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The most frequent recursion in the Army is the feeling of uncertainty. My personal experience with uncertainty mostly had it manifested into two forms while I was in... it began as "I wonder if I am going to die doing this?" to "I wonder when I am going to die doing this?"
"I wonder if I am going to die doing this?" was what I asked myself for my first three deployments. I asked myself this, but never honestly considered the possibility of it happening because I was still young and had a young person's mentality. Combat was still a relatively new phenomenon for myself, and I was still entertaining delusions of invincibility, not just for myself but for the entirety of our unit. After all, we were the fiercest fighting force in all of Iraq/Afghanistan when night fell, and we did all the killing when it had to be done, not the other way around. There were sometimes periods of introspection before a big mission when I would question whether I would or wouldn't exist four hours from that moment. These personal meditations were usually held in the ready rooms while I was loading extra ammunition and additional variety of grenades in anticipation of the impending firefights for the bigger occasions. Aside from these brief meditations, my death was merely a fleeting 'what if,' and nothing seriously considered.
This attitude would slowly whittle away after seeing the unfortunate and inevitable results of armed conflict, as well as the gradual accumulation of knowledge I acquired as I progressed through the ranks and further soaked in the deployment environments. I eventually came to realize that I was just really fucking fortunate to be alive, and that despite all the millions of tiny little things that could go wrong in combat operations, I had every time escaped having my wig split or my legs blown off.
I think what set off the shift in my uncertain mentality was when somebody I knew was killed near the end of my third deployment. I still remember the conversation I had during his last breakfast meal. We were in two different platoons, and I was telling him about how our platoon had scored enough CAT-5 cable to set up a small LAN network to get our nerd on with Halo 3 (terrible game, but desperate times call for desperate measures), and how we were having 10-15 man Halo parties and that he should join in on the festivities. The conversation shifted from Halo 3 to how fucked up all the new guys in our unit were (we were becoming 'old-timers' at this point) to his family and his future in the Army. This was his last intended combat deployment, as he had just had a son and wanted to invest more time and effort into his family life by taking up a non-deployable training job elsewhere in the Army. This stuck out to me because most people suppress any notion of leaving our unit for a more cushy position... it's a sign of a lack of dignity or being a quitter. His commitment to raising his family transcended the sometimes unforgiving culture of our unit, and I respected that.
He would die less than 24 hours later. It was later brought to light that a maybe some intel guys might not have briefed the entirety of the enemy situation for this particular mission (fuck intel guys), which led to the assault force taking more risks than they should have. My friend was running off the helicopter that he was on and took an AK-47 round right above an eyebrow almost immediately. You don't survive headshots from an AK.
You eventually come to witness the people that you grew up with in your unit being killed or maimed. The longer you stay in, the more of this you see. You start to realize that the odds of the same happening to you are relatively high. You start to get a little paranoid and cynical: you haven't ever eaten shrapnel from a grenade, let alone being shot, so you're probably going to die in the most grandiose and dramatic fashion... you come to accept your inevitable death in this line of work ("those who live by the gun die by the gun"), but the only thing you're anxious about is when it's going to happen.
By the time the fourth deployment rolled around, I was convinced that I wasn't going to come back to America a conscious human being. Before every mission, I'd come to grips with the fact that I might not be alive a few hours from that moment, and made peace with myself by reaffirming my belief of having no debts to humanity or personal regrets. I would listen to some ambient music, cool my resolve, then load up the helicopter to go out and conduct business.
While out conducting business, I generally lost myself too much in the work involved to wonder about my mortality. There were, however, moments where my existence was certainly made more aware to me and heightened. For example, in a particularly heavy IED environment, I would think to myself "Welp, this is the last step I'm ever going to take because I'm about to plant my foot on a fucking IED," before each step.
Probably the most negligent I've been because of this defeatist perspective on things was a particular time we were under indirect fire. The fire was consistent all day, with an accurate shelling coming in every 5-10 minutes for most of the daylight that we were pinned to this compound we were in. On one of the shift rotations to man machine guns along the perimeter wall, I, being the 'dead man walking' that I was, nonchalantly strolled to my position I was to assume. Bear in mind, when I say accurate, I mean accurate to the point where the indirect fire was literally on top of the roofs of the compound that we were in. It didn't occur to me how stupid this action was until sometime in the middle of my shift while I was scanning the distance I realized that I was at that point being a massive piece of shit liability to the force for being reckless.
I am fortunate to be alive. Life has certainly been good to me. And as stressful as this might have all sounded, I sometimes want to go back to war. You never feel as alive as you do when you're so close to death.
 
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Wow, respect to you man.
I can't understand what it like to have your life on the line everytime you walk out into combat but I can get a feel of... i guess anxiousness before you head out on a mission. I know some people receive a bit of counseling after being in the army for a bit too long.
It's pretty good that you've come up and talked about it in your blog. If you feel that you should live your life differently (ie: outside of combat), then there's no shame in that.
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shit
mad respect to you
ppl who directly/indirectly belittle the shit armed forces go through suck
5/5
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This is incredibly well written.
I hope things are going alright for you. I can't imagine what it must feel like to know your existence is reliant on the constant vigilance and excellence of those around you. I think I would be terrified of being responsible for someone's death.
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I'm sitting here wanting to say something witty or clever, try and lighten the mood, but nothing really comes to mind. Good job staying alive, and do remember that you ARE still alive. Only did 14 months myself, but I know (a bit) what you're going through.
Oddly enough, our most catastrophic event occurred while I was in the rear playing Halo 2 :/
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Thank you for sharing, well written. It's hard for me to imagine, sitting here safe on computer.
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Oops, wrong blog. Sorry bout that.
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I've never been to war, but I know the feeling when you know that 1 inch closer was the difference of being dead or alive. Everyday I look into the mirror and here it is, the scar that reminds me that I was very close to be dead. I don't know how to express this feeling, but you know your time was up and you are living a time bonus and I don't know how to face that fact.
I hope you get back to your home and your family, and I hope you have long lasting life full of happiness and I hope you don't get this feeling that I have... it just feels like a hand on your chest that is pushing you very deep but it does not hurt.. it just stay there and you don't know why.
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Thanks for serving man. Be safe and take care.
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And then someone chimes in--- why did we go to war? better yet, why havent we NOT been in war since the revolutionary war?
i hate talking about war because it offends those who serve in the military... but i personally know people who wanted to enlist just to kill people.. cmon? thats fucking stupid. and fighitng wars for terrorism.... WAR ON TERROR!!! something that will never cease to exist, and something you can never point a finger on directly... Terrorism will never be stopped.. in fact there's terrorists right in the USA at this present moment, and id bet my bottom dollar on it
THAT in my opinion, is more offensive than anything someone could say about the armed forces.. because whether or not you serve in the military, you aren't the one who says go attack.
now we want to fight iran, and anyone with a brain will look at history and realize we've rarely, if not at all, been out of some form of war for over two hundred years.
also, most people say that "OH, the miltary helps me with XXX and gives me $XXXX to sign up!" .. yah who the fuck would sign up if they didnt give you 100 things of incentive
in light of it all, im sure it taught discipline and hard work for you, but I personally would never join the armed forces...thats like putting your hand in fire then complaining it hurts.
how can someone honestly say they die for our country when 99% of us dont even know how our country is truly run and who is really pulling the strings
but i do respect the sacrifices our soldiers have made in the past... but...to me, Iraq and Afghanistan are another Vietnam.. and we all know how that turned out. an unwinnable war. how many lives do we have to sacrifice before we realize this... its all a sick game. kind of like how we supplied germany with steel in world war 2 to make their panzer tanks.. lmfao,
the world is run by money, and nothing else. war makes money.
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Having read both your blogs I wonder why you kept going back? what was your motivation? self defence is an important idea to me and I would enlist the day my country was invaded but even in my wildest dreams America would not fall to a land invasion
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On April 04 2012 20:38 Th1rdEye wrote:
And then someone chimes in--- why did we go to war? better yet, why havent we NOT been in war since the revolutionary war?
i hate talking about war because it offends those who serve in the military... but i personally know people who wanted to enlist just to kill people.. cmon? thats fucking stupid. and fighitng wars for terrorism.... WAR ON TERROR!!! something that will never cease to exist, and something you can never point a finger on directly... Terrorism will never be stopped.. in fact there's terrorists right in the USA at this present moment, and id bet my bottom dollar on it
THAT in my opinion, is more offensive than anything someone could say about the armed forces.. because whether or not you serve in the military, you aren't the one who says go attack.
now we want to fight iran, and anyone with a brain will look at history and realize we've rarely, if not at all, been out of some form of war for over two hundred years.
also, most people say that "OH, the miltary helps me with XXX and gives me $XXXX to sign up!" .. yah who the fuck would sign up if they didnt give you 100 things of incentive
in light of it all, im sure it taught discipline and hard work for you, but I personally would never join the armed forces...thats like putting your hand in fire then complaining it hurts.
how can someone honestly say they die for our country when 99% of us dont even know how our country is truly run and who is really pulling the strings
but i do respect the sacrifices our soldiers have made in the past... but...to me, Iraq and Afghanistan are another Vietnam.. and we all know how that turned out. an unwinnable war. how many lives do we have to sacrifice before we realize this... its all a sick game. kind of like how we supplied germany with steel in world war 2 to make their panzer tanks.. lmfao,
the world is run by money, and nothing else. war makes money.
I'm not going to say you do or don't have a point, because this is not the place. This has absolutely no relevance to the OP. Please start your own blog, then we can discuss.
The men and women who serve are the most noble and courageous of all. Without people like you, our country (no matter how fucked up it might be) would not be what it is today. In fact, no country would. Mad props to the OP. 5/5
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Long life to you sir, and thanks for keeping our homelands safe.
5/5
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On April 04 2012 16:51 SOyuncastor wrote:
I've never been to war, but I know the feeling when you know that 1 inch closer was the difference of being dead or alive. Everyday I look into the mirror and here it is, the scar that reminds me that I was very close to be dead. I don't know how to express this feeling, but you know your time was up and you are living a time bonus and I don't know how to face that fact.
I hope you get back to your home and your family, and I hope you have long lasting life full of happiness and I hope you don't get this feeling that I have... it just feels like a hand on your chest that is pushing you very deep but it does not hurt.. it just stay there and you don't know why.
May I ask what exactly happened?
On April 04 2012 20:49 JooliaGillard wrote:
Having read both your blogs I wonder why you kept going back? what was your motivation? self defence is an important idea to me and I would enlist the day my country was invaded but even in my wildest dreams America would not fall to a land invasion
A few reasons. First, I was bound my contract... you can't just up and out of the Army. There are some things you just have to own up because you volunteered to do so. You could make the argument that I could have tried to transfer to some non-deployable position or maybe even fake the funk and feign insanity or something, but I was a single and able-bodied man in an all-volunteer unit short of personnel. I think it would have been too selfish to just abandon people because I wasn't comfortable or disagreed with the situations in Iraq/Afghanistan. I stayed until my enlistment ended because of the friends I made and the will to help out the unit overall overseas.
I know these blogs I have written paint a pretty melancholic perspective of things, but that's because I feel most compelled to write when I'm in a depressed or very introspective mood. In actuality, the nature of the job is very stimulating and honestly a lot of fun. Despite all the negatives that come from armed conflict, there are very positive and gratifying things that come from this line of work.
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Being an intel guy I understand how much the guys leaving the FOB hate us. Trust me, when you don't have shitbags for intel we are actually striving to give you the best information possible.
Your blogs have been great for providing insight to the views of the men on the ground. I'm glad you made it back.
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EPT
