I volunteered every day to be point man in the minefields. You walk to see if there’s a mine. And everybody else has to walk in your footprint. The footprint is safe, everything else is not safe. And in six weeks out of the 40 men in our platoon, we lost 24 feet. So in effect, if you do the math, you have four a week blowing a foot off…and screaming for their mother. The images of feet flying thru the air remain. And the screams.
I was hyper. Not knowin’ I was hyper.; I was anxious; not knowin’ I was anxious.; I was depressed; not knowin’ I was depressed.; I had no idea what was happening to me and my body.; I used to be so nuts; I’d answer the phone; I used to say; Nut house. Paul speakin.; It made me laugh.; I was so depressed.
I could complain for hours about how hard it is being a female in the military. But at the same time, there are still so many rewards, so many benefits.
Like the feeling of meeting your best friends everywhere you turn. And you know that you can trust them. You have people who would give you the clothes off their back, or would stay late to help you out or would literally die for you.... You just accept, that’s what I would do for them and that’s what they would do for me.
standing in front of the board writing. It must have been biology class because the word that I couldn’t figure out how to spell was “nut.” And I’m like, “How do you spell nut?” “N. U. T.”
There are always some who don’t know or some that think I’m kidding and some who say, “No, he’s serious. He was in Iraq. He’ll go PTSD on you.” They said that to somebody once. It was pretty funny.
I found it hard to be a civilian…I was expected to do things on my own. Was expected to make my dinner make my lunch, get up, do laundry, all without being told. That was kind of hard. Sometimes you just miss the get up and still have someone else tell you what to do today. Just don’t make any decisions. But I’m getting older now, those are things you got to do, no one’s going to do them for you.
I’d be proud if my daughter served. It’s not worth losing her, but I think it’s worth serving. I think it’s the right thing to do.
A lot of Vietnam vets never really had a chance. Fire your weapon for 12 months, go home and be normal. Yeah, right. Of course!
It’s pretty cool. Things you do in the service are pretty cool. Some things you do in the service are pretty horrendous, but you shrug it off because it’s part of being cool and you’re young and indestructible. So you think you’re doing a vital service.
I hate being around people. I can’t be around people a long time. Five minutes.... Because they’re laughing, they’re making noise. I can’t take it. I just get up and leave....
Civilians are so dumb, Civilians don’t know what they’re doing. They’re lost. They don’t have a structure.... In the military you learn that. Yes, I suffered, but that’s part of it. At least you’ve done your duty.
One of the horrors of war is that when I was aiming my rifle, and sometimes I’d hit them and sometimes not, but whefn I saw them fall, I didn’t feel for them as fellow men. And that’s one of the horrors of war. I believe it’s the main reason why the military wants young people. It’s not so much for their strength or endurance, but for the fact that they haven’t except in rare cases, developed empathy. To me, the men that I shot at were targets, not people.
I take Lamotrigine, Sertraline. Those are the two biggest ones. Tramadol. There’s a couple others in there I can’t pronounce. I got a whole medicine shop in my bathroom. When I don’t take my Lamotradine and my Sertraline my mind starts to wander in such a manic depressive way, very up and down, up and down, but mostly down, to where somebody could do or say something where I’d snap and beat the hell out of them.
Every day’s a struggle for me now. I would say the most uneasy feeling is walking around without a weapon in my hand. Because you see so much shit in Iraq. And I’m not saying I want to walk around with a shotgun and hurt people, I just want to have it so I feel comfortable. A lot of us have that feeling. You know, not to hurt people but mainly for terrorists. You know if we see a terrorist. We see what they’re capable of. Just everything makes me uncomfortable.
I care about my guys. That’s all I care about. I care about those fifteen guys and that’s it. I’m sure it’s gonna piss people off, but I don’t give a shit about Iraq or Afghanistan. They could blow themselves up, fight each other, I don’t care. But as soon as you send some of my brothers there, that’s what I care about. That’s what makes me care about the war. I’m going do the best I can to bring those guys home.
I ended up crying, without knowing what I was crying about. I’d go out to the warehouse and get behind a bunch of boxes where nobody could see me. And just cry and cry and cry.
I did a very good job of burying my emotions. I didn’t physically act out,
I just withdrew. There were situations with my children, my wife would have to deal with them and I would basically go into myself and all but disappear.
You know that could have been someone’s father, someone’s brother, someone’s son. But now coming back I tell myself, I am someone’s son. I am someone’s father. I am someone’s brother. I had to do what I had to do. I forgive myself. Yeah, I do. It’s taken me a while to do it. You’re only going to beat yourself up and how can I change it? It’s not like I can go back and do CPR on someone I shot in the chest three times.
It shook my brain. My sense of motion is off. Like I walk left and as I’m walking left, I try to go straight, and I keep going left. So I call it a sense of motion. Like whoa, I can’t stop turning left.
That Iraqi father carrying his child. He was like babbling, and just kind of off in the middle of nowhere. It was like he was praying or something, and he had his dead son. He was carrying him down the street … it was like a movie. Then right after he passed, it was time to move out…. But that image, it’s never ever gone. It’s hard to explain. It’s just always there.
Andrew chose not to speak about what he witnessed or what he did in Iraq.
