"Only the dead have seen the end of war"- George Santayana, 1922
Its a quote that I have heard before, but never really paid that much attention to. Tonight, while flipping through the guide for the TV, I saw a documentary with the same title, read the description and figured that I would kill some time with it. I was half paying attention, half doing homework, when they began talking about the Jordanian embassy bombing in Baghdad in 2003. I think my body froze. I was there in the aftermath of that bombing. I fumbled for the remote and rewound what I had missed. There is the rubble. There are the burning cars. There are the exact steps I stood on with my team leader. There is the fish place right down the street. There are the drag marks in blood from the dead bodies. That day was the first time that I learned that you never stand in black spots, because those spots used to be people. An occasional shoe, and some body fluids are all that are left besides those damn black spots. There is video from the UN bombing. We had been there a week or so prior, ate lunch in their cafeteria. Their food was awesome. There is the parking lot where I peed on my friend Ashley Kennedy's vehicle tire, because he called me fat and he's 200 lbs of muscle packed into a 180 pound body, so its the only way I could get him back without getting tuned up. It goes a bit further, talking about Haifa street. It shows militants firing mortars into the green zone. I got wounded by a mortar round, right outside the green zone. This part was from 2004. I got wounded in 2004. Were these the guys who fired the mortar that wounded me? Im getting a little amped up. I can feel it in my body. I keep flexing my hands. I left all this behind when I retired. Im not that guy anymore.
I used to be good at being that guy. I loved deploying. I got numb to the death, I craved the mission and what it could bring. It only makes sense to those who did it. It was the best drug I have ever taken, and watching the Baghdad I knew, when I left it physically in 2005 brought me back. I dont know how to feel about it. What I am watching through someones camera lens, is what I saw with my own eyes and it all makes sense. The quote that I all but ignored, because I don't need to hear people romanticize war, who have never been hit me like I rock in my face. I think about every deployment everyday. Sometimes, if the weather is right, it feels like Baghdad. I used to be obsessed with eating Afghani food when I came back from there in 2009. Now I don't even like to smell it. It reminds me of too much. I ate alot of it when I was there, and I will be the first to tell you how good it was. Just dont show me any today or let me smell it.
I have made a new life for myself and my family. I should be worrying about school, the 3 kids of mine who have strep throat and how I can keep from getting it, because i'm going out to Santa Barbara next week to tell Melissa's story for the Moth. I feel like i've been pulled back into a different world. I finally have to admit to myself that I think about war everyday. I miss it. I hate it. I love it. It is part of me. It is a part of me that will never change, because it had that much of an affect on me. I yearn to talk to my friends that I went to war with. I talk with one or two, be it on the phone or social media on most days. When we get together, we talk about things that only that brotherhood allows. I don't tell things to strangers. I tell things to the people I literally bled with. It is true. As much as I ignored it beforehand, I truly know that only the dead have seen the end of war.
