I am writing this book on Steemit, and will be adding to it daily. The process of reliving a lot of these events is taxing on me emotionally, but I feel that some may benefit from hearing the struggle that so many of us veterans endure when we take off the uniform and begin the next fight for our lives --- "the battle for our minds".
This is the seventh part to this novel. If you would like to start from the beginning, please click here: (Part 1)
Soldiers get what is called “Quarters” when they are sick or injured while in the states. It is like having a sick day in the civilian world where they get to stay at home. Due to the nature of our servitude, we are really the property of the Army. It used to bug the shit out of me while we were deployed when I had to get some paperwork done, I would call JBAD, where our personnel office was located, and if I called say, 1:00 pm on a Saturday, I would get no answer. They worked some weird stateside, shift-work on the larger bases.
To them, I am willing to bet that their deployment was full of nightmares of cold food or missing their favorite television show on the Armed Forces Network. That is cable for the deployed military. We did not have the luxury of a day off, so hearing that someone took a day off pissed me off like no other. Shit, we were in combat, not some summer camp. I do not know how the other half lives, only my perception on how it must be. I never had the luxury of safety while deployed. My room was made of plywood, in a building made of more plywood. I used to fear an enemy round hitting our building in our sleep and would replay possible scenarios that could result. There was nothing you could do for this fear, but to block it out. The walls were filled with bullet holes from past attacks as a reminder to how dangerous our living situation was.
Immediately after the attack had subsided, I had to reorganize my manning for my gun crews. I had deployed with 33 people, and had already lost one due to him being shipped back to the states so he could transition out of the service. The gun crews had to be manned by a minimum of seven crew members. There are a lot of moving pieces on a Howitzer, and each position has a vital role for the safe functioning of the weapon. I had a few support troops that were attached to us. I had a medic and two mechanics. Their job was not to fire a weapon in combat, but when the situation dictates, that is exactly what they do. I pulled both of my mechanics together and asked them, “How do you feel about joining Gun Four’s crew?” The look on their face was priceless. Like a blank stare!
They had been witness to the attack, so they knew exactly the danger involved in becoming a “gun bunny” as we were sometimes referred to. This asking, turned into a telling activity. Since we were down six soldiers and had two on leave, it left my available population below the minimum manning by one soldier, I told H-Town that his crew would be substituted by myself in case a call for fire came down.
It wasn’t even two hours after the attack that the call would come. A team of insurgents were spotted on a hilltop that was adjacent to our COP. Those in the TOC were tracking these guys as they were walking along a trail. They had weapons in hand, but here is the crazy part of combat. Having a weapon, even an RPG in hand is not enough to allow for positive identification, or PID. We had to have PID on an enemy combatant as in they had to be engaging Americans or coalition forces before we could fire on them.
The Infantry Commander was one of those “straight by the book” types. His guys had not been wounded earlier that day, so to him, there was no conviction to seek out revenge. We were on another level with this. We wanted revenge. We had heard back from our detachment at Jalalabad, that both of our wounded were stable and were expected to make a full recovery. So revenge was on all of our minds.
The Infantry Commander was only about a month from redeploying his company, and an investigation, if he gave the wrong call, could have cost him his freedom as well. I understand now, but I did not then. He allowed us to fire two White Phosphorus (WP) smoke rounds at this group. We wanted to fire high explosive or HE rounds as they have a higher propensity of killing the enemy, but when in doubt, the careful use of a round designed for screening that drops pieces of ignited phosphorus all over the impact area, can have pretty much the same effect.
The WP round is a dangerous combination of smoke and fire! It gives a smoke layer that is pretty distinguishable and extremely dense. The white plume of smoke that ensues is good screening. It is considered one of our non-lethal rounds, but let me tell you, these rounds will maim and kill just as good as a high explosive round. Maybe not as quickly, but who chooses quickly with an enemy who would just as well cut your damn head off if they had the chance?
The thoughts of, “let these motherfuckers burn”, are all that came over my thought processes at the time. We were out for revenge! The rest of the deployment was a cat and mouse game of indirect fires versus indirect fires. They feared us, and we knew this! It was not uncommon for one of my guys to come and ask me, “Smoke, should we take cover?” I would ask, “What do you mean”?
Small arms were fired sporadically upon our gun pit from time to time. You would hear the snapping sound of the bullets fired next to you, or overhead. This used to piss me off like no other! Not the bullets being fired, but the fact that my guys would come to ask me to take cover. I would always tell them, “If bullets are flying overhead, take cover!” I hated that they felt the need to get their actions approved by me in order to do what was necessary.
We attacked them where they fought, and for a while during the summer of 2012, everything fell silent. This was not due only to our actions, but a combination of us and the other units at our location, like the Infantry Company and the SF group. The SF group were “BAD ASSES”. These guys had this truck that they had somehow configured into a serious fighting vehicle. This intimidating piece of military hardware looked like it was designed by Dr. Frankenstein. This thing had a M240B machine gun, and a mini-gun mounted on the truck bed where one crewman could man both weapon systems.
They switched between this mini-gun and their MK19 grenade machine gun. That is exactly what it sounds like! It shoots 40mm grenades in rapid succession. They had all the cool gadgets that most people see on television or movies. Our guys were always trying to get a chance to shoot one of their toys. There were corner “drug deals” going on that involved promises of allowing one of their operators to pull the lanyard on one of our big guns during a fire mission in exchange for some trigger time on one of their guns.
I took mid-tour leave at our half-way point in April. I had no Gunnery Sergeant, so I had to work out a deal with another Platoon Sergeant to have his Gunnery Sergeant fly over to assume my Platoon while I left and came back. This was a chore in itself, but one day, he just showed up. I was going to leave the following week, but the opportunity arose so I took it, and grabbed my bags only to wait on the landing zone to attempt to catch a ride to JBAD.
How we moved in Afghanistan was pretty surreal, in retrospect. The United States has arrangements with other countries who provide services in the war zone. You had the Canadians with Molson Air, who shuttled people up and down the Kunar River valley during the daylight. They flew these old Huey type helicopters that were a distinguishable blue color. They seated about 4 passengers, and ran on schedules that were posted on our secured internet webpage.
They did not land everyday, but we could always gauge how many open seats they had by tracking the manifest from the point of origin. We would stick out our thumbs, and beg for a ride in a sense. These guys were great, and always accommodating. I was not on a manifest due to the 72-hour advance needed to add a person, but I was determined to make the trip home to see my wife and kids as quickly as possible, as all I was thinking about was getting back to my men. Leave was made mandatory for us, and some were forced to start taking their "mid-tour" leave starting the second month we had gotten into Afghanistan.
Traveling in the war zone is quite frustrating. You have little control over the flights, and are for the most part, homeless. They have tents available for transient service members, but still the waiting game is what it is about. Just you and your thoughts. I started realizing that my thought processes had changed when I arrived on JBAD. I went to our detachment’s office when I landed, and got my leave form from them. I then had to wait till the next day for the next flight to one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan, Bagram Airfield (BAF).
That is the main hub for transit to and from Afghanistan. I had hit the “fear” a couple of days after the attack on my guys. This is that sinking feeling you get when you feel impending doom. It is felt in your gut, and is hard to shake. Initially, my actions were not viewed as dangerous. Like I mentioned before, we were getting attacked when all the actions were taking place that day. I have a wife and three kids, so naturally, when I had time to look back on what had transpired that day, I began to fear getting hit without warning.
I am a smoker, so I would walk out of the command post to smoke a cigarette from time to time. When I noticed this “fear”, that is exactly what I was doing. I was just outside sitting on a wooden bench that someone had built somewhere down the line, and this feeling of impending doom overcame me. It was the strongest sense of fear I have ever had. I am not a psychologist, so I do not know if that was my mind decompressing the events from a couple of days before, or if it was a delayed reaction. All I know is that the fear I felt, was immense. I couldn’t sit out in the open for quite a long time after that attack. My troops would see me smoking in one of the bunkers. I knew they could see that something was going on, but I was trying to keep this away from them.
Every once in a while someone would come up and say, “Smoke, you okay”? I would shrug it off and say, “Yep, living the dream”, and that would be the end of it. When I arrived in JBAD, I was still dealing with this fear, but to me, JBAD was a safe zone. I could walk without having to worry about one of the Afghanis raising their rifle in my direction. This was right around the time that a stack of Qurans had been burned on one of the bases. Also, about a week before I arrived, a Staff Sergeant by the name of Robert Bales decided to go outside the wire into a set of local towns, under the cover of darkness, in Kandahar Province, killing 16 and wounding 6; mostly women and children. This had hit the public spotlight, and there had been an uptick in "blue on green" attacks in our area of operations.
What I mean by this, is that the Afghani soldiers were turning their rifles and killing Americans they were working alongside! We worked alongside them, so seeing them as a threat was not good for the situation. The Afghanis I had come into contact with were always sizing me up. I am a bit intimidating in both my size, and stature, but I attributed their distrust over me due to them perceiving me as a possible Russian? Jokingly of course, but still these guys would “mean mug” the fuck out of me every time I would walk by them.
I became aware of this, and pointed it out to the other Platoon leadership. Then everyone began to see the reactions as I would walk by. Now, I took working out to a new level while deployed. I weighed in at around 210 lbs at around this time, and I was probably around 10% body fat. I was very lean and big. They would “mean mug” me the most, when I was in my physical training uniform going to the gym. I think they felt intimidated in retrospect. Most Afghanis are a “buck-ten”, and are pretty frail. So, I am sure that I looked like a giant to them, and someone they should fear due to the exposed tattoos on my forearms.
So there I was, two hours out from my flight from JBAD which was the real beginning of my journey home. I was hanging out by the terminal waiting for the roll call. All the sudden I heard a faint explosion. I naturally went around a couple of buildings to see what had happened. There I could see a black smoke plume in the direction of one of the entrance control points. I quickly put two, and two together and realized that a car bomb had just went off.
Then these crazy sounding sirens started ringing. Anytime there is an attack on these larger bases, these Euro sirens ring. They are unlike anything you have heard in America, but are pretty distinctive. I looked around, and there was sheer panic on everyone’s faces as bodies were scattering to cover! This was comical to me, because in my mind, that explosion was a good mile and a half away. We were relatively safe. Some dickhead Staff Sergeant ran by me, and I guess he missed my rank because he said, “Get to cover because we are getting attacked”! I said, “Yeah, you should get to cover, you look scared”! I am a huge smart ass as I enjoy fucking with folks.
This was nothing to be frightened over, it was what it was. A car bomb at the entrance, and the lack of gun fire led me to assume that the fighting had died off. That right there is enough for some to be affected though. You see, it is not the amount of what you see, but how you interpret what you have seen. That is combat to a great portion of the military. Their deployments are nothing more than stateside duties in a deployed environment.
Shit, they have weekly dances on these big bases. They have volleyball tournaments. To them, and most of the higher-brass, combat is a vacation. At least that is how my new thought processes told the story. I was not envious of them, but more or less disgusted. The higher brass rarely have a connection to those they lead. They simply live in a bubble full of their own thought processes. They are disconnected.
I have always attributed the Officer Corps in the military to “royalty”. The real sense of entitlement within the military comes from the brass! The American military has changed little over the years in this regard. I have met more than my share of these “book worms” who were teased and picked on in school who ended up becoming Officers in the military.
Corporate America has been misguided as to the value of the enlisted soldier, mainly due to how the Officer Corps has sold their service to the American people. We are viewed by a great portion of them as the “dumb fucks” that will ruin their career. Don’t get me wrong, some Officers are grounded. Some joined because they wanted to serve, not to be the person in charge.
They are given power from their inception, and anyone who knows a thing or two about power is that some people will wield their power for misguided reasons. A small percentage will abuse their power. I have met my share of good and bad Officers. Most are disconnected in the senior ranks. They will most likely read this story, and will take offense. Well, I am a civilian now, so time to wear your “big girl panties”, and “suck that shit up”! The good ones listen.
So, after that fiasco subsided, which was worrying to me that my plane would be delayed, I got on the next plane and started my journey home. Two more flights, from BAF to Kuwait, then Kuwait to Atlanta (with a stop in Germany for fuel), and I was home in America. The shit is surreal to those that have made that journey. As soon as you arrive, your bags are given back to you and you go through customs just like everyone else who enters America. Here you are asked what you brought back, and random searches are done to your bags. It wasn’t until I walked out to the main gate, that the handshakes started.
People clapping, and exclaiming, “Welcome home”! It was not a big affair, but a small group of volunteers who gave their time up to welcome returning troops as they touch down at the Atlanta airport. This always made me feel uncomfortable. I knew their heart was in the right place, but it is troubling for a service member to be instantly greeted, only to realize later on in life that America as a whole values you only while you serve. The day you take that uniform off, all that gratitude is gone. I will elaborate on this later on in this story.
So, my connecting flight did not take off for another 6 hours. So, there I was, anxiously waiting seeing my family. I tried to ask the person at the desk if I could get on a standby list, but people didn't seem too concerned with helping a returning troop. This was 2012, so the "honeymoon phase" of gratitude had lost its flavor. Two flights left the terminal while I waited. Both could have gotten me home quicker than waiting, but when the gate person would call over the intercom to solicit giving up a seat for a returning servicemen, no takers for either flight. They even offered $500 in cash to whoever would bite. This is where reality began to hit as to how we were viewed in the public eye.
Serving in the military is like separating yourself from the rest of society. This is not a good cross-section of society as there are strict requirements for membership. We don’t have the criminals or the societal problems most of society endures. We do have crime, don’t get me wrong, but there is a much lower degree and anyone caught committing a crime is typically removed from the group.
We are living on these bases across the globe, totally oblivious as to what is transpiring in the world around us. We are taught to believe that the American people support us and appreciate us. These volunteers at the airport when you arrive back home, only add to this perception for service men and women. We are blinded by the true, cold facts of how we are really perceived.
I slept the entire flight from Atlanta to Seattle. I awoke to the sound of the flight Captain coming over the intercom and telling us to prepare ourselves for landing. I took a big deep breath as I walked off that plane. I could not wait to see my wife, but knew that she would ultimately start crying as soon as she saw my face. She had seen pictures of me, as I have sent them from time to time, but there is nothing like seeing a loved one after not seeing them for a long time.
Six months is a long time to any of us to be away from a loved one. I walked out of the terminal on a mission. I did not know where my wife would be waiting for me, but I knew that I had to make it to the luggage claim, as that is where we had talked about as a link-up point the last time we had talked. As I rode the escalator to the second floor, I saw a glimpse of her looking down!
My wife is a short, petite woman. She is pretty, almost too pretty for me. I look rough, and I have a personality to match. I rarely smile, but she has seen my smile more than anyone I know. She is my “everything”! As soon as we saw each other and were within each other’s embrace, I physically felt her body relax. That is a strange feeling that those that have come home from a deployment may or may not know.
That relief is loud enough to wake the dead for those that have experienced this. We hugged for a good 5 minutes, before abruptly stopping, and changing gears. I wanted out of that uniform I had been wearing the past two days of flying. I wanted a shower, and I wanted to see my kids. So we grabbed my bags, and headed off into the night.
To Be Continued....
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