I think I started cub scouts when I was in second or third grade. That would have been 1988 or 1989.
My grandfather was a WWII Infantryman (Glider Infantry to be exact. And there is a reason you probably don't know much about glider infantry - it was used just once by Americans on D-day and deemed to be a failure and too costly in terms of human life) and he never talked about what he did in the war. This kind of left an air of mystique around what war was to me. My other grandfather was a clerk stationed in Japan during the Korean war. My father was too young for Vietnam (he graduated in 1973 or 1974) so I never knew anything about that war.
I spent much of my childhood playing with G.I. Joe (and legos) and playing out war.
I remember being in 5th grade around the time of the first gulf war in 1991 and I remember watching the footage of the scuds being launched toward Israel. I remember being so proud of our country at that time. I don't remember seeing anything directly about death and the horrors of the war in Iraq. I wouldn't find out more about that war until I was a Junior in high school.
I forget if the mess in Haiti was before or after the Bosnia/Kosovo thing. I remember watching little updates of what was going on in Haiti when I would watch the news in the morning. My brother, father, I would joke that the Army "bagged" another Haitian whenever we'd here something about a firefight and some Haitians were killed. My mother was not amused by this at all.
I was in 9th grade when the Dayton Peace Accord was signed and NATO forces went in to clean up the Balkans. Again, I was proud of our military and our country and I saw Bill Clinton using our military as a force of good. This had a profound effect on me.
When I was 16 and started my junior year of high school, a kid that was a year older than me who washed dished in my parents restaurant enlisted in the Army. He told me and my parents that I could enlist in the Army and do what they called the "split-op" enlistment program. Basically, when I turn 17 years old, my parents could sign a waiver and I could join the Army Reserves. I went to basic training during the summer vacation between my junior and senior year of higschool and I served one weekend a month in the local Army Reserve unit during my senior year of high school. I served as a 91B (combat medic). I could write quite a bit about that experience and what it was like to go back high school after going to basic training (I had a blast, I was a local celebrity of sorts and that was one of the best years of my life).
I was a nerd at heart and I received an Army ROTC scholarship and I went to college to get a degree in chemistry. When it came time for me to select what functional branch I wanted to be within the Army (i.e. medical officer, field artillery officer, military police officer, quartermaster,...) the Colonel in my ROTC unit must have seen something in me and he talked me into being an Infantry Officer. I was in phenomenal shape (two things I've always been good at is physical training (I could run 3 miles in under 19 minutes and I almost held the world record for bench press for a 168 pound man (which used to be 425 pounds at the time)] and shooting). Basically my Colonel mentioned that I would always have my degree to fall back on if/when I got out of the Army so he thought I should use the Army as an opportunity to try something completely different with my life. If I didn't like it, I could just get out and have a lifetime's worth of stories from my time. I really took that conversation to heart and I opted to be an Infantry Officer. I finalized my choice to be an Infantry Officer either the day before or the day of the September 11th attacks in 2001.
I graduated college and received my commission as a Second Lieutenant in May 2002. I spent about the next year training at Fort Benning Georgia where I spent 16 weeks going through the Infantry Officer Basic Course, I went through Ranger School (which kicked my ass), Airborne School, and I completed the Mechanized Infantry Leaders Course. I had about a month of training left to complete when the war broke out in Iraq in April 2003.
I arrived to my unit in Germany in June 2003, right as the unit was returning from a year in Kosovo. I was given a platoon in January of 2004 and I found myself getting deployed to Iraq in February 2004. I spent 13 months in Iraq as an Infantry Platoon leader and, without getting into the details right now, it kicked my ass and completely changed me.
During the year that I was there my platoon was credited with killing 46 people and wounding an astounding number. 5 of the 44 guys in my platoon were killed when I lost a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
I got out of the Army in 2007 and I've been struggling for years with PTSD. I get a lot of help from the VA and I have a 70% disability rating. I could go into some depth about it all what what life is like, but I'll just say that it is a complete struggle at times. Driving to and from work is an adventure, I'm a complete basket case when I'm out in public, and my relationships with my family is crap and I don't have any friends. I've been out of Iraq for about 8 years now and my head is still stuck there. I just can't move on or get away from it no matter how much I try.
Even though I don't have the time or energy to talk about how the war impacted me, I really need to get that out there. I'll have to save that for another post.
I don't really know what my point is, but I suspect that I really want to get it out there that believing war and service to your country is a good thing is a very dangerous and destructive path. Yes, the war is out there and talked about on TV, but nothing is really shown about the true horrors of the war. So much of what is shown on TV is sterilized. You don't see pictures of maimed, dying, and dead men, women, and children that the war produces. The pictures of flag-draped coffins aren't there either. The only thing we in America have to look at is some spiffy looking monument showing Soldiers in all of their glory - which presents the wrong impression of war. I think that monuments for war should focus on those who pay for it - the civilians and even more so the children. If/when they get around to making a monument for my war in Iraq, I want to see one of dead unarmed male Iraqi lying face down on the dirt with his crying wife in a burqa sitting indian style next to him holding a mangled and dead toddler in her lap, face up with it's mouth and eyes stuck open and gasping. That would be an image that would make nobody think the war in Iraq was a good thing.
= new reply since forum marked as read
for respect.
