Service memories

 The SecArmy made a great statement about mentally and emotionally supporting the troops this Christmas season. That’s terrific, well needed, and much applauded.

It’s a good start.

My son still sees a VA counselor regularly after “peace time” service at Fort Hood. The things they did to the troops during Covid bring nightmares. (The shots they got killed 2% almost immediately, and another 2-3% never came back from the hospital.) The lethal degree of institutional incompetence and apathy, open drug dealing by the officers and senior NCOs , and murder for hire (mostly by CID, invariably ruled as “suicides” despite being zip tied and shot in the back of the head) on the base didn’t help at all. Nor did finding the bodies of several victims, including a roommate. He’s lost too many friends to drugs, violence, suicide, and institutional callous disregard. In his experience, our own government is the greatest threat.

All I had in my years of service was cleaning up after suicides (please be considerate and shoot yourself outside, or at least over tile), digging up mass graves (the one with the cow on top was memorable), evaluating scenes after the fact, hunkering down through months of daily mortar and rocket attacks, and the occasional “sniper” (most attackers don’t know what the sights are for). We were generally safer while on our near-daily missions outside the base, even with the roadside bombs.

I finally broke when the local command refused to go to the aid of a convoy under attack right outside our base, and locked down the gates so we couldn’t go out to help, either. They listened to fellow American Soldiers dying and calling for help on the radio, and thought it was great entertainment. That was just before I was betrayed by my own company commander. (To say nothing of our incredibly cowardly battalion commander.) With one notable exception, every officer I interacted with in Iraq was arrogantly and blitheringly incompetent.

I stopped making new friends decades ago. Every time I tried to make a new friend, they were killed within a week. (By now we’d come to look at all replacements as dead men who temporarily had the use of the arms and legs. The came and went so fast and so regularly that sometimes we didn’t even learn their names. Truth is, after a while, we sort of avoided gettin’ to know them. - Private Zab, The Big Red One)

I don’t have a phobia about being outside, I have a minor phobia against going outside. Crowds attract explosions. I’m not fine, but I am within tolerance. (Except for this whole medical retirement thing, caused by one too many high fevers plus experimental medications that turned out to have permanent and debilitating side effects.)

Who, us, bitter, angry, and a touch paranoid? You bet your ass we are.