Random notes from deployment:
"I love working for Uncle Sam. Lets me know just who I am! If I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home!"
"I’ll tie back my hair, men’s clothing I’ll put on, I’ll pass as your comrade as we march along."
I have my blood type written on both my boots, as well as written in indelible ink on my body.
"It's okay to be scared; you just don't want to show it." Sorry....
Sometimes nothing can be done, even though we try so hard.
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
The 11th was a very bad day in Black Rock.
I am so tired.
“I am ready. I have repented my sins and soon I will be in heaven with Christ my savior. Now I must die like a man.”
I am in a place where to show your fear is worse than cowardice. It's a sin.
"The individual must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in a ground engagement."
I have officially seen the elephant and I am on the other side of the line now.
“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
I go to sleep with my cheek resting on the cool barrel of my M9. Wake me gently....
I am so tired. I am so very tired.
"And I heard as it were the noise of thunder, One of the four beasts saying, 'Come and see.' And I saw."
"And I looked and behold, a pale horse. And his name that sat on it was Death. And Hell followed with him."
"Though I ask naught else of God, I pray to Him: 'But these were boys, and died. Be gentle, God, to soldiers.'"
It doesn't hurt me. You want to feel how it feels? You want to know that it doesn't hurt me?
Sgt V was killed in combat on the 23d but they didn't release his name until today, meaning his wife was notified of his death on Christmas eve.
I should be moving on in less than three months and, God willing, will never come back. But I will never leave this place.
I am exhausted, I am exhausted. I am the magician’s girl who does not flinch.
I will take a lot of things with me from this Afghanistan experience. The most important ones are inside me that no one will ever know about.
But I also have a spent and deformed bullet from an SVD, and shrapnel from an 82mm mortar shell that have special meaning for me.
Can't sleep.
I no longer have anything in common with my old friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Their lives and interests seem trivial and pointless.
"There’s this huge sense of urgency any time the helicopter flies. It’s such a violent machine. It shakes and it screams and it’s going some place and you see these guns hanging off the side and all these men with weapons." --Sgt T
Well, never again for me. My last helo ride is ridden.
No matter how much I sleep I am always tired. Everything appears as if it were under water. When people speak to me I don't respond. Not immediately. I have to force my brain to engage, grasp that some action is required of me, determine what it is, compel my body to act.
So ... I have hearing loss as a result of exposure to an "intense impulse sound" -- that is, an explosion. I also have an exaggerated startle response and generalized anxiety. Oh, and trouble sleeping. And I will be having PCS and probably PPCS.
But it's all good, I still possess all my appendages, am not blind or..., and my brain still functions manageably. I have a face. I am not... well, there are so many ways to still be alive yet.... I can't even write them down. They are too horrible.
Sometimes I think I am all cried out. But there are always more tears. And not one of them can you let out. I have to be the strong one. But inside I am shaking...with anguish, despair and pain such as can never be described. What do I say inside my head so often? "I'm sorry!"
But I will be along soon enough myself. The pain and the fear and the unheeded pleading for help will engulf me soon enough too. Soon enough.
These are my boys. How can I abandon them? I've tried every thing I can to get my second tour extended. But no go. What will my days be like without carbine and pistol, PBA and Kevlar, MREs and A-rations, without guys who clutch my hand so hard it hurts?
A week...a week...and then it's all over. On my exit flight I will brush Sebastapol with my right sleeve, as von Schlieffen might have said. The thing is -- I don't want to go. I don't. I can't imagine not being here. I want to be the last one out. Every day hurts so much.
Oh, who can understand?
"Nothing but hurt left here. Nothing but bullets and pain and the bled-out slumping and all the fucks and goddamns and Jesus Christs of the wounded. Nothing left here but the hurt." --BT
I should be thinking: "I made it through!" Through so much. So very much. But I'm not.
See you when I see you!
“Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.”
― Sebastian Junger
“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The more training we receive, the more real it becomes. Watching clips of IEDs exploding and what they can do to a soldier, marine, sailor, or airmen intensified these feelings. Working with wounded and many times amputated individuals after they left the field at my command could not prepare me enough for having the trauma happen right in front of me. Visions of gunshots, amputations, and blasts fill my dreams at night and often wake me up as I wonder what in the world was I thinking by volunteering and asking for this deployment.
“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”
― Bram Stoker
What truth soldiers would speak
None would hear, and none repeat.
