Iraq Comes Home: Soldiers Share the Devastating Tales of War

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/asoldierspeaks/55921

Iraq Comes Home: Soldiers Share the Devastating Tales of War

By Emily DePrang, Texas Observer. Posted July 4, 2007.

Three veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan share the nightmare experiences that war has brought into their lives.

Editor's Note: This powerful article was missed by a lot of readers last week, so we're reposting it to get the attention it deserves.

- snip -

Words are another way. Below are the stories of three veterans of this war, told in their voices, edited for flow and efficiency but otherwise unchanged. They bear out the statistics and suggest that even those who are not diagnosably impaired return burdened by experiences they can neither forget nor integrate into their postwar lives. They speak of the inadequacy of what the military calls reintegration counseling, of the immediacy of their worst memories, of their helplessness in battle, of the struggle to rejoin a society that seems unwilling or unable to comprehend the price of their service. Strangers to one another and to me, they nevertheless tried, sometimes through tears, to communicate what the intensity of an ambiguous war has done to them.

One veteran, Sue Randolph, put it this way: "People walk up to me and say, 'Thank you for your service.' And I know they mean well, but I want to ask, 'Do you know what you're thanking me for?'" She, Rocky, and Michael Goss offer their stories here in the hope that citizens will begin to know.

***

Michael Goss, 29, served two tours in Iraq. He grew up in Corpus Christi and returned there after his other-than-honorable discharge. He lives with his brother. He is divorced and sees his children every other weekend while working the graveyard shift as a bail bondsman. He is quietly intelligent, thoughtful and attentive, always saying "ma'am" and opening the door for people. He struggles with severe PTSD and is obsessed with learning about the insurgency by studying reports and videos online. He is awaiting treatment from the Veterans Administration. He has been waiting for over a year.

Michael Goss:

I gave the Army seven years. It was supposed to be my career. I did two tours in Iraq, in 2003 and 2005. But during the last one, I started to get depressed. I lost faith in my chain of command. I became known as a rogue NCO. That's how I got my other-than-honorable discharge.

One night they said to me, "Sgt. Goss, gather your best guys." I say, "Where we going?" They say, "Don't worry about it, just come on." So we get in the car and go. We drive three blocks away, and there's six dead soldiers on the ground. They say, "You're casualty collecting tonight." I'm not prepared for that. I wasn't taught how to do that. But you're there. So you pick them up, and you put them in a body bag, pieces by pieces, and you go back to your unit, and you stand inside your room. And they're like, "You're going on a patrol, come on." You're like, "Hang on a minute. Let me think about what I just did here." I just put six American guys in damn body bags. Nobody's prepared for that. Nobody's prepared for that thing to blow up on the side of the road. You're talking, and you're driving, and then something blows up, and the next thing you know, two of your guys are missing their faces. They just want you to get up the next day and go, go, let's do it again, you're a soldier. Yeah, I got the soldier part, OK?

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[bhamlett]

1. I just stopped being polite about it

When people would say, "Thank you for your service," to me, I used to reply with, "Thank you for your support." Now, I just say, "What did I do for you?" and I force them to explain why they are thanking me. It's probably rude, but people need to be aware of the reality of war, instead of just watching it on CNN and going downtown to the annual veterans' parade.

[unhappycamper]

3. Welcome to DU bhamlett!

I'm looking forward to your posts. . . Great blog. :thumbsup:

[tblue37]

6. Welcome to DU, and thank you for your courage in responding

honestly no matter what people say! In other words, thank you for your service to the truth.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. That's the double-edged sword that praising soldiers is, in the US.

It can, indeed, routinely is exploited by war-mongering Republicans, as a "back-door" means of praising the wars themselves, wars which have been have been almost entirely wars of aggression; often not even fought by US troops but by right-wing militias trained by the School of the Americas and supported by State Department and the CIA, to suppress the impoverished majorities of their citizenries. All of it... for the ever-more obscenely larcenous profits of the Carlyle Group and other armaments manufacturers and infrastructure services providers. When they say they support the troops, they really mean the war they'ved forced them into.

I don't mean that there are not genuine American civilians who sincerely empathise with those returned soldiers, from the depths of their heart, and want to offer some small solace for their sufferings. But, bhamlett, I think you've got it exactly right. You are seeing it with 20/20 vision. It's a double-edged sword you could do without.

[unhappycamper]

2. Our vets a soooooo fucked until we get the VA working again.

Rocky:

If there was gunfire coming from a window, I shot into that window and made sure nothing was coming back out at me. One time, there was an RPG shooter shooting at me. He hit a Bradley in front of us, and we were in a Humvee. He hit the Bradley in front of us, and the round didn't go off. It got stuck in the mud. So the Bradley rolled back, and we rolled back. And I had to shoot the position-caller before I could shoot the actual shooter. He didn't have a gun, but I knew what he was doing. He was the one calling out what's going on. He was on the phone. So I sent a shot up 20 feet above him and below him and to the side of him. And he just stood there. On his phone, talking the whole time. Innocent people run. The bad guys stay and fight. If they're not running, they're going to be calling. That's the way I see it. So I shot him. If you freaked out and stood still, I'm sorry. I cannot take this chance again. You have to start making these moral decisions. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six. You're caught in the fucking middle of it.


Thanks for posting this Hissyspit - k&r.

[bonito]

4. A must read n/t

[bdamomma]

5. kick

[bbernardini]

8. Why are these soldiers lying? Why do these soldiers hate America?

:sarcasm:

[Suich]

9. Kick.

:cry: