From Baghdad To America (5 page)

Consider this passage from
Jarhead
by Anthony Swofford, who knew in his heart from the age of fourteen that he'd be a Marine when he was old enough. After all, his father, uncle, and grandfather had all served.

Now consider yours truly at fourteen. I no more knew what I wanted to do with my life than I knew how to perform neurosurgery while flying a rocketship. At fourteen all I could think about relative to growing chests was the girls in my class. I don't think I was even aware what the Marine Corps was. One of our neighbors, Mr. Woehleber, was in the air force reserve, but he was still a corporate executive with one of the conglomerates that dominated the Pittsburgh business community back in the day.

The simple truth is that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I thought I'd give the military a try. I was three years out of college, teaching high school and coaching high school football. I'd tried a few other jobs, too, but nothing seemed to click for me. Playing war wasn't among my favorite things to do as a child. I preferred games and competitions with a quantifiable outcome—and my mother didn't let me play with guns or take riflery at camp. (Okay, I did shoot those damn .22 rifles anyway without telling her. As a kid, it was too embarrassing
not
to when everyone else was doing it. I didn't understand then that it was okay to be different, or to stand for something.) I was a kid during the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby, and after Bobby's and Martin Luther King's assassinations, any kind of violence made my parents crazy. Which is kind of ironic when I think about it, because I still got my ass or face cracked when I screwed up. They were shocked when I decided to go into the military.

Initially I just wanted to fly airplanes. And it's not like flying airplanes was a lifelong dream of mine, either. I wasn't like those guys whose fathers had flown in Vietnam and grandfathers had flown in Korea or World War II. To them, completing the navy's flight training was some sort of rite of passage (I guess it's supposed to be this prestigious thing, but I'm more impressed by someone who can perform brain surgery). I even knew a few whose fathers were still on active duty, admirals or generals, and who felt they had to live up to the family tradition. Me—well, I thought it seemed like something cool to do for a while.

I made it through the navy's aviation officer candidate school (that
Officer and a Gentleman
crap) and naval flight school (including carrier qualifications). One thing led to another, and there I was in Iraq, training Iraqi soldiers and trying to stay alive. So there was a trajectory of sorts, a ladder I'd been climbing, and I'd just kept on going until I wasn't sure I wanted to be up there anymore.

All this added up to my feeling lost when I first came back. Maybe not so much lost as disoriented. I guess you could say things seemed out of place, and at parties, even with friends, I often felt like I didn't belong. People would ask thoughtless questions—“Did you kill anyone?” “Did you get shot?” Is that what happens when people watch too much
Survivor
and
American Idol
and not enough CNN or Fox News? They think that war is a reality show?

No wonder Lava was my best pal—he'd been there. He understood. Jane simply did not. A lot of returning veterans seem to wind up getting wasted 24/7. If you're drunk or high, you probably don't notice how much you no longer fit into the world at large. But I'm older, and I hope wiser, and instead of disappearing into a drug- or alcohol-induced haze I just became miserable to be around, constantly noting privilege and entitlement.

Jane's and her friends' reality was as hard for me to comprehend as the harsh reality that our government condoned killing dogs to keep us from befriending them. I had grown used to driving by angry, worn-out Iraqis nearly every day when I was there—old men, young kids, mothers, their heads and faces covered by the traditional
hijab,
whom we had to move from their homes in Fallujah into tents on the barren outskirts so we could “safely” bomb the area in the name of freedom. Hearing people complain about, well, anything now struck me as absurd. In retrospect, what did I expect? They honestly had no idea what it was like. The local news didn't divulge that sort of information, which left me feeling helpless, unable to do anything except make snide comments. I could only call these Americans weak and pitiable, which of course didn't go over too well with my girlfriend.

On the commute to your air-conditioned office here, you don't see the burned and charred corpses of what were once human beings piled in the bed of what was once a pickup truck. You don't drive over the headless remains of a bloated enemy fighter with your SUV, the tires spinning on the fat oozing out the neck cavity and into the street on your way to the supermarket or going to pick up your kids at soccer practice. The scent of burning excrement doesn't perfume every waking moment of your day. You don't walk to the shitter with fear in your heart. Sure, I want to be rich as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure anymore if I could do it without feeling something for the guy suffering down the street. Don't get me wrong—I'm no bleeding heart. But I think there's a difference when you've sacrificed—or seen sacrifice—at the level I have.

Most of these people, my former neighbors and friends, never gave any of it a second thought. They thought hardship meant the maid was late. I couldn't figure out why everyone wasn't falling down laughing at a dinner party one night when I joked around about killing terrorists. There must have been some discussion of kids or viniculture or some other equally arcane thing and I just kind of blurted out, “Yeah, it's easier to shoot terrorists than it is to raise teenagers. You have to actually talk to your kids.” Just like that. All you could hear were the crickets in the trees for the next fifteen seconds as everyone thought of something to say that wouldn't make the situation somehow worse. Of course, it didn't help that most of them, Jane included, had teenage children. Deep down I think the fathers all wanted to agree with me, but were afraid of never getting another blow job—from their wives at least—if they made even one comment that didn't fit into the PC culture of children as little adults, meant to command the same respect that one Marine might show another.

I mean, honestly, my parents never negotiated bedtime—or anything else for that matter—with me. It wasn't a democracy growing up in my house, and the dictator wasn't exactly benevolent. Curfew was curfew, you sat up straight at the table, chewed with your mouth closed, called adults Mister or Missus So-and-so, and God help you if you were late, disobedient, or rude. Every person at the party sported looks of horror on their faces as though I'd suddenly sprouted horns or suffered some grotesquely disfiguring illness or disease.
Don't these people realize there are real problems in the world right now? Leaders are being assassinated, oil is over a hundred bucks a barrel, and we're on the verge of a recession, for Chrissake.

The discussion then turned to the merits of a Château Lafite Rothschild over a Château Léoville Las Cases. I wanted to puke. I can't even pronounce that shit, much less care how many bottles of it someone has in the cellar. When I was a kid we kept the washer and dryer in the cellar. I guess my folks didn't care about their wine.

I didn't puke. I picked my nose instead.

My feeling of not belonging didn't disappear after we left the party, either. Jane and I fought in the car, in the kitchen, you name it. It was enough to drive a man back to the killing fields. Plenty of guys go back again and again because they can't hack the monotony of regular life.

I'll admit it: We who've made the military a career can be—brace yourselves—rigid, anal, uncompromising, demanding, distant, emotionally detached, and overbearing. I know you're shocked to hear this. Right? I mean, look at how I poured my heart out in the first book. I even admit to crying when I got news about Lava—
twice!
How can I possibly be talking about the same person? Allow me to get back on point here. And the point is this: The world looks different after you've experienced war. The rose-colored glasses of youth have been torn off your face, stomped down by combat boots, and ground into the desert sand. Deployments—especially multiple deployments to combat zones—wreak havoc on marriages, families, and individuals.

So what was the likelihood that my relationship would survive when I returned? That I could successfully rekindle a romance following six and a half months of trying not to get killed, fighting for my country when no one seemed to appreciate it?

Your everyday, run-of-the-mill citizens can't relate to having an RPG explode or heavy machine-gun rounds impact just inches away. How could they? It's eerie to look back and realize that at the time you almost didn't recognize how close you were to having your head ripped off your shoulders by a hail of bullets powerful enough to punch a six-inch hole through the trunk of your Humvee
after
it first went through the vehicle's quarter-inch-thick steel side. It's not until later, when the firefight is over and you've had time to assess your good fortune (better than the other guys' for sure), that you begin to think of all the bad stuff: no more surfing; weeping parents; who'll take care of Lava; closed-casket funeral, definitely closed casket. Taking this into consideration, I'd say the chances of me maintaining my relationship were slim to none, and slim had left town on a bullet train.

I know that is a cavalier answer to a serious question, and I don't want to make light of the situation. Still, if I'd had the ability to recognize what was happening, things might have worked out differently. Perhaps I'd have realized that my frequent anger and frustration—which I directed at everything and everyone except myself—were born of the feelings I was trying to suck up and not let others see. Having the advantage now of time and some selfreflection, I can see that I was a jerk, behaving more like a child than a responsible, mature adult. Intentionally? Maybe. Was it my fault? Yes and no. I could make the argument that I am just another statistic. (I've included some of the original studies; check them out yourself.)

But I'm supposed to be smarter than that—better than that. I've come to learn that you can't always control the fear, hurt, and anger by suppressing it. Trying to appear strong on the outside when inside you're hurting and conflicted isn't going to work. I recognized this in Lava, especially when the fear got too strong for him. He was terrified of the ocean. Absolutely, whole-bodyshaking, refusing-to-move terrified. Did the waves crashing on the sand sound like bombs to him? Was the shifting sand underfoot a reminder of his previous feral and uncertain existence? I could see this in him, and even think about how I could help him function despite it, but I believed with the conviction of a zealot that none of my experiences had shaken me in the same way.

I don't exhibit the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lava does, as I'll spell out later, but I really don't. In fact, until I started writing this book, I didn't think I had any issues coming out of the war.

I've read the stories in
The New York Times,
and I think I'm doing better than most. Unlike Lance Corporal Walter Rollo Smith, I never found myself bawling on the rifle range after returning from Iraq. Unlike him, I didn't hold my girlfriend underwater until she was no longer breathing, leaving twin babies without a mother. Like him, though, I saw similar things in Iraq: “I watched this kid's head get blown away, his brains splattering while his screams still echoed,” Smith told a reporter. Like him, I wouldn't blame the war for everything: “I can't completely, honestly say that, yes, PTSD was the sole cause of what I did.... I don't want to use it as a crutch. I'd feel like I was copping out of something ... [but] before I went to Iraq, there's no way I would have taken somebody else's life.”
⁷
I wasn't driven to volunteer for dangerous, nearly suicidal missions like Specialist James Gregg, a National Guardsman whose job it was to stand guard at a checkpoint. Having Iraqi citizens come to him day after day, holding the bodies of their loved ones, dead or wounded, screaming that it was his fault, scrambled his mind. Soon after returning to South Dakota, Gregg put five bullets into a man who'd beaten him in a bar brawl over a girl.
⁸

Can I give Lava the credit for keeping me from crossing that line? He couldn't stop me from ending a relationship (he was probably as happy as I was to break that one off, to be honest). But who am I to say? Maybe deep down I knew that I was having some trouble connecting with people, but I was unable—or unwilling—to acknowledge it and make the changes necessary to be a better person when I returned from Iraq for the last time. I guess in the ensuing months—after Lava and I had some time to ourselves—I was finally able to resolve some things with (and within) myself, making it possible for me to be a stronger, more self-assured person, wanting to be in a committed and loving relationship.

Yes, I've made mistakes in the past, but I believe things happen for a reason and that everything has a way of working out for the best. How do I maintain this belief with all the young kids who've been killed or wounded in the war? In any war? That somehow their deaths happened “for the best”? I don't know that I can answer that question, and it's something I struggle with from time to time.