Image via WikipediaCaveats: FOUO
Thanks my friend,..I don't know where to begin really so I may ramble
endlessly,... I don't really want to go into all the firefights, and
this is not my first combat experience, however, this place is not
Kosovo,..."Maddys war" and it is not Iraq,..it is worse. I don't really
find myself challenging my faith in God and my belief in Jesus Christ
because what I have witnessed, to the contrary, my faith has been
reinforced...Example: Two nights ago my best friend Richard Randall
Rush,..or Triple "R" ...AKA the "DICK RANDY" was in a big TIC( Troops in
Contact)or a fire fight with his men. One of his Soldiers was shot
square in the head,..in the ACH helmet..This was no 5.56 Round but a
7.62 AK round,..the Round entered this kids Hemet, traversed the inside
arch of his ACH, tearing up the pads and out the other side,...There is
no way this kid should be alive right? There is no explanation for this
JFK magic bullet but I saw the kid and the ACH....when you see this shit
it confirms that some people are meant to live and some were meant to
die. A couple of weeks back I was in shootout where three of our guys
got shot close to me. One week later we lose two Soldiers in one of the
worse fights the 101st Division had experienced while saving a downed
pilot. Every day I leave the wire one of us takes contact,...I used to
look forward to killing "The Haj",..but I find myself getting more and
more angry every day,..I see it in other Soldiers, other
leaders,...maybe it's just the end of the deployment and people are at
each other,...maybe it's the witnessing of the corruption here,..the
biting of the very hand that feeds these people....Maybe it's
frustration of our own risk adverse leadership, who refuse to take the
fight to the enemy. Some days I hate even leaving the wire thinking
"What's the point?"
Being older and wiser than a lot of my peer group, I feel I can handle
the stress better than many of the others, but I find myself waking up
at 0200AM right on schedule,..I find my mind racing with negative
thoughts at night and I can't fall to sleep. I'm finding that I rarely
call home,..I have left Facebook,...and I'm confrontational with my
higher ups,...Saying things like " Sir, You can go have a nice hot cup
of,.. Go Fuck Yourself!".....As a RECON Commander I used to preach to my
Junior Officers and NCO's to watch for signs of PTSD. When I step back
and self assess myself, as most good leaders should do,..I find some of
the very warnings in my own actions. I do not know if I have anything
crazy wrong with me or not, but I'm troubled my something and not sure
what it is,...I don't feel traumatized by what I'm seen,...Soldiers get
hurt and killed, dead people are dead people,..kids run over by MRAPS
are sad but the world is a cruel place.
I have probably put out more here than I would normally have ever said
to your face. I guess I'm not looking for you to solve the puzzle here
and get involved.
