I find my friend Winters. “Where’s Hawk?” I ask.
Winters shoots me a look. “You didn’t hear?”
“No. Where is he?”
“Hawk is fucking dead, man. He got shot in the face.”
Just when I think it’s over and I can come back and meet with my best friends—nope, sorry, one of them is now dead. Death is the gift that keeps on giving.
I try my best to stay busy. Then, in 2005, near the end of January, I go back home to North Carolina.
The battle of Fallujah, what happened to my battalion, was all over the news, every single detail. I can tell that my wife and parents want to ask me about it. I’m grateful they don’t.
How can I explain what it’s like fighting to the death and seeing horrific shit like torture rooms where people were kept in cages? Or how can I explain how, when I got back to the barracks, I’d have hallucinations of people appearing in the bathrooms and then I’d go kick in the doors and leave feeling stupid because no one was in there?
And how do I explain what a huge shock it is for me to go from combat to living back in the United States, where people are living peaceful lives, where there’s no gunfire or roads marked with huge craters from bombs?
Different sounds and smells, I discover, trigger my fight-or-flight response. My body gears up for something really bad to happen—something truly dreadful—even though the whole time my mind is saying, No, no, no, everything is fine.
In the summer, while I’m working for my dad’s law firm and starting up at community college, I almost get extended for a third deployment. It doesn’t happen, which is good. I know, deep in my heart, that if I go back, I’ll die. And yet some guys I know have just deployed again as individual combat replacements to different units where they’ll be the new guys, and it makes me feel guilty that I’m not there with them.
I worry about them all the time.
On top of that, I’m living in the civilian world without a purpose. I’m not around people who really know and understand what I’ve gone through.
I don’t fit in here. What can I possibly do after fighting—and surviving—that huge battle in Fallujah? The only things that bring me joy are smoking cannabis and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.
The cannabis does wonders for my anxiety. The booze helps stop some of the bad feelings and lets me tap into some of the good ones. It helps stop all these intrusive thoughts that are playing on an endless loop—getting a grenade thrown at me, shooting people and them shooting back.
I drink every single day, without fail, because I just want to stop feeling so bad. I go on some epic benders, too. Sometimes I wake up in the creek across the street from my house, dressed in my camis. Other times I feel so despondent that I hop on my motorcycle, drunk, and ride it around and black out.
Oh, my God, I think every time I wake up hungover, I did it again. I’ll never do this again.
But I do it again. And again. My life is falling apart even though I’m going to UC Berkeley and getting good grades. I’m even getting some counseling, but I’m still not ready to face some of these intrusive thoughts, some of these difficult feelings. I’m not consciously aware that I’m purposely avoiding processing the traumas. I don’t know I’m purposely avoiding getting close to people because I’m scared of going through the pain of losing someone again. I don’t want to grieve. My friends are gone. I don’t want to face that fact, or the feelings involved.
What complicates this even more is my friend Josh Munns. He went to Iraq to work as a contractor so he could buy a house for his fiancée. He got kidnapped, and the kidnappers mailed his fingers back to someone in the US forces to prove that they had Josh and he was still alive. He was held captive for over a year, and despite intense negotiations, he was killed.
Life, I know, is never going to get better; it’s only going to get worse. All I can do is pump more booze into myself, and do more reckless things, and feel good once in a while, try to live for those fleeting moments the booze and drugs bring.
That changes in 2012, when I graduate with a master’s degree in social work and start working with a vet group called Killing the Wounded Heart. The group talks about a principle called radical honesty. You have a choice, they say. You can live with your shit and feel like shit, or you can decide to be brave and face your fears.
Listening to them, I feel this pang deep in my gut that this might be my only way out. One day I decide to go home and practice some radical honesty.
“I’m drinking a lot more than you think,” I tell my wife. “I’ve been doing a lot of drugs, and I’ve been unfaithful.”
My wife of four years stands there, glaring at me in shock. She just got home from work and I’ve verbally thrown up all over her.
That day she moves back home with her parents.
The next day, she calls me and says, “I want to stay together. But only if you give up every single drug, even cannabis. And no more booze. One more drop and our marriage is completely over.”
The idea of living without alcohol or drugs—the only things that make me feel good—is terrifying.
“I choose you,” I say.
We work on our relationship. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous and face all these feelings I’ve been avoiding, the grief and the intrusive thoughts, the post-traumatic stress—all of it.
It takes years before I start to feel better.
The real transformation begins on my thirtieth birthday, when a friend gives me a completely shitty present: a registration card for a half marathon. What kind of gift is that? The last thing I want to do is get in shape and run.
But for some reason, I decide to do it. About a week and a half into training, I feel good for the first time in a long, long time—all without using any mind-altering substances. I come to the realization that I can be here, in my own body, without having to disappear inside my head. I don’t have to get blackout drunk or stoned out of my mind to feel like it’s okay to exist.
I sign up for a half Ironman. I do a few of those and fall in love with the sport.
I sign up for a full Ironman. By that time, I’ve got a few triathlons under my belt, but for me it’s still incomprehensible to go 140.4 miles without stopping.
Ironman sends out a short motivational clip of a woman named Lisa Hallett who lost her husband, John, in Afghanistan. In the video, she tells people that she was depressed and stuck in her grief and dealt with it by running. Running, she says, is all about physically moving forward, and that helped her move forward in her life, literally and figuratively. It helped her move forward emotionally and spiritually. She runs in honor of her husband and wears a shirt with his name on it.
In that moment, everything clicks for me. I’m able to shed tears of grief and joy. I’m so overcome by emotion, this freedom of not feeling ashamed or guilty that I survived. I don’t have to feel this utter dread.
I can remember them. I can honor them by racing and carrying their names on my jersey. I can deal with my grief in a way that makes their families feel happy. I can do something I enjoy and do it with a purpose bigger than just completing a race, which in itself is a good enough purpose.
I begin to experience my own transformation and healing.
Ironman gets wind of how their events helped reshape my life. They ask me if I’d be willing to share my story in their upcoming footage for the World Championships. I jump on it. I want to let other people who are in my shoes know that they’re not alone. Trapped. That you can find something that can change your life.
When Ironman announces its upcoming fortieth-anniversary celebration will take place in Santa Rosa, California, the company reaches out to me again, this time asking if I’d like to become their race ambassador. “Is there anything you’d like to do to make it unique or special?”
“Actually,” I say, “I’ve been thinking of running a marathon for a gold star family. From experience, I know they get a lot of support during the funerals, but afterward they get ignored because t
he community doesn’t know what to do to help support them.
“What I want to do is invite a local family to the event and run the entire marathon while carrying a flag with the name of their son or daughter on it. I think it might not only help other veterans who have survivor’s guilt but also help the community make sure these gold star families feel welcomed.”
And that’s when the fear shows up. How the hell am I going to pull off running 26.2 miles while carrying a flag?
I tell myself I can do it—I will do it.
And I do.
CODA:
MEMORIAL DAY
SHIVAN SIVALINGAM
Shivan Sivalingam was born in Singapore. His family immigrated to the United States in 1984, and he grew up in Austin, Texas. While attending Texas A&M University in the mid-1990s, Shivan began serving as an intern in the federal government. After graduating, he received a commission in the US Navy Reserve. In 2005, Shivan left federal service to work as a defense contractor. He has been recalled to active duty on five occasions, most recently to serve as a liaison officer for the US Navy’s 5th Fleet at Special Operations Command Central, in Tampa, Florida.
My friends,
Ten years have passed since I shared the story of my friend Roz with some of you. Others of you may have heard bits as we’ve met in the years in between. Roz and Shawn, two of my teammates in Afghanistan, set off on the Kabul-Bagram road ten years ago today. A short time after eight that morning, both were lost. There are many story lines that I think about from that day. The tremendous leadership from an unlikely hero. The friendship and community from Roz’s family and so many others in the years since. Obviously, the guilt. But most of all, I think about the difficult fact that life will deceive us with relative predictability for long periods until, at the moments when we begin to feel the most comfortable, it unfolds, reminding us how powerless we all are.
As we approach Memorial Day, of course I remember Roz. However, on this day, we must be obliged to remember as many of our fallen friends as possible. While some of us by good fortune may not have a loved one or even acquaintance who has perished in the conflicts, isn’t that all the more reason for those of us who have lost someone to share their stories? What follows are some stories of a few friends no longer with us.
MOHSIN
With much in common, Mohsin and I became fast friends at my camp in Kabul. We were both junior officers in a headquarters camp, both of South Asian descent, and both exceptionally charming young gentlemen for the times. Charm, we should be reminded, is one of those forgotten casualties of war. Mohsin, a Pakistani, had just completed a tour in Iraq and had gone home only long enough to get married before returning to harm’s way. We ate dinner together most days, recounting the events of the past few hours and our plans for the day that was to follow.
Mohsin was especially excited during one of his first Fridays at the camp, as that was the day of the big bazaar. Vendors from all over the area would set up an open-air market just outside the camp, peddling everything from furniture and antique rifles to pirated DVDs and all manner of trinkets in between. After lunch, we walked to the bazaar, where he planned to shop for jewelry for his wife. For me, one of the grand wastes of time is watching someone bargain for anything at all, let alone alleged precious stones, so I excused myself. Mohsin seemed slightly displeased at this, expecting more hospitality from a friend.
When we met up for dinner, Mohsin, with unnecessary enthusiasm, displayed his prize catch of the day: a beautiful lapis lazuli necklace. He stayed on the topic some forty-five seconds longer than necessary to convey a message that I believe should never have exceeded ten. I took this as gloating, as implying that I should have kept his company at the bazaar. Never accused of refusing an opportunity to humble a good friend, I reminded him that the only difference between a jeweler and a thief is a handshake. Mohsin conceded, putting the lapis away.
During our chats, we often spoke about Mohsin’s desire to go to the border region, where he felt he could put his language skills to better use. This would be a point of contention in our friendship. I tried appealing to reason, telling him that he could potentially get the attention of one of our seniors if he stayed in Kabul, thereby influencing the conflict at a strategic level. I appealed to emotion, reminding him of his obligation to his new bride and his family. None of my interventions worked.
The border region was unsafe for all Americans, but it would be especially unsafe for Mohsin. Locals he encountered there would quickly identify him as a native. For each local who displayed pride that one of their own had become an American soldier, there would be no fewer than three who would brand him a traitor. I thought that our enemies would not rest until they killed him. They would be relentless. Regardless, after a few weeks of trying, Mohsin got his desired assignment and left the camp in mid-August of 2008.
About a month later, I traveled home for my brother’s wedding. On a random day, I looked at the faces of the fallen in the local paper. You don’t ever look at that section expecting to see someone that you were just eating dinner with…not because the person was out of harm’s path, but because you expect that you will get the bad news in a more direct way.
But Mohsin had arrived at our camp by himself, and he’d left by himself. In the few weeks he was at my camp, he got to know only a handful of people. When I got back to Kabul, I looked up the incident reports. Mohsin had been assigned to a camp where they frequently went out on missions. Our enemies had struck American convoys from that camp at a rate of just a couple of attacks per month in the months prior to Mohsin’s arrival, but in the two weeks prior to his death, the enemy had targeted Mohsin’s convoy four times in five attacks! Relentless indeed. Our enemies had been hunting for Mohsin.
MIKE
In November of 2001, some of the heaviest fighting of the then just six-week-old war occurred at Qala-i-Jangi (literally, “fort of war”), an imposing structure guarding the ancient Shia city of Mazar-i-Sharif from the west. It was here that General Rashid Dostum held some four hundred Taliban fighters, rounded up during a death march from Konduz to Mazar, across the Afghan northern plains. Dostum was one of several influential Afghans whom we enlisted for support after the 9/11 attacks.
One of my friends who had deployed there in October of 2001 shared a great account of General Tommy Franks speaking to Dostum on the phone about additional compensation for the assistance that the warlord was providing. “What’s got to happen first is the mission!!!” Franks thundered before slamming down the phone on Dostum. Franks, having risen through the ranks during the lean Clinton years, was probably uniquely prepared to handle Dostum.
Dostum and his men picked up some four thousand Taliban on the way to Mazar, but only four hundred survived the journey. At Qala-i-Jangi, the prisoners were stuffed into the basement of a small building with pink walls. If a sardine had viewed the cramped, filthy conditions in that basement, he would have quickly reconsidered his plight and happily lumbered back into his can.
Mike and his partner arrived to question the Taliban prisoners. A few dozen of Dostum’s men were all that stood between the two Americans and the prisoners. Initially, the prisoners, weary from the long trek, were likely just content to be off the container trucks, but perspectives and intentions would change quickly. Mike and his partner were focusing on the task at hand, not completely attuned to the changing attitude of the enemy, which was no doubt taking stock of scenes of friends being beaten and spirited off to unknown fates by Dostum’s men. Recall that these were men who survived the death march—the march that had reportedly wiped out more than three thousand of their comrades.
Said another way: they were the strongest, toughest, and most resilient of the initial group. Even depleted in number, they still outnumbered Dostum’s men by three or four to one and may have smuggled in weapons. Mike and his partner probably didn’t know those crucial details. The prisoners began sizing up Mike, his partner, and Dostum’s men. At a coordinated moment, when Mike�
�s partner was away, they encircled Mike and began to pounce.
The ensuing battle featured these prisoners; Dostum’s men, some of whom were on horses; British Special Forces elements parachuting in; and precision-guided aerial munitions dropped from ground attack aircraft, all within the confines of a high-walled desert fortress.
The picture in my mind is one from an eighties-era G.I. Joe cartoon, except Qala-i-Jangi really happened. Over the grand ramparts, inside the fortress grounds, the Afghan Army’s 209th Corps would establish a garrison here a few years later. A huge wall bearing a disproportionately small door divides the fort in half, separating the working area from what amounts to a memorial ground for the fighting that took place here that November. The fortress was perfectly unpreserved, and stepping through the door, one quickly encounters rusted-out trucks, spent 12.7mm DShK shells, and the notorious pink house, the whole scene almost exactly as it was in the days following the battle.
When you walk Bull Run or Sharpsburg, much is left to interpretation and your imagination. In Qala-i-Jangi, the only things missing from 2001 are the bodies, the sounds, and the smell. A memorial for Mike stands in the veranda of the pink house, and the camp bears his name, a couple of miles to the south. Mike has the unfortunate distinction of being the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan after the conflict began.
FRANK
Some eight years after Mike was killed, Frank arrived at Camp Spann with a team of Navy personnel. They had trained together, done their pre-deployment workups together, and they had all traveled into theater together. In short, they were already a tight-knit group. Camp Spann was entirely enclosed within Camp Shaheen—the main garrison for the Afghan 209th Corps, with some command buildings a short distance away at Qala-i-Jangi. Shaheen was a perfect square, about three-quarters of a mile on each side, and Spann occupied a small corner of the larger camp, with its own perimeter fence.
Walk in My Combat Boots Page 28
