This isn't about a fun day. This is about the heartbreak I feel when I see a country that I lost friends in, that I was wounded in and a country that changed us all, fall back into enemy hands. In 2003 we crossed the burm and felt like heroes without every firing a shot. Cheered from the side of the road, with little kids trying to steal our gas cans off the back of our truck. Jesse Velasquez getting his sunglasses stolen off of his face because he left his window down. Driving for what seemed like forever until we hit Talil, passing burned out Iraqi tanks that were in school yards and right next to peoples houses. Early April in 2003, we were a bunch of gypsies. We squatted in Talil until we got caught by people who knew better. I was part of the advance party and we were led by a First Sergeant that wanted to get us in the fight. We all wanted to get in the fight. Every one of us will remember the convoy of death when we left Talil for Baghdad on what can only be described as one of the most fucked up back roads in the world in the middle of the night. This is about the pain when we lost our first guy, Travis Burkhardt. This is about pulling security at the first meeting of the new Iraq. Fucking history and we were there. Living in tents with stolen air conditioners, a platoon Sergeant getting us ice by shotgun and burning a field to clear it for our tents only to realize that underneath it was an ammo bunker and rounds were cooking off, every damn way you could imagine. This is about brotherhood that was forged out of fear and unconditional love, because whatever argument or dislike you had for someone disappears the first time you get shot at. This is about taking a bitch bath is Saddam’s garden at the Republican palace in one of the stranger moments of my life, my brothers by my side. This is about giving a full bird Colonel who we didn't know a ride and seeing how the years in an office made him soft, when we were smashing our mirrors on other cars getting out of a bad situation. Its what we do, its how we stay alive. Drive fast, shoot straight. That’s how we made our money. This is about leaving early after I got hurt, coming back 7 months later with a new Company and seeing that all the love that was there for us before had now turned to hate. I really thought I had Baghdad down. I was there for the second time in a year. I knew the place. I did know the place until I was running down the street between the Baghdad convention center and the Al Rashid hotel with blood pumping out of my legs after a mortar round landed five feet behind me. I did not know Baghdad anymore. I don’t know Iraq anymore either and it kills me inside.
We make sacrifices for each other and for people we don’t know in the name of freedom. To some its because they want money for college, others its a calling. Whatever the reason, we do it for each other, where the rubber meets the road, we have each others back. I sit watching northern Iraq fall, moving down towards Baghdad, my Baghdad and I wonder if the sacrifice was worth it. Was it worth Travis Bruce never getting to make that confused looking face that he was so good at again? Was it worth Todd Partridge never being able to play with his daughters again? Was it worth Steve Reynolds never being able to tell you about the Polizei or the Spetznatz again, while rubbing his hands together and drinking mountain dew while smoking what seemed like a carton of cigarettes in a quick conversation? Was it worth the horrors that followed Ashley Kennedy home that led him to kill himself? Was it worth Blair Emery getting extended past the twelve months the Company was supposed to be there to fifteen months and getting killed when he should have been home with his wife? Was it worth my gunner, who was an all State swimmer in High School losing his leg or the shrapnel that lingers in my legs? These past few days have caused me to wonder what the hell happened to this Country that I left some of my blood, but more of my sanity in.
While it may be a blip on the news for you, it is every sacrifice we made, every brother we buried, every nightmare we have and every pill we shove down our throat or joint we smoke to help us live some semblance of a normal life. This was our world, a chance for us to make a change for people so they could live a life of freedom and it is for all intents and purposes gone. We left them in a worse situation. I feel guilty because of that. I feel guilty that I get to selfishly play with my kids while my friends don’t. I wish there was a way that I could make it right, but the uniform is off, I'm just another retiree and there is nothing I can do about it. I can only watch the news or see the videos of people getting shot from passing cars, the camera going up to the dead bodies constantly filming. I can still smell the gunpowder, blood and stench of death in that Baghdad sun and I am helpless to do anything about it. I wish I could have done something more to help, but this situation is bigger than me. It is bigger than my brothers. It is a Country I had hoped to go back to some day as a tourist and put some of these demons to bed, but it is only a dream. Just like the dream of a free Iraq.
