Six Years Ago, Today

This time of year is always a particularly introspective one for me. Both of my deployments started in February (2003 and 2004) and it was around this time in March or April several years ago that I experienced the majority of the combat I did. Usually those memories lie dormant in my brain like a volcano that seldom smolders.

Sometimes I have dreams of experiences so vivid I don’t know how they can’t possibly be true. They’re not bad dreams, luckily, just lucid echoes of fuzzy memories – the manifestation of combat stress in my subconscious. Confused, I’ll thumb through my journal (a distinctly Marine Corps lime green-colored journal) to uncover where I was, and what I was doing to see if these things actually did occur:

Fallujah, Iraq
Day 68
April 9, 2004

Slept in till 0800. Went into work and became very busy with random tasks. Off at usual time. Rested for night mission. Before crossing of wire, two separate mortar attacks came f***ing close. Posted as OP for our CA mission from last night that was canceled. Two minutes after we reentered the gate, witnessed a huge firefight across the wire. Seriously close s*** again. Thank God for his protection.

I dreamed that I was walking that night on a patrol (which was not the case), where something bad happened, but I couldn’t remember what. It’s just a flash of an image that I remember from that dream. I’m marching with my weapons and I’m feeling the foreboding of death…

My absolute last day in the Marines, I drove to the Henderson Hall post exchange (military department store) at the Headquarters of the Marine Corps in D.C. I knew I wouldn’t have access to these facilities as a civilian, so I wanted to purchase some parting gifts for myself: a brand new bumper sticker; extra ribbons and medals; a gray t-shirt that reads “USMC” in black letters. A captain was there. He felt familiar for some reason. I broke traditional protocol (a corporal wouldn’t usually approach a captain) and walked towards him.

“Good afternoon, Sir. I’m sorry to bother you, but do I know you?”

He stared back. “Yeah, maybe.”

We flipped through our collective consciousnesses. Were you in Iraq? Yes. In April 2004? Yeah, that’s right. Fallujah? Yes, that’s correct, who are you Corporal?

The captain, it turns out, had come with us on this civil affairs mission of ours that occurred on this day six years ago. We went to resupply a Jordanian hospital during the First Battle of Fallujah. I had been posted as an observation post slash machine gun position at the south side of the hospital. I watched the evening horizons all around me illuminate with dozens of flashes through my night vision goggles. Violent explosions thumped the ground. Apparently, according to the captain, an enemy element was observed at the north side of the hospital and he had called in artillery to eliminate them. “That night was the biggest fire mission I ever called,” the captain boasted.

I don’t think I ever knew that. But maybe I did. I’ve never killed anyone but I know, in part, that the captain only successfully accomplished his mission because I was watching his rear. Six years later, I still don’t know how I feel about what I learned. Maybe I couldn’t accept what happened then so I had hidden those realizations away.

It’s amazing what the brain can do automatically on its own accord. It’s hard to understand the past when trauma has beat up our minds. I’m writing this today for clarity. It’s part of my healing process.

Feel free to offer up whatever you have to say.

You are not alone.

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