Walk in My Combat Boots

by James Patterson

  And over time it does. My friends and family tell me I’m night and day different than the person I was before, and I think it’s because I have more of a sense of myself, and a sense of purpose. More than anything, I want to help other veterans, whether it’s getting them a new home or just reaching out and talking to others who are struggling. Just help them with their mindset, because mindset is the biggest thing. Ninety percent of people want the direction of their life to change, but they forget they’re the ones driving the car. You have to turn the wheel. Life isn’t going to change for you, and no one around you is going to change. You have to change.

  ROBERT LIVELY

  Robert Lively grew up in suburban Washington, DC. When he graduated from Virginia Tech, he left for a six-month, 2,100-mile hike through the Appalachian Trail. When Robert returned, he went to work for a small trucking company, met his future wife, got married, and was then transferred to central Indiana. There, after much reflection, he decided that he wanted to live his true goals and visions and joined the Army. He was twenty-seven when he started basic training. After twenty-eight years and twenty-eight days of service and multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Robert retired as a command sergeant major.

  On June 17, 2001, I have my lower lumbar fused—L4, L5, and S1—the result of having slipped on a vehicle over in Europe and breaking part of my back. Now I’m looking at a long recovery at Walter Reed. I’m thirty-seven years old.

  Here’s my daily therapy back at Fort Bragg: walking in the aquatic pool with eighty-year-old veterans and ladies, trying to get my back right. I’ve got only one shot.

  Three months out, I’m walking down a hallway back at headquarters to hand off some paperwork. On one of the TVs I see a plane fly into a tower.

  What the hell is that guy doing? It’s a pretty day in New York City, not foggy or anything. By the time I reach the other end of the hallway, a second plane hits, and all the guys assemble around the screen in the squadron lounge.

  We all know what has happened.

  The command sergeant major of the squadron comes into the lounge. “Hey, fellas, it’s on now. You know that, don’t you?”

  My first thought is, I have six more months to recover. Holy smokes, I’m going to miss going to war.

  I get into my truck and drive to Walter Reed.

  “I need to get an assessment on my recovery,” I tell them. “I need a bone scan. I need to see how far this thing has advanced, what my recovery looks like.”

  They do a bone scan and tell me I’m looking really good. They agree to cut me loose for about thirty days of aggressive physical therapy. But I have to start real slow.

  “That won’t be a problem,” I say. I have a solid athletic background—avid hiker and skier, and before I went to college I played football and trained hard to try to make the NFL—so, at some level, I know what I need to do.

  Thirty days later, my squadron deploys. I miss them by about a week.

  I call my doctor. “I’m feeling good. You need to let me go.”

  He pauses, thinking.

  Then he says, “Put your gear on and go run a couple of sprints and tell me what it feels like.”

  I hang up, do a couple of sprints, and call him back.

  “It feels pretty good,” I tell him.

  “I’m going to cut you loose. Go ahead and go.”

  The Army manages to get me a flight overseas. It leaves in six hours. I need to go home and pack.

  My wife and I don’t have cell phones. Right now, Cathy is at soccer practice in Pinehurst, North Carolina, with our girls. I call the Pinehurst police department and ask them to go get my wife and kids and tell them to come home.

  We spend a couple of hours together. My kids are crying. They’re old enough to understand where I’m going, what it means to go to war. I don’t know when I’m coming back. I kiss them good-bye and then run off to catch up with my guys.

  My first deployment to Afghanistan is short but intense, aggressive, and focused. I don’t want to take a day off. I don’t want to rest. I just want to be here. That’s the Army’s business strategy: deliver maximum sustained impact; come back, refit, recover, take on new responsibilities; and then be able to dial back in and go at it again.

  Each deployment is different. Doesn’t matter if it is six, nine, or twelve months: the environment changes, the enemy changes—everything changes. And for my personality, I love that.

  When it comes to war, if you’re going to pick up a gun, you cannot have an imbalance of commitment. You have to be ready to go, ready to fight, and ready to die. It’s like my coaches used to tell me in football: you can’t play like you’re afraid to get hurt or you’re going to get hurt. You have to be committed and you have to be all in.

  I don’t know of another woman, another mother or military spouse, who is any stronger or more committed than my wife.

  I was never a big technology guy. During all my deployments between 2003 and 2005, even when I could Skype with my family, I didn’t. What Cathy and I tried to do was let the kids be kids. Let them go to soccer, let them go to school. When I was home, we’d have a nice leave together, and then when it was time for me to go back, we’d go on a shopping spree and the kids knew it was time for them to up their team play at home: to pitch in better, to make sure they didn’t give Mom too much trouble as teenagers. And when I got home in a few months, it would be like Christmas and we’d go on another vacation. I tried to bookend my leaving with two things that were fun and exciting.

  And in the meantime, I expected them to be kids. I didn’t want them doing stuff like military student programs. I just wanted them to be hanging out with their friends and not worrying about what’s going on in another part of the world. They’ll have the rest of their lives to worry about that.

  During those three years, my mother died. Cathy’s mother died and her father died. I lost several guys. Cathy’s grandparents died and my grandmother died. I never missed a deployment, and I never got a single negative email from her. Cathy never said, “I need you home with me.” She never complained. My kids were never late for school and never got bad grades. She never missed a soccer game or an athletic event or a school function. She carried that like no one I have ever heard of or seen.

  I don’t think anyone realizes what she did during that time frame and how well she did it.

  We never really planned that she was going to be a military spouse someday. I never really planned to join the Army. This is just more affirmation that God has a mission or plan for people, and if you just watch it and try to listen to it, you’ll end up there. Build a growth mindset and next thing you know you’ll be handling things pretty well. You’ll be able to have an impact on yourself and others in a way that you never dreamed you possibly could.

  PATRICK KERN

  Patrick Kern and his brother grew up north of San Francisco, in Marin County. Their father, who grew up in the projects, enlisted in the Army to become a dental technician. When Patrick graduated from high school in 1987, he attended West Point and chose the Army. His branch was Armor. His brother enlisted in the Marine Corps.

  The FBI has me out on Staten Island, doing surveillance on these organized crime goombahs. I’m on my way home one day and see an M1 battle tank rolling down the freeway.

  When you graduate from West Point, your obligation is five years of active service, four years reserves. My active service is done.

  In October of 1992, a little over a year after graduating, the Army sent me, a brand-new second lieutenant, on my first combat tour along the Kuwait-Iraq border. The Kuwaitis and Iraqis were going at it. Department of Energy guys were there to issue us the ammo for our tanks—kinetic sabot rounds made with depleted uranium, designed to penetrate hardened steel and armor.

  I did another tour there in 1993. When I came back, I did two years as a platoon leader and then another two as an executive officer. Then I punched out and went pretty much straight into the FBI, and now here I am working organized
crime for the New York City field office.

  As I watch the tank rolling down the highway, I’m thinking, I don’t know what unit that is, but that’s the unit I’m going to join. And that’s how I get exposed to the 1st Battalion of the 101st Cavalry. It’s an old unit from New York that became a tank battalion back in the day, and it’s right here in Staten Island.

  “You’ve got to turn on the TV,” a friend of mine says.

  I’m barely awake as I hold the phone to my ear. I was out late the night before and planned on sleeping in. I’ve got to go into work later in the day.

  I sit up in bed, in my apartment in New Jersey. “What’s going on?”

  “Plane attacked the tower.”

  I turn on the TV, thinking back to an accident from the 1940s, when a B-25 accidentally flew into the Empire State Building. The plane my friend said flew into the tower—it has to be the same situation: an accident.

  Then the second plane hits and I know what’s going on.

  I pack a bunch of extra clothes and then I grab my military uniform. I throw my dog tags around my neck, throw my shit in the car, hit the siren and drive my ass into the city. I’m about fifty miles out.

  By the time I’m on the road driving into the city, the state troopers have already cleared the highways. I get a police escort for about thirty miles and then he breaks off and I go right through the Holland Tunnel and pop up into the disaster.

  The FBI has a garage on the West Side Highway. When I arrive, I see a lot of FBI personnel already there. They’re using the garage as a command post. It’s mass confusion.

  I meet with my supervisors and then we try to figure out where our people are. The big bosses are trying to figure out what they’re going to do next while trying to get accurate information on what exactly happened.

  The phones are limited. When I’m able to use one, I call my master gunner.

  In 1998, when I took over company command, the Army had gone from eighteen active-duty divisions down to ten. A whole bunch of soldiers who got out of the Army were young, experienced, and still wanted to serve. During the mid-1990s, the Guard had an influx of these former soldiers. These guys are now cops and firemen and state troopers and corrections officers. Some are district attorneys. They’re talented people with professional careers.

  When I get ahold of my master gunner, I tell him to call up our guys, have everyone go to the Armory, post guards, and secure it. Two of my platoon leaders are there in a couple of hours. They roll the tanks out on the street, which somehow immediately gets back to the adjutant general in the governor’s office. I get a phone call from some major who screams at me to get my tanks out of the street.

  I hang up on him.

  When I’m not talking to the agents and FBI personnel around me, I’m on the phone making more calls. Nobody seems to have a handle on what’s going on—if another attack is coming, if there are more planes in the air.

  Later in the day, the Bureau decides that agents will go on twelve-hour schedules. The National Security branch gets days. Criminal—my branch—gets nights. I’ll be working from 10:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. every day, for the foreseeable future.

  When the FBI releases me, I drive to Staten Island, report to my battalion commander, and help him get organized. By seven o’clock that night, all my guys have rolled in, dressed in their gear. They’re ready to do what they’ve been trained to do. They operate well in this sort of environment.

  Each day, when my twelve-hour shift for the Bureau ends, I head over to Battery Park, where my battalion commander has set up headquarters. There, for the next couple of weeks, I get tasked out to different military guard checkpoints surrounding the zone around the rubble.

  The Bureau is my priority. Any free time I have I spend with the battalion commander or out with my guys.

  We then get tasked to guard the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s basically a security detail—nothing hard, just keeping an eye out and interacting with the civilians, who tell us how it gives them a sense of calm, seeing soldiers out there with M4s.

  Our presence has another effect: it shuts down a known place where crack dealers meet up with all the junkies. The crack dealers and junkies are pissed off because the National Guard has taken over their site and shut down the drug trade.

  I spend Christmas pulling a security detail on the Williamsburg Bridge. I think about the day the planes hit the towers. I think about my friends who died there and I think about agents like Lenny Hatton, who jumped on a fire truck and went down to the World Trade Center to help. That was the last anyone saw of him.

  A lot of the FBI agents who were down near the WTC that morning and survived came right back to work all covered in dirt, filth, and dust. Some people can handle events like that. Others can’t, like this kid in my unit. He’d been in one of the Towers, got out and survived, and now he’s broken. Done.

  We have to release him from the unit. He’s not mission-focused, which makes him a liability.

  Years later, I’ll read this book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, written by a military guy named Dave Grossman. He’ll talk about how courage is like having money in the bank. Everybody has money in the bank, but some have more than others. And every time you go out and get into a bad situation, you take a little bit of money out of this bank. If you keep taking money and don’t put any in, you’ll reach a breaking point.

  There’s no shame in it. Some people hit it earlier than others. When it happens, you need to step away and go someplace where you can recharge, put money back into that account. You have to step away and recharge so you can come back stronger.

  When my command ends in 2002, my obligation to the Army is done, and I’m done with the military. The Bureau offers me what’s called an OP, an office of preference, and I choose San Francisco. I’m a senior agent, and my FBI career is getting busier and busier. In 2004, I’m given an amazing opportunity: Oxford accepts me into its MBA program.

  Mario, my old battalion commander back in New York, calls me and says, “Hey, the division has been alerted. I’m now the big dog who puts the whole shebang together for the commander. I want you to come over to Iraq and be my deputy.”

  “I’m going to Oxford.”

  “No, you’re coming to be my deputy.”

  “I’m taking a year off and going to Oxford. I need a break.”

  “No, you’re going over to be my deputy.”

  We go back and forth like this for days.

  The Bureau isn’t going to pay for my MBA. To go to Oxford, I have to take a leave of absence and go a year without pay, plus take out a loan to pay the eighty thousand dollars for this one-year MBA program. I start crunching the numbers and start thinking maybe I don’t want to take on this kind of debt.

  Mario keeps calling and pressuring me. I finally make a decision.

  “I’ll give you one year,” I tell him. “I’ll be your deputy G3 for one year.”

  I take a military leave from the FBI and ship back to upstate New York for training. When I get there, Mario tells me he gave my job away to someone else.

  “You’re now the CHOPS,” he says.

  “What the fuck? You said I can be your deputy G3, and now I’m chief of operations? That’s a step below.”

  “There’s another CHOPS—this other major. He’s going to be the senior CHOPS. You’re going to be the junior. He’ll get nights, you’ll get days.”

  This is just getting better and better, I tell myself. I shouldn’t be so surprised by Mario’s actions. This is typical Army. No good deed goes unpunished.

  In 2004, IEDs are becoming a huge problem in Iraq.

  The 278th Cav is still equipped with the light Humvees. To give them some protection, they turn them into these Mad Max–type vehicles, bolting on steel and making turrets. When I go out on combat patrols, I sit on Kevlar blankets with these ad hoc steel doors, a little periscope for windows.

  I travel to pretty much every major city in the four p
rovinces. I file report after report back to the division commander and my G3 about the bloodbaths I see on the battlefield.

  When the Iraqis are not attacking us, they’re attacking the elections that are going on. A chief of police from one tribe gets elected, and the other tribe assassinates him. We have another election. Another guy wins, and then he gets assassinated. The Sunnis go after any Shiites who go out and vote. Suicide car bombs go off and kill anywhere from seventy to eighty people.

  It’s a daily occurrence.

  When they’re not killing each other, they’re mortaring our forward operating base and using IEDs to try to take us out on the roads.

  In the beginning, the IEDs are mostly old Soviet 155 shells planted in a road with wires. When they detonate one, shrapnel gets into the target vehicle. The explosions are not catastrophic.

  Then they start using EFPs—explosively formed projectiles made in Iran. They’re diabolical. A single EFP can penetrate an armored Humvee as well as Bradleys and tanks. We start losing drivers here and there. When the enemy buries a whole bunch of these EFP explosives in the road, it can shred a Humvee, kill four or five guys at one time.

  When my deployment ends in 2005, we’ve sent seventy-two kids home in body bags.

  What people have a hard time understanding is that Iraqi culture isn’t wired for democracy. All these Iraqi tribes are basically interconnected. They’re all brothers; sisters; third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh cousins—and yet they’ve hated each other for centuries. They’re all at each other’s throats, vying for power.