John Wall was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but grew up outside Birmingham, Alabama. A lot of men on his father’s side of the family attended West Point. He is named after his great-grandfather, a West Point graduate (class of 1911). John graduated from West Point in May of 2006 and served with the 82nd Airborne as an infantry platoon leader. He got out in January of 2012, with the rank of captain.
Our job is to deliver food and medicine and perform pop-up medical examinations for the locals—all without getting blown up.
Killed.
And that’s a really hard thing to reconcile: risking our lives to help people who also want to kill us.
It’s 2006, and the IED threat here in Afghanistan is massive. The thing that scares me the most—scares my men—is the actual driving when we go out of the wire. The uncertainty of what might be waiting for us on the road, the randomness of the attacks—you know it’s going to happen to you at some point; you just don’t know when.
Helmand, the largest province in Afghanistan, is a well-known Taliban stronghold. For the past twenty days, instead of doing humanitarian missions, we’ve been traveling in a huge armored convoy running resupply missions and providing combat support to our other line companies who are fighting to take control of the province. We’ve taken over the city, and the Taliban has fled to the nearby villages.
Now we’re traveling from village to village, performing dismounted operations where we get out of our vehicles and go look for the bad guys. The people who live in these villages are supposed to be gone, but we find out that a lot of them stayed behind, making it really difficult for us to differentiate the Taliban from the civilians.
We’ve taken a lot of fire, a lot of casualties. My men are tired and keyed up as we head into another village. Coming in as their platoon leader two months ago was overwhelming. I didn’t have any credibility as a young lieutenant, and that can create some adversity—even more if you’re a West Pointer like me. All these guys had combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I didn’t. Fortunately, I had a great platoon sergeant, a multiple Silver Star winner, who took me under his wing and smoothed the transition.
We’ve now been involved in multiple firefights. I’ve earned their respect, and they’ve come to trust me as their platoon leader.
When we started out that morning, it was dark. Now it’s light. Up ahead, I can see a bridge going over a small creek. We can’t drive over it because there might be an IED. The only way forward is to drive down into a wadi, which is basically a dry riverbed.
The vehicle I’m in, an armored Humvee, goes first. As we drive down, I’m scanning the area for the enemy, any threat. I’m waiting for the sound of gunfire. In those moments, ten seconds seems like ten minutes. It’s almost like watching a movie in slow motion, frame by frame. It’s the most surreal thing when—
BOOM.
The explosion comes directly behind me. I turn and see the armored Humvee carrying our interpreter and our FSNCO (fire support NCO), Sergeant David J. Drakulich, being pushed up into the air.
The convoy comes to a full stop.
Our interpreter and a few soldiers riding inside the Humvee are wounded.
David Drakulich, my good friend, is dead.
An IED explosion affects everyone differently—even more so when guys get hurt and killed and you can’t find who’s responsible for the bomb. And then there’s the fact that you still have a mission to do. The mission must continue.
When we get back to the base, I address my men in a group and then try to talk to them individually. I try to figure out their needs, whether they’re angry or extremely sad, if they were scared when it happened and if they’re still scared now. I’ve got thirty-five different people, with different backgrounds and different feelings, and the hardest part is figuring out how to motivate and take care of each soldier. Everyone looks for leadership in a crisis.
Drakulich, I’m told, wasn’t killed by an IED but from an anti-tank mine. I could have just as easily driven over it.
I’ve been struggling with undirected feelings of aggression, and now I feel an enormous sense of survivor’s guilt.
I’m also told that Drakulich’s parents have already been notified through the proper channels. As his platoon leader, it’s my job to call and explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to their son. I’ve never met his parents, which is going to make this phone call even more difficult.
The hardest part is answering their questions. Because a lot of information is classified, I’m only allowed to say certain things. I have to work hard to find a middle ground that will give them the closure they need without overstepping my bounds.
It’s the first of many such phone calls I’ll make over the course of my military career.
Talking to families who lose loved ones, trying to comfort them—it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I did a great job with some. With others, questions will always weigh on me. Did I handle the situation appropriately? Am I doing the best I can to take care of them? Do they want to be called on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, anniversaries, and so forth? I want to be respectful, but I never want to reopen the wound.
No matter what they teach you at West Point, in basic training, at Ranger school—none of it ever prepares you for how to handle these situations in the moment. Or how to go on living with them.