Four years have passed since I first was introduced to war. Four years have dulled my memories, and the emotions connected with them have faded. Yet the urge to purge my mind of those unforgettable days that have since and forever influenced my attitude on life, to come to terms with the weight upon my conscience, still gnaws at the edge of my waking mind. Several times I have started and failed to complete this written record of my experience, having always dreaded the confrontation with painful remembrances and doubting whether my small part in the greater story constituted a portion much worth telling. In the twilight of my third deployment to Iraq, the personally held importance of doing so has not seemed to lessen. I know mine is not an uncommon story. I know that if I have suffered, I have not done so to any greater degree than many millions who have shared in the conflict since the war began in 2003, and certainly not more so than have the veterans of previous wars. There are many dead men whose stories deserve to be told more than mine. The triviality, the selfishness, of sharing my small role feels almost shameful. But I can no longer deny my compulsion to complete this task, to glean from the pages of my wartime journal a work worthy of preserving the memory of the lives destroyed around me. I hope as well that the peace I seek may come if I can at last give voice to my thoughts and account to myself, to whatever constitutes my feeling of the presence of God, and to the ghosts of war.
This is the story of my preliminary wartime experience. These are my memories of life as a member of one of the U.S. Army’s three-man tactical psychological operations teams (TPTs). While attached in support of the United States Marine Corps’ 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, and 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, operating along the Euphrates river valley in western Iraq’s Anbar desert during the spring and summer of 2005, I witnessed what was at that time some of the most vicious counterinsurgency fighting of Operation Iraqi Freedom since Fallujah.
I do not claim to be a historian, or even to have been privy to the big picture of the war reserved for the generals and their staff. Nothing I did was heroic or changed the course of history or any battle. Mine was the perspective of a low-ranking sergeant, isolated from the media’s reports and influenced by the stresses of fatigue, fear, and moral uncertainty. Doubtless there are details in the collective record of the war’s participants I am unaware of or have forgotten. Others may remember the same events differently. Some things, as well, should frankly not be said. But as for the memories of one soldier who was there, what follows is what really happened.