This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter . Joy Metzler had expected to still be in uniform, working as a junior officer at her Air Force engineering job. Instead, she found herself protesting outside the United Nations, weakened from participating in a 40-day fast as she called on authorities to deliver full humanitarian aid to Gaza and end U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.