There is beauty in our contempt. Battle has added years to our spirit. The precession of life and death has refined our taste. No longer, do the decadent, sweet pleasures of leisure satisfy us. Our palette has evolved. We now seek out the complex flavors of hardship and fidelity.
The tides of war are receding and many of us are left feeling cold and lost, standing at the water’s edge. Our crucible has transformed us, reincarnated us into beasts of burden. The harvest has been reaped. Our toil is over. The creature we have become is not fit for pasture. In the darkest hours, we fear that we are destined to become feral wanderers; a rapidly endangered species; nomadic pack animals without equal or rival.
Right up front if your going to be a douche and ask me dumb shit like "have you ever killed someone", or call me a baby killer, or take this down a huge political argument I'm going to stop you right there and tell ya go ahead an kick rocks shit licker. This is very minor accounting of some of my experiences and views of the largest chapter of my life that I am about to close.
I have spent the last 9 years of my life and my entire adulthood on active duty with the U.S. Army. In those 9 years i have bounced between Iraq and Afghanistan more than a few times, I have lost 14 brothers in combat and unfortunately some to suicide, I suffered through a bad divorce, I have been blown up, shot, an had the general shit kicked outta me more than once. For as horrible as that sounds I would relive every single second if it meant to serve with my bro's again.
Every morning in highschool my first class of the day was russian, the teacher would come in an immediatly speak nothing but russian. Her opening statement was that a plane had crashed into the twin towers. The translation in my head of a plane crashing into a tower made me think of some local news regarding some drunk hillbilly in a crop duster hitting a cell tower...... I could never have been more wrong. later that day in physics we watched the 9/11 attacks on tv and when I saw the bodies falling my life changed forever and I wanted to storm out of that class room an start kicking the piss out of anyone responsible. I always wanted to join from a young age i was an army brat to begin with but that day solidified it forever.
I left for basic training the same week I graduated highschool and was in Iraq before the years end. Basic was a whirlwind of learning to shoot fight and getting our balls smoked to death and I swear by the end of it we were so brainwashed im suprised they lets us out in public after.
I got to my unit the day they deployed and we were told we would be following them in a few weeks. If we didnt drink, fuck, and train our way through every second of those few weeks i dont know what we did haha.
Not 3 weeks in country and I lost my first friend, a truck full of five guys just gone in an instant. Unfortunatly for an 18 year thats what it took to make it real. It was real alright they werent there when we got back, they werent there when we ate chow that night.
(THE WEAK OF HEART MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH)
That 1st tour I saw more evil in man than i ever thought could exist. one day we walked into a very small clearing and there was blood everywhere. three small buildings we cleared them and found a hot plate still cooking breakfast we didnt know what was up but we knew they were close. next we found a truck pulled off into the palm groves out back with decapitated bodies, their heads in zip loc bags. we found plans, weapons, propaganda, explosives all kinds of bad juju in this joint. last we found the room with chains bolted to the walls and a video camera. the very night before these guys got in a argument with the local villages leaders and in retaliation decided to kidnap some of the villages males, one of which was in the middle of getting married and they stormed the ceremony firing into the guests while they took the groom. well they used a drill on their faces and packed the wholes with chemical fertilizer, sent the video to the local leaders and demanded ransom. We found the assholes that did this, I wish i could say we were earlier and could have returned those men and that groom back to his bride to be but at least i know we took care of that small bit of evil that did this.
I thought to myself this isnt in the news, its never going to be in the news. everyone will argue up and down why we are here but me im not a politician im not in the senate or house thats not my decision but i do know that in that moment i was there and i had an obligation to try to right a wrong simple as that.
One of my other tours when we first got into the area we would be working the average time between incidents was 8 minutes. By that i mean every 8 minutes somewhere in our area there was a shooting, rocket attack, explosion, murder etc. etc. etc. we worked very closely with the locals and by the time we mopped that place up they had not had a single incident in 8 months. one of the village leaders we worked with almost daily thanked me one day he said to me 'We are building a school here, the mothers are happy to see their children get to play soccer outside in the streets" that moment made it for me. If my brothers and i could have the power to do that for anyone in the world be damned if we wouldnt. yes we took care of a lot of important problems in a large scheme but just being able to help those people that way that have never known peace like that before made all of the pain suffering and sacrifice okay to me and i think my fallen brothers would agree with me.
The days were never ending, so many times we walked away from shit we shouldnt have other times not everyone came back. dudes wifes were cheating banging some jody ass hole back home all the while cleaning out the bank accounts. brothers were lost. forced into situations or seeing things no one should have to see hear or smell but we made it okay because we had each other. no wife or girlfriend will ever understand how close we are with our brothers 6 years gone since my very best friend in the whole world was killed and i can still hear his laugh or look up and imagine him opening another beer and start shooting the shit like nothing ever happened. I never felt more powerless in life than the day i lost him.
One day I was pinned down in a ditch with people shooting over me from both directions and murphys law hit when this grenade lands right next to me it went off while i was trying to shimmy away from it in the ditch, ive been blown up countless times by roadside bombs, one day i had a round cut my chin strap and burn my cheek it passed so close. what do you do when you walk away from that and others dont. its hard but ill tell ya one thing. life has never been sweeter, no meal so fulfulling, no laugh so hearty, and no brother so meaningful ever again. 99.9% of the time we joke about it and i still do to this day when i think about that grenade it makes me laugh my ass off at what my platoon must have seen when it tossed me windmilling out of a ditch like the idiot i was.
Theres a twisted side to all of us grunts who have been that knee deep in suck for so long is that we want to go back we want it again, it will never leave us. ive heard the saying that ptsd is realizing you never be this cool again (all jokes aside ive had my demons thats a whole other blog for a diff day) and that rings a bit true. I saw a photo that said "some men dream of being heros, others relive them in their nightmares"
BULLSHIT they might be nightmares for you but for me i cherish every single one of those nightmares that im back there on a mission with some of my brothers i will never see again doing shit that mattered and sadly its only in dreams.
So heres the hardest part. how do i leave it behind how to i deal with this loss of identity getting out and hanging it up. Guess what my most promising job offer is right now....... ready..... armed fucking security guard..... thats right folks i will be the most bamf version of paul blart youve ever damn well met.
All I know is I will be just fine with my friends and family beside me.
Axios
-Dunny