The Mythic Warrior

A need for understanding the warrior ethic

2010-01-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

Military misconduct may be sign of PTSD - Washington Times:

"After his diagnosis, Sgt. Boyle was sent to North Carolina's Fort Bragg, an assignment he resented because he thought he should be fighting the war. At Fort Bragg, he was given heavy antidepressants and sleeping aids that he said caused him to oversleep and miss formation on several occasions, a major transgression in the military.

He wanted to return to Iraq to fight, but the medications barred him from more deployments and he became miserable and agitated. Sgt. Boyle went on to spar with commanding officers who, he said, were unaware of his combat experience. He drank heavily, couldn't control his rage and ended up in trouble with the law.

He reached the tipping point when he experienced a flashback while supervising a session at the firing range at Fort Bragg.

'I was supposed to be keeping an eye on [the soldiers], keep them safe and doing the right thing,' Sgt. Boyle recalled. 'At one point, I went into a flashback into a firefight, and I was in Iraq. And during that flashback, I zoned out and forgot what I was doing.

'I snapped out of it and realized I missed the whole firing sequence, and it scared the hell out of me. I can't operate as a soldier if I can't concentrate on a firing range like that. That helped me realize I had to get out.'"

When I read this portion of the aforementioned article I could not help but exclaim "Oh my god" to my computer monitor. What is the worst thing that you can do to a proud soldier with buddies fighting? Take him away from them. It was hard enough for this soldier to come forward to a field stress clinic, but then for them to take him away is harmful. I am not saying that the treatment is not some sort of removal from the fight or the theater of operations. I just know that to the soldier this action makes you useless to your fellow soldiers. In our minds it perpetuates the notion of weakness and adds to the guilt suffered. Guilt is a ruminating condition and when we get on a kick of such it only adds to our depression, which makes the PTSD worse. And as some authors have noted, such as Terrence Real in the book "I Don't Want to Talk About It", depression in men is oftentimes very covert and is displayed by other things, such as heightend aggression and violence. This fits very well with the picture we have of combat veterans and the rise of domestic violence in their homes.

Our warrior ethics propel us to pull our own weight, to not shun from the fight when others are there, to be supportive of our comrades in arms. Everything about this treatment violated this. It must have been very hard for this sergeant to feel like he had a place in the military, that he was still a warrior.

Military misconduct may be sign of PTSD - Washington Times

2010-01-12T13:08:00.000-08:00

Military misconduct may be sign of PTSD - Washington Times

In 2007, a high-ranking Navy doctor sent a sobering warning to colleagues:
The service may be discharging soldiers for misconduct when in fact they are
merely displaying symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Post-deployment misconduct, especially in a Marine who has previously
served honorably, may indicate an unrecognized and unhealed line-of-duty stress
injury that deserves expeditious medical evaluation and, when indicated,
appropriate treatment," said the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The
Washington Times.

Sedatives may slow recovery from trauma - health - 01 October 2009 - New Scientist

2009-10-01T21:09:00.001-07:00

Sedatives may slow recovery from trauma - health - 01 October 2009 - New Scientist

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The National Resource Directory

2009-08-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

"The National Resource Directory (NRD) is an online tool for wounded, ill and injured Service Members, Veterans, their families, and those who support them. The NRD provides access to more than 11,000 services and resources at the national, state and local levels that support recovery, rehabilitation and community reintegration.

Maintained by the Departments of Defense, Labor and Veterans Affairs, the NRD links to federal and state government agencies; Veterans service and benefit organizations; non-profit and community-based organizations; academic institutions and professional associations who provide assistance to wounded warriors and their families."

Straightforward Transition Manual

2009-08-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

Get your own - Open publication

Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers

2009-08-20T17:41:00.001-07:00

D. Myles Cullen/U.S. Army

At a recent training session in Philadelphia, Sgt. First Class James Cole and other soldiers participated in role-playing and learned mental fitness techniques intended to help them in combat.

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees.
The new program is to be introduced at two bases in October and phased in gradually throughout the service, starting in basic training. It is modeled on techniques that have been tested mainly in middle schools. (read more)

35 Tried and True Ways to Keep Your Sanity While He’s Deployed

2009-08-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

35 Tried and True Ways to Keep Your Sanity While He’s Deployed
posted on March 05, 2009 14:04
By Janet Farley

Maybe you’ve been there, done that and earned a number of deployment t-shirts already. Perhaps not. In any event, a little inspiration designed to see one through the long haul never hurts. Use and abuse the following tips, not listed in any particular order of importance, to help you make that the time in between the times that matter the most to you go by just a little faster.

Be a joiner in your unit’s family readiness group. There, you will not only find the support and friendship of others sharing the same experience, but you will also be among the first to learn of any noteworthy news.
Enroll in a certificate or degree program. You will not only keep busy with the books but you will be making yourself more marketable for the future as well. Research military spouse-specific scholarships and grants to defray the cost.
Perfect the art of rollerblading. Or quilting. Or antiquing. Try whatever you think may bring you inner happiness and do it shamelessly.
Train to run a marathon or walk around the mall five times.
Lose that last 10 pounds once and for all. And just in time for homecoming.
Befriend the new girl in the unit. She needs it.
Go shopping but don’t go crazy shopping. You don’t need more debt.
Try on a new haircut or color for a change.
Be an everyday hero by volunteering to help out in your community.
Email your loved one every day. Tell him how much you love him, miss him and can’t wait for him to come home.
Avoid sequestering yourself away from the general public. It’ll just bring you down.
Ask for help when you need it and know that everyone needs it sometimes.
Don’t overbook yourself in the name of keeping busy. You’ll only stress yourself out more.
Just breathe. Breathing is good. In. Out. In. Out. Lower that heart rate and repeat “this too shall pass.”
Plan a girl’s night out and make enjoying yourself the number one priority.
Take up that a new hobby.
Live your life and avoid sitting by the phone in hopes of his call. He will call. You may be there, or you may not, but he will call again.
Make a care package and send to your sweetheart. Include gifts, letters and pictures from his darling offspring.
Read the classics or get your fill of mindless junk, whichever works for you.
Rent and watch every chick flick you’ve ever wanted to, but haven’t seen yet.
Resist the urge to move back home with your parents. Visit them instead. It will make everyone happier in the long run.
Plan a trip to someplace you’ve always wanted to go and do it.
Get a new job or get yourself promoted on your old one.
Keep your sweetie in everyone's thoughts and conversations daily even if he can't be there in person.
Don’t be a news junkie. It will just make you crazy.
Save money towards a particular goal for your family or just for the two of you.
Send him a spicy letter with a one redeemable coupon for _________ (you fill in the blank).
Do something nice for yourself once a week without fail. Have your nails done. Get a massage. Splurge on a pedicure. Eat out a nice restaurant. You deserve it.
Focus on your kids if you have them. They need the most now.
Accept that some days will just suck, some worse than others, and get on with it.
If you don’t live near an installation and think everyone around you is clueless about life in the military, clue them in.
Start a journal and faithfully record your thoughts, feelings, fears and joys.
Create a countdown calendar and enjoy seeing each day pass that brings you closer. This might be especially helpful for younger children who don’t quite have a grasp on the concept of time.
Accept that he won’t always sound happy when you do hear from him.

Dig way down deep inside of yourself and know that you will make it through this tough time.

Janet Farley, Ed.M Freelance writer specializing in Careers & Workplace Issues Author, The Military Spouse's Complete Guide to Career Success (Impact Publications, Jan 2008) and The Military-to-Civilian Career Transition Guide (Jist Inc). Visit my website at www.janetfarley.com

The latest news on post traumatic stress disorder, American troops, effects of the war - PTSD NewsLadder

2009-06-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

The latest news on post traumatic stress disorder, American troops, effects of the war - PTSD NewsLadder

A collection of reports and projects... good stuff here.

War is Hell

2009-06-06T00:37:00.000-07:00

This was published in the Oregonian's Iraq War blog and it is deeply moving. As I read this tears fell down my face. My heart aches for the men and family left behind, at the great loss that they feel. It would do well for those who so casually want to commit us to a war, or to so casually throw out phrases like 'withdraw' or 'pull out' to try to imagine what it feels like to be the soldiers in this piece. Our sacrifices are so very great. Remember this on Memorial Day before you go to your shopping spree or cookout.

War is hell
Posted by Stalker15A, via Mike Francis, The Oregonian June
02, 2009 14:56PM
Categories: Iraq military operations
On Friday our patrol got hit. An insurgent threw a grenade into one of our patrol vehicles. I helped the rest of my guys carry my roommate to the CSH (Combat Support Hospital) here in Mosul in a black body bag. As we took the body out of the Stryker vehicle our uniforms and boots became stained with blood comingled with tears for our buddy. Our steps were slow and deliberate, blood seeping out the bag as we walked. No one talked. There was no need. We placed the remains on a cold metal table. I turned to my guys and I told them "Remember this feeling"..then we started filing out. The bigwigs had started arriving to have their "look see" and quite frankly I was not in the mood for their dog and pony show. Our platoon consists of thirty men. We lost three that day. My roommate was fatally wounded..the team medic will never return to military service (amputee) and the gunner will most likely not return to military service (reconstructive facial surgeries).

We walked back to the transport vehicle and began hosing down the blood. As I watched it seep into the ground, I became acutely aware that tears were streaming down all our faces although there was no audible sounds emanating from us. We have been down this road before. We are well aware of our own mortality. The putrid acrid smell of burnt human flesh permeates our vehicles and clothes. My heart bleeds and my soul hides. A Doc comes out to tell us that our gunner is conscious and alert. We race inside to see him. We are not prepared for the sight. There are tubes in various orifices. His face is unrecognizable. His jaw and multiple facial bones are broken. His eyes are almost swollen shut. Yet he manages a smilewhich exposes the carnage in his mouth. Most of his teeth are broken or completely gone. His bottom lip is split wide open exposing a few more remaining teeth. We huddle at his bedside touching whatever body part we could..telling him that we were there..that the only thing to focus on now is getting better. They give him the purple heart. The tears flow freely again mixed with a few sobs and expletives. We are asked to leave so he can rest. I inquire about our team medic. They told us he was still in surgery..that they were doing everything they could to save his leg. We return to our vehicles. The chaplain comes out and offers us water and words of consolation. I am in a daze but I clearly hear words like God and hero and sacrifice. The platoon is not in the mood to hear anything religious. We need our space to think and grieve. He prays and walks away. We sit and wait. A nurse comes out to tell us that the team medic is out of surgery and heavily sedated. They managed to keep his leg attached for now and it is covered in a mound of bandages with blood seeping through. He briefly opens his eyes, scans the room to acknowledge everyone, then closes them again. We stand in silence. He opens his eyes again and asks why we were all staring at him. We have no answers. Someone yells "It's because your nipples are exposed"..(his hospital gown had fallen down off his shoulders). The feeble attempt at humor works for a brief second. He smiles..we smile. Then he asks about the other guys. The tears flow freely once again. We tell him to rest and begin filing out of the room. We drive back to our living areas. Those that have the stomach to eat do so. Most of us huddle outside. I go into the room. His laptop is still open..unfinished letter to his Mom..on his bed...dirty laundry strewn across the room. The reality is sobering. He is gone. Members of other platoons start arriving to pay their respects and offer condolences. People started punching and kicking things. There was a lot of cussing and enough tears to fill a bucket. Someone said we should get clean. We had a ramp ceremony (where we bring the casket to the plane) in a few hours. No one moved.

A few hours later we were back at the CSH. There were two planes on the runway. One had soldiers returning from leave and new soldiers arriving to the unit. The look on their faces told us this was not the welcome they expected. The FLA (dont know the meaning of the acronym) drove the body onto the tarmac flanked by two of our guntrucks. We marched out and removed the casket. It was adorned with the bronze star, the purple heart, and the CIB. The CIB, combat infantry man's badge, is issued to an infantryman for taking and returning fire during combat operations. My roommate returned from leave on April 16. We got into a firefight the very next day, April 17, in the Ras Al Koor neighborhood. This was his first firefight and therefore made him eligible for the CIB. I wrote his recommendation after that incident and he was due to get the coveted CIB very soon. He was looking forward to pinning it on his uniform and I was now looking at it pinned on his casket. The tears flowed behind our military issued sunglasses as we carried his body slowly to the aircraft. The casket was mettalic in nature and extremely cold due to the material used to preserve the body during shipment. The airfield was a sea of people rendering final salute as we walked by. We placed him in the belly of the airplane and rendered our final salute. I ran my hand the full length of the coffin..caressing the flag..whispering that if he could hear me.. I loved him and I missed him. The chaplains and Battalion Commanders gave their speeches. We hugged and cried. We marched off that plane with the entire battalion behind us. I paused briefly to look at the lonely casket sitting on the ramp of the airplane. We drove back in silence to our living quarters.

A few hours later we were back at the airfield. We carried our team medic to his plane pretty much in the same fashion we carried the coffin a few hours earlier. He was on his way to Landstuhl Germany for treatment. We shook hands and saluted as he flew off.

We never got to see our gunner leave. Sometime during the night he was flown to Balad Iraq to catch a follow on flight back to the states. We were pissed. I guess command thought that we had a pretty long day and needed the rest. What we NEEDED was to send our boys off the right way.
Saturday we mulled around for the better part of the day. Recovery guys came and inventoried his property and took it all away in large black tote boxes. I asked them to leave the pictures up that he put on the walls. They comply. The room is much emptier. I stare at the walls and the ceiling. Sleep does not come easily but it finally does.

I am awakened a few hours later by members of the squad for a mandatory debrief. The Combat Stress Team is here asking "How does that make you feel?" type questions. They say they KNOW how we are feeling and we need to talk it out...we politely tell them to go away. When they leave..we open up to each other..we laugh..we cry..we talk about our buddies. We keep the memories between us..no one else understands the bond..the unit cohesion..the love we have for each other.

A few minutes later we get word. We are tasked with a mission. Less than 36 hours have passed since the incident. We lace up our boots, don euipment, and race to our vehicles. Work beckons...we will grieve later. The war machine grinds on..and we..we are the cogs in the wheel. I do one final check of my guys..we lock and load..and prepare to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

For Soldiers, Stress After War May Be the Biggest Enemy

2009-06-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

by Karen LeighJune 03, 2009
Insurgents are stealthy fighters, their attacks unexpected, startling and violent.
Combined with the stress of longer deployments, loneliness and brutal desert conditions, they are the perfect trigger for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Soldiers now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing the highest levels of PTSD since the Vietnam War. Some just have trouble sleeping. Some find themselves emotionally numb or easily startled. In the most extreme cases, soldiers have killed themselves – and fellow soldiers. The nonprofit aid organization Veterans for Common Sense said that as of December 15, 2008, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, had diagnosed 115,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets with PTSD.

“These are staggering numbers,” said VCS executive director Paul Sullivan. “We can either admit that there’s a very serious problem and begin treatment, or we can ignore the problem and wait until the PTSD turns into unemployment, drug use, and suicide – very expensive social problems.”

The National Institute of Mental Health defines PTSD as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened,” and says military combat could be a trigger.

Tom Tarantino, legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the largest group dedicated to veterans of conflict in the Middle East, estimated that as many as one in four returning servicemen had diagnosable PTSD.
“No one comes back from war unchanged – as many as one-third come back with some kind of PTSD, depression or traumatic brain injury,” he said.

According to IAVA, the country’s largest organization dedicated to the welfare of recent veterans, there is a total of 1.8 million alums of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Due to dwindling enlistment and troop surges, many served more than one tour of duty in the Middle East.

“There’s a very severe soldier shortage,” Sullivan said. “Soldiers deployed twice or more to the war zone have a 50 percent increase in the risk of returning home from combat with PTSD, compared with those who went just once.”

The military defends its mental health assessments and policies.

“No military in the history of the world has done more to identify, evaluate, prevent and treat the mental health needs and concerns of its personnel than the Military Services of the United States,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

But Sullivan disagrees. A Gulf War veteran, he says the very nature of combat in the Middle East – no set battles, but thousands of unexpected assaults at checkpoints, bases and roads by stealthy insurgents -- is the perfect breeding ground for PTSD.

“They call it ‘360/365,’” he said of the stress that comes with not knowing when the next battle will come. “They’re completely surrounded -- 360 degrees, 365 days of the year. Everyone thinks war is just you fight, then go back to the clubhouse and play video games and eat pizza.”
The military currently provides mental health support in combat theaters to respond to the mental health needs of service members in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Within five days of returning home from a tour of duty, soldiers complete a Post Deployment Health Assessment and have a one-on-one review with healthcare professionals in which they discuss any health concerns, though these sessions are not tailored to mental ailments.
Three to six months after returning home, they are asked to complete the Post Deployment Health Re-Assessment, which does a follow-up check on any mental or physical health concerns.
“The DOD is actually doing a fairly decent job compared to how it used to be done. They’ve finally gotten the message,” Tarantino said. “We need to train our junior leaders to identify mental health injuries – and they are injuries. They are as a result of trauma, so it’s just like getting shot or getting blown up. We need to train our sergeants, our lieutenants, our captains and our colonels.”

Meanwhile, debate has been raging between the military and veterans’ groups who say soldiers with diagnosed PTSD are being forced to return to duty due to troop shortages.

“It’s a very serious problem,” Sullivan said. “The military had already deployed thousands who shouldn’t have been.” He referenced an “entire planeload of soldiers from Ft. Carson who were unfit,” but still taken back to war.

“One was taken out of a mental hospital, and another committed suicide in the war zone,” Sullivan said.

Some soldiers, affected by mental health stigma and a can-do attitude, may also try and hide their problems from military bosses.

“Servicemen and women aren’t being properly screened,” Tarantino said. “The stigma of mental health is so big within the military that a lot of service members just have that ‘suck it up’ mentality. These are people who do a lot of extraordinary things at an extremely young age with very little resources.”

He also noted a lack of support for veterans of the National Guard.
“Their situation is much more dire,” Tarantino said. “They can go from Baghdad to their front door in 36 hours and they don’t have access to the resources and community that the army does.”

Veterans And Ptsd

2009-05-31T12:37:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Veterans And Ptsd

View more OpenOffice presentations from Eddie Black.

Penn State video on the veterans

2009-04-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

This was posted by Penn State. The website itself had options to click on to look at different parts of the video, such as how did the professor do well in handling the veteran, how the administrator did well in listening to the professor, and so on. Yet the problem is that the veteran depicted here is a stereotypical one and the discussion about the realities of the changes in our veterans was not addressed. I am unsure if the psychology department was used in creating this video. If not, they should have been, and if so the department shows a complete lack of understanding. After a large outcry against the video Penn State pulled the site. But it is out on YouTube. You can also find video segments of faculty at the Office of Admissions at Penn State discussing parts of the video on YouTube as well.

The stereotype that veterans are dangerous and one step away from being the next killer in our midst is a real on that we come against often. We need to educate people that this is not who we are. One study looked at Vietnam Veterans and found that, contrary to stereotypes, they were not more likely to be criminals than non veterans. The researchers concluded that in fact they were more likely to be good citizens. What Vietnam Veterans ARE more likely to show is divorce rates, depression, suicide, and substance abuse.

Because this stereotype of the veteran exists we are sometimes robbed of our rights of being legitimately angry. We get angry when we perceive an affront to honor, justice, rights, etc... and sometimes this is warranted. Yet if coworkers, faculty, and other non veterans feel that this stereotype is true, whenever a veteran displays any anger at all (whether valid or not) they are treated as if they are one step from "going postal" (to use another stereotype that is damaging to a population... this case, postal workers).

Military Bloopers

2009-04-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

Anyone's who's been military and possibly deployed know the amount of boredom that sets in. Here is a collection of funny bloopers.

Reserved to Fight

2009-04-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

This is very short but has a common sentiment at the end.

The Long Road Home

2009-04-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

Odysseus in America

2009-04-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Warrior Ideals

2009-03-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

This is a diagram from Webspiration that I am using to figure out connections among ideas of the warrior. It is far from complete but shows some of my thinking thus far.

Great Warrior Videos

2009-03-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Some scenes from movies that are indicative of what we feel. These are examples of values that we warriors hold dear.

Myth of the Warior

2009-03-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Being an infantryman is a culture

Fragment

2009-03-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

Short video (five minutes). He talked about being fragmented. When I came back I took a lot of classes at Portland State that dealt with a lot of these themes. I took philosophy classes on the morality war, philosophy of religion, literature of warfare, positive psychology, personality, and so on, and also began my own therapy with a wonderful counselor. I try to keep an eye on how I am doing, noting my internal states, and I noted that a common one was the feeling that I was being held together by scotch tape. It was as if the only thing keeping who I essentially was from flying off in a million different directions at once was that it was held together by flimsy scotch tape.

Suicide Epidemic Hits Veterans

2009-03-16T00:45:00.000-07:00

Portland Tribune Story from August 2008 tells what has become more and more real. Listen up. There may very well be some soldiers out there that don't buy into the ideas of 'friction' or 'combat stress' or 'PTSD' or even of 'depression'. There are many reasons for this; stoic mentality and outlook of the solider, cultural norms and pressures, the uncomfortable nature of dealing with one's own emotional landscape (easier to ignore it, some believe), and more. Yet here is the reality... whatever your viewpoint on mental states, soldiers are comitting suicide at alarming levels. If you are in a position of leadership and you simply thumb your nose at the data, you are failing your troops. By not taking this seriously you are failing as a leader and aren't worth your stripes. Period.

Educate yourself on the signs. Watch your troops. Don't take no for an answer. When we are out on a movement on a hot day, the good NCO doesn't take "I'm not thirsty sarge" as an excuse for not drinking water. At least not any NCO I know of. You make them drink water (or if you let them pass out you do so with medics nearby so that they can get the pleasure of an IV to learn their lesson). Why would any competent NCO treat drinking water as more important than suicide risk behavior among his/her troops? Well, one it is uncomfortable to talk about issues. How do we do it? Do you just go up to a troop and say 'hey, how ya feeling?" Actually, that's a start. You already know your troops (if not, get to know them) and keep close to them. Learn to read them. Educate yourself on the warning signs and then wonder what each of the different personalities that are under your leadership would behave like for each sign. We all show joy, anger, sadness in different ways. And if you think someone is a risk... keep on them. Stay close. Hell, bring them home and make them watch bad movies with you just so they are not alone. You don't have to be the world's best counselor, but you can be a good NCO and take care of them.

Shell Shock to PTSD

2009-03-10T21:57:00.001-07:00

Shell Shock to PTSD Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf War

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Fiction & Literature shell Jones

Deployment and Stress

2009-03-10T21:42:00.001-07:00

US Army pamphlet on deployment stressUS Army: Deployment Related Stress

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Internet & Technolog usa military

Pushing others away

2009-03-04T21:56:00.000-08:00

One thing that happens with soldiers is that they distance themselves from their partners. Why? Is it that we are selfish jerks? Or could it be that there is a protective component to what we do, that we are protecting others from something that is bad... us.

Positive Aspects of our Warriors

2009-03-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

What is a warrior? I've not addressed this question much (yet) but I'll briefly state that, while we have some very strong virtues associated with bieng a warrior, there are traits that are often NOT associated with being a warrior (such as mercy and compassion). These are at odds with our belief that to be a warrior is to be able to quickly and decisively kill.

However, the warriors from this nation's ranks are members of this country. They are, I believe, among the best that this country has to offer. To put it in 'plain speak', we want to be good men and women, we want to do what it 'right' and 'just' and we have this inherent belief that we 'wear the white hats' (are the good guys).

Our defined virtues of our military culture may not have space or distinct values as what is in this video, but our best soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, all carry the virtues in this video. What happens, then, if you take good people of moral character and place them in a war where they have to do or witness things that are at odds with the people that we are? It is an eventful occurence and one could shut down the human side and become only the soldier. Yet what soldier, with honor, does not understand the human cost? I argue that one cannot have honor without such a moral weight, that honor is indeed much more than simply a keeping of one's promises.

And what is moral conscience without emotional weight in our dealings with other people? And what is this without a sense of jus ad bellum?

Here are some positive examples of what our warriors are. We are ruthless, fast, efficient, and if need be, incredibily violent and brutal. But we are also human, caring, sacrificing, and hopeful.

Spem semper habemus

(we always have hope)

Marines in Iraq (this is our story)

2009-03-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

It is Marines in the pictures... but the story is all service members in Iraq. This is a really good video.

SGT Doyle

2009-03-04T14:19:00.001-08:00

Good job brother! Thank you for showing your strength and courage in testifying. Gods be with you!

A terrible, terrible video

2009-03-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

This is an example of some of the terrible and counterproductive videos out there that the Army has in dealing with PTSD. Instead of making things easier to talk about among soldiers, this video crystalizes sentiments against PTSD. The nightmare sequence itself is a bit too graphic to have soldiers who might indeed be having nightmares to view. I am amazed that this video is in use. I know of not a single person who has seen this video and came away with a feeling of openness to talking about their experiences. Instead it is the butt of jokes and ridicule, all mechanisms to keep the focus off of their own mental health.

If you are brass (officer types) or psychologists, this is an example of WHAT NOT TO DO in making a video to help troops. Seriously.

Office War

2009-02-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

This video is hilarious. Sometimes in talking about war and the obvious terrible nature of it we forget the nobility of our actions (as we focus only on our guilt and our barbarism), of jokes had, of feeling alive, and more. That war is archetypal (and archetypes lend to comedy as well as tragedy) and that in the depths of darkness we find things to laugh at.

some old but still good videos

2009-02-26T01:24:00.000-08:00

I know this is months after the election, but move past the election parts. There is an underlying theme here of what is real and not real in veteran's issues.

relationships

2009-02-25T14:39:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched a great movie, Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. It was a night after a long week of disconnected feelings and uneasiness. As much as I read about mental health, about what PTSD is, about social interactions and the psychology of the military... as much as I know (and know that I know), I still found myself in a long week. It had been two weeks of very little sleep, of working late hours, of deadlines for school exams, and I found myself in a state of not caring about anyone or anything. It was only a week earlier that I had a spring in my step, a song in my heart, about meeting someone and dating her. Suddenly, for no reason I could find, I found myself not caring, shying away from people, not wanting anyone near me. At work I was allowed to go home because they assumed I had a bad cold. Truth was I was emotionally flat and uncaring.

At the end of another long day I stopped, on a whim, at the movie theater to watch this movie. Wonderful. I cried. I'm glad I was alone because I was not self conscious of my emotions and could give myself to the movie. "What really haunts a man are the things he does and isn't ordered to", as Walt says in the movie. In another scene, as his neighbors tell him he is a good man, he says flatly "I'm not a good man".

I ached for Walt as he sat on his bed with the phone in his hand and looking at the admittance form for the hospital in his hand. He was trying to connect with his son over the phone but couldn't. In confession he says that his inability to be a father for his sons bothered him his entire life. The picture of him sitting in the dark, alone, drinking his beer, tore at me. I know so many of my comrades feel the same way. At this moment I too felt the same way.

I had to show strength and courage. I was distancing myself from a wonderful person I had met. I did not know what to say, what to do. Emotionally I didn't even feel like doing anything... at least it seemed that way. To be completely honest with myself (we lie to ourselves a great deal) I knew that I really wanted her in my life. I was scared. I was scared of bringing my self to her. Scared of showing her my weakness. Scared of showing her what haunts me.

I know that healing occurs within relationships.

I drove to her. I didn't know what to say. I just went. I am fortunate in that she understands. She just held me while I fought my inner battle there, moving back and forth from clenched teeth and wracking guilt to a calm weariness. No words from her, no "I understand", nothing like that... just holding me. It isn't easy. It is hard to share like that with her. I recognize this. And while I was there and she just holding me I became fearful of her being contaminated by me. I moved from her touch, feeling on some emotional level that I was making her less by her contact with me. Healing doesn't occur insantly, but this is a start.

Today I am more toward center. I am thankful. I am blessed.

Iraq Combat Vet Struggles

2009-02-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

The themes this vet talks about are shared by so many other veterans.

Infantry in Iraq

2009-02-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

A good video of various units in Iraq.

November 2004- Iraq

2009-02-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

A video of a patrol of 2-162 Oregon Infantry in Iraq in 2004. The camera is placed down on the humvee as the gunner moves his turrent around. The sights and sounds are what its like. A lot of riding around, yelling at civilians to stop, a lot of yelling at each other over the radios to determine where the shots came from. This video is not my platoon, but I was in country at this time.

2-162 Infantry

2009-02-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

An official music video by the Oregon National Guard. Ooh Rah Oregon Infantry!

Marines turn to Greek plays to cope with stress

2009-02-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

Even 2,500 years ago, Sophocles was using words like 'shell-shocked'

"I wanted to keep the pain to myself, son, but now it cuts straight through me. Do you understand? It cuts straight through me," the lead character in the play "Philoctetes" tells a comrade. Read the Story

This is an amazing story of how the Marine Corps is putting on conferences to discuss PTSD and how they are reading ancient Greek plays about war to which standing ovations are given. This is wonderful because it helps us modern 'men' to see that we are no weaker, no different, than the warriors that have come before us... human. We can see that the strains of war are as old as war itself and this knowledge gives us license to accept our own epxeriences and struggles.

A question

2009-02-17T00:34:00.000-08:00

I have a question. It may resonate with some... it may seem senseless to others.

PTSD described in many ways

2009-02-16T00:15:00.000-08:00

This article in th Yuma Sun is a quick look at PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, has been described in a number of different ways ranging from hysteria to trauma to shell shock to exhaustion. Shakespeare even coined a term for PTSD in King Henry IV, calling it the "War sequelae."

However, it was not until the ’80s with the publication of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III" that the term post- traumatic stress disorder appeared.

PTSD not only presents a number of different symptoms, but it also evokes a number of different responses. Gen. Patton slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue in a hospital ward during World War II. A television "M*A*S*H" character, Maj. Frank Burns, called them "slug nutties." A family experiences heartbreak when one of its members becomes more and more withdrawn and behaves in an alien manner.

More...

Letter to an Iraqi Child

2009-02-16T00:09:00.000-08:00

A friend, who runs this blog, made this video. The lines between combatant and noncombatant blur in the realities of urban warfare and our code of the warrior are hard answers for our transgressions.

Maddow - IAVA advocates for mental health care for veterans

2009-02-13T16:07:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The need for increase in mental health care and veterans benefits

Editorial about veteran suicides

2009-02-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

Editorial in The Oregonian about rising rates of veteran suicide

(by Mike Francis)

The Army says it can't fathom the rising and 'terrifying' rate of soldiers who are committing suicide

It's a statistic that staggers the imagination: More American soldiers killed themselves in January than were killed by hostile action in Iraq and Afghanistan. This follows a record number of suicides for 2008.

Similarly, an examination of the suicides among Oregon service members and veterans over the past five years shows that more Oregon veterans died at their own hands than at the hands of their enemies in war zones. It's as if the "hot wars" on the battlefield are being shadowed by an almost-unnoticed silent war that is killing service members at an accelerating rate.

While the raw numbers may not seem particularly high -- the Army says it believes that 24 soldiers killed themselves in January, although some of the cases are officially under investigation -- they are rising quickly. The Pentagon has been forthright in admitting it faces a growing tragedy in its own ranks, and Congress has begun to examine the phenomenon.

There's no single explanation for what's happening because every person and every set of circumstances is different. But it is clear that fighting an extended war on two fronts has become a devastatingly heavy burden for a small segment of the population, even as most of the rest of America has stopped paying attention. And it seems to be getting worse the more we ask these soldiers and other service members to do.

"This is terrifying. We do not know what is going on." That's the frank admission of an unnamed Army official quoted by CNN and other sources in the wake of the January statistics.

There are some factors that occur frequently among suicidal veterans: They have been deployed more than once, they suffer financial hardships, they have sustained wounds or injuries or suffer chronic pain, they abuse alcohol or drugs, suffered sexual trauma, saw friends killed, are prone to mood swings and have endured stresses in their relationships, even among their closest family members.

U.S. military policy today relies on an all-volunteer force, which is the system that commanders say works best. But the pain that falls on that force is sharp indeed -- sharp enough to raise questions again about whether an involuntary draft wouldn't be more effective in acquainting Americans with the cost of war.

One way or another, that cost is going to be felt here at home. The Oregon National Guard, which has suffered its share of suicides in these wars, is preparing to send as many as 3,000 citizen-soldiers back to Iraq this summer. With skill and fortune, most of them will come home after a year, only to face a new round of difficulties in their civilian lives. This is a human cost that our state will bear for years to come.

The suicide rate is another factor to bear in mind when America considers sending troops into combat. Even as the war in Iraq winds down, the United States is preparing to ramp up its forces in Afghanistan, where the war is a long way from ending. Any flare-up in Pakistan, Korea, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia or elsewhere has the potential to stretch America's military capacity past the breaking point.

It's time for America to ask hard questions about what it means to support the troops. And the military's civilian leaders must not be allowed to wear out the most precious tools in their kit.

TriCare video

2009-02-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

https://www.hnfs.net/training/guard_reserve/index.html

There isn't a 'preview' ability to post this video here, but follow the link above. It is a video about TriCare for National Guard and Reserve Components. The viewer has the ability to skip to various sections that are more applicable.

Fear for active-duty spouses triggers symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome

2009-02-03T23:07:00.000-08:00

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, describes a set of reactions many people have after seeing or surviving something involving death or the threat of death or serious injury.

Traumas that can lead to the disorder include going to war, being violently attacked, sexually assaulted, kidnapped, held hostage or tortured or living through a disaster.

Symptoms include having nightmares, insomnia, or flashbacks, avoiding reminders of the trauma, and feeling excessively angry, vigilant or jumpy.

To count as PTSD, the symptoms must last more than a month and must hurt the patient's ability to function at work or in relationships.

A key factor in the diagnosis is being directly exposed to a traumatic event, something not present for Sunich's patient.

Still, "there's a lot of research to show that partners and spouses and kids suffer from secondary PTSD," said Tom Berger, a senior analyst for veterans benefits and mental health issues for the Vietnam Vets of America.

If you don't seek some sort of treatment for yourself, do it for your family. This news article briefly illustrates the link between veteran and family. Here are some more information from this news article:

Military spouses' comments from Sunich's survey
• "I don't think I can handle another deployment."
• "Need to look at the effects deployment has on preschool-age children. There isn't much help or programs for the 3- to 5-year-olds."
• "Much of my trauma was from the mass casualties my husband's unit sustained and the funerals afterwards."
• "If I hadn't had my faith in God, I wouldn't have fared so well with my husband's many deployments. That faith has been my saving grace, literally."
• "My biggest problem dealing with my husband coming from Iraq has been that I don't know what to do for him. This causes me great anxiety."
• "Urgent intervention for families should be an outcome."
• "I am on edge because I just don't know when the Army is gonna say, 'Okay, you have to go back.' It's just hard."

To take the survey, go to http://www.shrink-rap.net.
Resources for military families
• MacDill Airman and Family Readiness Center:
(813) 828-2721
• Brandon Resource Center: (813) 655-9281
• MacDill Air Force Base Chapel: (813) 828-3621
• Military & Family Life
Consultant Program:
(813) 426-4145
• National Military Family Association: http://www.nmfa.org
• Military One Source, around-the-clock answer service on counseling, money matters, deployment and spouse employment: toll-free 1-800-342-9647; www.militaryonesource.com

Testimony on family services needs

2009-02-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

The Statement of Fred Cowell on the need for family support for veterans tells the truth in that the front lines of dealing with the aftereffects of tour are in the homefront.

The impact of a veteran’s mental illness is far reaching and obviously has serious consequences for the individual veteran being affected. However, less obvious are the serious consequences, stemming from a veteran’s mental illness, that confront his/her spouse, their children and other family members. Families of veterans provide the most basic support network for returning veterans. Spouses of veterans are usually the first to identify readjustment issues, and they are usually the best advocates for guiding the veteran into professional care. However, to provide correct guidance on treatment these family members must have a basic understanding of VA mental health resources and how to access them. This understanding can only come from comprehensive VA family counseling and education services.
Additionally, spouses and other family caregivers who provide love, support and assistance to the veteran must also cope with tremendous personal stress as well. Unfortunately, VA’s Mental Illness family support services are limited or restricted. PVA believes that Congress should formally authorize, and VA should provide, a full range of psychological and social support services as an earned benefit to family caregivers of severely injured and ill veterans.

It is difficult for us to talk with others about what is going on. One one hand, we have fought, at times tooth and nail, and have unleashed parts within us that we wish to keep seperate from those that we love. "When I look at her face, I want her to only feel love, not this monster within me". I have to keep this seperate from her... not contaminate her, not poison her. It poisons me enough as it is. What loving spouse would share this?

Think of your soldiers and those that you served with. Is there a bond? Did you trust them? Would you trust them? Can you count on them to have your back? You are in a relationship with someone, an adult... not a child, who loves you. If it were one of your soldiers who was keeping off to the side, not talking to anyone, you'd step in. Let your spouse/partner in.

A huge asset in readjusting back home is the presence of a loving relationship. A relationship is a two-way affair. You have to give a little.

PTSD Presentation

2009-02-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Joint event by Psi Chi and the SVA (Student Veterans Association) about PTSD. The presenter is a member of Psi Chi as well as a veteran of the Marine Corps (Desert Storm) and the Oregon National Guard (OIF2). On hand will be members of the SVA for a panel discussion.

Eddie presents PTSD from his own experience as a marine and soldier and a psychology major in terms that worked for him.

"When I got back from Iraq, all I wanted to do was go see my girl. I only wanted to go home. I felt fine. I felt okay. I missed my home. And the presentations and talks that the VA, chaplains, and others gave to us during our demob went in one ear and out the other. It didn't connect with any of us. None of us. It wasn't until months later that I went to a counselor, not for myself, but to get inormation to take back to some of my fellow soldier in the company, several of whom were drinking heavily, taking pills, having relationship problems. As someone who was training in psychology I recognized the need around me for intervention. However, I did NOT recognize the need in my own self. It was in the act of helping othes that I saw how much I myself needed therapy. I was very quick to anger, could not concentrate, could not enjoy a concert or a 4th of July, took everything to seriously and more. Now I've gotten help and looking back I see how much I needed it. It strikes me that there are many more who are like me, that do not recognize the need within themselves. That is why I am so upfront and public about my own history. That by showing how someone like me, a normal, capable Staff NCO, who seems to have it all 'wired tight' needed help and how getting help doesn't lessen my leadership as an NCO, but makes it better.

http://www.warriormyth.blogspot.com

http://www.eddiecoyote.com/veterans.htm

eddiecoyote@gmail.com The following address takes you to a google map that show location on the map and a ground eye view of what building you are going into. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=SMSU+298,+1825+SW+Broadway,+Portland,+Oregon+97201&ie=UTF8&ll=45.559256,-122.637634&spn=0,359.577026&z=11&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=45.511354,-122.683954&panoid=d9uNrxMhQ_woNpoDbvtqag&cbp=12,347.57029722525476,,0,5

Chemical changes in the brain

2009-01-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

This story has some interesting things that are starting to come out more and more. Further down in the story is the role of mentorship. I cannot stress this one thing enough, the role of NCO's to mentor their troops with all the tools listed...

Psychosocial factors are also important. Positive emotions, the ability to regulate emotions, cognitive flexibility, possession of a moral compass, social support, training, rapid recovery and understanding the purpose and meaning of the mission are all factors that lessen the chances of a soldier developing PTSD, Dr. Southwick explained. And having a mentor with these attributes can also be important. “Resilient role models can transmit attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and behavior,” he noted. “Imitation is a very powerful way of learning.”

It sounds remarkably similar to good parenting. There are some notions among some that to be a good military NCO is to be the cold, emotionless (except for explosive bouts of anger) drill sergeant type, the SGT Rock type. There is a time when the NCO needs to put his foot up someplace in a swift military manner. And there are those few who respond only to such treatment, but they are a much lower number than many who subsribe to such types of treatment would tell you. I've been fortunate to have the love and respect of the men that I've lead. I don't see it so much as me leading them so much as I have to give my best to a group of great men.

relationships

2009-01-28T02:56:00.000-08:00

Relationships, if they are good ones, make us happy. Some of us might want to be stodgy old bugbears and not admit that we want a relationship of sorts, whether with friends or a spouse/partner, or so on. But we do. Relationships make us happier and, being with people who know us, allows us a fuller means of expressing ourselves and testing our strengths.

Relationships, for the veteran and partner, can be a bit tricky. Chances are there are some changes after a deployment, uncertainty, miscommunication, fear, and a changing of identities. I've heard an equal mixture of interest and scoffing at an announced weekend retreat for soldiers and their wives to 'learn marriage skills'. Besides, there isn't a lot of language offered to us in dealing with relationships, emotions, and how to tie it all together without coming across as a granola eating, hippy, touchy feely kinda guy. Add to this our normal inclination to shy away from the murky waters of our emotional landscape (where the lanscape is a minefield) because men don't talk about feelings.

At a later date I want to put chapter 14 on this blog in its entirety. Not now, because I wish to sleep and I need permission to do so. But it uses an ingenious example of our relationship with our rifle. Below is a video of the Marine Rifleman's Creed. Every marine knows this, but every one who's served knows their weapon they were trained on. We must know a rifle's strengths and weaknesses as well as our own body's strengths and weaknesses in relation to the weapon. We must care for it. We must train with it. We must not try to make it something it isn't but see it for what it is. When it is dirty and muddy and we are tired and beat and want to sleep, we must put in the work and clean it and maintain it. For if the rifle goes down, we go down

Learn to see your partner for who that person is. If your perception has changed, adjust your 'dope' (your sight alignment/picture adjustments on the rifle). Put in the work to patch things up. I'll put the chapter up at a later time, it is really good. But if you cannot wait, you can order the book (it is worth it) here.

The Marine Rifleman's Creed

This is my rifle... there are many like it but this one is mine...

happy to be home ... but I miss the action

2009-01-28T02:26:00.001-08:00

As strange as it seems, inside there's a need to get back to the war. I can't tell my folks this because they'll think I'm not glad to be home. I feel trappd, and like someone who is schizo or something. I'm glad to be back, but there's something always gnawing at me and I can't figure it out... I feel really confused.

-An OIF Veteran

I've heard many of the guys I was over in Iraq with tell me this same thing. Some have sought out other deployments to go on, volunteering with other units, contracting services, anything to get back to a place where life was real again.

In Iraq things were real and they were simple. You do your job. There wasn't a lot of grey. Back home in the civilain world things are not so simple. The entire world is grey. You also pulled your share of the weight, watched each other's backs, and developed strong bonds. Back home there is uncertainty. Some, not wanting to confront the great amguity of life in the safe and lax civilian world feel a need for some thrill. If they cannot redeploy they might seek thrills, ride motorcycles or vehicles in a dangerous manner, or pick up dangerous and other risky behaviors. There is a need to maintain an adrenaline 'high'.

And there is also guild in being in a safe place while our brothers and sisters are still in a war. We have a guilt in feeling what right have I to take it easy while others are out on patrol right now, risking their lives?

wired for life

2009-01-28T01:32:00.000-08:00

Before I deployed down range I was different around my wife and kids. Now that I'm back I can only let them get so close before I have to get away. I used to have fun letting my boys jump and crawl all over me. We would spend hours playing like that... Now I can only take a couple of minutes of this before I have to get out. I usually get in my truck and drive back to base to be with my platoon...

A young sergeant paratrooper with 173 Airborne Brigade

Page 33 of "Once a Warrior: Wired for Life" by Cantrell and Dean

The young sergeant referred to here in the book was confused. He loved the energy of his kids before Iraq but after deploying, but now the high energy of his kids sent him over the edge. In Iraq he was 'wired tight' and was able to keep cool, to predict, endure, had greater tolerance levels... and when he came home he found that he was easily knocked off balance. He felt like a failure and he was afraid of the person he had become.

In this chapter, Chuck, a Vietnam vet, tells of his own emotional distancing when he got back from Vietnam. In the military we use the term 'the wire' to refer to the perimeter. It is a powerful symbol for us. For computer programers another symbol of protection and security might be a firewall, for others... a shield. We had our 'wire'.

Inside the wire we could let our guard down a little bit, though not really because there is always the incoming mortar attack. What can you do when mortars hit? How many times have I heard someone say "no use running... you might run to where they are landing". Many of us simply resolved to let the mortars 'fall where they may'. When my platoon, which operated on FOB Volunteer (the Old Iraqi Olympic Stadium a few blocks from Sadr City) would visit a large major base and happenstance occurs that the base is mortared, we'd shrug our shoulders and sit in our humveess while everyone around ran for bunkers during mortar attacks.

One time, as I was in the motor pool checking on a broken rig, my squad of three guys, had driven to the small chow hall to pick up a food delivery for some soldiers that lived at an Iraqi Army post. They moved their rig from one spot to another. Then a mortar attack and one of the mortars came close to where they had just been parked. This was proof positive for everyone that you can't plan to go anywhere, just go where you go and let the cards fall where they may.

However, outside the wire is a different story. Outside the wire one is on guard all the time. Even if you are on patrol and have to hole up for a while and you want to get sleep, you leave lots of wakeful eyes with fingers on triggers to keep watch. Outside the wire you are all business. Inside the wire, not so much.

Whenever I had guard duty at the front gate I would sometimes walk outside the front gate. I was alone, the rest of the guards were inside the gate and talking about women or football or whatever. I would go outside the front gate and lean against the wall. The night would be quiet and I'd reflect on the noticeable change in my nature with just a few steps. Subtle, but different.

This chapter in the book suggests that our new wire is a mental one. We've seen some pretty fucked up shit. How do you cope? You make a wall. You make a wire. Inside you are okay, outside is the threat. The building of this wire is normal. It has different forms. I trained as an EMT and a firefighter and came into contact with Emergency Room doctors and nurses and paramedics and firefighters who daily saw heartbreaking ordeals. To cope they developed a dark humor, making jests and poking fun of things that others not in their line of work would consider morbid or disrespectful. The people who did these jobs were very respectful of human life, but they needed means of coping with the loss around them. We too have seen destroyed bodies and homes. We've seen what is left of a busy intersection when a carbomb goes off. We've seen the result of our own shots. We too must cope, and so we build our 'wire'.

A new theory of dreams

2009-01-28T00:55:00.000-08:00

I am not a sleep specialist, but I do know that getting enough sleep is a very important part to healing the mind from traumatic experiences. I would speculate that we have inherent qualities within us, a natural resiliency and 'human' tendencies (interpret as you wish) that, if given REM sleep can test out the damaged schemas of the non-REM sleep, discarding them over a period of time until we cull the maladaptive schemas.

Interesting video.

Major General Smedley D. Butler

2009-01-28T00:48:00.000-08:00

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken from the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to 'about face', to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder, and through mass psychology they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then suddenly, we dishcharged them and told them to make another 'about face'. This tiem they had to do their own readjusting without mass psychology, without officers' aid and advice, withou nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them anymore. So we scattered them about without any speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these find young boys are eventually destroyed mentally, because they could not make that final 'about face' alone."

(written between WWI and WWII...)

Smedley D. Butler,
Major General, USMC
1936
Two-time winner, Congressional Medal of Honor

Marines in Fallujah, Iraq

2009-01-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

Soldiers Getting Help with PTSD

2009-01-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

News story about soldiers getting help with PTSD

From 2000 to 2006, 1,066 male veterans in Oregon took their lives.

2009-01-26T13:55:00.000-08:00

I am tired and sleepy and have spent a couple of hours roaming through various books on vets issues and am trying to wrap my mind around things in order to pull some of my weight at work on this research project. At the end of this bout I am about to shut down and go to bed. Before I do I scan the headlines of some news feeds. One of them gets my attention and I read the first paragraph and it brings me to tears.

Retired Oregon National Guard Major Tom Egan died of exposure in Eugene, homeless, with a liquor bottle by his side. Yet he had friends, including members of the National Guard.

Another story listed a statistic that I knew was high but still shocks me whenever I see it.

From 2000 to 2006, 1,066 male veterans in Oregon took their lives. There have been as many Iraq-Afghanistan veteran suicides in Oregon as Oregonians have been killed in theater. Do the math, in 72 months that is almost four suicides per week for six years!

I am not doing enough. I waste too much time. I weep for my lost brothers in arms. I've let them down. Whether they died from their own hands or they froze to death... I let them down.

I am sorry.

Birth of a Soul

2009-01-26T01:45:00.000-08:00

On page 110 of Edward Tick's book War and the Soul is a powerful testimony from a Marine Vietnam veteran.

I laid my gun across my legs and, while the Vietnamese family stared at me without daring to move, I stared out the door of their hut.

That doorway was like a picture frame on the world... like I was staring out trough God's eyes. The men I fought with, the "good guys, yelled like idiots and pushed these little people around. I watched my buddies walk over to the hut right across from me... and torch it. I looked at the family cowering in fear by my side. I looked across the way at my friend, the good guy, and another terrified mamasan... the flames destroy[ing] her home.

Something woke up in me. God and evil. Honor and dishon0r. Right and wrong. These had been automatic concepts... but at that moment.... they were real, living things. You earned them by torturing yourself with questions until you really knew what was right and good and honorable, not because someone told you, but because you saw.

I watched my buddies burn another hut... they weren't gooks, for God's sak!.. They were a helpless mother and her terrified little children! After six months in the bush I saw them for the first time... they weren't evil. They weren't the enemies. They weren't the bad guys. We were!

Everything was turned around. I wanted to raise my M-16 and blast away at these crazy marauding Americans who were wasting this helpless village. Now I had a soul, and I wanted to blast away at these crazy marauding Americans who were wasting this helpless village. Now I had soul, and I wanted to save it an these people by doing the right thing and defending them, even if i cost me my life.

I just walked off in a stupor while they... torched the hut. My hut with my family in it. Where I found my soul. Where I figured out the truth. I was in a daze for a long time. Then I went numb for the rest of my tour.

At the very moment I found my soul, at the very moment it woke up and I could see the truth for the first time in my life, at that very second when I knew we were evil, it fled, I lost it.

John Stewart Mill Quote

2009-01-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing, which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than him."
-- John Stewart Mill (1806-1873)

Introduction video from Eddie on PTSD

2009-01-25T12:08:00.000-08:00

video 1 part 1. Eddie talks about joining the military

Video 1 part 2. Eddie talks briefly about being new in Iraq.

Video 1 part 3. Eddie briefly talks about ramificatios of PTSD on returning troops.

Odysseus in America

2008-09-01T03:30:00.000-07:00

Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. This book is, thus far with three chapters left to read, wonderful. It is a treasure. This man has listened to combat vets from Vietnam over many years with his heart and has done a great job in translating that complex otherworld of our souls into a form that can make sense. Through using 'The Odyssey' as allegory in explaining the processes of homecoming by a combat vet it gives us a roadmap.

Page 45 he writes about veterans combat experience as having a constant roll of the dice. I read 'The Iliad' recently and while the heroes in it fight, pitting their prowess against the other, there is also the very real sense that there is much chaos working behind the scenes of the fight. The warriors, then, have a choice... they can continue to fight as though all were decided by their own honor and virtue and skill... or they can fight (live their lives) without such notions. This latter, to me, seems to run toward cowardice eventually. For the warrior there is only one way to fight, to be, and that is as if what you do mattered, even though you know there are events, fates, that are out of your control and influence and outside of a notion of universal justice. While reading page 45 I came upon this sentence...."it is as if, having lived in a world where the dice were constantly rolling, the calm, plan-filled responsibility of civilian life (or for that matter, of peacetime military service) is intolerable". This isn't, mind you, the boredom of teenager who is without his favorite video game. When I read this I thought of the many streets I drove down in Iraq that were known IED alleys. Of seeing the wires and aiming sticks of roadside bombs, of the craters of prior exploded bombs, and more. There is, in the back of your mind, the gnawing feeling that the fates are rolling the dice whenever you start to drive down a street. How many patrols have I done? I can't begin to count.

Page 83 has some good writing on our perception on how we spoil everything we touch. This ties into some thinking I have and also might tie in with something I read in another book by Haidt on purity and such (some earlier entry, I dont' remeber) and perhaps it might bear fruit to look at this more in depth from a psychological perspective. What could Positive Psychology say about this?

After I got the call that the book had arrived I went to get it and then sat down at the coffee shop to read. After reading for a while I stopped to write. Very rough stuff to follow, transcribed out of my paper journal.

Page 4. Recovery happens only in community. Two people are not a community. Erich Maria Remarque's exerpt from the book "The Road Back" is a good example of our attitudes on getting back from war. It is on page 11 and 12.

There is great distinction between the Thumos (great hearted spirit/ heart) and the Gaster (greedy, demanding, uncultivated/ belly) of our heroes/veterans/soldiers on page 12.

Page 14. When Odysseus is in the court and the bar sings a song of Troy it brings Odysseus to tears. But to the 'civilians' it is the same as all the other tales... ENTERTAINMENT.

Odysseus doesn't talk about the war at Troy with people who show themselves incapable of hearing the stories with their heart.

Feel that ache? That subtle, almost inperceptable tingling in your arms... under your skin. Your heart feels made out of lead and you are balanced between explosive action, running away or outburst of exclamation, and roling up into a ball, shutting off the outside world. Think of a lover who has scorned you, out of the blue and without reason. Think of a dear family member who died all too soon and without knowing the depth of your love.... that sense of lost opportunity, wasted time, of injustice. Remember when you lost your job and didn't know where to go next? Creditors calling you and the sense of shame that seemed to define who you really are. Can you feel that desire, the pressing need to weep with your full weight of your soul? to let out all the anguish and dread that is drowning you in hope that you can breathe? That in weeping you can also protest the fates with all the righteousness a heartbroken soul can muster?

How can the stoic soldier, the providing father, the hero of untarnished virtue, the savior, feel such weakness? How can the brave, the best of our generation, the hope and pride of a country, express these emotions? We aren't the only heroes. Single parents working two jobs, an ICU nurse who comfortss the sick and dying, the police officer who arrests the drunk driver before a deadly crash, and more... Part of their identities of these heroes have, by definition, their care, their heart, the love for another, their selfless service to their community, a community that at times transcends even when it is rooted firmly in their local community. What of the soldier? We kill. We are the purveyors of death. We rip and maim and hurt and destroy. As a religious minded person might ask, what loving god can be a destroyer, what god of mercy can invent a place called hell, so too we ask of ourselves. for we've ridden through hell... we've gleefully unleashed the power in our arms and cunning of our mind in all its hellish fury. We've struck out with reckless abandon with Ares in all his bloodthirsty gluttony, only to find ourselves asking why in the periods of calm therafter. What hero, what human of goodness and virtue can so easily, happily, wantonly kill and still be called good?

Think this a question of no importance and you are not asking it with heart. Imagine seeing a parent with a child at a public event. The child acts up and the parent slaps the child in the face in response. You do not stop to wonder if the parent is stressed from a multitude of things, like two jobs and a foreclosures on the house with a dying parent in the hospital. No. Likely you see the person, at lest initially with your emotional/moral sense, as being bad and possibly a bad parent. It is a natural, gut reaction, an emotional judgment made in the blink of an eye. We are hardwired to do this. This same hardwired emotional/moral judging is done by ourselves in our own histories every day.

Ask the question... what good and decent person kills (when the killer is you)?

page 39. To be really home is to be emotionally present and engaged.

page 74. you have sex but you don't have intimacy. We live in a hell that is ours alone and we dont want to drag her into it, so we live in there alone and cut off intimacy. With a life partner you want to be able to share everything with her. You can't even come close, she has enver experienced anything like that. Her image is that a man goes off to fight, you're strong, you come home and you build your life. You have the reality.

Another 4th of July

2008-07-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

I heard a commercial on the radio about an open forum to discuss if whether or not 4th of July firework displays should be toned down out of respect for veterans who are jumpy. I wasn't able to listen to the show, yet I do not think that the fireworks should be toned down. Rather than spending energy on this part, perhaps we as a society should address our veterans as members of our community... as being 'within' our community and not outside normal society. I must say that it isn't only veterans that are affected by in/out group dynamics and that other individuals, by identifying themselves with a group or the like find themselves burdenend by expectations/exceptions and viewpoints. Veterans is one of a few groups that I belong to that experience this.

I get off topic.

On the t.v. I noticed that there was a news special (KATU?) on how fireworks are noisy and lound and might cause strain on the happiness of.... pets. Pets? Really? What about mention of lots of veterans out there who go to nightclubs for the loud noise and escape the booms and bangs, or who drink themselves into numbness (me last year) or who put on headphones and loud music? Lets not talk about this on the t.v.... too divisive. You can be labled as a liberal or anti-war or unAmerican if you talk about this.

Bullshit. Because I am not for war does not mean I will not fight one beside my comrades. Because I question government policy does not make me unAmerican.

I noted yesterday that as I walked to the truck, cooler loaded and on my way to meetup with friends for a party, that I did not freak out when hearing fireworks around me. I met them at work, got the address, and we all drove to the house. As I drove down Scholl's Ferry Road, it was now dark and I liked the sight of fireworks in the sky. Then a LOUD firecracker (like a cherry bomb or something) went off at what seemed like the sidewalk as I drove by at 30 miles an hour.

FUCK! FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERIAMGOINGTOFUCKYOUUP!

That was not... I say again... NOT cool. My rig was never hit by an IED in Iraq... but one missed me one night and scared the shit out of me. I've rolled over plenty of other IEDs and IED heavy routes as well. Pucker factor is pretty damn high.

As I turned onto Barrows Street and winded through an open area the air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning fireworks. Pops and bangs all around me. Another IED went off nearby and I yelled more curses. My adrenaline was pushed up and I was chewing the hell out of a straw in my mouth. When I got to the house I cursed at fireworks across the street as I pulled the cooler out of my truck and walked to the apartment.

Inside... straight shot of bourbon and some beer. After a while I was fine and went outside and we shot off fireworks. It is like seing a snake. If I see it and know its coming, no big deal. But when it surprises me... I jump.

But all in all, except for that drive down an imagined IED alley, this 4th of July was not nearly as bad as last year. My emotions were, for the most part, much more calm than last year, and I was able to have normal social interaction with others.

Progress

I need a drink

2008-07-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

Rarely do I turn to alchol for soothing. I can recall individual episodes in the past two decades when I needed a drink. I am going to make one now.

I've written, and I've told my therapist, about times when the feeling comes over me that I am close to falling apart into a million pieces, that I am exhausted from keeping all of the splinters that make my self togther and how puzzling it was to me to feel this sensation. I feel as though I were bound by scotch tape and that it was about to come undone and I'd explode like a supernova into a zillion pieces into the universe. I didn't understand this.

I am thinking again of the firefight in Iraq. In the last couple of counseling sessions we went to this topic and instant emotion wells up within me. The last one we ventured into it some more. I would become filled with emotion and then take a deep breath and soothe mysself. The therapist says that it is a very good coping mechanism I am using... that I am very good at it. Lots of practice. I still don't have any visual memories of what I saw down the street. I have clear memories of my hands on the rifle, the feel of it, the pulling the trigger... but not of what I saw. I know there were lots of bodies on the ground because others have said that they saw them all.

My therapist wants me to try EMDR. She says that while I don't have some signs of PTSD, I do have others... constant irritation (every damn day I am irritated by many people) and startle reflex. But there is more. As I finished a short test and we went over the results, there was also the emotionality of certain levels of intensity. I reported that when I get to a certain intensity of emotion, things fall apart and I shut down. With (my ex) we'd be making out hot and heavy and I'd get so worked up... and then I'd put the breaks on and back off. Frustrating to her and I recall the many fights that my last relationship had about this issue, which adds to more frustration on my part and a healthy dash of negative affect to the already boiling pot of emotion I am feeling. There are some other issues as well. Lack of concentration, really pissing me off in school, that I cannot focus. Also I am tired a lot of the time... mentally tired and I can't read but a few pages and I am sleepy and tired and have to close my eyes. And then we got to the concept of the amount of energy my mind is spending on repressing these things and that this is ailing me in a lot of ways and why I might feel like I might fall apart at times. That made perfect sense.

So we might try some EMDR therapy. I hope it works. I am entering a new relationship and I don't want an insane amount of baggage to deal with, nor subject her to all of this crap. It'd be nice to be able to deal with somone from a more stable platform than what I've had for the past two years.

A respite for the soul

2008-06-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

I feel much better after yesterday's torture. I don't expect anyone else to understand save for those that know of what I speak. How do we define ourselves as noble or vile based on thought and deed and how do we transcend these categories. I feel more of a pull to the '25 Acts' that I had before. I could feel how hungry I was for it as I questioned my own nature... the hunger to reach out and do something heroic. How very easy it is to die in a fight we believe in, to let loose those energies for good, to feel the strength in our arms as it weilds a holy sword.

I bring up lots of images here, for our feeling, our understanding, of what war is and how we fight it is made of such complicated and contradictory elements. There are so many things that are not truly thought out in our daily lives but of which have emotional energy to them. When we build the fire under a complex in our lives, those complexes are fueled by archetypes underneath them, and when energies collide... look out.

The trick is to not turn from the hurtful, to not hide from the pain and confusion, but to let it come and go of its own accord. You weather the storm. You can, if you insist, stand on the deck of the small boat and scream your curses out at the wind, or you can just huddle up with some ropes and wait it out. Don't try to steer through the storm... let it take you.

A danger is that storms can crash us on the rocks and we drown. Or they can bring you into a new harbor that you've never seen before, new lands, new sights... a deepening of the soul.

How does one ensure that the ship does not break upon the rocks? I do not know. But I think that the answer is somewhere in the notion that the person 'is' the ship and that the crashing is akin to the resistance to the storm... cease resistance and move with the current.

I do not know. But today the weather is fair. I feel calm, more centered. I can still feel the animal lurking behind the trees, ready to pounce. Is the danger in trying to leash the wild? I admit that I felt, at many times during yesterday, the pull of pacifism in that I did not want to feel the effect of violence upon me again. Yet this feels as wrong as violence itself. It isn't a middle way, to balance the two, as it is a third way that is both.

I think again of Aikido... a way of harmony and I ask for the eternal gods to continue their influence... I am not finished growing... I am open. My soul dilates.

Letter to the Editor

2008-06-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

I had a rough day yesterday. I feel better today. I go to a coffee shop and sit down with a bottle of water, a coke in a glass bottle, and a mocha, and pick up the Letters to the Editor page of the paper. There is this...

Liberal policies imperil U.S.
I read with trepidation the Supreme Court ruling concerning the military prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, that they have a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge ("Court rules for Guantanamo prisoners," June 13).

Liberal elements in this country fail to see the peril that their "feel good" policies have on the very existence of this country. They fail to understand that the very people they would set free today would also be the ones to cut their liberal throats tomorrow, if they could. Justice Antonin Scalia said it correctly when he wrote in dissent to this decision, "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today."

If I were a combat soldier and in this war zone against current enemies, this decision would give me one mandate: I do not take prisoners anymore, no matter what.

MICHAEL PILKINGTON Northeast Portland

So I cranked up my computer and sent in my own letter to the editor.... Michael Pilkington, of Northeast Portland, was quick to say "If I were a combat soldier and in this war zone against current enemies, this decision would give me one mandate: I do not take prisoners anymore, no matter what." (letter to the Editor, Wednesday, June 18).

As a combat soldier I wish to gods that those who do not understand what it is to kill another human would shut-up for good and quit their sabre rattling when it we that must carry the sword. The taking of life is lead weight that you cant get out of your blood. Its obvious that those like Mr Pilkington do not truly understand what they are saying when such generalizing statements as this are made. Kill all enemy combatants? No matter what?

I can only shake my head in disbelief at the inexperienced, naive audacity of others who know not what war is to so carelessly thrust others into its chaotic play. It is my hope that we move away from the politics of fear and toward realizing that vision of the country we can feel in our marrow.

We are the good guys (at least I feel we are) and as such we ought to hold ourselves to high standards. That means giving trial to those in Gitmo. That means no water-boarding. That means not indiscriminately killing all combatants. That also means owning up to our mistakes of the past, opening up the scrutiny of them being wrong (and ourselves being mislead or not) and moving on.

I am a conservative in that I hold that those values that make America truly America are to be cherished and guarded and defended. I am liberal in that many of those ideals have not been adequately expressed yet and we've got a lot of change to go through in order to truly be that 'city on the hill'.

Semper Fi
Eddie Black
Portland, Oregon

Raw

2008-06-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk in forest park today. I carried some black coffee and three books and a journal. Only the coffee was used.

Disclaimer. I've had two plates of shrimp pasta and 3/4 bottle of an Old Vine Zinfandel (the red stuff, not the pink stuff... friends don't let friends drink white zin) and I'm typing oddly. I'm a bit buzzed right now.

So I went walking. I was in a weird state. I went into the wood looking for the gods to speak to me. I found a log crossing a creek and I laid on top of it for a while and I eventually heard an owl hoot over and over again off in the distance... at noon. I thanked the gods for being (being) with me. How often have I been in the woods? Lots. How often have I heard an owl? Rare. How often during the day at noon?

I am numb right now. I can see how this is a desired state for someone escaping hurt. This might not be escape... it could be a breather. Every boxer needs that bell now and then to sit on the stool and spit the blood into the bucket.

I came upon a Pileated Woodpecker and I tried to snap some pictures of it on my iPhone. Someday I'm going to get a good camera. I had my GPS with me and was tracking down a geocache. Due to heavy tree cover the GPS had its compass backward now and then I did a lot of bushwacking. When I got to the right spot I found the cache in short order, signed it. It was the Poet-Tree cache. I left a little two line poem.... I can't remember what I wrote... but it was something of a homage to Ani DiFranco... "So much is around me, my soul dilates". Ani DiFranco is out of the question... but my gods... to meet someone like her... I could fall in love with a soul like that!

After walking to the cache I was surprised to find that I had hiked for five hours. I was hungry, tired, and ready to eat. I went back and forth from state to state... from calm acceptance of the world around me, to anguish. I was still hurting.

I drove back home, thinking of stopping at a bar, having a beer, and turining on the laptop to write a story that is brewing inside of me. I ended up in the Cedar Hils area and at the movie theater. Didn't see it coming but it seemed like I didn't want to think, didn't want to be with anyone, didn't want to deal with it all. So I went to a movie. Like I usually do I'll see whatever is playing. I had two choices... The Hulk or The Happening. I wasn't in the mood for suspense... so I went to the Hulk. I was still in a very weird state from my last entry... and I needed some escapism.

The Hulk wasn't it.

I wasn't thinking or I would not have picked a movie about violence hidden within our selves and the theme of carrying on without the support of others and fear of hurting people.

Fuck me.

I cried often during the movie. Many scenes got me hard and I had tears running down my face. The scenes had exactly what I was feeling. He had to leave her because he was scared of what he had inside of him. He didn't trust himself with her. He was afraid of his rage, of what he might do.

I left the movie in a worse state.

I stopped at a grocery store, bought some wine and some noodles, shrimp, cheese, and sauce. At the store I couldn't look at anyone. In the parking lot outside the movie theater I was walking to the truck and a guy walked by. When he was ten paces to my left, for no reason, he turned around and walked backwards. I felt it as a challenge and wanted to turn toward him and challenge him back. I could feel the twinge of desire to beat him within me. I muttered to myself, as I closed my eyes, to not even look at him, keep walking to the truck and don't look. Its nothing. At the store I turned on my iPhone onto some music and an acoustic (the B side version) of "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan came on my phones. It set the mood as I roamed the aisles looking for food. not really roamed... I barely shuffled. When I came upon somone I would scan the other direction, not daring to look in their direction. Since the fucking movie I had odd waves of emotion creep over me. At one point I was driving and growling and baring my teeth. What the fuck is up with this?????? In the store I felt alienated from everyone around me. I could sense their positions around me, like blips on the radar, but they seemed like moving statues to me... not human. Realizing this, noticing that I was unable to empathize with them, bothered me all the more. Emotions filled me. I had long gave up trying to understand them... I was hanging on for dear life.

Back home... I opened my door with a bag in my hand. The usual routine is always the same, my two beloved cats meet me and meow for attention. They are spoiled and I love them a lot. They go to bed with me everynight and wake me up every morning. This is the first time something different has happened. This time they looked at me from across the room as I opened the door and they ran for the bedroom and hid under the bed. I was breathing hard from emotions, gritting my teeth, feeling like a monster... and my two cats, who know no fear of me, ran.

I've always said animals are good judges of character. To see them run from me only for entering the room... hurt all the more. Am I a monster? Its the question that keeps coming up over and over. How easy it would be to do harm. There are few chains keeping that part of me down, it would seem. "We are what we think" goes the saying. I pondered this on my walk. A person could desire to eat sweets and to crash the diet, yet not actually do it. A person could have urges to cheat on his wife but not follow through... so we are not only what we think. We are, in large, what we do.

Hope.

Yet... what is a killer?

I am a killer.

There was a time when I talked with someone and boasted that I'd done all the sins in the book save for killing.

.....

What can I write? I've done them all. I feel no guilt for some of them. But killing? Killing the enemy is hard enough.. but non fighters?

I am afraid of myself. I have this quick reaction in me right now that is very near the surface... very near to come out. It feels as though it would not take much for me to really jump on someone and pound them. It isn't a question of strength... it is a question of the desire to hit those vulnerable points that really hurt, that can't heal... that I know about and that I, gods forbid, want to hit during a fight. 9 pounds of pressure to snap a neck, 7 pounds of pressure to break a clavicle, 3 pounds pressure to pierce the trachea, and an easy task to disable someone for life.

I am so afraid right now that I can't think. I've friends that love me that I want to call... but I don't. I feel as a leper, as something evil.

I know this is an emotional storm. As much as I desire everlasting peace (don't entertain the notion anymore) I tell myself that it'll end... just hang on and this too will pass. Eventually I'll be in calmer seas again and perhaps I can help others like me. Until then... I am hanging onto shadows and smoke.

blood and anger

2008-06-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

spots of blood... thick, fat, round splats of blood along the bar floor. It got my attention. I was doing my closing duties, wiping down the bar, moving in circles, and I noticed the blood on the floor, on the bar tap, on the espresso machine... fat and dark red. I looked at my left hand, the one with a large birthmark on it that bleeds easily when nicked and scratched. There was a solid line of blood on my finger. The other finger was covered in bandage and finger condom from a cut fifteen minutes prior and now I had another one.

Actuallyt it was a piece of glass stuck into my finger. It was small, the size of a 1/4 of a pencil eraser. I pulled it out with my teeth and the blood started to leak out good then. I went and bandaged myself up. We were closed and I was getting ready to leave the bar for home and a beer.

The day started out on the wrong foot. I was running late to work and that put me on edge. At work we got a pop and the servers were working their asses off. It was all I could do to keep up. There were questions of how they could assist me, what could they pour. I was in the weeds already and to be asked questions, when I am in a bad state of mind, only frustrates me more. I told everyone to talk elsewhere, not around me, and stay out of the bar (out of my way).

At the end of the rush I had a cup of coffee and some ice cream and let myself unwind a bit. It did me a world of good. However, near the end of the night I was getting more and more frustrated. The issue, as stupid an issue as there is, was on water glasses. I had a dishwasher full, two sinks full, the top filled to overflowing, and servers kept bringing me water glasses. I wash the bar glasses and enough water glasses to keep the bar stocked. Yet I was getting behind in other things because of washing so many fucking water glasses. When I asked several times the same servers would continue to bring me fucking water glasses. 1/2 the glasses washed are water glasses and I'm behind in everything now. The answer given to me by the servers was that they didn't want to 'walk all the way back to the kitchen' to take them back. Basically, fuck you that your are busy, I'm going to put them here anyway. That's what I heard. I got angrier and angrier. Still they came. I exploded and bitched even more, threatening to turn off the entire dishwasher and they could take all the fucking glassware to the back dishpit. I was argued with and I was already pissed off. I was told 'to get another job' if I couldn't do this one. This pissed me off more. I am the fastest bartender at the company. I was told it was a silly thing to get pissed off about. And while it I was arguing and getting pissed off, one of the waitstaff who is as competent as a one legged blind man, laughed at my anger and walked off.

I write all this out to show the pettiness of it all. For I realize it. Both sides are in the fault, me and the servers. Fine. But when that ##### laughed at me as I was getting amped up for a fight, something clicked in me. I wanted to hurt people... really, really, really hurt people badly. I'm not talking about a fistfight... I am talking to do serious damage. I wanted blood. I wanted the entire room of people to experience pain as much as I could dish it out. I was aware of many objects around me, at that time, that I could use to inflict pain, if not kill.

A coworker tried to calm me down and did a great job at it. He was just enough to calm me but not enough to get me angry at him. I was almost out of the room when I heard another laugh and I wanted to go back in. He helped me not to.

The casual person might say that, yes, I was angry and that I wanted to throw down. The casual person has no fucking idea. I did not write above that I wanted to punch a couple of people in the face and gloat over them, or to hit them and get them to shut up, or to punch them and therfore 'win' the argument. No. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to really hurt them.

Writing that last paragraph scares me. If you don't see how it would, you do not understand how much I wanted to hurt them. I fought the urge to run out into the parking lot, just to get away from temptation. I wouldn't look at them and I tried to let it go as best as I could. My chest and arms felt like I had worked out and were tired and numb. I was petrified of what I had almost done. Could one more word directed at me had brougth me to put one of three sharp objects to my right hand into his and her face? Oh my god! I went up and away and called my therapist and couldn't leave a message. When the tone went off to leave my message, emotion rolled over me like an avalanche. I felt as though I were coming apart. I couldn't breathe. I wanted to fall to pieces. As I was on my third attempt to leave a message, she called and let me tell her what had happened. I told her how fearful I was of how close I had come to hurting someone. Could I have stopped myself? I felt as though I were on a wild animal with the poorest of reigns. The manager came looking for me... stuff needed to be done at the bar. I got off the phone and back to work.

As everyone left and I was alone with my thoughts I found it hard to breathe. I breathed in gasps... like I was holding my breath and remembered every now and then to breath. My mind, numb, went over what had happened. I was edgy all night and the right buttons had been pushed, the right factors, the laughter, the confrontation, it all, and I had almost lost it. I was so afraid of myself that I thought (still am) of leaving right then and driving away to someplace away from everyone. I thought of quitting my job because I was afraid of what I might do. I was then afraid that there wasn't any other jobs out there for recluses to not talk or deal with people that pay any money... and I would not be able to make my rent or truck payments. Who would hire me? I'm a crazy vet waiting to snap! What the fuck would I do?

Such a slippery slope to suicide. It doesn't have a lot of pull... but the thought did come to mind. Tired, weary, and very afraid of what I could do.... if one has a dangerous dog that bites people for no reason... you put it down... why should I be any different? In my back pocket I have some suicide hotline numbers that I give out to soldiers and their families. I know the confusion and such that they feel and I wanted to try to help them. I thought of my own needs at this time... how I wish there was another Eddie out there doing what I am doing that I could call. Who do the heroes call for help? I am no hero though.

I feel broken right now, like a lot of the big pieces were held together by tape and that tape finally came off and those big pieces fell down to the ground. I think of the other soldiers out there who might have felt something like what I am feeling and who did commit suicide. I grieve for them. I wish I could have been called by them. This thought propels me forward... to carry on... to move on and grow through this, to not give up... to be there for my comrades.

The next two days are off days for me. I am thinking of going hiking... far into the wilderness away from roads and people... to still myself and let myself fall apart onto the wild earth.

Right now I feel so very alone. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to be in that state where I want to hurt. Better to hurt yourself than another person... especially over something as stupid as water glasses. Right? This hurts.

I write all of this out so that others can read it. Maybe someone will be in a similar situation sometime and wonder, in absolute terror, how they could want to harm their wife or friend or whomever, and wonder if they are a bad person. No, my friend... you are not a bad person. You have something wired different in you that is ready for war, to respond at the blink of an eye to a threat from any direction, to kill quickly and decisively without hesitation. Once a river has cut its path through the hills, it is forever more an easy thing for water to follow that course. You are not alone in feeling this. You are not different from many others who have had to look more deeply into the abyss of darkness and death (for they are the ones delivering death to others) and have come away changed by it. I know it is easy to give up right now. I know it might sound like the safest bet, to throw in the towel. But you have to keep going, keep pushing, to see this storm through. You have your fellow solders, your family, and others, counting on you to make it through this. Don't give up. Call for help. Seek counselling. Do something. But don't give up. Don't.

Iraq revisited

2008-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

This therapy session was supposed to talk about some other issues but instead I mentioned the fireworks going off near my truck as I drove down the street. Went down that road.

I'm tired right now. I had to get up very early after a late night and drive an hour and a half away to take a physical fitness test after I was feeling bad last night. Didn't go well. My eyes burn.

I'm not going to go into a blow by blow for the session. But I'll try to come up with some of the main points I thought of.

Part of the thing that due to part of what I've done in combat, or what I think I've done, give me a large sense of guilt. We were stationary and were attacked by insurgents in Baghdad. We responded. What is down the street is mental blur to me, I cannot remember it, but friends of mine tell me it was not pretty. In thinking about this guilt I said that I felt that I could not allow myselt to let go of the guilt, that it was some sort punishment that I am imposing on myself, my cross to bear. Whether my actions were real, or purely imagined, the guilt that I carry is heavy enough.

Another thought about this. I said, imagine that you have children and you wake up to realize that the night before you got drunk, blacked out, and you beat your kids severely and how sickening that would make you feel and also how questioning you would be about what sort of person you are, how good you are, etc... That is kind of how I feel, only I wasn't blacked out at the time I emptied a couple of clips. It isn't the enemy combatants that I feel guilty for... it is the busy street the combatants chose to attack us from.

I wondered if, since I am unwilling to let go of this guilt and think that I need to carry this around, if perhaps it could fuel something positive, something good in the world? My therapist remembered my idea for '25 Acts' where, according to one psychology study it takes 25 acts of heroic kindness to overcome one act of murder. I saw this idea as a healing route for myself... and it is funny... for as much as I've thought about it, I've done so for the means of helping other vets and didn't think much in my own healing.

Deora Ar Mo Chroi

2008-06-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Deora Ar Mo Chroí
Irish Gaelic
Tears on My Heart

Ba dheas an lá go hoíche
Na glórtha binne i mo thaobh
'S aoibhneas i gach áit gan gruaim
Áthas ar mo chroí go deo
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

Má shiúlaim ó na laethe beo
An ghrian 's an ghealach ar mo chúl
Níl uaim ach smaointe ó mo shaoil
Deora ar mo chroí go brón
He-a-ro
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

It was beautiful all day [1]
The sweet voices by my side
And beauty without despair everywhere
Joy in my heart forever
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

If I walk from the alive days
The sun and the moon behind me [2]
I'll only need thoughts from my life
Tears sorrowfully on my heart
He-a-ro
He-a-ro
He-a-o-ro

Literally, "It was a beautiful day til night/nightfall".
Literally, "... on my back".

It has been a flurry of activity for me this morning. I crammed for a quiz in Astronomy this morning and took it and left, explaining to the prof that I was going to a panel of vets with a US Senator and didn't want to be late. The panel was good and I passed a handwritten business card to two people for possible opportunities helping vets in the future.

I left and walked with two vets, talking about working long hours and going to school and comparing envy of those students around us who have what seems like lives of less stress and concern. I saw three of the attendees from the roundtable, they from a community college, looking at the campus map. I offered to walk them to where they needed to go and that turned out to be abandoned and then I walked them to the new building and that turned out to be not used. There is, right now, no Veterans Center on campus.

In walking with them, however, we talked and compared notes and interests. At the end they gave me a card to contact them. They are giving resources, space, for a veterans center and need a personality to help affect change, to facilitate things, to move things, to start things, to help build a cohesive veteran group on campus and to help steer them to the resources (educational and mental health) that are available for them. I, in turn, am looking for an opportunity to put together my military experience with my concern for vets groups with my need to do a psychology practicum for PSU.

I just sent an email. Lets see if it is a good fit/opportunity. Right now it seems it would be.

I also emailed two professors asking for advice and possible advising. Both are amazing individuals and I could gain so much from their mentorship. I included a copy of my presentation on PTSD to everyone.

I was also just called by a reporter for the Oregonian who asked me some questions about my history in the military and my experience with the GI Bill.

Now I am sitting here and on my iPhone I am listening to some music and Enya's "Deora Ar Mo Chroi" comes over my headphones and I am transported back to Iraq. Before I bought an iPod I had a small MP3 player that held a dozen songs. One of the ones I had on it was this song. While down south of Baghdad with long hours every night on guard duty and long hours during the day on patrol, grabbing little sleep and so forth, I would put this song on repeat and fall asleep to it. I had no idea what it meant, it is in Gaelic, but it was soothing and calming and I understood it with my heart. It was a cherished means of peace in an unpeaceful place.

What is the source of the emotions that well up as I listen to this.. it is not nostalgia. I've felt this before in times of peace because underneath this peace is a sense of something... something like... sacrifice. Something along the lines of we know what happiness is if we've experienced fully what sorrow is and that when feeling the subsequent joy there is, in framing it, a rememberence of that darker time.

But that time wasn't that dark for me. I wasn't scared all the time. I was just not at peace. I've still not fully figured out what my experience has wrought within me, but it is a deepening and a gathering of complexity.

A useful analogy I used in therapy yesterday was that of a star. A star in a binary system (two stars orbiting each other) may get mass from another star over time. That mass in turn creates greater and greater density which in turn has greater gravity and this presses the mass closer together leading to greater density and so forth. When the magic number (I believe it is 1.4 solar mass, but I am neglecting my astronomy studies) is reached core collapses upon itself and rebounds out in a Super Nova! I am a potential supernova... I feel it... yet I do not have enough density yet and I move in many circles, read many things, seek many experiences, trying to add as much mass as possible to my core self, to increase its density. When that magic number is reached...

... my life will nolonger be my own. I am not afraid of turning my life over to service, to something larger than myself. I am on the edge of exploding... but not quite there yet.

warriorhood

2008-04-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have a new book that I bought. It is called "An Operators Manual for PTSD". The foreward is befitting a retired Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps... it is one page, short, and to the point. No dancing around bushes and no setting up elaborate premises. Sgt Maj's are, if anything, direct.

In the foreward, the SMAJ (pronounced "smadge") says that "regardless of conflict, approximately 15% of all combat veterans develeop PTSD". This struck me with a new thought. THE VIEW by many combat vets, or at least those that I've dealt with personally, and indeed the military mindset, is that this 15% are those nonhackers. There is a saying in the Marines... that "there is always that 10%" meaning, there is always that small group of people that aren't up to the standard of being a Marine (and the standards are high).

My question and concern deals with how we are grouping the 15% that develop PTSD with the nonhackers. It is an unspoken assumption that the two categories are of the same population. This is much the same that some right-wing conservatives will assume that the numbers of homosexual and child molestors are tapping into the same population of sexual deviants. (note, I do not, in any way, believe that homosexuality is deviancy. I am expressing a trended belief of many).

Question. Are those that develop PTSD of the same category as those 'non hackers" who cannot live up to the ordeals of being a warrior? I say, most emphatically, NO.

This begs us to define what a warrior is. In Plato's Republic there are the three aspects of the soul as reason, spirit, and desire and their interest being knowledge/honor/pleasures in that order. This gives us the class of philosophers/warriors/commoners. Wisdom is the hallmark of the philospher, temperance that of the commoner (hey people, its about not being so damn crazy in your spending sprees for crap!) and courage is that virtue of the warrior. Justice transcends all.

There is a basic nature of the soul, its main interest, what class works best for it, and the virtues associated with it. For the soul that hungers for reason, it's interest id knowledge and one should become a philosopher and extol wisdom. The soul type best for warriors, or Plato, is Spirit and our main interest is HONOR, our virtue is courage.

What is given lipservice to, at times, is this notion of honor. I happen to think that Plato was on to something here. Honor IS our watchword. It is a guiding theme for the military. We ARE manifestations of honor and we do so against overwhelming odds... enacting our virtue of courage to do so.

So, again, question. Can one be a warrior and not feel what honor is? One can be a fighter... but warrior is a different term. Warrior is sacred, it is a role given by the community. A fighter is an individual that fights for self interest. A warrior does so for his/her community. A warrior is different because of this concept of honor (which brings with it notions of sacrifice and whatnot). Somehow we've gotten mixed up between what a warrior is and what a fighter is and we've confused the two. At grappling combat training the instructor, a referree and trainer for the UFC, told us that the definition of a warrior is "someone willing to get into a fight". This was appealing to the mass of men in those circles that were training to grapple and pummel. Yet I disagree with this. A mother who is defending her children against an attacker is not a warrior. She is fierce, she is strong, she will kick your ass nine ways till sunday, but she is not a warrior. Is she willing to enter that fight? If you have any doubt, go mess with a mother's children. I'll see you in the hospital.

No. A warrior is someone who has tapped into that rage and agression that makes one tear flesh and smash bone, to destroy with all the fury of Ares, and yet, does so within the confines and dictates of honor. Honor is defined different ways in different cultures, and yet among disparate tribes, groups, warriors, clans, armies, there is a notion of what honor is. At times those notions do not recognize each other (The British Army's distaste for the sniping techniques used by Roger's Rangers during the American Revolution, or the British against the Ottoman Army techniques a century later, or by American Infantry against the Mahdi Army techniques in OIF2), but there is some concept of honor.

The smart tactictian will not assume that his enemy will fight by the rules he himself employs, that the dictates of honor he follows is followed by his enemy. This is not a post on tactics. This is one on warriors and PTSD.

What do we, as American veterans, define as honor? There is a deep understanding of this and I believe it is connected to the group of those feel remorse, grief, and guilt over their actions in combat. What I am saying is that those who are more aligned to the concept of warrior are also those who are more likely to develop PTSD because of their deeper connections to what honor is.

The reason for the development of PTSD is, then, not a fault with their own shortcomings as warriors, but instead for the shortcommintgs of the communal environments they find themselves in. We hold within us what is the warrior ideal, but seek to live it within the rules and norms of a society, or culture, or group that says that men and soldiers can only act in very narrow terms. For gods sake, look at the hatred we (the machismo manly culture) have for efeminate males. Men hate homosexual males not because of the male/male sex, but because it is unmanly to be submissive or to act in any manner not deemed manly. Take a man that is heterosexual and give him 'feminine' qualities and he is hated as well. The policy of 'dont ask don't tell' works as long as the homosexual male in question is able to conform to all expectations of domination as befitting a male as required of him.

This is, to me, a very odd state to find ourselves in. How did we get in this spot? The answer is, I fear, very complicated and long in the making.

But back to my point. What if I could find a way to address what a warrior is so that it leaves open a means of communcation of emotional turmoil? What if I found a means of introducing what a warrior is so that one could openly grieve?

I think of the Masaii tribe and how their males do not show any pain at all. A professor told of his going through the ordeal of being ritually burned and his having to show no pain. He raised an eyebrow while they poked a burning stick onto his chest (scarring him). He didn't do great, but he did well and was hence accepted by the Masaii.

There is something to this. For it is a natural response to go into combat and to close of emotions. If you didn't, you'd go mad as you killed and maimed. We want our warriors to be able to go forth and kill. To not do so is to not be a warrior. And what human can kill without remorse? Monsters, as we call them.

And yet here is the crux of what I am saying... what sort of monster (the killing machine without emotion) can feel honor?

Think about that for a second.

The mind is able to heal itself. The brain can change itself. The emotions can evolve and heal themselves. We are resilient beings.

We recruit many men to become warriors. The ads for the Marines are excellent examples. They speak to us on deeper levels, as warriors, to be among warriors. It is why I joined. We go and fight and live as warriors and come back to a civilian life that doesn't understand what a warrior is, the fierce joy in fighting (fightin is always bad they say, war is always evil (what then of those that fight a war?) and fallen warriors are 'wasted' lives). There is no place among the communal table for the sacred warrior to sit. Other venerated roles are there, the teacher, the professor, the firefighter, the policeman (at times, at times not), the farmer, the parent, and others. But the warrior is not there. The warrior is, instead, an ending for the sympathy of the yellow ribbon on the back of your car, he is something to feel sorry for because he wasted his time, lost his buddy for a wasted cause, and is changed forever. Don't talk to him Johnny, just be polite and keep moving. We are, still, outcasts.

Not always and everywhere, but enough.

therapy sesson... remembering Iraq

2007-06-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

Deep breath.

Another counseling session today and a couple of things came out. I'm trying to recall the feelings now. They are slipping back down into the unconscious.

I expressed that I feel guilty about getting the counselling from my therapist. This is compounded by the fact that she is the best I've ever seen. I cannot express enough the great admiration and respect that I have for her in her craft and as a human. Because of such I am not scared in going places with her, in letting her see the worst of me, and how much a relief it is to see that she understands and gets what I am saying. Not acceptance necessarily... for she hasn't agreed with me in all things... but understanding and a non-judgment of them. It is, I think, the best that humanism wishes to be. I expressed my guilt in getting the services from her for free, as she is a member of a network of professionals that volunteer their time for veterans (www.returningveterans.com). We looked at this. I expressed that I am getting from her but am not giving. It is so often the other way around for me, that I give and do not get, that this is an injustice. She asked me what I thought she got out of it all. I couldn't come up with anything. She said a few things that I could buy into, the joy of helping someone, etc... yet she said something that was alien to me... that I did not know before and it brought tears to me as she told me. She told me that she felt a priviledge in being able to share in my complex world. It is such an alien concept to me that I struggle now to even write it out, to even remember the way she said it. I cannot. She expressed it in a few sentences and there were such deep concern and sincerity in her as she said this that I believed her. Her was, essentially, a person who loved me, I do not feel wrong in using this term, and who was grateful for this. She has heard my greatest fears and my greatest failures and heard me say all that I am most ashamed of... and she is grateful for knowing me and seeing me.

She asked me why I had the response that I did, tears in my eyes, and I told her that it is similar to an image that I had while writing about returning from war. A mental image, a photograph of the imagination, and I had written of it quickly in that past, and it rose to my memory now. I told her, imagine a soldier, home from war, in uniform... me.... and I am at home with a woman, romantic partner, and she is sitting on a couch. I am on the ground and my head is in her lap. My therapist asked me what she was doing in the picture, and I said that she was just letting me be... just letting me be.

Again, the theme of acceptance, so often missed, so often short of.

Some time later in the session we got on a topic of a fight in Iraq. It had never really come up with me in the past and I didn't think I was bothered by it. Yet now I know that it does bother me and I had tears and a quaking voice as I talked about it.

It is a hot day and it is my second day outside the wire. I've been in country for a week now and have had to watch as my platoon rushed outside on patrol, leaving me behind. The reason is that my rifle was not zeroed in. It was Batallion protocol that you could not go out on patrol unless your weapon was zeroed. I finally got it boresighted with a laser and was able to go out. It was, again, my second time to leave the wire and I was unfamiliar with the city, the people, what to look for, the sights and sounds. I was overwhelmed by it all. I was green and new.

We had elements of the Iraqi National Guard with us. They were roaming around with us on this patrol. Some of them spotted a wire in the dirt. We stopped, pushed out security elements, and sent a search team to follow the wire. It was a buried roadside bomb we rolled over (my rig also) and the search team found the lookout spot where the enemy was to push the button, blowing up the bomb. He was not there. Due to a lunch break or something, nobody was there to push the button when we rolled over.

We called out for EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) who were to come out to our location and blow the charge in place. Unti they showed up we were to keep watch on the area so that nobody would come set it off or take the explosive for future use against us. So we set security around us, assigned sectors of fire, etc... and set down to wait.

An hour later one of the soldiers that had an M14 with a scope on it had been watching down the street where Sadr city was... it was ony 400 meters away and a hotbed of insugent activity. He yelled out to the platoon sgt that there was a mortar team setting up. He was just given the go ahead to fire on the enemy team when they mortar team had fired first. They are very fast. One of their techniques is to roll with mortar in a car's trunk. This is why we are suspicious of four or so men riding around in a car together. They will pull up to a spot and then quickly pull out the mortar, not bothering to sight it in, and they will indiscriminatly fire the mortars and adjust fire from there.

The mortars exploded 50 meters away. VERY LOUD and they really grab your attention. My first reaction was one of taking it personally. I was personally insulted that these people were shooting at me. Sounds odd, but that is the emotion that I had. The mortars were being walked up on us, getting closer. One buddy of mine was at the rig close to mine and he got a piece of shapnel that barely scratched his finger. We were lucky. I don't understand how we didn't have wounded from as close as the mortars were exploding around us. The platoon sgt yelled "Kill every fucking thing over there" and the automatic grenade launchers, the 'ma deuce' (the .50 calibre machine gun) and other weapons. I had been a marine prior to my enlistment in the National Guard. In the marines it was drilled into us the concept of "one shot one kill", to pick your targets and to kill it. The Army does not do this. The platoon around me erupted in violence. I was frustrated. I looked down my rifle at the scene down the street and saw a huge cloud of dust. The explosions from the grenades and machine guns was ferocious. I growled (I am a growler... I growl in frustration at things) and I cursed loudly. I had no point targets to shoot at, no enemy in sight... and I was pissed! I cursed and yelled and gripped my rifle in frustration. A soldier next to me hit me in the arm and yelled "just fire suppressive fire", which is military speak for shooting a lot of bullets in one particular direction. So I did... I emptied a clip or two, I don't remember, and there was nothing left of the mortar team when we were done. However, I had a hand in the killing. Not only in the mortar team, but the busy street they shot from as well. There were civilians there. Women, children, and innocent men. We killed them. I am too connected to it to say whether we acted right or wrong, if we had other means of reacting to the mortars, if we reacted with too much force (and before you say yes... I'd like you to have mortars explode fifty meters from you first). I cannot say. I can say that civilians died and I pulled the trigger. Considering the many grenades, the many automatic grenades, the many many automatic rounds, fired down the street, it is unlikely that by the time I shot my paltry two magazines that I personally killed a civilian. This, in no way at all, lessens me from the responsibility of what I did. I pulled the trigger. People died. That is all that matters.

As the dust cleared, we were moved around in different spots, awaiting for a flanking maneuver from the enemy. They came up on the left flank and snipers had tried to get into place at various spots as well.

I was put in part of a blown up building looking out through an alley. I could hear the machine gun a building over next to me talking constantly. They had something going on. I and the SGT with me, however, had no targets in our limited field of vision. We had to be alert for by the time an enemy was sighted they would have been up on us before we could react. In an urban environment of tight streets, constant turns, people (enemy and non-enemy alike) everywhere around you, cars close, etc... you have to stay ready to act at the blink of an eye. This might explain some of my startle response that I have even now, which always gets laughs from those who see me jump. I hold a little resentment to those who do laugh... it is funny, sure, but it gets old after dozens of times to sheepishly look at the civilian grinning at me because I was startled, spun around, and in a defensive position because of a noise.Why don't they laugh at a person who lost their arm to diabetes and who still tries to grab for something off of the table, only to remember they don't have that limb anymore? Not so funny now, is it? You are laughing at my inability to let some things go, to rewire my brain to relax and to not try and percieve the threats around me all the time. Thanks.

I was moved to the roof. From there I could see further out and I noted some men with rifles trying to cross an area far away. We took pop shots at them. The guy next to me was able to get one. I had a good vantage point of our location. The Iraqi National Guard was gone. When the attack first started they bailed on us. EOD had just showed up and when the attack began and they high tailed it back to base. The engagement was over and had died down. We had killed the mortar team and was really just sitting around as other enemy elements tried to flank us and were shooting at us. Nothing major.

During the course of the fight the civilians had come out on their terraces and doorsteps to watch. They continued to cross the field, cross the street, even while gunfire is zipping past them. They ignore it all and walk through our firefight. It is the damnedest thing I've ever seen. The guy next to me would fire bullets just before the walking oblivious, at the dirt, and cursing loudly for them to run out of the street, only to see the dust kick up in front of them and they person hop over the spot. This was common to a lot of their reactions.

At the intersection I watched as a car would now and then turn onto the street we were on. They would come toward us and then hear the sounds of warning shots from the gun trucks posted on the ground. They would then run off of the road in a hurry to get out of the street. They realized they were in a bad spot and they hastily left. One car, however, did not do this. The car turned and came toward us. The usual hand and arm signals were given for the driver to stop and turn back. It kept coming and a warning shot was fired. The car kept coming. More warning shots. The car sped up. I was on the roof, watching this and had now trained my rifle onto the car. It sped up. I could see the bullets richocet off the pavement. The car sped up. The driver gassed it. When it got to an invisible line that we all know, it was now a threat and we opened fired. Automatic guns and rifles of soldiers in that part of the cirlce, mine also, were put to use. The car came to a halt. Eventually a man got out of the passenger side. He put his hands up. Soldiers were yelling for him to lay down. He did. But soon later he got up again and was in distress. This repeated a few times, him getting up, being told to get down, and finally a rig was sent out to the location to check on the man. He was shot. The driver of the car, his son, was dead. The man would not leave with the soldiers (and we were coverning down the street now as the soldiers were in open view now of the enemy). The man would not leave without the body of his son. The soldiers grabbed it and, having nowhere else to put it, put it over the back of the humvee. As the rig left the scene we were fired on again by the enemy and we returned fire.

We had to get the man to medical attention and so we decided to withdraw from the fight. Had it not been this we would have stayed. Before we could leave a SGT in my squad had to go back out into this area of being targeted by the enemy. Two other SGTs went with him, one was me. We trotted out into the middle of the street, our rifles trained down where the enemy was at. There was a six story building that we had tried to call an Apache strike on because of fire coming from it. The apaches were called someplace else, another firefight the marines were in a couple of clicks away from us. We were now in the middle of the street in plain sight of this building. No cover in a very wide street (think as wide as I-5). There was a sign post in the middle and I was behind it. It was two inches wide. Two inches might save my life. We were fired on and the three of us returned fire. Because we were in front of our gun trucks, they could not fire. So it was just the three of us. Tactially stupid for the PL or the PSG to allow us to go forward like that in front of his automatic weapons. The SGT beside me gave me a hand and arm signal. I misread it and took a few steps forward. I had one thought in mind... to move forward and to kill. The SGT was really telling me to move to his location on the side of the road and that we were going to withdraw. My reaction was like I said, to simply go forward and to kill. One of the guys in the back was watching me and told me later that bullets were hitting the ground around me. I earned their respect that day because I fired my weapon and did not shrink from going into fire. We ran back, hauling ass, and as soon as we crossed an invisible line on the flank, the automatic weapons began talking. As soon as I crossed into the platoon's area, several soldiers grabbed me and began running hands over me and then pulling them back. What they were doing was looking to see if they came back with blood, to see if I was hit. It is a common thing you do when you go through a spot like this. You take your hand and run it up the backs of your legs, your back, the arms, and you look to see if they come back red. Adrenaline dampens pain and soldiers have not realized how bad a wound is until is worse and the battle has ended.

This was a rough memory for me. I have problems with the innocents killed. I have pictures of the body on the back of the humvee. I have pictures of carbomb victims and more. They are not for casual viewing. I bring them out when someone says they want to see war. Really? Here, fill your cursed eyes. I show them to the young privates in my care. A picture is bad... but they are not nearly as bad as real life. Imagine the face of your loved one in a picture. It brings emotions to you. But how much stronger is seeing this face in person? It is the same with horrors of war as well. Pictures cannot approach the bleakness. I show the troops under my care these pics to get them to take my training seriously. I am training them to try to keep them alive, to try to get them to realize that this is real, that lives end.

I was choked up, couldn't speak well, and tears streaming down my face as I recalled these civilians in my therapist's office. I told her that I did not mind killing the guys that blew up a school of kids. I lost no sleep over it. It did not bother me. I came to terms with it. But the deaths of the civilians... it did bother me. I also told her that I've not had any of my troops die under my care. I don't know how would handle one of my soldiers dying. Hopefully I won't have to deal with this added pain in the future.

reply to a rant on Craigslist

2006-06-01T03:41:00.000-07:00

Looking around Craigslist (Portland) on the Rant and Raves section I see a lot of post by liberal and conservative about the Iraq war. Lots of name calling, lots of stupidity on both sides. So I replied a short reply.

Reply to: pers-167036905@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-01, 4:16PM PDT

Going to college at U of O when I saw the Nick Berg video. He was a dumb shit for being over there, but he didn't deserve to die in the manner he did. It also showed me the fanaticism (as if 9/11 wasn't enough) of some of the elements involved. I've got three such videos on my computer to show people who think that everyone in the world just needs a handout, a hug, and some education to become a European-type liberal. Evil exists and it lives in the heart of man. But so does good, and it is good that causes people to go into harms way to, to draw a line in the sand, and to say 'no further'.

I am a former Marine and had been out ten years. I joined again, asked for a rifle, and flew over to Iraq to join the Oregon unit already in Baghdad. First day outside the wire, we got mortared and in a short three hour firefight.

Nobody on this friggin list knows everything that is going on over there. Not the candy-ass liberals that want to give the world a hug, or the foaming-at-the-mouth conservatives that want to invade anyone that disagrees with them.

Guys in my squad were all shades of politics, from far out (man) liberal to Christian Coalition conservative. Some hated President Bush, some loved him. One thing for sure, they love their country and they love the brothers they were fighting next to, and they all believed in doing their job, in why we are there.

Is it possible, just for a second, for those of you stuck in your political spectrum, to think outside of the friggin box for a moment and to see Iraq as the insanely complex event that it is? You can't say that it is all oil, or all humanitarian, or all staegic interest, or many more things. By sticking to your conservative/liberal bias, the lens that you see the world, you limit your understanding. The elements involved in all the different sociological, political, historical, economic, and religious influences on what is going on are enough to study for years and is ample ground for scholars to study. You think that some body on Craigslist, sitting at home, knows anything about Iraq? Get out of the coffee shop and get into a library. If some of the flame posts are from scholars, then they are not posting as such and have lost their academic standards.

Is it possible for the Iraqis to love the American troops and yet want them to leave at the same time? To appreciate them and yet be insanely frustrated by them? What about your local police department. Chances are you are nervous when you see them behind you in the rear view mirror, and perhaps you think there are too many of them. But I bet you are happy to see them when you've been robbed, or you're glad to see one cruise by when you are walking home late at night and see some shady characters watching you.

If you think it is easy to patrol an area the size of Los Angeles, to be friendly to everyone, yet keep ready for car bombs and roadside bombs that are ready to take you out, piloted by people that look like everyone else, you try it. You get jaded and you get complacent and you get paranoid all in one big ball of wax.

Support the troops over there doing the best they can. Mistakes happen, yes. But there are two types of error, one where you die and one where others die. Think it's easy to always act in accordance with the last one? It aint.

Both sides of this debate should reaize that truth in an argument lessens in proportion to the yelling and name calling involved. The more you show your ass, the less you show your brain.

Try being thoughtful and intelligent for a change.

Sgt Black
2-162 C Co Infantry