Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 165

(3/3) “It wasn’t every second of every day. But sometimes I’d...

(3/3) “It wasn’t every second of every day. But sometimes I’d get this boiling feeling like there was mercury in my blood. And it would rise up into my head and I’d get so angry it was like I was going to explode. And all I could think of was worst-case scenarios. And it felt like there was no way out. I’d work myself into such a frenzy that I thought there was only one way to eliminate that feeling. And I’ve already lost seven veterans that I know to suicide. Two of them were very close to me. These were educated guys. And they seemed happy. You’d meet them, and think: ‘These guys are so great.’ And I knew if it could happen to them it could happen to me. So I came here and I started unpacking this shit. It was a lot of work. The therapist just guides the conversation. You have to dig up stuff you thought you’d packed away forever. And you have to answer questions that you never answered. It’s exhausting to go that deep. But it works. I feel like I’m in control again. I know my triggers. I don’t flip out. I don’t send inappropriate emails at work when I feel slighted. I still have bad days but I’m in control again. I was afraid therapy would cause me to lose my edge. That didn’t happen. It made me stronger. It’s like gym for the mind. And I don’t want to lose one more veteran. That’s why I’m telling my story right now. I don’t want anyone to be afraid to look under the hood. Therapy is like Men’s Wearhouse: ‘Give it a try. You’ll like the way you look. I guarantee it.’”

(2/3) “All we wanted to know was who the bad guys were. But...

(2/3) “All we wanted to know was who the bad guys were. But nobody knew. We were getting picked off one by one and we couldn’t find the bad guys. Some guy who was helping you during the day might kill you at night. The enemy didn’t wear uniforms. Far more innocent people got hurt than anyone else. It wasn’t malicious. It was just legitimately confusing situations. When you’re driving to a meeting and a car bomb explodes, suddenly every car looks like a bomb. And you’re surrounded by cars. And anybody could have a suicide vest. And you’re surrounded by people. It was threat overload. And it was mentally exhausting. One day we were driving to a small village to pick up a young Iraqi boy. We were going to fly him to the US for a rare heart surgery. And I’m in the back of the convoy doing rear security. And this woman in a burqa starts walking toward me. And I’m shouting in Arabic for her to stop, but she keeps coming. And I can see she’s carrying something. She’s clutching something inside her burqa. And she won’t stop. And I keep trying to wave her away. I’m screaming at her and pointing my gun but she keeps coming closer. And I’m thinking that I have to kill her because she has a bomb. I have to do it. And I switch off my safety, and I’m just about to pull the trigger, and suddenly she opens up her burqa. And there’s a baby inside.”

(1/3) “We got called out one day to assist a fuel convoy that...

(1/3) “We got called out one day to assist a fuel convoy that was being pinned down by gunfire. They had stopped along an open field, and were taking fire from a tree line about 200 meters away. When we arrived, I noticed a small truck about 50 meters out. It had stopped on a farm road running along the field. There were legs hanging out of it. I was acting medic for the platoon so I went to investigate. And they’re obviously not combatants. It’s this family of six. I guess they’d been driving toward the convoy and somebody got scared and shot them up. It’s just a mom and a dad and four kids. And there’s this unique, awful smell when your guts open up. And everyone’s dead except the father and this eight-year-old girl who’d been shot twice in the chest. And she’s crying. And this wasn’t what I came for. I thought we were here to kill bad guys.”

(4/4) “I never thought Iraq was a good idea. I thought it was...

(4/4) “I never thought Iraq was a good idea. I thought it was a stupid war. I remember getting into an argument with my Dad about it. But the war started, so it became a question: ‘What am I going to do about it?’ Was my best choice to stay in Cambridge and hold up a protest sign? Or was it to deploy and try to create a better outcome for the guys who were going to war no matter what? It’s complicated. Did I kill people? If I did, you paid me to do it. You didn’t have to pay your taxes. Our military may have fought the war, but our whole society went to war. All of us were part of what happened.”

(¾) “You see this really fucking horrible stuff. You...

(¾) “You see this really fucking horrible stuff. You see guys blown to bits. You see dogs eating people. And the whole time there’s this little voice in your head that says: ‘That’s not normal, that’s not normal.’ And the longer you stay in that place, the quieter the voice gets. That voice is like your anchor. If it gets too quiet, it’s hard to come back. If I’d stayed in Fallujah for two years, maybe I’d be fucked up. But I left after a month. The experience profoundly affected me. But it doesn’t haunt me. I don’t think I’m sick. I’ve had complete strangers tell me that I’m in denial. There’s this tendency to pathologize the entire war experience. And recently ‘PTSD’ has become a catch-all to describe every veteran with a mental illness. I’m just not comfortable with that trend. A lot of good Marines have PTSD. But a lot of us don’t.”

(2/4) “The 2nd Battle of Fallujah began on November 8th, 2004. ...

(2/4) “The 2nd Battle of Fallujah began on November 8th, 2004. The plan basically called for the entire 1st Marine Division to form a giant line and advance through Fallujah from north to south. The city was overrun with insurgents. My company commander ordered the platoon that I led to establish a forward position. Forty-six of us snuck across a highway at 3 AM to seize a building 150 meters in front of everyone else. It was a candy store. The guys were excited at first because the place was filled with chips and soda. And we were starving and thirsty. But all hell broke loose when the sun came up. RPG’s started slamming into the side of the building. We could see guys in black sneaking up all around us. My platoon sergeant was shot through the helmet and knocked unconscious. Another of our guys got shot in the femoral artery and his blood covered the floors. And we couldn’t get out. Every exit was dialed in with machine gun fire. You couldn’t even poke your head out. We were pinned down all day. And suddenly my company commander is on the radio saying that we’ve got to advance. And I’m shouting into the radio over the gunfire that we’re probably going to die if we leave the store. I’m shouting so loud and for so long that I lost my voice for four days. But he’s saying that we have no choice. He’s being pressured by his commanders, all the way up to the generals. And the generals are being pressured by the White House. And all my guys are looking at me because they know if I lose that argument, we’re going out there. And I lose the argument. And I tell them that we have to go. But instead of running out the door, we piled a bunch of explosives on the back wall, and we blew it out. And we ran. And everyone survived. Twenty-five guys were wounded, but everyone survived. A lot of that was luck. And a lot of that was our platoon and how good those guys were. But I also feel that my decisions mattered that day. And if I had decided not to serve, and stayed home, it could’ve ended much worse. So no, I don’t have any regrets about going to Iraq.”

(¼) “My brother went to Harvard. He’s ‘Good Will...

(¼) “My brother went to Harvard. He’s ‘Good Will Hunting’ smart. I lived with him in Cambridge for a while, and I visited the campus chapel, and up on the walls they had the names of every Harvard man who’s died in war. The list was so long for World War I and World War II. It went all the way to the ceiling. But the list got thinner and thinner as time passed. The best and the brightest didn’t show up for Vietnam. And I understand. I get that it was an unpopular war. But they chose to not show up and there was a consequence for that. There were leadership failures. Standards were lowered and people were killed because of bad decisions. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to happen whether I chose to participate or not. I was a fortunate son of this country. I had a good family. I went to a private school. I graduated from a great college. A lot of the guys who served under me didn’t have those advantages. They relied on me to make tough decisions in dangerous situations. And I’m glad I was there to make those decisions.”

(3/3) “I know guys who look back on the war as the best time in...

(3/3) “I know guys who look back on the war as the best time in their lives. They’d love to go back. They only see themselves as a soldier and I want more for them than that. I want them to be OK with being home and finding new and better ways to be themselves. What happened to being a good person? Or being the best version of yourself? I think at the end of the day, everyone just wants to feel good about what they did. And so do I. But I don’t. I don’t want to wave the flag and say we killed those motherfuckers. I don’t want to be thanked for my service. I don’t think it made anything better and I don’t think we won any hearts or minds. For a long time after I got back, I isolated myself in a cabin and drank all the time. Then at one point I decided that I was going to try everything possible to feel better. I was going to try acupuncture, chiropracty, therapy, and if nothing worked, I was going to kill myself. Recently I’ve been experimenting with femininity. I’ve never been feminine. My father put me in mixed martial arts when I was nine. I became a blackbelt and a kickboxer. I was always the tough chick. Now I’m trying to go in the opposite direction. I’m being very cliche about it. I’m doing yoga. I’m wearing dresses everyday. I’m wearing make-up. I even joined a woman’s group. Every month we have a sacred circle on the new moon and do guided meditations, set intentions, and eat chocolate. God, this is harder to talk about then bombs.”

(2/3) “We had a company commander in Iraq—let’s call him Captain...

(2/3) “We had a company commander in Iraq—let’s call him Captain Johnson. He was in charge of all the medics. He set the rosters, scheduled the convoys, and coordinated with other units. He was also fucking his secretary but that’s less important. We were nine months into our deployment, and Captain Johnson decides to go out on a convoy with us one night. That wasn’t his job. His job was to stay inside his office. But that night he decided that he wanted to go. And during the convoy one of the trucks hits an IED. And guys are screaming ‘go, go, go’ over the radio, and we’re trying to push through the hot spot, and small arms fire keeps bouncing off our vehicles: ‘plink, plink, plink.’ It sounded just like the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. I hate that movie because they got that sound so perfect. And as soon as we were out of the area, Captain Johnson has us stop on Samarra Bridge to repair the vehicle. And it was so stupid to stop there. Because that bridge was getting blown up every other week. And we’re sitting on that bridge, pointing our M-16’s into the dark, and people are whispering ‘do you hear that?’ And we almost shoot at our own infantry because we don’t know it’s them. And I asked Captain Johnson why he came with us. And he told me: ‘I have two sons at home. I need stories to tell them.’ And I hated him so much in that moment. Because I didn’t want this shit. When I signed up, they told me I’d be working in a hospital. I wanted to be safe, but I wasn’t allowed to be. But he had a choice, and he chose not to be. Just because he wanted war stories.”

(1/3) “I didn’t fit in too well in training. I came back from...

(1/3) “I didn’t fit in too well in training. I came back from drinking one night and I was three minutes after curfew. My senior drill sergeant told me that he was going to punish me because a few medics had noticed I was late. So I asked him: ‘Do you decide what kind of leader you are based on who’s watching?’ He didn’t like that. He screamed at me and made me do a bunch of pushups, and me being a drunk-ass, I was calling him a ‘pussy’ and ‘motherfucker’ the entire time. So he reported me to the company commander, who reported me to the battalion commander, and I end up at this formal hearing where they make me listen to all this awful shit about myself. And then they asked me if I had anything to say. I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to keep quiet, but I had typed out this whole speech about how my senior drill sergeant didn’t embody Army values. So I read my speech, and when I finished, everyone was pretty mad. A command sergeant major started screaming in my face. He looked like Clint Eastwood if Clint Eastwood was only five feet tall. After he was done yelling, he ripped my insignia off my uniform, escorted me from the room, and with a mix of disgust and pride, said: ‘You’ve some got balls.’”