New Year, New Goals

I know it’s kind of a sappy sentiment, but this really is the best time of year to do some deep introspection and reflection and start making some resolutions for the future. As my friend who hates New Year’s reminds me, “It’s stupid to make resolutions on this day because you could make resolutions on any day.” True. But it’s the end of the year now and with all the holidays and small breaks from our responsibilities, we have extra time to think, and I would say that we should all take a personal self-assessment.

So where are you? Are you functioning survivor of war who does what he has to but still feels numb to the world? Are you so far past your experiences people don’t even believe you when you tell them you used to serve (no one believes me: I’m out-of-shape and bearded). Or are you simply planning to spend the holiday with several 40s or a flask of whiskey, unable to fathom how you will stay alive in this next year?

I’ve been there. Well, not technically, vodka was always my poison.

Today, I’m doing well. But I’ve learned very recently that if I’m going to keep following the path I’m on – this path as a writer who writes about war and the life after – I’m going to have to embrace a role I don’t want. I don’t want to be a beacon that other veteran’s will come to for help and advice.  I don’t want to because the farther I get from my experiences the happier I feel, and I’m afraid that I will be dragged back down. Don’t counselors and therapists have a really high suicide rate? I’m also not so full of myself to think I have the secret key to “the way to getting better,” but I do have a story. I think it’s a successful story, and maybe some other veterans can study pieces of it and apply my lessons learned to their own journeys.

So, lesson number one: It’s a New Year and you’re alive. How are you going to get yourself where you want to be? Start small. If you asked me this question at the end of 2004 or 2005 my answers would have been pretty pathetic. I would have said, “I want to be able to pay my bills on the first of the month instead of wasting all my money on booze and almost getting evicted every month.” Or I would have said, “I want to be able to stop feeling like I want to die every time I’m reminded of my traumas from war."

It was a dark place. But I was able to make small changes. I didn’t waste every cent I had at the bar every night, and sometimes took a night away from going out and partying. I went to hang out with my old friends sometimes – positive people I’ve known since being a teen in youth group – to keep me away from all my horrible tendencies and flagrant self-destruction.

Today, six years later, my goal is to finish my master’s degree in writing. Really? I know. It shocks me to write that out and realize how far I have come. We want you to get to a place where you can be happy again. This site is for you. These stories are for you. Please look around and join our community.
Much love,

Dario

~ Semper Fi ~

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The Curse of Alcohol

The curse of alcohol is that you can never move

Away from the town where you’ve made the bars home.

You can never save up enough to buy a  

Way out of your problems.

Each shot becomes an expression of the regret
You can’t swallow, so you fill your cup again.

Settling for being empty and never quenched,

Each drink is more desperate than the last.

You cycle between the highs and lows of your
Glass only to come to understand

You drank yourself away years ago.
And you can’t get that time back.

And you cope with the bottles, 

And you love them

Because the booze blacks out the scene

Of your buddy’s head exploding;

The cold glass feels better than the warm blood

From when you bandaged another’s bullet wound;

Because it was hot in the desert and the

Whiskey pulses flame through your heart and mind.

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From One Veteran to Another

I’ve been trying recently to make sense of the whole universality of the veteran experience. The longer I’ve been out, the more veterans I meet (it’s funny how you can still instinctively tell by someone’s mannerisms and demeanor that they served even if they don’t have regulation waistlines and haircuts anymore) and it seems that no matter where they’ve served during the War on Terror (or any war really), or what branch they were in, or what job they did, we all suffer from the same demons.
 Some more than others, but I’ve yet to meet a vet who doesn’t relish a chance to get blasted with another former warrior so they can talk without inhibition about their experiences. It’s like a mini therapy every time a veteran hangs out with another vet. That’s definitely a good thing I suppose, but what about our shared experiences made us all messed up in the first place? (And yes, I know not every vet has psychological issues, but no doubt their time at war has still changed them in a way most others can’t understand.)

 I think it’s all about the prospect of us facing down our mortality daily during our tours. That’s everyone. Whether you were a postal clerk, administrator, tanker, or infantryman, everywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and other places) brought about the momentary possibility of our lives ending. That reality changed our spirit and our mindset; it made us hyper-tense, calloused, and adrenaline-filled. Even if we served in the Green Zone or a large main base, there was always an errant mortar to land around us, potentially blowing up our buddies’ head. There was always some local on base who wanted us dead and might detonate himself as a suicide-bomb while we sat down to chow. It was an experience that was so fundamentally different from the American nine-to-five life or the college life of many our peers that it was so easy to feel alienated and separated from normal society upon our return.

 And what exactly is normal life now? Should we pretend the things that happened didn’t really happen at all? Should we not discuss how edgy we feel in large crowds or mention how we’ll occasionally be afraid to drive past a trash pile along the highway while we drive our civilian vehicles? Can we go back to being who we were before the war?

 Personally, I wouldn’t even try, because that would be sacrificing my true identity. I was once a warrior. I once sat atop a Humvee ready to kill at the behest of my nation. I survived rockets, mortars, snipers, and IEDs. Those things have changed me.

 At first they changed me in a bad way. I was guilty to go through so much yet come home unscathed when some of my friends had died. I took to intense self-medication to replace the chaos in my soul that felt normal as a result of my time overseas. I was angry, rage-filled, and manic. I ruined many relationships and made a lot of enemies. But I’ve grown; and I’m growing.

 Nothing’s a regret if we learn from it and move on. By the sheer intrinsic value of these horrible and traumatic experiences, we’ve been tested in a way that most others never will be. We can learn better lessons as such: we can truly appreciate every single moment of every single day; we can really feel compassion and love for another human being; we can understand the value of existing. Does this sound like a dream? To many of you, I’m sure it does.

But I’ve been there. And now I’m happier than ever. But it was the hardest place I’ve ever arrived at. And I couldn’t have done it without my veteran friends. Don’t isolate yourself. There’s a whole community for you here at Not Alone.

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Echoes

I’m pleased to report that things are going well in my life. Like everyone, random bills hit me hard sometimes and family stresses me out (I won’t even talk about Turkey Day this year), but I move on. And I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed with Writer’s House Literary Agency, which was a dream coming true – a four year goal finally achieved.

But there are echoes of my past life – the manic life of the young man returning from war – that still sound off even today.

I told you once about a friend; an old Marine buddy, roommate, and childhood friend. We’ve been seeing each other occasionally for coffee or meeting up to watch football, but he’s fallen on the wayside again.

I got this voice message from him two weeks ago: “Hey, man. I really need someone to talk to cause I don’t have any friends. And my girlfriend just cheated on me and I just want to go out and chill and drink a few beers.”

I knew it was going to be bad but how could I say no? I knew he had been sober for some time, and gotten a nice job, and behaved like a normal, calm civilian. But he was relapsing into the insanity of never really dealing with his mental health problems and them flaring up again. The girlfriend, as much as that hurt him, would just be a catalyst for reliving more pain.

We went to the bar. I told him I wouldn’t let him get too drunk, but really, how was I going to stop him? I told him he needed to start doing healthy things: like not moving in with a girl he had just met; taking martial arts again to help focus and discipline his mind; not start drinking again.

“I just want to become a Marine again,” he said. And it was true: war was the easy part for us veterans. We did what we had been conditioned and trained to do, and we did it well. But no one really prepared us, or watched after us for when came home.

It’s crazy but I still feel the same too sometimes. I think: "if s*** gets too bad, I can always go back to Iraq.” The real world – taking care of, and being responsible for yourself – that’s the hard part. The military is an easy system to adapt to and understand. Life runs like a well-oiled machine when you are in service, because you have a purpose and a mission and that is all.

“You’re doing well for yourself man,” I told him. “You’ve just hit a bump. You’ve got to quit thinking about war, man. You’d probably just see more of your buddies die.”

At about 11 pm, surprisingly, he abruptly informed me that he was ready to go home.

“Awesome,” I replied. He didn’t seem very drunk at all.

An hour later I got a call. He had been pulled over by the cops for driving ninety on his motorcycle. I was a little buzzed myself, so I had another friend pick him up.

We saved him that weekend, but the following Friday he whipped his body into a tree after getting drunk and driving in the same way. He did come out the coma. No one believed he would have survived.

I get angry when I see my veteran friends imploding. I want to shake them say, “Cut it the f*** out! Yes you’ve been to war and seem some rough s***, but we need to you to be okay. We need you to move on!”

I’ve moved on, but I still remember my training: I am not allowed to leave a man behind. And I am understanding this now as the toughest mission.

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Behind the Wounds: A Look Into the Documentary Series

Thanks again to Steven Freitas for his hard work on Camouflaged Wounds. Thank you to Not Alone for producing the project (and covering all the pesky media expenses). And thank you especially to Tracy Miller for her courage and bravery in sharing the story of her son.

It was a scary prospect for me, a veteran Marine myself, to sit down with the mother of a fallen brother warrior, and try to share his story appropriately and with all the honor due him. I never knew Nick but it is clear to me after learning about his tale, that the world lost a truly upstanding and awesome young man. He is missed by many. I will be thinking of him often too.

I wanted to do the story of a relative of someone killed in the wars for this first episode, because I think those are the easily forgotten stories. There’s a finality in death not apparent in mental health and physical issues that many of the two million surviving troops still endure as their wounds of war. But that doesn’t mean that the hurt and pain goes away. Resources and support still need to be offered to the families and friends of the fallen.

I think it’s so amazing all the things Tracy is doing to make the reality of her son’s passing something positive. What wasn’t included in the video was the fact that Tracy also ran for local politics, campaigning on the issues her son cared about. You didn’t get to see her interactions with all the student veterans, or get to understand how much they cherish her for all she does for them. I wanted to write this blog to make everyone aware of how great of a person she really is.

These wars, like all wars, are brutal and deadly. I have a hope that many will rise up like Tracy, and try to take the impact of this decade long struggle against terrorism and reshape it into something positive. We must learn from the past. We must take care of our veterans. We must, like Tracy, strive for a better world. 

You can watch Tracy's story about the passing of her son Nick here.

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Veterans Day

I will wear my ribbons today, even though most of them don’t mean anything to me except my Combat Action Ribbon and sea service deployment ribbon with a star. (The others were “gimmes,” as I call them. Here’s a Presidential Unit Citation for staying alive. Here’s a medal for being a Reservist who actually deployed – congratulations on just doing your job.) I will pin them to my chest with a mixture of pride, anger, and embarrassment.

I will be proud of my service to my country and its defense. I’m most proud of how, in some existential way, I’ve defended the constitution by enlisting and I’ve helped secure and protect the great freedoms we have in America or for other peoples around the world. I’m an artist. The first amendment means more to me than anything that has ever been codified in English. I would grab a rifle again anytime if the Department of Defense ever failed or tyranny somehow invaded our Democracy, and a new power tried to silence me.

I will be angry that we’re still in Afghanistan with a strategy that I find suspect at best. If we want to win this war, then let’s do it. If we’re just trying to prevent a resurgence of terrorist activity from coming to America again, then let’s just do that – we’d only need several thousand Special Forces and support troops on the ground for that strategy. But this middle ground, this gray area of political tomfoolery and waffling, is only causing a wastage of human life; the daily passing of men and woman whom I still regard as brothers and sisters. I will also be mad about the suicide of eighteen veterans a day.

And I will be embarrassed. Still ashamed of the fact I didn’t do more. I will feel inadequate when comparing my story to the sacrifices of so many others who’ve endured battle after battle, seeing combat on hundreds of occasions now. Do you realize that we’ve been at war for almost ten years now? The character of the men who continue to reenlist and sign up truly humbles me. That’s a fortitude and bravery I can’t comprehend. I will wear my ribbons to draw attention to their sacrifices. Someone has to care for them because they don’t have any sense of self.

I’ve got a whole four stacks of ribbons – sometimes we called them salad bowls because of the bright colors. I performed satisfactory when taking fire and I went where my country needed me. I’m proud, angry, and embarrassed. It’s too much emotion to have, because it’s not really my day.

This one’s for the men in the fighting holes in southern Afghanistan right now. This one’s for Corporal Dunham. This one’s for the men I miss and remember every day. This one’s for the men and women I will never meet. Cheers.

~ Semper Fi ~

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 5)

(This is the final section of a five part series that was posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments!) 

The Conclusion.
In the afternoon we woke up still feeling high. We relived the parts of the previous night we could remember well. I was getting ready to start graduate school at Hopkins in a few days and I finally felt like a normal person, with real hopes and dreams. I felt that the Corps was finally just becoming a distant memory of a far-away life. And when I sold my book, I could buy a van, find a band, and go on tour myself. Maybe I’d learn how to drum metal so Tom would want to come too.

My phone rang. It was Tompkins, a Marine buddy from my unit who I had not seen in two years. “Yo, D-bo,” he said (D-bo was my nickname while I served – short for DiBattista).

I didn’t say anything because usually he rambled a lot and spoke too quickly. “What’s up?” I asked after a long pause.

“Cahir is dead,” he replied, the words as thick and shocking as the strike of a gong.

Sergeant Bill Cahir, the 40 year-old former newspaper reporter and former congressional candidate, my brother Marine and mentor, was dead. He would never see his wife again. He would never meet his yet-to-be born twins.

My body turned warm with the news and the room spun.

“Fuck,” I replied into the receiver as tears streaked my cheeks.

I didn’t want to be around anyone, so I packed my bag again and left as quickly as I could. “Sorry,” I said to Tom, and he nodded knowingly.

He had left a CD in my car. A group called The Haunted remained in the player. For the chorus of one of the tracks the singer screamed, So when I die / lead my remains into the fire / so that my soul flies and I reach the end of the line. It was a raucous rage that soothed my soul and kept me sane as I raced home, ignoring almost every traffic law. I played that track over and over again for those two hours. To the beat, I smacked my palms against the steering wheel and cried. My tears made the road ahead fuzzy but I didn’t slow down.

After one of the best nights of my life the next song had come on. It was a track I didn’t like. But I keep listening to metal because I don’t know how to live a placid life. And I don’t think that’s what my dead friends would want. They would want me to pulse with the rock and roll inside me, always raging against the dying light.

~ Semper Fi ~

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 4)

(This is part four of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 

Part IV.
It became apparent that Tom’s new muscular build had made him more tolerant to binge-drinking than me. Another friend of ours, Carlton, a local Jersey boy who Tom once served with in the Marines, showed up to join our party and I could barely stand after trying to maintain pace.

Carlton held me up when I followed them outside to smoke. A short Latin hombre (who we were reasonably certain was a member of MS-13 because of his tattoos and random references to drug dealing) began mingling with us. Tom bought him a shot. It was better to have him as good-time friend than a criminal enemy.

Alcohol overuse and the fact that I had also been partying for several days already shut my body down. Carlton helped me to his open-top Jeep Wrangler parked right outside. I passed out for a couple hours in the backseat, clutching a crowbar that he placed in my palm. “Hey, no bullshit,” he warned, “If someone comes here – anyone – you use this, okay?” I guess we weren’t appreciating how tough of a town Trenton could be.

When I woke up, feeling rebooted, Tom and Carlton were on the street with the male band members of The Agonist, still smoking and still laughing. Tom had them all convinced that he worked for the CIA – as he did indeed look like Special Forces warrior – and Carlton was enjoying helping reinforce the lie. As citizens of Canada, only here for their tour, they found Tom and his experiences – both real and fictive – amazing. It was his chance to feel cooler than the rockers he idolized.   

The bar had closed and we sat cross-legged on the asphalt parking lot across the street, outside of their tour bus, sharing our cultures and politics. They all wanted to know what it was like to be in the American military and about the wars. As a recent college graduate with a degree in political science and a veteran, they seemed very curious and stimulated by all my opinions and empiricism. Feeling unusually jovial, we lead the conversations and were becoming good friends with them all. We never imagined our military service would be something that genuine rockers would perceive as metal.
The warm sun peaked over the horizon eventually, and they politely informed us that they had to go to the next show. The driver turned on the bus; it roared like angry metal grinding as it came awake. We all hugged and shook hands and exchanged contact information. A local drunk had passed out right under their tour vehicle. Tom grabbed his legs and I grabbed his hands; the man swung like a hammock while we moved him out of the way and then set him back down on the lot.

“What do we do with that guy?” the bass player asked, while holding his stomach with laughter. 

Everyone couldn’t believe what we had just done.

“Let him sleep,” I replied deadpan. “He’ll be fine.”

“Later, Canucks,” Tom jeered.

“Later, Marines,” one of the guys responded.

We returned to the hotel at 9 am, and one of the other patrons we had talked to the night before was headed to some sort of business enterprise. “You guys are just getting back?” he asked incredulously.
We poured ourselves some cereal and orange juice, splashing drink around and making a mess, and Tom purchased us another day in our room so we could sleep past noon.

“I had an awesome time,” I said after we fell against our beds. In all likelihood, we were still legally intoxicated.

“Yeah, man,” Tom slurred. “Rock on!”

We didn’t perform that night. We didn’t have a band. But there was no denying that night was ours.

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 3)

(This is part three of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 


Part III.
We stepped inside and purchased entrance to the show immediately. To our luck, the band Tom wanted to see, The Agonist, had not performed yet and were still setting up after another group just finished.
Awesome. Tom purchased us two beers and two shots after getting our hands stamped and we then entered the secondary lounge which doubled as an event stage.

Pure metal is not for the tame. The band started their show a few minutes later with amplifiers raised to ear drum-shattering decibels of distortion. A row of large, guitar-strapped men banged their bodies towards the audience – who stood inches away – their long cascading hair flowing forward like whips. The drummer thrashed high-tempo triplets against the toms, smashed the cymbals, and kicked out unceasing double bass which ached inside the walls of my chest. The singer was a beautiful young woman who wore knee-high leather boots, torn clothes, and bright blue hair. What little light shone on the stage caused her many piercings to shimmer. With the microphone pressed against the seductive lips of her regal face, she clenched her eyes and unleashed guttural screams juxtaposed every few moments with her classically-trained vocal range – a maniacal dynamic.

I could see Tom smiling unabashedly like he rarely does. Standing only few feet away from his metal goddess was a dream coming true. “Dude, I can’t believe we were that close,” he commented after their short set.

Buzzed from our pre-gaming, we returned to the main bar and sat on cracked vinyl stools. I looked around, finally trying to take this place in.

Across the black countertop bordered by a faded brass railing, was a Megatouch arcade screen sounding off vintage Atari beeps. Behind the large bar mirror sat three rows of alcohol, including the rarely seen redneck favorite, Red Stag by Jim Beam. A sign near the bar well ordered: “Don’t stand here ever.”

On the far side of the room were drop ceilings and wood panel walls. The AC window units along the wall only seemed tolerable in their output when combined with the two ceiling fans over the bar. Two bar-sized pool tables stood atop of busted tiles, torn up carpet, and worn metal trim. The only things that made this place seem like a sports bar at all were ESPN on the wall-mounted plasma TVs and a mantle of APA pool awards reminiscent of childhood everyone’s-a-winner-style plastic trophies.

After analyzing my surroundings, I tried to order the appropriate drink. “Can I get a Pabst Blue Ribbon please?”

“No way,” the tall bartender responded bending down slightly. “Try this instead,” he said popping open a Black Label, a splash of foam streaking down the side. “It’s from Canada.”

“Can we get some shots of Jager, too?” I added.

He raised an eyebrow. Without speaking, he grinned slightly and stacked five rocks glasses up as a tower. The bartender held the chilled Jagermeister bottle upside down over the top glass, letting it overflow into each lower level. “I get the top glass,” he said.

“That’s so metal,” Tom remarked, his face growing animated. And we smiled and quickly consumed both of our shots. We continued this tempo for two hours.

A sloppy drunkenness took over our filters and our bromance came out. “You’re my best friend,” I told him. “I missed you. I didn’t know what to do when you weren’t here.”

“I missed you, too, but we’re always going to be brothers,” he responded, while we high-fived and hugged. And that was true. Tom’s real brother had died of a drug overdose a few years before I met him, and I never had any brothers. Since we met in seventh grade we had become as close as straight men who aren’t biologically linked could be. 

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 2)

(This is part two of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 


Part II.

“How do you feel about a metal show?” a text message from Tom read. When the message alert beeped, I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, growing increasingly tired of roasting in the radioactive sun and dealing with privileged white kids who liked to use hallucinogens and refer to themselves as hippies.

“When and where?” I replied with my thumbs.

“Tonight. Trenton. I got us a hotel.” And this wasn’t extraordinary behavior for Tom. He would have gone by himself if he had to. But he knew that we both liked to live on the road. He knew that we were always following the traveling disturbance of loud sound.

I packed up my military duffel bag quickly. Then, saying goodbye to my ex-brother-in-law who I had been attending this festival with every year I could since age 15, I zoomed off to Trenton, following the female-toned British-accent voice commands of my GPS and blasting some twangy rock. For me, music has always been a constant comfort and I don’t like feeling alone. The philosophy of a tune tells me to just Carry on, my wayward son. Even if you don’t dig this track, the next song will be playing soon.

After we both arrived at the hotel, we dropped our bags on our beds and walked to my Lincoln Town Car, stopping to share cigarettes and talk with other hotel guests. The show would be starting soon, and we guessed that we were probably already late. But time for us meant nothing more than improvising our existences with the rhythm of life. If we were late, so be it: it’s not rock and roll to show up with punctuality, anyway.

We finally made it downtown at Championship Bar and Grill, and the humidity blanket of a summer city caused us to begin sweating after getting out of my luxury car.

Band stickers covered the PVC drainage pipe that the followed the perimeter of the establishment’s roof and leaked a brown stain onto the sidewalk and street. A vintage sign read: “Tomato Pies” “Burgers” “Pasta” and “Steaks” in descending order with alternating red and blue letters against a white background. The show had indeed already started; heavy metal burst through the walls, becoming audible on the street. Before even entering we could tell this place was going to be rough and dirty, which suited us. We didn’t like perfect things.

It was time to rock. Tom – like me, now a civilian – had just returned from national security contracting in Afghanistan, and he wore the wild, five month beard to prove it. He had bulked up considerably from working out every day and he had started the tattoo sleeving of his right upper arm.

I felt out of shape in comparison, considering we both used to be Marines and my muscles had since deflated and morphed into fat. My lips were cracked and my clean-shaven face burned from the outdoor folk festival. Underneath the classic Orioles cap I wore to represent my hometown, my professionally-short hair hid. I wanted to be as bad-ass as him. And I wanted a beard, too. But I would have to settle with simply trying to fit in. Contrastingly, Tom was metal; there was no doubt that he would make this scene.

More tomorrow...

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 1)

(This is part one of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 

Heavy Metal in Trenton

 In the summer of 2001, my best friend and I exchanged our rock and roll dreams for military service. Dispassionate barbers trimmed curly mop-tops into sandpaper buzz-cuts. Piercings and prickly beards were replaced with the poster boy regulations of the image-obsessed Marines. And rifles replaced our sticks and picks.

9/11 occurred just a few months after we had shipped to boot camp. We knew then that our rock star fantasies would be forever replaced by the dark reality of unending global war. Our commander-in-chief told everyone this during his state of the union address after the towers fell. In addition to Afghanistan, Iran was coming. Iraq was coming. North Korea was coming. One of those damned countries was going to be destroyed; and we knew we’d be there, quietly wishing to return to the music that meant everything to us. In our lives, there’s never been a stronger love or a more fervent connection.

At just age 13, Tom (a man I call my heterosexual life mate) had developed the status of a guitar virtuoso, even subbing in at Baltimore biker bars for bands that his parents knew. On his free time, he sought about learning every single Metallica guitar solo by ear just because he could. A radio tower near his one-story home in Perry Hall, Maryland used to project classic rock through his half stack Marshall amp. He’d just raise the volume knob and lick along with Hendrix, Clapton, Frampton, Page, and the other greats.

I never was so good back then. But I played the drums, and drummers were always needed, so I learned to become functional since so many bands sought after me. I never turned down any requests for my services. I played in indie bands, punk bands, alternative bands, jam bands, blues bands, acoustic bands, hardcore bands, and experimental bands.

The highlight of my career still is the Perry Hall High School Showcase of the Bands in the Spring of 2000. My group at the time, Pubescent Weasel, intentionally created a wild, grating sound that was meant to offend everyone present in the auditorium. Beautiful people cringed when our singer leaped off the stage to scream into tiny blonde girl’s faces. I hit every drum and cymbal I could underneath his banshee yelling, not too concerned with any rhythm or beat. Over the wall of sound we created, our guitar player riffed out a hulking anthem of low frequency distortion. Inexplicably, everyone seemed to love us.

Despite our deep musical passions, like any graduates of high school facing the rest of their lives, we made our decisions about what to do next and suffered the consequences. In just the eight years after signing up to serve and shipping off, we’d live in eight states and seven different countries. Between us, we’d serve four combat tours, which would equal almost an entire year of each of our lives. And there would be no way to tabulate to the number of rockets, mortars, IEDs, and bullets we’d see.

I can tell you how many of our friends died and how many memorial services I’ve attended, but I’d rather not.

It didn’t matter because, we survived, and in the summer of 2009, in Trenton, New Jersey, the Gods of Rock would finally smile down and reward us with one night as rock stars.

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At Elmer's Bar in Connecticut

It’s Karaoke night at the only bar within walking distance of Central Connecticut State University. The air is beyond frigid outside, even for these New England types. As I approach the entrance, crossing Route 175, the atmosphere feels like a walk-in freezer. The smokers congregate outside the door, huddling into each other and puffing quickly. Billows of white smoke emerge from their lips like cannon fire. I walk past them, saying hello.

Inside, the patrons shove themselves into the crammed lounge and bar area, lining up three deep at the bar. They scream at each other over the music or stare into their bottles and say nothing at all. Someone is singing Journey, again. A drunken chorus reverberates as almost everyone repeats the lines – a cacophony of slurred and off-pitch chanting. It feels warm in here.

Not very much time has passed, and I’m already feeling as buzzed and good as everyone else. I only make 100 dollars every six weeks as a resident assistant of the nearby freshmen dormitory, Vance Hall, so I order Long Island iced teas. It’s the strongest, cheapest drink I can think of and I don’t like waiting three deep in tight spaces. It tenses my nerves.

The other resident assistants in Vance Hall like to play a game with me. I bet them 20 dollars if they can sneak into my unlocked room and take a picture of me before I awake. Their shadows under the doorway are enough. By the time they place their palms on the door’s handle to twist, I’m sitting up and watching them. I still haven’t come down from that combat high – that warrior frame of mind.   

I’m with my friends at our bar and we’re feeling fine. I like being an RA because I’ve found a family outside the military. I’ve found a new group of friends to live, work, and play with, sharing one hundred percent of our time together – just like that brotherhood and camaraderie I enjoyed in the Marines.

Suddenly, someone’s whispering into a microphone. “Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor…”

“FLOOR!!!” the would-be singer yells and my momentary peace is shattered. It’s a performance of Drowning Pool’s Bodies, a song which suddenly, I realize, offends my sensibilities.

I’m picturing Corporal Salazar’s body being ejected from the Humvee when the suicide bomber crashed into his patrol. I’m watching his body arc to the ground and bounce, before crashing against the rocky Iraq sand. I am seeing him bleed out. I’m watching hopeless faces circle him as he dies.

I’m no longer warm – my mind and body are on fire instead. I sit down at a booth and curl my face into my locked arms.

While everyone else keeps dancing.

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Following the Long Walk Home (Part 2)

He realized then that he had what he calls “a hollow memorial; a meaningless penance.” Zaleski finally decided to do something tangible to help with the legacy of his fallen friends. So he kept doing what he did – walking shoeless – but he started doing it with a purpose.

Some of the results were unexpected. In Zaleski’s pursuit of getting mandatory PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and grief counseling for all returning veterans by collecting a one million signature petition (20,000 names in each state), he helped finally cure some of his father’s demons. Initially Zaleski walked the Appalachian in bare feet to meet his goals. His father asked him “What’re you punishing yourself for?” and Zaleski shared the reasons for his personal crusade.    

His father started crying then, an emotion so rarely seen by Zaleski that he only initially recognized it as a “strange noise.” Zaleski’s father it turned out, had been wearing a tremendous guilt from his time in the European theater of combat for 60 years: the guilt of watching men serving 5 years being killed on the final days of the war when he had only served five months; the trauma of watching 12-year-old boy soldiers, “Hitler’s Wolfpack,” being shot down by his comrades; using soap made from dead Jews. His father’s revelations underscored the sense of urgency in Zaleski’s “Long Walk Home. 

“If you can get a guy (the appropriate counseling) right when he gets out he has a much better chance,” Zaleski says. Speaking of the estimated 175,000 homeless veterans in the U.S. he adds, “For a guy who put his life on the line to be under a bridge drinking his memories, that doesn’t make it for me.”

So far his progress has been minimal. Maybe 4 or 5 thousand signatures he guesses. And Zaleski doesn’t want to simply create awareness. He wants real change. “If I tell somebody their house is on fire but I don’t help them, what good is that?” Zaleski wonders. Of the politicians he’s encountered, most have written off his cause because they aren’t his representative. “They (the politicians) say nice things to my face,” Zaleski says brashly, but they eventually just ask him “are you my constituent?” and when he answers incorrectly they decline to latch on to his cause. “A soldier didn’t fight for the North or South or New Jersey or Kentucky,” Zaleski screams, “they fought for America.”

On a positive note though, Phil Roe, a Tennessee Congressman and former soldier himself, has decided that he wants to help champion Zaleski’s cause. So there is some hope. They plan on meeting up in October when Roe can concentrate solely on Zaleski’s cause and not on the upcoming election.

But even if Roe turns out like almost all the other elected leaders he’s met, Zaleski’s not going to quit. “I question my sanity I really do. I realize if I do nothing, that’s crazier than doing something. I don’t want to pass this along to the next generation. I don’t want another mom to tell me about her lost son.”

You can follow Mr. Zaleski and sign his petition at www.thelongwalkhome.org 

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Following the Long Walk Home (Part 1)

He’s in Nashville now, a stop on his way towards visiting all fifty states. He doesn’t use a small plane, an automobile, or even a bike as his mode of transportation. Ron Zaleski is walking all across America. With his petition in hand, he doesn’t even wear shoes. When there’s no one around to solicit signatures from, sometimes he’ll lay down that document to pick out one inch shards of glass or repair a torn off heel. Passion can’t even begin to describe how fervently he believes in his cause.


59-year-old Zaleski is the founder of the The Long Walk Home, a nonprofit organization that seeks to raise awareness and solutions about the mental health problems that veterans face during and after their service. He wears an impressively-sized sign around his neck on his daily 10 to 15 mile barefoot walk that reads: “18 VETS A DAY COMMIT SUICIDE(‘commit suicide’ in red, bold letters).” A veteran Marine himself, Zaleski’s quest is a very personal one. “I get that sense that everybody that’s in the military is related to me in some way,” he believes. “That could be my son, my daughter, my loved one in there.”


And the grief of his walk gets more personal more often than he likes. “The hardest part of this journey for me has been when a car pulls over, and a mother will stand there and cry.” She’ll tell him that “her child came home safe, committed suicide, and then she’ll hold me,” Zaleski shares, also tearing up.


Zaleski joined the Marines in 1970 even though he came from a devoutly catholic lineage and did not believe in killing. His family, he also notes, was “a dysfunctional World War II family.” His father had brought the war home with him as it continued raging within his mind. That rage manifested itself as alcoholism and mental abuse towards his family. Zaleski joined to intentionally anger his parents in a passive-aggressive kind of way.


But when the orders to go to Vietnam arrived for him and five of his buddies, the reality compelled Zaleski to follow his convictions. He told his commanding officer that the only way he was going was “chained to a helicopter,” and he was willing to face the jail time for his decision. Miraculously, they decided he could stay because of his other critical skills. “I became an office squirt because I could type and had brains,” Zaleski says, emphasizing his Long Island accent and vernacular. 


He saw one of those men later. Zaleski asked what happened. “We all got shot and two of us are dead,” his buddy told him.  He decided to embrace their sacrifice for freedom -- so he stopped wearing shoes in 1972. Understandably so, people would ask why he didn’t wear shoes and Zaleski would respond combatively, “because I don’t feel like it; you got a problem with dat?”


In 2005, after years of slowly destroying the family business he inherited and a horrible divorce – all problems stemming from his arrogance and bitterness (most likely learned behavior from his father) – a girl asked the same question he had been hearing for the last 33 years. “Why don’t you wear shoes?”


“I had been doing it so long,” Zaleski recalls, “I couldn’t really have an answer. God spoke through that child.” What were you doing? He questioned of himself. 

(Continued tomorrow)

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911 Call

Provided for you here is a portion of a real conversation that I had with an old friend (name changed) who randomly messaged me on facebook.com a couple evenings ago. Think of this as a 911 call about the trauma of life after war. I’m not posting this to marginalize the seriousness of this talk. I think this transcript can say more with its realness and rawness than I often can with my patiently crafted words. This is about as honest as it gets. I haven’t altered the transcript in anyway. Please forgive the adult content.

Joe Soldier 1:34am

dude i am feeling down is there any confort you can give me

Me 1:34am

sure, man. what's wrong?

Joe Soldier 1:35am

i miss my fallen friends and i joined the reserved and i and on a line about to cross it and valinterr to deploy to make it right

Me 1:36am

sounds like you got some guilt, man. Going to fight again is not going to help that. It will just bring you more guilt. Your fallen friends would want you to make a nice life for yourself, not volunteering again and again you did your time, bro no one can take that from you

Joe Soldier 1:37am

seven that is how many dear friends i have lost

Me 1:37am

Unfortunately, that's not a sacred pain man. I've lost just as many. People I recruited are now dead. I still feel like shit about it, but we make decisions we make, and we move on

Joe Soldier 1:38am

well how do you get by cause i drink way to much and take way to many pills

Me 1:38am

I used to do that. And then I found writing, and college, and other veterans -- things that helped me focus my energy positively and people to listen

Joe Soldier 1:40am

well i go to a consouler but she doesnt know how it is

Me 1:41am

Do you mean at the VA?

Joe Soldier 1:42am

well at the vow

Me 1:43am

Oh word. Dude, I know it's rough bro. It took me three years to begin feeling normal again, and I still have flashbacks and grief. One of my brothers died a year ago, and I have friends who are still serving that I worry about Have you checked out my website,www.notalone.com? It's a resource website for people like you, people dealing with the trauma of war. They've got programs there. I've used them. They're pretty legit. And if necessary, they can get you professional help

Joe Soldier 1:44am

no i have not yet but i will now

Me 1:45am

I blog for them and create other content. My blog is Behind the Blast's Shadow: An After War Blog You can read my story, man. I've been in your shoes. There are a lot of people on that site who have been there

Joe Soldier 1:46am

ok its just that sometimes it all hits me at ounce

Me 1:47am

Well, they say when it rains it pours, and aint that the fucking truth dude. You can't run away from all that though, sometime you're going to have to face it. Is it hitting you now?

Joe Soldier 1:48am

ya dude i hit me enough to make me cry tonight 

(End Transcript) 


My friend was okay for the night and I'm going to meet with him soon. I'm praying he won't do anything too destructive between then -- obviously, self-medication is not the answer. It's a long walk back to normalcy after war. And it's a struggle. We've got to prepare ourselves. Not Alone can help you do that. 

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