine we moved over to Mount Rainier, Maryland, which was on the D.C.-Maryland line, and that's where I discovered the public library. I would walk down the street and go to the Mount Rainier Library, and I discovered a whole world of books. I had never really ventured into libraries before. I got a library card and I would just spend hours in there, getting books, looking at them, starting to read them. Then I realized if I checked them out I could take up to seven or eight at a time. I would devour them, take them all back, and start over. It was just a sanctuary for me.
Howard Lovy: Thank God for libraries.
Darnnell Reese: Exactly. I realized that escapism was what it was for me. Growing up in the inner city and then going to Mount Rainier, I realized there's a lot going on outside of where I live, and I would never have known about it had it not been for those books. I think that's what started me on the trajectory of wanting to go elsewhere and go beyond what I thought was all there was.
The Decision to Join the Army
Howard Lovy: Did that shape your decision to eventually join the Army?
Darnnell Reese: The decision to join the Army came after a bubble burst in my brain. I was going to school at William McKinley Technology Senior High School in Washington, D.C. I even had a stay-in-school job throughout the year and into the summer, so I was making money. But reality came crashing in when I started thinking about what I wanted to do after high school. I thought I was a pretty smart girl. I went to one of these college fairs at George Washington University and I was like, oh yeah, this is the place for me. I could become a dentist, I could take this program — didn't realize this costs money. I had no idea how people were paying for college. I just thought they'd let you get your degree and you'd pay them at the end.
My mom never talked about it because it wasn't something she was even considering for her children — it was just me and my brother Glenn. Our school counselors really didn't focus on me. I guess there were certain lanes they categorized students in, and I wasn't on their radar as someone who was going to college. But we did get a recruiter who came and talked to our class, and once he told us we could be all we could be, travel, take any kind of training we desired — that's when I knew, okay, maybe I won't be able to go to college right out the gate, but if I go into the military, they're willing to give me money for college, and then I can get my degree that way.
Howard Lovy: So right out of high school you joined the Army?
Darnnell Reese: Actually, I signed up prior to graduating through the delayed entry program, because I was dead set on getting out of D.C. Not that I didn't love it, I just felt like I wasn't going to amount to anything if I stayed there and continued working my government job. It was GS-1, very low pay — good for a high school student, but it wasn't going to serve me well once I graduated. I thought, I won't be able to move out, where am I gonna live? I just felt like it wasn't going to advance me to the point of being able to go to college. I would've still been in that level-zero mode, making very little pay — and how are you going to pay for school while working a low-level job?
Military Intelligence: 98 Juliet
Howard Lovy: After you enlisted, you became a military intelligence analyst. Tell us what that is.
Darnnell Reese: It sounded so cool on paper. It was 98 Juliet — that series is now obsolete, they changed it to a 35-something series. Basically it was an electronic warfare non-communications interceptor analyst position, which sounds very impressive. I was like, yeah, I want that. The other similar series actually used Morse code and I was like, ah, that sounds a little hard — you're sitting there listening to beeps and you have to transcribe that into something that makes sense. But the 98 Juliet series, you're using this big tracking vehicle with a mast antenna on it. You crank it up and intercept all these different radio frequency signals, then cross-reference them to known enemy signals and identify what kind of aircraft or equipment they belong to. It was pretty high tech. I thought, that's the one I want.
Operation Desert Storm and the Battle of 73 Easting
Howard Lovy: You were also involved in Operation Desert Storm, and you found yourself close to the front lines. Tell me how that experience changed you, both in the moment and afterward.
Darnnell Reese: After I joined the military I went to my first duty station in Germany, and I was in a tactical unit — as a 98 Juliet you could be in a strategic unit or a tactical one, and I got tactical. Tactical units go out in the field; they train for actual war environments. Whereas strategic units are command center, 24 by seven operations. I think I would have preferred probably the strategic side. But when everything popped off regarding Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, they started mustering up the tactical units from Germany and probably elsewhere. We got orders to go to Desert Shield — it was still Desert Shield when we got there, and then come January and February of 1991 it became Operation Desert Storm.
Howard Lovy: For the younger people in the audience, Desert Storm and Desert Shield were the operations to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Darnnell Reese: Correct. Our unit was the 511th in my battalion, out of the Seventh Corps — General Norman Schwarzkopf was our commander in chief of that operation. Our unit wanted to be of use, so our commander coordinated with the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. We attached with them to provide the advanced intelligence they might need, since they were an armored cavalry, mechanized unit — tanks and all that. Once we attached with them, these ‘nerdy MI folks' were excited to get some action.
One day we were in a convoy heading north towards the Kuwait-Iraqi border. Prior to reaching our actual destination, we encountered the Republican Guard — Saddam Hussein's elite battle troops. The Second ACR and the Republican Guard had a tank battle right there where we were. We all had to get out of our vehicles, dig foxholes as fast as we could, and take cover. That became known as the Battle of 73 Easting — I didn't know that until years later, right around when I was starting to write the book.
What She Endured Within Her Own Unit
Howard Lovy: In your memoir, you talk not only about the battlefield but also what you endured within your own unit. It took you more than three decades to write about that.
Darnnell Reese: Yes. It was one of those events that happens to a young person where it hurts you to your core to the point where you can't even speak about it. It was so traumatizing and demoralizing. It happened right around the time of the Battle of 73 Easting. We had stopped for the night in the open desert in either northern Iraq or Kuwait. We didn't put tents up or anything, and I chose to sleep in the Humvee because it's sheltered and it's cold outside in the open desert at night. My team leader, a sergeant, came in the back. It was big enough for both of us, but I didn't think much of it — until he tried to have his way with me.
In that moment I calculated everything. This was a man who had barely said two words to me — he mostly grunted and gave commands. He had been assigning me every grunt duty there was. I was the only female on the team, surrounded by strapping 20-to-24-year-old men, and he'd been putting me on water bottle duty, carrying five-gallon containers back from the watering station. He had been dogging me. But on this particular night he thought he was going to mount me and have his way. I thought about it, and I said no. Just no. Nothing else. And he stopped. Thank God. Then I went to sleep thinking this was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me — I was 19 years old and didn't think much of it.
The next day I thought everything would go back to normal. But that same sergeant had already gone to the female team leader of another team, given her a bad report about me, and asked her to take me. When they both came to transfer me, she looked at me and said, I better not have any issues out of you — like I was the problem. I wanted to speak up, but I knew it wouldn't help because she didn't like me either, she never had. Not back in Germany. So I just went with it. But I felt like there was a cloud over me, knowing he had told her something negative about me. I felt isolated, hazed, constantly targeted with duties others weren't given. The Second ACR soldiers I ended up meeting during that time — they kind of became my saving grace.
Collaborating with Her Daughter Deidra
Howard Lovy: After you left the military you built a career in the federal government while raising your daughter as a single mother. You mentioned your daughter played a key role in bringing this story to light. Can you describe how that came about and how you came to write the book with her?
Darnnell Reese: My daughter and her husband live in Los Angeles, California. Her husband is a director and co-producer for the show All American on The CW — he worked for Warner Brothers. Because he's in that realm of the arts and TV and film production, he's always looking for things to write about and pitch to people in Hollywood. My daughter told him a while back, why don't we talk to mom and see about her story? He wasn't sure if anyone would be interested. She said, what about her experiences in Desert Storm? And he asked what happened, and she couldn't fully tell him because she had never gotten the full information. As a child, I never burdened her with what went down. It was still something I carried internally, and I didn't want to waste anything on her that wasn't going to be received at the time.
Eventually she came to me as an adult and asked me what happened — what was the war like? Because there were so many layers to my experience, I just put it on paper. I went to the computer and typed it out chronologically from the time I joined the military to the time I exited. Because it covered a relatively short period of time, I was able to organize it for her. Once I gave it to her, we said, let's polish this up and publish it — we're not going to waste all this good material. She was so invested in it once she saw the full, unvarnished truth, and not just the pieces she had known about from me and her father. She said it was compelling and felt like it should be in a book.
The reason she's co-author is not only did she write the prologue and epilogue, but she helped me flesh out the story and add more details. She'd ask: you're telling me when you were in Saudi Arabia, was that the first time you talked to my dad? And I would give her more details, and she'd push further. She was like a great writing coach.
Howard Lovy: What's her name — we should mention her on air.
Darnnell Reese: Deidra Wilson.
Faith, Scripture, and the Books
Howard Lovy: The book has received some strong recognition, including from Kirkus Reviews. And you also went on to write books that rely heavily on faith and scripture. When did your writing begin to take that direction?
Darnnell Reese: The book we've been discussing, Blanket Party in Desert Storm, was actually my third book. My first book was I See Victorious: Defeating Bullies and Giants God's Way. So it took that inspirational, faith-based tone from the very beginning. The reason Victorious came first is because the Desert Storm story was still inside of me — my daughter hadn't asked me about it yet. Victorious came first because in my federal career I kept running into the same type of leadership: people who were threatened by anyone who was smart, intelligent, ethical, and a self-starter. I didn't need anyone to tell me what to do every day. I knew what I needed to do, I would get the thing done, document everything, keep receipts, track everything. There really was nothing anyone could complain about — in fact I would always get high performance ratings. But those same leaders would try to put their thumb on my neck and remind me they were the boss.
After getting four or five of those bosses in a row, I thought: what in the heck is going on? Let me go to my Bible and see what people were dealing with in the Bible, because there were lots of bullies in the Bible. Once I started seeing a pattern — oh, that's how God dealt with that one, this is how he dealt with that one — I realized the book Victorious needed to exist. It features many different biblical figures and how they acted and what God did to address what they were doing.
Howard Lovy: So scripture becomes a kind of handbook for dealing with bullies?
Darnnell Reese: Absolutely. I saw all types — the Jezebels, those who lie and steal and say you did things when you didn't. How did God deal with her? Then there's Haman, who wanted to get Mordecai in trouble. He was asked what should be done for the man who has honored the king, and he assumed it would be him — but it was Mordecai. There are so many people in the Bible who thought they were better or smarter than someone else, but they found out differently.
Howard Lovy: Is that how you coped with the unfairness you saw in your work?
Darnnell Reese: My coping mechanism was always to stay rooted in the Word, to pray to God about everything, and to journal it. When I journal, I'm literally talking to God — telling him, God, I know you saw what happened today, this is what happened, and how are we handling this? And I felt like going to him, whether verbally or in writing, as long as you're going to him and letting him know what's going on, he's going to deliver. He's going to hear you. That's why I feel like Victorious was born — because I know it worked for me. Some people stay in a situation and just complain and cry about it, but they're never using the vehicle they have access to, which is prayer. You can actually move out of it. You just have to be willing to not just complain and stay stagnant.
The Choice to Self-Publish
Howard Lovy: In keeping with your very independent personality, you're also an independent author. What choices did you make about going indie, and what have you learned along the way?
Darnnell Reese: The choice was that I didn't really know a lot about writing or publishing. The books I wrote were always meant as a handbook or a guidebook for me personally. And because they were written, I was like, God, if you want me to help other people, is that why you kept having me go through these horrible situations? Then I need to help people, but you're going to have to help me figure out how to do it. I knew people had publishers and agents, but I was like, there's nobody out here checking for me. Even if I knew of a publishing house, I don't think they would have signed me up as an author.
One day I was on Amazon and I scrolled all the way down the page and saw ‘self-publish with us.' I clicked on it, thinking, I wonder if this could help me. It was CreateSpace at the time — they had a website that told you everything you needed to do from A to Z, with templates for different book sizes. I chose six-by-nine paperback, downloaded the Word template, and everything I had already typed up in Word, I did a copy-all and paste and it dumped right into the six-by-nine format with the margins already set. I was like, well, God, thank you, because there's no way I would've been able to do all the technical things required to make my document fit what they needed for the upload process.
Audience, Generational Healing, and Message
Howard Lovy: Do you have a particular kind of reader — religious, veterans, women, all of the above?
Darnnell Reese: I want to say all of the above. Amazon doesn't really let you know who your audience is unless they leave a review, and I haven't mastered the art of getting a lot of reviews yet. But people I've met face to face — like an Uber driver I told about the book, who I ended up giving a signed copy — he emailed me a week or two later to tell me how well the book helped him and how he felt it could help a lot of other people. He was definitely a churchgoer. So I know people who are churchgoers really like the book for what the Word provides to them. But there are also people who don't know much about the Bible who like it, because they didn't know many of these stories.
Howard Lovy: You've described your latest book as generational healing in print. What do you hope readers — especially veterans, women, and your fellow believers — take away from your story?
Darnnell Reese: As far as fellow women veterans, I've been in group therapy sessions at the VA — a program called HERR: Healing and Empowerment for Recovery and Resilience, offered by the Washington, D.C. VA. The women who join those sessions all similarly share stories of feeling hazed, isolated, or targeted during their time in the military. The recurring theme is that we might be the only Black female in that group, on that shift, in that unit or platoon, and somehow we ended up getting hazed — not necessarily because the people inflicting it think of it as racial, but because that person is the new one, or the one without advocates.
We all felt like we didn't have a voice. And it still hurts us to our core, even years and years later. I want the book to provide a voice for other people. And I want women to know: your story matters, I know you were there. Please reach out to the VA, the Women's Crisis Center, whatever you need to do. Don't keep burying it inside, because that's not helpful. You need to be able to release it — through therapy or however you need to do it — otherwise you're going to be holding onto it for a very long time, and it might stifle you. Keep you in that place of bitterness and anguish.
Howard Lovy: It sounds like you're not in that place anymore, and your writing has helped yourself and other people as well. Thank you so much, Darnnell. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. This has been fascinating.
Darnnell Reese: Thank you, Howard. I really appreciate you. I did take a look at your website and read your excerpt, and I felt like our books were similar in a way — the whole span of time, the way that time is almost a character in itself.
Howard Lovy: Yes — time is very much a character in itself. Thank you for noticing my book as well.
Darnnell Reese: You're welcome. Thank you, Howard. Bye-bye.
