part0034

The other day, as I prepared dinner, my young daughter ran into the kitchen and tried to get my attention. Even though I heard her bare feet slapping the ceramic-tile floor and her little voice call out for me, I didn’t react. My mind was somewhere else, fighting a war that I shouldn’t be fighting anymore. Sometimes the past overtakes the present; it whispers doubt and despair into my ear. Sometimes this happens often. And while I don’t know how much my daughter will know about my military service by the time she is old enough to read this, I am sure that somewhere along the way she will realize that her father is different from other parents. My combat experience left an indelible mark, a stain, really, on both of our lives.

I was a twenty-five-year-old Marine sergeant when my unit deployed to Iraq. I’d spent years training for the opportunity to fight an enemy. Whether it was reading books on tactics or conducting martial arts classes for my unit, my life up to that point had been spent studying war and honing my fighting skills. Knowing we were about to invade a country that had a sizable opposition force made me extremely happy. Most, if not all, of my unit felt exactly the way I did.

Marines are a unique assemblage of ruffians who take pride in being Marines. People don’t usually join the Marine Corps to learn a trade or to get free college. People typically join because they want to fight: Marines want nothing more than a war. And that was about to come to fruition. What I didn’t know was that those of us who survived combat would still have a price to pay.

Certain sights haunt me more than others. And these are the gruesome images that cause my mind to drift. These are the things that mentally pull me away from my family and friends.

We were a sandstorm of destruction rolling across Mesopotamia, a swarm of locusts devouring the land. Death was everywhere. Every breath we took seemed like a gift. Bloated bodies lined ancient roads like trash piles of flesh. They festered in the desert sun and became meals for packs of dogs. I stood in a vehicle that was painted red with the blood of US Marines. None had made it out alive. Those sights were from just the first few days of our combat deployment.

Sometime after the Battle of An Nasiriyah, which was one of the biggest fights of the initial invasion of Iraq, my unit came across a white passenger bus. The bus sat in the desert, a mere hundred yards off the blacktop road, and about a half mile away from a small village. Its tires were deflated, and the side that faced the road was pockmarked. It leaned toward us, like it had a secret it wanted to share. I pulled a disposable camera from my camouflaged CamelBak and snapped a photo. My mind did the same.

Marines got out of their vehicles. The infantry secured the perimeter. I waited in the turret of one of the amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs) I commanded, behind a .50-caliber machine gun and MK 19 grenade launcher. These instruments of death had already proven themselves in An Nasiriyah, and both stood ready for my command to spit out their venom again. Our unit inched closer, then stopped in front of the passenger bus. Pieces of cloth hung from the shattered windows and moved gently in the soft breeze. Something seemed off. I reached down and caressed my machine gun’s butterfly trigger.

About a hundred people from the small village had gathered behind our convoy. They were clearly agitated. Some yelled and shook their fists in the air. Others appeared to be sobbing. I called over the radio to my Marines, told them to stay alert, and then traversed the AAV’s turret so it faced the bus. I trained a pair of binoculars on the bus.

The pieces of cloth hanging from the windows were the clothes of innocent Iraqi women and children. Some of the children had been small babies still in their mother’s arms. Some were toddlers, about the same age my daughter is now. All were dead, pulverized by gunfire. Their fathers would never get to hear those little bare feet slapping tiled floors again. Their little voices would never call out for anyone again. Iraqi soldiers had loaded the bus full of women and children and then used them as human shields. When a convoy of Marines approached the bus, the Iraqi soldiers began to shoot. The Marines returned fire and killed everybody on board. The Marines didn’t have any way of knowing what they were doing, that the bus was full of civilians, or that they were being goaded into killing innocent people. They saw gunfire and reacted. US Marines are efficient killers, and that unit proved that fact.

Even though it was horrible to see, one of the images that really stuck with me about that incident was the bus’s windshield wipers. They, along with a sole uniformed survivor, were the only things that made it through the shootout. The man lay in the desert injured; the windshield wipers swept uneasily across what was left of the windshield. I wanted somebody to turn off the wipers and to shoot the man who helped facilitate the bloodbath. We did neither. Instead, we loaded up and drove off. As we pulled away, the villagers closed in. They wanted to retrieve their dead. They wanted to exact revenge on the one Iraqi soldier who had survived. Whatever they did to that Iraqi soldier probably wasn’t good.

The windshield wipers never stopped moving.

I wish I could say that was the worst thing I saw or did in Iraq, but it wasn’t. There was still plenty of death to witness and cause. Dead children. Dead Marines. Dead dogs. Dead emotions. Iraq stole a piece of me. Fifteen years later, and I still find myself mentally traveling back to that Middle Eastern war zone. I think about war, write about war, and, at times, dream about war. The images are as vivid as the day I first saw them.

It has gotten dark for me, really dark. Panic attacks, insomnia, and depression have been constant companions. At first, I drank heavily, which only compounded my issues, so I stopped. After a few years of dealing with the war on my own, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress (PTS). While it has been called many things over the years—soldier’s heart, shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—doctors recently concluded that PTS isn’t a disorder but rather a natural reaction to unnatural events. War veterans don’t have a monopoly on it, either. Trauma is trauma no matter where it is experienced. And I experienced my fair share of trauma in Iraq. It oozed from my pores.

For years, I tried everything to forget what I saw, but nothing could erase the memories. But with the work I did inside myself, I realized and accepted that remembering is okay, too. The pain, the memory, and the carnage all deserve a spot in my brain. The war is a part of me, it has given me a voice, and it has molded my thinking. I am who I am because of it.

But I refuse to let the trauma define me. Instead of running from PTS, I own it. I might be a former US Marine who has to sleep with a light on, but I am not broken. Hardened by trauma, yes, but not broken.

There are still days that I feel as if I am teetering on the brink of insanity. There are still days that I find myself wading through the darkest regions of my brain, dredging up memories that are best left untouched. Still, I refuse to allow this to break me. I refuse to allow the depression to win. I am alive. I say it out loud. I remind myself that while life is filled with painful moments, it is mainly beautiful.

I live life one day at a time. Today is a good day. Tomorrow might not be. I have to get better and have to make sure that I continue to take the appropriate steps to recover from the trauma. My little blond-haired daughter deserves a father who lives in the present. So I meditate: inhale positive thoughts, exhale the negative. I try to focus on the beauty that surrounds me. Whatever it takes. I will not let Iraq win. I will not let that experience destroy my family or me.