Walk in My Combat Boots

by James Patterson

  It was an unbelievable sight, how the pilot swayed that chopper from side to side just a few feet above the ground and weaved it up that winding road.

  Once the chopper arrived, it rocked back momentarily. We swung the body bags into the bird. The crew grabbed us as we entered and the aircraft immediately took off. We flew out of there and looked at each other with tears in our eyes, grateful because we had somehow managed to get out of there alive, grateful because we had completed the recovery mission and were bringing our men home.

  No man left behind isn’t just a saying. It isn’t just some BS motto people write on a wall. It’s a deeply rooted core value that’s part of the brotherhood of being a soldier.

  And what better tribute could I have given at the end of my career but to have had the honor and privilege of being a quartermaster officer and playing a key role in making sure those valiant fallen warriors got back home?

  JON EYTON

  Jon Eyton grew up in a military family. His father served in the Air Force in Vietnam, and his uncle, a member of the 101st Airborne, completed four combat jumps in World War II. Jon served in the Army from 2003 to 2007. He got out as a staff sergeant and was assigned to Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry.

  When I return to Fort Drum in 2008, I decide to get out of the Army and move back to Boise, Idaho. I’ve got a plan: I’m going to open my own structural steel fab shop business. I don’t really know shit about it, but I’m going to put my full force and energy into it while my wife stays at home raising the little ones.

  Within three weeks of stepping off the plane, I’ve got everything I need to rock and roll.

  Then 2010 shows up and the country is at the height of the financial crisis. My wife and I are fighting to keep our heads above water. Even with everything that’s going on financially in my life and across the entire country, I manage to find a way to buy a house—I’m relentless, like a dog with a bone—and then the bottom drops out and I’m sitting in bankruptcy court owing forty thousand dollars to business vendors I can’t pay.

  Seemingly overnight, I’ve gone from being a former military guy who, while deployed in Afghanistan, was in a high-level leadership position—a guy with a high-functioning skill set and a ton of responsibilities; a guy who, on a daily basis, for years, dealt with IEDs, combat, and being constantly surrounded by people who wanted him dead—to being a guy standing in line at the Idaho department of welfare to apply for food stamps and Medicaid so my kids can eat and see their doctors. It’s a very humbling experience.

  On top of all that, nearly all work in the state has dried up because of the financial crash. Jobs are practically nonexistent. Every night, my wife and I work our budget literally down to the penny to make sure the kids don’t notice how bad the situation is.

  I treat looking for a job as a job. I put in twelve-hour days. I calculate the miles I need to drive on specific days to see if I’ll have enough gas because money is always tightest before the next unemployment check comes. This cycle goes on for months, until I land a job with a competitor of mine. I cash in my G.I. Bill and go to night school, to get my associate’s degree in drafting and design, while working full-time.

  Eleven months later, after Christmas break, I walk into work and see my boss.

  “No need to go back to your office,” he says. “You’ve been laid off.”

  Back to square one again. Back to government assistance.

  Three months later, I land another job with a competitor, a guy who owns a big fabrication company. He’s got a lot longer reach and a lot wider geographical range than my previous employer. He hires me as a project manager.

  I end up getting my associate’s degree and roll that right over to my bachelor’s for construction management. I work during the day and go to school at night.

  My wife decides to go back to school. We’ve got three kids in school and we’re in school and the kids are all playing sports—and I’m coaching. I’m “enjoying the suck,” as we say in the Army, and it feels good because my wife is just as relentless and stubborn and hardheaded as I am. We’re both willing to do today what other people aren’t willing to do tomorrow.

  The Army gave me that attitude. Deployments gave me that attitude. Leadership and exposure to good mentors in the service gave me that attitude. There are no excuses, no bad days, no “Poor me.” There’s just no other way to be.

  ANDY WEINS

  Andy Weins grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called Menomonee Falls. He served for fourteen years in the Army Reserve as an 88 Mike, motor transport operator; a 31 Bravo, military police; and a 31 Echo, corrections and detention specialist. Andy is currently a sergeant first class, his MOS 79 Victor, Army Reserve career counselor.

  As a truck driver hauling fuel in Iraq, I’ll always be a big, slow target. There’s a damn good chance I’m going to die.

  I grew up in the burbs, on a quiet street. I always wanted to join the military because, to me, the idea of becoming a man revolved around going to fight for your country—kill or die, if need be. I grew up loving that mindset. When 9/11 happened, it reignited my conviction to join.

  Unfortunately, I needed two medical waivers. I’m fructose intolerant and I have really screwed-up elbows, and the military, I was told, allowed you only one waiver. I tried joining the Army in 2001, but they wouldn’t let me in. In 2002, when I graduated from high school, I tried the Marines. No luck. I went back to the Army in 2003, tried again, and got rejected. My luck changed in 2004, when the recruiting standards dropped, and I’m able to get into the Army with two medical waivers.

  I couldn’t do infantry because of my fructose intolerance, so I asked the Army about the minimum amount of schooling I would need in order to get closest to the front lines.

  “Go be a truck driver,” the Army told me. “Those guys are getting blown up all the time.”

  Cool, I thought at the time. I already knew how to drive a truck.

  But I never researched the job. I was so green I thought that you did whatever the Army told you to do. I went reserve because, at the time, I was told they were slotted to go to Iraq—and they are. It’s February of 2006, and I’m flying on a C-130.

  When I land at the Al-Taqaddum Air Base in the early afternoon, I’m hungry and kind of disoriented. It’s hot and I’ve got motion sickness from the flight. They show us where we’ll be sleeping, and after they give us all the basic supplies, we go to a convoy brief, where I find out I’ll be going on a convoy the following night.

  I go through rehearsal of concept (ROC) drills, learn that each vehicle in the convoy has its own job. I’ll be one of forty vehicles hauling fuel to a Marine Corps base in Fallujah. The Marines protect the roads, and we deliver fuel to them since they don’t have the necessary supply trucks and tankers.

  We run at night, so we head out of the base at dusk. I’m all geared up—neck plate, all the different pieces and parts to my Interceptor Body Armor—and ready to get out there and kill the bad guys. The guy I’m with has been here for months. He’s wearing a T-shirt and a soft cap. His uniform looks like shit. He’s got this scowl on his face because he is so done and ready to leave this place and go home.

  And now he’s got to deal with me, the eager new guy. “Just drive the truck,” he says wearily. “If the truck in front of you stops, don’t hit it. And don’t fall asleep. If you think you’re gonna fall asleep, say something. I’ll talk to you.”

  As we head out of the wire, I try to take in everything I can see while there’s still enough light. Once it goes dark in Iraq, if you have a full moon unobstructed by clouds, there’s tons of ambient light, and you can see forever. But if there’s no moon, you can’t see anything because there aren’t any lights in the distance.

  Because we’re carrying fuel, we can run only on a hardball, which means we drive only on asphalt. It means that we can’t use any bridges that aren’t rated. It means that we can’t take the shortest route: we take the safest route. The shortest route would b
e forty minutes. The safest route is four hours, and we may or may not get killed by insurgents along the way.

  We arrive at the Marine Corps base at two in the morning. I’m exhausted.

  “What do we do now?” I ask the guy driving with me.

  “You eat or you sleep.”

  I fall asleep outside, between two tires. I learn to sleep that way for the rest of the year.

  When I return in September of 2006, things are really heating up. During Ramadan, we get hit by IEDs in seventeen out of nineteen missions. When Ramadan ends, we get hit basically every time we go out on the wire.

  I get hit.

  Here’s how it happens.

  You’re driving and all of a sudden you hear an explosion. It’s loud and it’s quick. You don’t know what the hell happened, and you’re disoriented and if you’re the driver, you’re trying to keep your truck on the hardball. You can’t see through the thick plumes of smoke and dust and sand and debris but you keep rolling, hoping you’re not going to run into a disabled vehicle and cause a massive pileup.

  If you’re the truck commander of the vehicle you’re riding in, you reach for the hand mic clipped to your armor and more often than not you can’t find it because it’s fallen off. You grab the cord attached to the mic and fish it back into your hands as people in the convoy send reports over the radio. You tell the driver to keep rolling and you call the convoy commander and tell him you’re alive and then you give him a LACE report: liquid, ammo, casualties, equipment. You’re wondering about a secondary device or a secondary attack as people radio what they see, or saw, and because your vehicle is still moving, you slow down just enough that you don’t lose the others.

  Someone tries to blow you up and you keep driving. It’s not that sexy.

  When you roll in, you go to a special area so the vehicle can be inspected. Usually it’s a hot mess because all the fluids have pissed out of it. You have a raging headache and your ears hurt and more often than not you have whiplash. Someone comes and picks you up and you go get breakfast and then go to sleep.

  Getting hit by an IED—to me, it’s such a nothing burger. But yet I know it’s such a significant time in my life. I know people who call these days their “rebirth date” or “the day they should have died,” or something along those lines. To me, it’s just another day in Iraq. That’s it. That’s my life every forty-eight hours.

  And the only thing I care about is how many hot meals I can get. I want to be the first guy in line at breakfast, every morning. I always eat a massive breakfast: an omelet, four hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, waffles, and grits. Chow time is the one time throughout the day when I’m in charge. I can choose what I’m going to eat. For that twenty minutes or half an hour—that’s my time. No one can fuck with me.

  What I struggle with the most is the fact that someone wants to indiscriminately kill me and I can’t fight back—I don’t even have the opportunity to fight back. It takes away the edge of war. If you shoot at me and I shoot at you, the better man wins. But to lose just to lose? That’s where I struggle. It makes it less personal, which also makes it more personal.

  When I get back from Iraq, I become a tour manager for a band. I keep myself busy for the next eighteen months and then all of a sudden, in December of 2008, I lose my job. I find a bar and start thinking through my life.

  I don’t have a job or a girlfriend. I came back from Iraq, and instead of thinking through everything that had happened over there, I basically partied for a year and a half. And then everything hits me all at once.

  I’m a hot mess for six months.

  This time, I choose to deal with my demons instead of going to a bar. I go to counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists for nine months. I don’t get anywhere. It’s all bullshit.

  Every year, I schedule my PHA—periodic health assessment. Every year, the doctor tells me I have PTSD and need to go seek help and treatment.

  I don’t. What does work for me, though, is connecting with other struggling veterans on LinkedIn or talking to them on the phone. As much as I might be helping them, they also help me.

  I’m very blunt and transparent. One year I tell my doctor I have homicidal and suicidal ideations every day because sometimes life sucks, and that’s where my brain goes. He puts me on restrictive duty for thirty days.

  Medicine, from what I’ve seen, treats symptoms, not the problem. When you walk into the VA with your problems, you leave with the same problems. My problem is, I miss being around people that have my back, that make me feel safe every day. That’s what I miss. The symptom is, I don’t trust people. The symptom is, I’m not very good at relationships. I don’t open up to people. The symptom is, people in the civilian world will fuck you over every chance they get. How do I fix that?

  I fix it by surrounding myself with veterans and people of the same mindset.

  When you’re in a military unit, you get everything. You’ve got your cooks, you’ve got your maintenance guys, your line platoon that go out and do their thing. You’re self-sustaining. You’re a tribe. You don’t get that in the civilian world. You have to go out and create one for yourself—and I do. I create my own tribe. I also learn the importance of asking others for help because, as the Army’s resiliency program taught me, asking for help is a fucking strength, not a weakness.

  KAREN ZAKRZEWICZ

  Karen Zakrzewicz grew up on a dairy farm in Thorp, Wisconsin, with three older siblings. Her father was in the National Guard and the reserve, as a combat engineer and an officer, and her grandfather was a drill sergeant during World War II. She is a sergeant in the Army Reserve, and her job is 68 X-ray, behavioral health technician.

  In February of 2016, I’m working as a DOD contractor in Milwaukee, going to school for behavioral health, and putting in my time in the reserves when I get a call from my first sergeant.

  “Do you think your soldier wants to go overseas?” he asks.

  He’s referring to Dan, the father of my daughter. I met him in 2013, and we had a kid. Our daughter was born in 2014. She’s coming up on two, and Dan and I are looking to do the whole marriage thing and have more kids down the line.

  “Absolutely not,” I tell him. “I can almost 100 percent guarantee you he’ll say no. But I won’t speak for him, so give him a call.”

  “Do you want to go overseas?”

  “I sure do.”

  Twenty minutes later, I get a call from the company commander for the deployment. He’s part of an MP unit heading to Camp Arifjan, in Kuwait, and he wants me to deploy as an augmentee to their prison staff. American soldiers, contractors—whoever it may be—that break the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) while deployed are confined there for up to thirty days. If their sentencing goes beyond that, we escort them back to the United States to carry out the rest of their sentence at Fort Leavenworth.

  “Are you interested?” he asks.

  “I don’t have any experience on the prison side. None whatsoever.”

  “But you do have a lot of clinical training. You’ve done intake interviews and know how to properly prepare files and how to put information into the Army’s medical database.”

  I’m up-to-date on health documentation, and I’ve been keeping up with my interview skills and all the new data that’s coming out on PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. I know the difference between chronic depression and major depressive disorder, as compared with transitionary issues when soldiers come home or are just getting to their duty stations.

  “Don’t worry about the prison stuff,” the company commander says. “You can train with our unit at Fort Leavenworth, provided you’re interested.”

  I tell him I am, and then in May, I’m off to Kansas.

  Fort Leavenworth houses two prisons: the disciplinary barracks, or DB, where you stay if your sentence is ten years or longer, and the correctional facility, for those serving under ten years. For the next two and a half weeks during the month of June, I work with
the prison’s behavioral health sergeants and technicians, learning how to do intake interviews and understand the paperwork, how it works. I also learn the necessary combative skills and protocols in case an inmate puts his hands on me or attacks.

  It’s 2016. We get our orders to deploy in September. My daughter’s birthday is at the beginning of the month. Fortunately, I’m able to attend her party.

  Saying good-bye to her is extremely hard. She’s two and really has no attention span—no concept that I’m going to be gone for nine months. She’s just kind of like, Oh, okay, whatever.

  The Arifjan base is two to three miles wide. The prison facility is moderately large. It can hold up to 175 people. There’s literally no one there when we arrive—which means that our people are doing the right thing and following the laws of war and not violating the UCMJ.

  Over the next few months, whenever an inmate trickles in—and it’s usually a fourteen-day stay for insubordination, some kid who told his first sergeant and company commander to fuck off directly to their faces—I do the initial intake and then coordinate with the behavioral health clinic to sign off on his treatment or care plan.

  I arrange my life so I can talk to my daughter. I call and video chat with her all the time. I go to the gym every morning at 3:00 a.m., which is about 7:00 p.m. back home, right about the time she’s getting ready for bed. I’m starting my day and she’s winding down, and after we chat for a little bit, I read her Guess How Much I Love You in the Winter. I bought her a copy, and I brought one with me so I can read her a bedtime story every single night as she goes to sleep.