Clayton State Student DeSherra Foster Shares How Her Military Service from the Middle East to Georgia Challenged and Developed Her into the Woman She Is Today
(November 11, 2026) - Clayton State University student DeSherra Foster is a military veteran and is in her first year as a graduate student pursuing a master’s in business administration (MBA). Foster said, “I found out about Clayton State through some members at my church who are alumni. So, I talked to them about it, looked into Clayton State, used my chapter 31 military disability benefits, and applied.”
“I'm from Norfolk, Virginia, with my mom being a retired Marine. We did a lot of traveling. I've lived in California, a little bit in Albany, Georgia, and South Carolina, where I also got my undergrad at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, in criminal justice.”
Foster served in the U.S. Army as a Military Police (MP) Officer at Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia. She said, “Fort Stewart is one of the high deployment posts. You have a lot of MP units, and you have a lot of infantry units. My unit deployed to Qatar, but we also went to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Ireland.”
Initially, Foster said she was processed into the Army at the Jacksonville Military Entrance Processing Station in Florida. She said, “My basic training was in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. So I did what you call One Station Unit Training (OSUT), which is when your basic training and AIT are pretty much all in one. And that's a 21-week process. So first, the first half of it is basic training, and then the second half of it is Advanced Individual Training (AIT), where it's all just focused on your Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), of which mine was being an MP.”
Her first military deployment to the Middle East came as the United States was withdrawing forces from Afghanistan. Foster said, “So initially, it was very, very scary, very nerve-wracking. Because initially we were supposed to go to Afghanistan, be at the Afghan airport, and help keep the peace during the evacuation. While we were traveling to Germany mid-air, our orders changed, and that's when we ended up going to Qatar.”
In addition to facing High Alerts at times during her deployment, Foster had cultural bias to deal with. She said, “In the Middle East, there's no women in power. So, knowing they had women police officers that they had to listen to and get instructions from, a lot of the Middle Eastern men had a problem with that, particularly with me being a woman of color. We had a lot of threats put on our lives because of that. Some of the other women and I would be harassed. They would try to follow us.” She adds that there were other dangers; even during evacuation, there were other war zone-type threats. She said, “We had drones flying over our heads. So, we had a lot of it; it was kind of scary.”
After returning to Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia, the threats she faced in the Middle East subsided, but the challenges did not. She said, “No day was ever the same. I feel the military police are a prime example of being a jack of all trades. So, some days we're doing traffic. Some days we're securing an area for whatever event that they might be having on post. Some days we're strictly in our motor pool, checking our vehicles or getting ready to go to the field for a couple of days to a week or two.”
Many of the duties Foster dealt with were the types of duties handled by civilian police. She said, “Some days we're doing welfare checks. I've gotten calls for suicidal ideation; calls for active deaths where we had crime scenes we had to lock off. There were domestic violence calls. Sometimes it's just outside community policing.”
Another challenge Foster faced was that, because of deployments at the base, periods when MPs were shipped out meant the team left on base was smaller. She said, “Sometimes we had to go into 12-hour shifts. And those were, those are really long and hard, when you're doing those 12-hour shifts for sometimes months at a time.”
In terms of community engagement, she said, “As a female MP, I would talk to the wives or girlfriends when dealing with domestic violence. I have grown to know a lot of the kids out there. Being a mom myself, I would keep candy in my car, especially during the summertime when they would be outside. Anytime they see us, they want to stop and see the lights and the sirens. So that was a way for me to get to know them and bond with them. So, every day was really different. That's one of the things that I enjoyed about my job. No two days were ever the same.”
In reflecting on her time in the military, Foster summed up her feelings this way. She said, “I really appreciate the military, specifically the Army, for a lot of the experience, a lot of the discipline that it gave me. Unfortunately, my time was cut short because of injuries sustained to me while I was deployed. But looking back, I'm thankful I even had the opportunity to serve. And I met some of the greatest people and built some great relationships that I still have to this day.”